Great reading, kcurie! The part about the 13 phonemes and the multiple pitches made me think of the research by Alfred Tomatis. In one of his books he discribes some research he did on language. He found that each language has it own and recognisable frequence pattern, that distinquishes from other language.

He also did some interesting experiments (writen from memory). He let an American pianist play a Tsaikowsky peace and recorded it. Then the pianist had to wear headphones and had to play the same piece again. However, this time the music was filtered through a Russian frequency pattern and they were amazed how different in quality the piece was played.