Subject: Pawel, From: Robert Bolia <rbolia(at)FALCON.AL.WPAFB.AF.MIL> Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1998 09:41:04 -0400Pawel, Thanks for the interesting question (which has prompted a great deal of interesting discussion). I believe the correspondence between "high" pitch and high-frequency sounds is the same in Finnish as it is in the Indo-European languages (at least according to my Finnish-English dictionary; I am not a Finnish-speaker). I have dictionaries for several other non-IE languages (Arabic, Chinese, Estonian), but they are either not very good or only go one way (i.e., Arabic-English but not English-Arabic; not particularly helpful since I don't read Arabic). Any good technical dictionary should be able to tell us something. Bob. Pawel Kusmierek wrote: Thank you very much for this information. I am the one who posted the original "Why high is high" message and caused a huge discussion that gradually went to topics, which are not very relevant to my questions. But now you gave me an interesting information. Please clarify one matter (I need to be sure): does 'high' in Finnish mean a sound of high frequency (like in English, Polish, etc.) or opposite? Other people who now other non-Indo-European languages or who has non-Indo-European-speaking friends: please contribute and tell us how are sounds described in Chinese, Japanese, Hungarian or any other language! Pawel Kusmierek ************************************* Pawel Kusmierek Department of Neurophysiology Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology 3, Pasteur St., 02-093 Warsaw, Poland tel. (48-22) 659 85 71 ex 379 or 388 fax (48-22) 822 53 42 E-mail pq(at)nencki.gov.pl ICQ 11740175 Email to AUDITORY should now be sent to AUDITORY(at)lists.mcgill.ca LISTSERV commands should be sent to listserv(at)lists.mcgill.ca Information is available on the WEB at http://www.mcgill.ca/cc/listserv