Over the last few years, I've developed an interest in linguistics. I
do not pretend to be an expert in that field, just someone who is
fascinated by the study of how and why we humans developed speech.
I have become acquainted with the basic thrust of linguistics today.
Most linguists ascribe to the theories of Noam Chomsky, who believes
that there is a "gene" or some basic unit programmed into each human's
brain that allows for the formation and understanding of language, and
that regardless of the particular language learned, each human has the
inborn ability to learn language. It is universal. However, over the
last decade or so, in keeping with theories from a century ago, some
linguists feel that culture can not be ruled out as a major
contributor to the human experience of learning language.
Basically, we have a nature vs. nurture debate going on within the
field of linguistics.
I mention all this because I wonder just where the lyrics of The
Beatles fit into all this.
In 1980, two authors, Colin Campbell and Allan Murphy, authored a book
entitled, "Things We Said Today: The Complete Lyrics and a Concordance
to The Beatles' Songs, 1962-1970".
What they did is do***ent, and print all of the lyrics to The Beatles'
songs as they are sung and spoken in the recordings of those songs,
and placed them into a Concordance, and a word frequency list.
For those of you not familiar with it, a "concordance" is an
alphabetical index of all the words in a text showing every occurrence
of each word. In the past, concordances have been done for authors
and poets, but Campbell and Murphy undertook their endeavor on behalf
of The Beatles. The result is a fascinating study of every word
uttered by The Beatles in song, informing the reader which song the
word can be found, and in which line of the lyric it can be found.
It's obviously not something one can sit down and read, like a book of
prose or poetry(although there is a great essay within the book called
"From Romance to Romanticism"), but as a reference do***ent it is
great.
But, bringing this back to the linguistics, I am curious as to how the
lyrics of The Beatles fit in to the nature vs. nurture debate.
When Beatles lyrics are translated into other languages, are they
easily understood? Is there a basic template of universality about
these lyrics which translate with ease from one language to the next?
If one were to translate the lyrics of The Beatles into an obscure
aboriginal language, belonging to a people, who presumably have no
knowledge of The Beatles, would the words make sense...would there be
a universality about them, or would they just be a collection of words
that the experience of their culture can't understand?
Are there any linquists, or others, in the ng, who can contribute to a
likely answer to my questions?
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