Re: Digest Number 389

Margo: Thanks for the usual elegant and erudite response. I think the
example of early European music is relevant because it shows that
pythagorean intervals are sometimes preferred over 5-limit thirds and
sixths, even in non-harmonized music.

Johnny: The Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq are plausibly descended from
the Sumerians, at least in part. Cavalli-Sforza wants to do a genetic
survey on them and other vanishing populations before it's too late.

As for the Turks, they may be descended in part from the Hurrians, but
their language is Altaic and comes from Central Asia. It has no genetic
relation to Sumerian; even the most extreme lumpers such as
Shevoroshkin, Greenberg, and Ruhlen place Altaic in the same phylum as
Indo-European and South Caucasian (Kartvelian). Sumerian appears to have
no extant relatives, but some linguists think it might be related to
Sino-Tibetan and North Causcasian (to which Hurrian might be distantly
related). However, such remote relationships are not accepted by the
majority of historical linguists.

Hungarians also claim that their language is related to Sumerian.
Nonsense, it's related to Finnish, Estonian, Lappish, and a number of
languages in Russian (Vogul, Zyrian, Cheremis?, etc.). These form the
Uralic groups and they may be related to Indo-European in the Nostratic
phylum along with Dravidian, Altaic, Kartvelian, Inuit,and some
languages of Siberia. Or perhaps not.

One reason Turks, Hungarians, etc, claim relationship with Sumerian is
that all these languages are agglutinative, as opposed to inflected like
Latin, Hebrew, etc. or isolating like Chinese, English, Farsi, Otomi,
etc. . Unfortunately, structural typology tells one nothing about
genetic relationships. Swahili and Quechua are also agglutinating;
Finnish and Estonian once were and are now fusional (aka inflecting),
English and Chinese were once inflecting and are now isolating.

Sumerian may have been tonal; none of the Uralic or Altaic languages are
to my knowledge or have been.

BTW, there is a recent claim that speakers of tonal languages have
absolute pitch. I'm dubious as tonal languages vary a lot as to how the
tones are used. Some use tonal contour rather than tone height. In some
languages, tone is grammatical, in others lexical.

As for the aulos, Greek sources say its intonation is notoriously
unstable, a trait confirmed by discussions with Jim French and Lou
Harrison. I don't doubt that one can play a 6/5 on a given aulos, but on
another day, with another mouthpiece, by another performer,etc., the
interval might be narrower or wider. I just don't believe Kathleen
Schlesinger's claim that the aulos is a reliable pitch and scale
standard (however interesting her system of harmoniai may be).

--John