Language Vs Music Exploring Music S Links To Language

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject American Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,0, Humboldt-University of Berlin (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Language vs. Culture? A Comparison between Language and Music, language: English, abstract: Language and music--both can be found in every human society--are the most basic socio-cognitive domains of the human species. At first glance, they share fundamental similarities, such as being based on acoustic modalities and involving complex sound sequences. Language, as well as music, functions as a means of communication and a form of expression. Both systems are organized into hierarchically structured sequences, and a written system was developed for language and for music. The interest in music-language relations has a long history, of course, and does not originate with modern cognitive science: "The topic has long drawn interest from a wide range of thinkers, including philosophers, biologists, poets, composers, linguists, and musicologists. Over 2,000 years ago, Plato claimed that the power of certain musical modes to uplift the spirit stemmed from their resemblance to the sounds of noble speech (Neubauer, 1986). Much later, Darwin (1871) considered how a form of communication intermediate between modern language and music may have been the origin of our species' communicative abilities. Many other historical figures have contemplated music-language relations, including Vincenzo Galilei (father of Galileo), Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. This long line of speculative thinking has continued down to the modern era (e.g., Bernstein, 1976). In the era of cognitive science, however, research into this topic is undergoing a dramatic shift, using new concepts and tools to advance from suggestions and analogies to empirical research." (Cp. PATEL (2008): Music, Language, and the Brain) The production of music and language is a prime example of the human brain's capacities. But does th

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject American Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,0, Humboldt-University of Berlin (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Language vs. Culture? A Comparison between Language and Music, language: English, abstract: Language and music—-both can be found in every human society—-are the most basic socio-cognitive domains of the human species. At first glance, they share fundamental similarities, such as being based on acoustic modalities and involving complex sound sequences. Language, as well as music, functions as a means of communication and a form of expression. Both systems are organized into hierarchically structured sequences, and a written system was developed for language and for music. The interest in music-language relations has a long history, of course, and does not originate with modern cognitive science: "The topic has long drawn interest from a wide range of thinkers, including philosophers, biologists, poets, composers, linguists, and musicologists. Over 2,000 years ago, Plato claimed that the power of certain musical modes to uplift the spirit stemmed from their resemblance to the sounds of noble speech (Neubauer, 1986). Much later, Darwin (1871) considered how a form of communication intermediate between modern language and music may have been the origin of our species’ communicative abilities. Many other historical figures have contemplated music-language relations, including Vincenzo Galilei (father of Galileo), Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. This long line of speculative thinking has continued down to the modern era (e.g., Bernstein, 1976). In the era of cognitive science, however, research into this topic is undergoing a dramatic shift, using new concepts and tools to advance from suggestions and analogies to empirical research." (Cp. PATEL (2008): Music, Language, and the Brain) The production of music and language is a prime example of the human brain’s capacities. But does the brain process music as it processes language? Are language and music processed in the same hemisphere(s)? Are linguistic and musical irregularities processed by the same brain area(s)? What are the cognitive differences and similarities? And how can brain activity be measured? These and other very complex questions are to be approached in this seminar paper. The central interest is to explore and compare some of the structural and cognitive properties of language and music (and the links between them) in order to find out whether music is language-like in certain regards. The central questions are: Does music have something like a grammar or syntax? Is music able to transfer meaningful information? Chapter 2.1 examines the structural units (...)

In the first comprehensive study of the relationship between music and language from the standpoint of cognitive neuroscience, Aniruddh D. Patel challenges the widespread belief that music and language are processed independently. Since Plato's time, the relationship between music and language has attracted interest and debate from a wide range of thinkers. Recently, scientific research on this topic has been growing rapidly, as scholars from diverse disciplines, including linguistics, cognitive science, music cognition, and neuroscience are drawn to the music-language interface as one way to explore the extent to which different mental abilities are processed by separate brain mechanisms. Accordingly, the relevant data and theories have been spread across a range of disciplines. This volume provides the first synthesis, arguing that music and language share deep and critical connections, and that comparative research provides a powerful way to study the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying these uniquely human abilities. Winner of the 2008 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award.

