Noam Chomsky.txt

Dear Noam Chomsky,

I have personally experienced an extremely interesting phenomena, and one to which I believe may be highly relevant to your work in linguistics. At two separate points in my life, I have found myself suddenly and radically change the way I mentally process sound and interpret language, and I believe that I can use the understanding I have gained to provide serious insight into how people's minds perceive art forms like music and poetry in potentially different ways. The ways the brain functions involved in processing sound, evaluating the structure of sentences and perceiving poetic verse and music are interlinked in a way that. Importantly, I have good reason to believe that the way people perceive these things is radically different among individuals in quite specific ways, and that there may a set of processes that allow a person to change what modes of perception they have access to.

To boil down my theory to its most basic elements, I believe that there are at least two discrete factors, each of which are seemingly thresholds that can be active or inactive in a given person, but which once are on and accessible to conscious function, allow a person to combine perceptions in particular ways that they otherwise would be incapable of. Much of it initially relates to music, but I believe that, what I have to say has more profound implications for the human perception of language and grammar, along with the generation of wider imaginative abilities, than it does for music alone.

The first of those factors, which I call UVP for Uniform Voice Perception (or universal song), is one that enables a person to hear that music is "in a key". What I mean by that, specifically, is that a person who possesses this will feel that certain music, if a number of notes of a given melody within it is played, 'ought' to resolve with a continuation of those notes into a particular key or set of chords, depending on how the melody progresses. I say this to contrast with what it is like to lack UVP, in which case this simply does not occur, and I believe will not occur until the person lacking it somehow activates UVP (possible methods of doing so which I will discuss later). A marked characteristic of this perception, which I noticed prominently when the transformation occurred several years ago, and which I believe will interest you, is that prior to UVP I perceived the human voice to have characteristics which were distinct from other kinds of sound, while after developing UVP I perceived other sound in general differently. Where previously, the sense that someone was 'speaking to' someone was a quality that I felt when hearing a human voice, but not otherwise (when hearing other sounds), after this change I perceived the same 'vocal' qualities, the sense of a being speaking with intent, in all sound, with the rise and fall of tone of any noise feeling as it would were a person emoting with their tone of voice while speaking. Hence, my decision to call this phenomena UVP. What is fascinating about all this is that this transformation on the whole allowed me to perceive specific kinds of structure in music that was previously incomprehensible to me, and I believe that all these factors are necessarily tied together. Where previously, what musicians might call 'Tonal Art Music' (including forms like sonatas, fugues etc) sounded like a confusing mess of dissatisfying or dissonant sounds, I instead gained the ability to hear how their tones might be arranged such that parts of the musical structure felt like 'responses' to other structures. This is something that did not occur when I did not have UVP. The way the timbre of things sounds to me now is noticeably different from what it was like prior to UVP, due to the 'language like' nature of what I now sense all sound to have.

I don't actually believe that what I have experienced might be all that unusual, I have heard reports of other people who seem to have undergone similar kinds of sudden, distinct changes in musical perception. I have also encountered references to music instructors who are specifically aware of certain qualities of perceptive change that they can induce in their pupils through appropriate training, but I am not aware of any systematic treatment of this subject in any exiting literature.

However, that is not all. There is a second perceptual phenomena, one which I only experienced a few months ago, which I will call Super Grammatical Perception (SGP). This mode, I believe, is similar in nature to UVP, in that it is discreet in nature and unlocks the ability to perceive specific kinds of structures. The specifically wide reaching nature of it surprised me though, and while at first it appeared to be more minor than UVP, I realized that it has more serious and profound effects on my linguistic and musical comprehension than I thought. To explain its nature, I will tell you what I believe that I was lacking without it and how the things I seem to have gained from it are linked. Prior to this development, there was still something fundamentally dissatisfying about listening to 'serious' music which I could not overcome not matter how much concentration I applied. The distinction is this; with UVP alone, thematic structures in music can be perceived, by only 'linear variations' of themes and melodies will be experienced as being meaningful. Specifically, hierarchical structures used within a piece of music (via techniques such choosing to repeat an unresolved part of a musical theme instead of directly resolving it, or transposing repeated musical phrases so that they are embedded within a larger thematic structure) are impossible to perceive intuitively or experience directly as intended without having developed SGP. When possessing UVP but lacking SGP, then in listening to a piece of (classical or otherwise 'progressive') music, one constantly wants to hear the melody currently being played lead straight into what one might call the tonic of the key at the end of a melodic phrase. With SGP, this need for resolution can be suspended, and in its place the resolution can be substituted or paired with with repetition of substructures of the previous phrase that parallels it, which can in turn be embedded in or responded to by larger structures that themselves parallel those phrases. As such, SGP seems to enable the immediate apprehension of at least context free structures (and possibly context sensitive ones) that otherwise could not occur, regardless of effort, without it.

