Denis Fodor replies to me:

>>As far as I can tell, language depends on denotation much more than music
>>does.  Hence, there are dictionaries of verbal language and none of music.
>>Also, if languages have a grammar (that is, you can describe how they mean,
>>rather than what they mean), what's the grammar of "body language?"
>
>A good question, to which Mae West might have replied, "Honey, if you need
>to ask, I'm not playin'."

Hilarious, but I asked about the grammar, not the meaning.  The grammar of
"The ball was hit by the batter" differs from "The batter hit the ball,"
although the meaning is pretty much the same.  Again - to be stuffy and
pedantic about it - grammar shows a systematic relation of parts that leads
to meaning.  Come to think of it, Mae West's parts were a pretty system in
themselves, and they meant a lot to quite a few people.

Again, however, I don't really see this happening in music, mainly because
I don't know what music means in an objective way.  We've been playing fast
and loose with the term "meaning" anyway.  I can analyze music harmonically
or structurally or Schenkerianly.  Music may even inspire extra-musical
thought in me, but I have no guarantee that this is the music's meaning.
Programmatic or incidental music like movie music may strike me as
appropriate or inappropriate, due to certain conventions that have grown
up since the middle of the 19th century, but are these conventional
associations really the same as musical meaning? I'm currently thinking
about a review of Alfred Newman's score for The Greatest Story Ever Told.
Musically, it's blameless, but it lacks something as an accompaniment to
the film (in itself no Instant Masterpiece of World Cinema).  All the
conventional associations of music and religiosity from Gounod on are
there.  I know what I'm *supposed* to feel.  What I *do* feel is
disatisfaction, and again with music that in itself is well made.  But
what's the musical meaning of that music or of Beethoven's Fifth, for that
matter? What's the grammar of that meaning that allows us to say the music
is really and not metaphorically a language?

Steve Schwartz