Subject: They sometimes behave so strangely From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Ole_K=FChl?= <kyhl@xxxxxxxx> Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2006 19:05:37 +0100 List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>Dear List It has been very intriguing to follow the discussion triggered by the 'strange behavior' of Diana's vocalization. To my mind, this beautiful example points to a very important problem that we should consider seriously. The implicit question is, of course, how can we explain this phenomenon, which seems to be fairly consistent across a vast population. Shall we discard it as purely phenomenological? Most of us would hesitate to do so. There seems to be a switch between two perceptual modes in our cognition, a music mode and a language mode, prompting us to ask: How can we explain this switch? and What triggers it? Is it a purely cultural phenomenon, as some writers have suggested, or does it rest on biological properties as well? We see how this simple demonstration raises a host of questions that are very difficult to answer, and it is therefore tempting to ignore them. Our inability to explain the mode-switch phenomenon may have to do with the way we conceive of the fundamental categories language and music (which may not be so far apart, as we have seen a number of examples of these last days). Seen in this perspective, Diana's 'illusion' becomes a demonstration of the instability of our basic categories. Not only do they have 'fuzzy boundaries', but their very definition is human and cultural, thus subject to change and interpretation. The categories language and music are not predestined and given by nature, they are part of the semiotic web in which we perform our investigations. We should therefore not be surprised by the fact that it is possible to manipulate a demonstration in such a way that the category boundary becomes blurred. Ole Kühl kyhl@xxxxxxxx