Grammar with a "G"

Sherman Wilcox wilcox at UNM.EDU
Tue Mar 23 16:05:34 UTC 1999


On 3/23/99 Tony Wright wrote:

> Linguists "make" languages?

Maybe not languages, but grammars. In one way, at least.

I was having a good discussion with some linguist friends after a
Sonny Rollins jazz concert last night (which was awesome, by the
way). One mentioned that the musicologist Gunther Schuller once
published a transcription and analysis of a Rollins tune, "Blue 7"
(an odd tune, recorded in 1956). He found some interesting structural
stuff going on.

Apparently Rollins read this analysis and wrote back something to the
effect, "take your analysis and shove it. My music can't be analyzed
this way."

Well, what do we make of this. Is Schuller wrong? Is that structure
not there? Rollins apparently didn't think it showed anything useful,
and he was the creator, the speaker, to so speak. Or, maybe
musicologists, like linguists, know more about the products of
creativity than the creators do.

Another question, as my other linguist friend pointed out, is not
whether structure can be found -- is "there" -- but whether *that* is
what accounted for Rollins' production of his improvisation in the
first place. My simple-minded way of thinking of the difference is
that maybe Schuller's analysis *worked*, but it wasn't *right*.

Maybe linguists' grammars work -- that doesn't make them right.

And, of course, there is one more problem (thanks again to Larry
Gorbet, one the linguist friends, for pointing this out): the
difference between saying "that structure was *there*" and "*that*
structure was there" (that one, and no other). Sure, maybe Schuller
found a structure, and if we accept that he's not hallucinating (this
is jazz, after all) and knows his musicology business, then
apparently that structure is there. But another, equally sharp
jazz-loving musicologist might find a different structure. Are they
both wrong (I bet I know what Sonny would say)? Is only one wrong? Or
are they both correct?

I guess I think they were both correct.

But none of it means a damn for Sonny, who created "Blue 7". And to
that extent, then, I also think they're both wrong.

If linguists are like jazz critics or art critics, then the best
among them are, I guess, finding stuff that's *there*, and they're
all correct. The beauty of creative works is that they are "multiply
sanctioned" -- to use a cognitive linguist term. The best are
massively multiply sanctioned. That's why, like "Blue 7", they are
ageless and inspire so many, over and over again. We hear something
new in "Blue 7" or see something new in a Jackson Pollack painting
each time we experience them.

I, for one, though, would like to figure out how the hell Sonny
Rollins created "Blue 7" and all the other brilliant improvisations
that he does. And as a linguist, I'd like to figure out why and how
and what people do what they do when they create utterances. When it
comes to language, we are all improvisational geniuses.

"Blue 7" just finished on my stereo. I'll shut up now.

-- Sherman



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