Dear Michael and Vincent,

What a delight to hear! The book launch was music to my ears; all my favorite themes about “speech” in a wonderful blend of personal l’histoire and scholarly delight. Vincent you are a master of the human spirit and the engaged intellectual in communication. The perfect dialogic compliment to Michael as polymath linguist and logician. You both are obvious accomplished “professors” who know how to communicate! There were many points of deep interest to me, but the conjunction of speech and music was a particular high point. I just published a piece on the concept of “home-world” and a key idea I use is Émile Benveniste’s entry for “community” in his history of Indo-European languages book where he says that speech is dependent on “speech community” which derives from “group singing” (Alfred Schütz’s “Making Music Together” essay is an example). So, Benveniste says “community” is defined as “people who sing together”. The book launch was truly the voice of a chorus! You both should post the video on your personal web pages as well as the YouTube version; it is a “go to” gem for students.
 
With Cordial Regard, Richard
Richard L. Lanigan