But there is so much more to what I believe SGP entails (together with UVP) that I could write at significant length about my experiences and what I believe this may imply for the nature of human cognition. When I gained SGP, the musical possibilities it enabled were immediately apparent to me on that day (in fact I had long wondered if there was an additional layer to musical perception that I was lacking given how oddly unsatisfying my experience with more complex music was at that point). What really shocked me though, was how significant an impact this had on my experience of linguistic phenomena in other ways. A couple of days after this development, I realized that could intuitively understand poetry and poetic metre, something which I has no feeling for whatsoever prior to this. Where previously, I despised everything written by Shakespeare and found virtually all of it completely incomprehensible or emotionally dry, I suddenly found myself with an intuitive understanding of the structure of blank verse and the emotional effects that were enabled through it, and without needing to put any conscious effort into it. Beforehand, even going line by line and deliberately trying to grok iambic pentameter was completely fruitless, I simply perceived no overarching structure in poetry beyond what was enabled thought simple rhyming schemes. Things like repetition of consonants (through alliteration etc.) now have immediate structural meaning to me, where they simply did not before. And there is still more. SGP seems have granted me the ability to read sentences in large 'chunks' and speed read more rapidly and with much less exertion than I was able to before. This seems to have allowed me to escape from the inhibitions otherwise caused apparently by mental sub-vocalization otherwise dominating my experience of reading.

I believe that it should be possible to theorize about the nature of these factors, and in doing so, categorize individual humans via whether or not they possess this seemingly discreet structural perceptive abilities. Hence, it may be possible to determine what is likely to trigger the development of these factors in individuals. I am not sure though if UVP must necessarily be developed before SGP or if my experience is particularly unusual. Either way, what I propose I have experience implies a distinct connection between a number of phenomena that I have not heard of being considered part of any larger systematic theory. There is much more that I wish to elaborate upon and specify which should clarify what I believe and why this may be important, but I do not with to make this correspondence any longer. I would love to hear your thoughts and will gladly elaborate further if you are interested, as I believe I may be able to construct a theoretical framework regarding how humans respond to any work with a rhythmic beat or metered structure and how this may relate to the forms of the language facilities of the mind. I am currently no expert in either music theory or linguistics, but if what I have discovered through introspection within my own mind is as significant as I think it might be, I hope what I have to say may prove to be valuable.

Regards, Andrew Van Caem.


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Dear Noam Chomsky,

I'm writing to you to share a very interesting phenomena that I have experienced personally, and one to which I believe may be highly relevant to your work in linguistics and the the human language faculty. At two separate points in my life, I have found myself suddenly and radically change the way I mentally process sound and interpret language, and I believe that I can use the understanding I have gained to provide serious insight into how people's minds perceive art forms like music and poetry in potentially different ways. The ways the brain functions involved in processing sound, evaluating the structure of sentences and perceiving the poetic nature of verse and music are seemingly interlinked in a way that allows the gain of particular abilities in one to directly affect others. Importantly, I have reason to believe that the way people perceive these things is radically different among individuals in quite specific ways, and that there are processes that can allow a person to change what modes of perception they have access to. I have delayed writing to you in order to spend time describing these ideas in greater detail on my blog, which can be found here:

https://chromaticproduction.blogspot.com.au/


To boil down my theory to its most basic elements, I believe that there are at least two discrete factors, each of which are seemingly thresholds that can be active or inactive in a given person, but which once are on and accessible to conscious function, allow a person to combine perceptions in particular ways that they otherwise would be incapable of. Much of it initially relates to music, but I believe that what I have to say has profound implications for the human perception of language and its structure, beyond what it does for music alone.

The first of those factors, which I call EVP for Encompassing Voice Perception, is one that enables a person to hear that music is "in a key". What I mean by that, specifically, is that a person who possesses this will feel that certain music, if a number of notes of a given melody within it is played, 'ought' to resolve with a continuation of those notes into a particular key or set of chords, depending on how the melody progresses. I say this to contrast with what it is like to lack EVP, in which case this simply does not occur, and I believe will not occur until the person lacking it somehow activates EVP (possible methods of doing so which I will explore later). A marked characteristic of this perception, which I noticed prominently when the transformation occurred several years ago, and which I believe will interest you, is that prior to EVP I perceived the human voice to have characteristics which were distinct from other kinds of sound, while after developing EVP I perceived other sounds in general differently. Where previously, the sense that someone was 'speaking to' someone was a quality that I felt when hearing a human voice, but not otherwise, after this change I perceived the same 'vocal' qualities, the sense of a being speaking with intent, in all sound to varying degrees, with the rise and fall of tone of any noise feeling as it would were a person emoting with their tone of voice while speaking. Hence, my decision to call this phenomena Encompassing Voice Perception. What is fascinating about all this is that this transformation on the whole allowed me to perceive specific kinds of structure in music that was previously incomprehensible to me, and I believe that all these factors are necessarily tied together. Where previously, what musicians might call 'Tonal Art Music' (including forms like sonatas, fugues etc) sounded like a confusing mess of dissatisfying or dissonant sounds, I instead gained the ability to hear how their tones might be arranged such that parts of the musical structure felt like 'responses' to other structures. This is something that did not occur when I did not have EVP. The way the timbre of things sounds to me now is noticeably different from what it was like prior to EVP, due to the 'language like' nature of what I now sense all sound to have.

