Linguistic Models in Ethnomusicology

Abstract

ions which a mathematician may retranslate into other abstractions of another logical order. This method of analysis is based on the completely false assumption that transcriptions of music have some sort of objective reality, and are standardized to the extent that linguistic phonetic transcription is standardized. Moreover, the author is absolved from discussing what claims this type of explanation is really making and what (if anything) it has to do with music because the essence of the work is formal and because there was little data to begin with. When it boils down this is an anything that's possible is interesting and/or feasible approach, and it has little to do with the development of a scientific ethnomusicology; it merely exalts formalism as an end in itself. It does not use formalism for what it really is in science-a means towards expressing general theories in the most explicit way. I have no doubt that the authors cited above, and the other ethnomusicologists utilizing similar approaches have good intentions; I simply want to point out that they are not formalizing ethnomusicology-they are just using the formalisms of linguistic notation and terminology. They have given analyses filled with tree diagrams, phrase markers, derivations, rules, binary oppositions, and the like-but hardly any of their discussion has taken place on a theoretical level. Only Blacking (1970, 1971) and Lindblom and Sundberg (1970) have dealt explicitly with basic theoretical issues like the approach to music from natural science, the differences between music and natural language, the concept of generative description, musical competences and performance, and deep and surface structure. The rest of the literature ignores issues like the empirical comparison of models, a metatheory of music, evaluation procedures, and the relation of the models to the phenomena they supposedly explain. This paucity of theory in the midst of a sea of applications makes it clear that the models are not scientizing ethnomusicology but playing games with abstractions. In a recent article discussing the empirical and logical superiority of a transformational approach to language teaching, linguist Robin Lakoff notes the misuse of transformational grammar in some new grammar texts. She points out that rather than borrowing and using the significant conclusions of transformational linguistics (viz., the rationalist approach), these books are simply borrowing the rules themselves, the abstractions of transformational grammar, its narrow shell of formalism (R. Lakoff 1969:129). Just as the books cited by Lakoff miss the point of transformational grammar, linguistically based ethnomusicology has missed the point of formalism. By simply borrowing a hollow shell of formalism from mathematics and linguistics, rather than dealing with substantive issues in theory, proponents of linguistic models have not formalized ethnomusicology; they have thrown out rules and notations which in themselves do not clarify any significant ethnomusicological issue. Hence, I would join with Blacking in concluding: 210 This content downloaded from 207.46.13.176 on Mon, 20 Jun 2016 05:39:03 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms FELD: LINGUISTICS AND ETHNOMUSICOLOGY Analytic tools cannot be borrowed freely and used as short cuts to greater achievements in ethnomusicological research as can electronic devices such as the tape recorder: they must emerge from the nature of the subject studied (Blacking 1972:1).