I think I'd agree with David on this one:
language is "prototypical" but only in the Eleanor Rosch sense and not in the historical sense. That is, language is central and dominant among socio-semiotic systems but not originary or primeval.I've read the Halliday / & Matthiessen claims before, and to me they read like just what you'd expect linguists to say: to me they come across as axiomatic claims and not conclusions based on empirical evidence.
For me, it's the experience of being a practising — and trained — musician that makes me doubtful about awarding any such primacy to language. When I was learning piano, which I did from ages 8-21 with a number of different teachers, I learned in the appropriate "classical" style which was based on two things: 1. interpreting the notation - i.e. the process of turning the notated score into actual musical performance, and 2. explaining the technique - i.e. the process of what you do with your fingers, hands, arms, (torso, legs etc etc) in order to achieve certain sounds and musical effects. Now the presence of notation in the Western classical tradition means that 1. inevitably involves language — the musical notation is clearly dependent on the prior existence of a writing system for language — the very earliest examples of notation in Europe, devised for the vocal music we now call "Gregorian chant", consisted of "intonation-style graphics" written over the top of the verbal text — and every feature of the notation has its appropriate linguistic label. But not all styles even of Western music depend on notation — perhaps most folk and pop musicians can't "read" — and in the absence of 1., 2. can be carried out largely by demonstration, although the presence of a labelling system, i.e. a technical vocabulary, is very useful for transmission, although not for performance, which in such traditions is largely equivalent to improvising on the basis of fixed "formulae".
Blogger Comments:
[1] This is misleading because it is untrue. To be clear, observations of child development provide empirical evidence that language is ontogenetically prior to other social semiotic systems, and the fact that the earliest known cave paintings are only about 40,000 years old, suggests that language is also phylogenetically prior to other social semiotic systems.
[2] This is an instance of the logical fallacy known as Circumstantial ad hominem – stating that the arguer's personal situation means that their conclusion is wrong.
[3] To be clear, this is an instance of the logical fallacy known as ipse dixit: a bare assertion, unsupported by evidence. Moreover, McDonald ignores the reasons that Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 509-10) provide for regarding language as the prototypical social semiotic system:
Language is set apart, however, as the prototypical semiotic system, on a variety of different grounds: it is the only one that evolved specifically as a semiotic system; it is the one semiotic into which all others can be "translated"; and (the least questionable, in our view) it is the one whereby the human species as a whole, and each individual member of that species, construes experience and constructs a social order. In this last respect, all other semiotic systems are derivative: they have meaning potential only by reference to models of experience, and forms of social relationship, that have already been established in language. It is this that justifies us in taking language as the prototype of systems of meaning. …
[4] This is an instance of the logical fallacy known as Appeal to accomplishment – an assertion is deemed true or false based on the accomplishments of the proposer.
[5] To be clear, both 'interpreting the notation' and 'explaining the technique' require the prior ontogenesis of language in both teacher and learner. And teaching and learning by demonstration only happens after the prior ontogenesis of language in both teacher and learner.
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