Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 91. kötet (1990)

Tanulmányok - Péter, Mihály: Once again on Language and Music (A semiotic approach) 163

166 MIHÁLY PÉTER signifié of the intonational sign in this case is a psychic content, an internal expérience, signified in a global and generalized, but not conceptual form. Emotional intonation as a sign acquires its denotative (referential) capacity in the verbal context and/or the situation. Musical signs and emotional linguistic intonation belong to a type of sign whose specific feature is that the meaning of the sign is not a conceptual abstraction but rather the generalization of an internal expérience, and this generalization is both changeable and socially-historically fixed. Neither music, nor the intonation of language can be regarded in the concrète totality of its manifestations at any time as an ancient and natural code that extends across historical periods and societies (although there are components with such features in both of them). With regard to the référence of this type of sign, however, music and intonation differ considerably. Music is an art, so ambiguity, i.e. the theoretical possibiüty of having several interprétations, is an essential feature of it. In the course of musical communication, the musical expression obtains its "référence" in the images and associations which it elicits in the hearer. These associations function, as it were, subsequently as "eliciting conditions", fictitious or real, for the hearer's inner expérience. The range of possible associations is quite wide but not entirely arbitrary: it dépends not only on the hearer's personal sensitivity and previous expérience but also on his knowledge of the musical code. This process is made evén more complex by the fact that a pièce of music is normally heard through the interprétation of a performer. The range of possible interprétations is much narrower in the case of linguistic intonation: although individual différences are possible—this is a feature of linguistic communication in gênerai—, intonation is always attached to a verbal context and other concrète situational factors (such as mimicking, gesturing, etc.). The specific function of the type of sign to which both musical signs and linguistic intonation belong, influences the properties of the signifying side (the signifiant) as well. It is still instructive to see what requirements an 18th c. Germán aesthete, Heydenreichs set up for "signs that copy feelings and passions ("Zeichen, wodurch Gefühl und Leidenschaft kopiert werden können soll"). Briefly, such signs l.are bound to time, their tempo can be changed, 2. are gradable in the expression of the intensity of qualities, 3. hâve permanence and continuity, and 4. hâve variations in union with permanence (quoted by Pfrogner 1954. 245). Using more up-to-date terminology, we can sum up the requirements as follows: the musical sign, just like intonation, has a d y n a m i c and analogous character, in contrast with the static and digital character of words. The fact that human language uses not only digital but also analogous signs, is being increasingly recognized nowadays (cf. Wilden 1972), and serves as important évidence Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 91. 1990.