I don't actually believe that what I have experienced might be all that unusual, I have heard reports of other people who seem to have undergone similar kinds of sudden, distinct changes in musical perception. I am also aware of techniques practiced by musical instructors who are specifically aware of certain qualities of perceptive change that they can induce in their pupils through appropriate training, or get past issues of understanding by singing melodies which would otherwise by played by an instrument, but I am not aware of any systematic treatment of this subject in any exiting literature.


However, that is not all. There is a second perceptual phenomena, one which I only experienced a number of months ago, which I now call Super Grammatical Perception (SGP). This mode, I believe, is similar to EVP, in that it is discreet in nature and unlocks the ability to perceive specific kinds of structures. The specifically wide reaching effects of it surprised me though, and while at first it appeared to be more minor than EVP, I now realize that it has caused more serious and profound changes to my linguistic and musical comprehension than I initially thought. To explain its effects, I will tell you what I believe that I was lacking without it and how the things I seem to have gained from it are linked. Prior to this development, there was still something fundamentally dissatisfying about listening to 'serious' music which I could not overcome not matter how much concentration I applied. The distinction is this; with EVP alone, thematic structures in music can be perceived, but only 'linear variations' of themes and melodies will be experienced as being meaningful. Specifically, hierarchical structures used within a piece of music (via techniques such choosing to repeat an unresolved part of a musical theme instead of directly resolving it, or transposing repeated musical motifs so that they are embedded within a larger thematic structure) are impossible to perceive intuitively or experience directly as intended without having developed SGP. When possessing EVP but lacking SGP, then in listening to a piece of (classical or otherwise 'progressive') music, one constantly wants to hear the melody currently being played lead straight into what one might call the tonic of the key at the end of a melodic phrase. With SGP, this need for resolution can be suspended, and in its place the resolution can be substituted or paired with with repetition of substructures of the previous phrase that parallels it, which can in turn be embedded in or responded to by larger structures that themselves parallel those phrases. As such, SGP seems to enable the immediate apprehension of structures that otherwise could not occur, regardless of effort, without it.

But there is so much more to what I believe SGP entails (together with EVP) that I could write at significant length about my experiences and what I believe this may imply for the nature of human cognition. When I gained SGP, the musical possibilities it enabled were immediately apparent to me on that day (in fact I had long wondered if there was an additional layer to musical perception that I was lacking given how oddly unsatisfying my experience with more complex music was at that point). What really shocked me though, was how significant an impact this had on my experience of linguistic phenomena in other ways. A couple of days after this development, I realized that could intuitively understand poetry and the poetic metre of unrhymed verse, something which I has no feeling for whatsoever prior to this. Where previously, I despised everything written by Shakespeare and found virtually all of it completely incomprehensible or emotionally dry, I suddenly found myself with an intuitive understanding of the structure of blank verse and the emotional effects that were enabled through it, and without needing to put any conscious effort into it. Beforehand, even going line by line and deliberately trying to grok iambic pentameter was completely fruitless, I simply perceived no overarching structure in poetry beyond what was enabled thought simple rhyming schemes. Things like repetition of consonants (through alliteration etc.) now have immediate structural meaning to me, where they simply did not before. And still more, SGP seems have granted me the ability to read sentences in large 'chunks' and speed read more rapidly and with much less exertion than I was able to before. This seems to have allowed me to escape from the inhibitions otherwise caused apparently by mental sub-vocalization otherwise dominating my experience of reading.

I believe that it should be possible to theorize about the nature of these factors, and in doing so, categorize individual humans via whether or not they possess this seemingly discreet structural perceptive abilities. Hence, it may be possible to determine what is likely to trigger the development of these factors in individuals. I am not sure though if EVP must necessarily be developed before SGP or if my experience is particularly unusual. Either way, what I propose I have experience implies a distinct connection between a number of phenomena that I have not heard of being considered part of any larger systematic theory. There is much more that I wish to elaborate upon and specify which should clarify what I believe and why this may be important, but I do not with to make this correspondence any longer. I would love to hear your thoughts and will gladly elaborate further if you are interested, as I believe I may be able to construct a theoretical framework regarding how humans respond to any work with a rhythmic beat or metered structure and how this may relate to the forms of the language facilities within the mind. I am currently no expert in either music theory or linguistics, but if what I have discovered through introspection within my own mind is as significant as I think it might be, I hope what I have to say may prove to be valuable. 

Regards, Andrew Van Caem.