From the perspective of Ordinary Language, music lacks the core element
that is required for a "language." Not that the term "language" can't be
expanded metonymically to refer to the musical experience, but language
requires a picture or image to be conceptualized that is a mutually shared
conceptualization.  It's difficult to imagine music producing a "picture"
in any ordinary sense, much less the same picture in any sense that is
communicative among all those who share the "language." One might argue
that they "perceive" a "waterfall," but the perception is strictly
appetitive and not really of a true waterfall, but an imagined one.
Again, this isn't to deny that music can be evocative, but it is not of
words which are the symbols of thought.  The evocation is appetitive,
not ratiocinative.  Thus, despite metonymic analogies, music is its own
sui generis, and not ordinary language as we usually think of it.

Stephen Heersink
San Francisco
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