Re: Tonal Songs and glossalalia

Dan Sulani wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Sally Caves wrote:
>>
>>> Are there any musical experts on this list?  What does anyone
>>> know about "tonal songs" -- songs that are sung with meaningless
>>> words?
[...]
>
>    Thinking further on this, I realized what might be a connection
>between scat and scat-like behavior
>and conlanging:
>    When a person scats, the sounds may be devoid of meaning, but
>they're not random. Perhaps not consciously
>and deliberately, but at some level they are selected for their effects.
>If not, it wouldn't always flow.
The following is just idle speculation on my part, but what the hey:
I've been wondering if this sort of 'scat' singing may not point
the way to the mechanism by which language developed in the first place.
I've been reading recently that some scientists think that gestural
language may have preceded oral language in human development. I've
also been struck for a long time by how easy it is to memorize words
set to music, almost as if we're hardwired to do it.  So imagine the
following scenario:  Early humans have developed two modes of
communication, gestural and simple vocal calls.  The former would
be somewhat more developed than the latter: gestures could convey
complex meanings, while calls would simply be like the calls that
various primates make to each other during their foraging to this day.

Sometime in the midst of this, the concept of music arises, at least
in the sense of rythyms (sp?) beaten out with sticks, and people find they
like to move to the rythym, i.e., dancing is invented.  I don't think it is
too much of a stretch to imagine these people beginning
to tell stories by the gestures they use in the dance: describing a
successful hunt, for example. At some point, people caught up in the
dancing begin to make sounds, to "scat" sing.  Over time, particular sounds
become associated with particular gestures.  Over more time, the
sounds may begin to replace the gestures, at least in non-musical
contexts.  People may have begun to appreciate the idea of a
communication system that didn't depend on sight and that left your
hands free, and this would be the origin of vocal language.

-- Terry