A presentation of music and language within an integrative, embodied perspective of brain mechanisms for action, emotion, and social coordination. This book explores the relationships between language, music, and the brain by pursuing four key themes and the crosstalk among them: song and dance as a bridge between music and language; multiple levels of structure from brain to behavior to culture; the semantics of internal and external worlds and the role of emotion; and the evolution and development of language. The book offers specially commissioned expositions of current research accessible both to experts across disciplines and to non-experts. These chapters provide the background for reports by groups of specialists that chart current controversies and future directions of research on each theme. The book looks beyond mere auditory experience, probing the embodiment that links speech to gesture and music to dance. The study of the brains of monkeys and songbirds illuminates hypotheses on the evolution of brain mechanisms that support music and language, while the study of infants calibrates the developmental timetable of their capacities. The result is a unique book that will interest any reader seeking to learn more about language or music and will appeal especially to readers intrigued by the relationships of language and music with each other and with the brain. Contributors Francisco Aboitiz, Michael A. Arbib, Annabel J. Cohen, Ian Cross, Peter Ford Dominey, W. Tecumseh Fitch, Leonardo Fogassi, Jonathan Fritz, Thomas Fritz, Peter Hagoort, John Halle, Henkjan Honing, Atsushi Iriki, Petr Janata, Erich Jarvis, Stefan Koelsch, Gina Kuperberg, D. Robert Ladd, Fred Lerdahl, Stephen C. Levinson, Jerome Lewis, Katja Liebal, Jônatas Manzolli, Bjorn Merker, Lawrence M. Parsons, Aniruddh D. Patel, Isabelle Peretz, David Poeppel, Josef P. Rauschecker, Nikki Rickard, Klaus Scherer, Gottfried Schlaug, Uwe Seifert, Mark Steedman, Dietrich Stout, Francesca Stregapede, Sharon Thompson-Schill, Laurel Trainor, Sandra E. Trehub, Paul Verschure

In the first comprehensive study of the relationship between music and language from the standpoint of cognitive neuroscience, Aniruddh D. Patel challenges the widespread belief that music and language are processed independently. Since Plato's time, the relationship between music and language has attracted interest and debate from a wide range of thinkers. Recently, scientific research on this topic has been growing rapidly, as scholars from diverse disciplines, including linguistics, cognitive science, music cognition, and neuroscience are drawn to the music-language interface as one way to explore the extent to which different mental abilities are processed by separate brain mechanisms. Accordingly, the relevant data and theories have been spread across a range of disciplines. This volume provides the first synthesis, arguing that music and language share deep and critical connections, and that comparative research provides a powerful way to study the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying these uniquely human abilities.Winner of the 2008 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award

This annotated anthology documents historical trends and basic findings regarding music in early childhood education, development, and care. The papers in this volume discuss the main research trends of musical engagement with early children, such as music in the family, employing music in child care, and musical skill and development. This collection hopes to stimulate further reflections on the implementation of music in daily practice. The volume represents many facets of research from different cultural contexts and reflects trends and projects of music in early childhood. The findings incorporate a historical perspective with regards to different topics and approaches. The book provides practitioners and researchers of music education, music development, and music psychology, an opportunity to read a selection of articles that were previously published in the journal Early Child Development and Care. Each paper concludes with an annotation note supplied by the principle author addressing how they see their article from the perspective of today.

This book presents original, empirical data from quantitative and qualitative research studies in the field of language learning aptitude, ability, and individual differences. It does so from the perspectives of Second Language Acquisition, psychology, neuroscience and sociolinguistics. All studies included in the book use a similar and uniform layout and methodology. Each chapter contains a study examining factors such as memory, personality, self-concept, bilingualism and multilingualism, education, musicality or gender. The chapters investigate the influence of these concepts on language learning aptitude and ability. Several of these chapters analyse hypotheses which have never been tested before and therefore provide novel research results. The book contributes to the field both by verifying and contesting existent findings and by exploring novel approaches to devising research in the subject area.

This volume provides a systematic comparative treatment of urban contact dialects in the Global North and South, examining the emergence and development of these dialects in major cities in sub-Saharan Africa and North-Western Europe. The book’s focus on contemporary urban settings sheds light on the new language practices and mixed ways of speaking resulting from large-scale migration and the intense contact that occurs between new and existing languages and dialects in these contexts. In comparing these new patterns of language variation and change between cities in both Africa and Europe, the volume affords us a unique opportunity to examine commonalities in linguistic phenomena as well as sociolinguistic differences in societally multilingual settings and settings dominated by a strong monolingual habitus. These comparisons are reinforced by a consistent chapter structure, with each chapter presenting the linguistic and social context of the region, information on available data (including corpora), sociolinguistic and structural findings, a discussion of the status of the urban contact dialect, and its stability over time. The discussion in the book is further enriched by short commentaries from researchers contributing different theoretical and geographical perspectives. Taken as a whole, the book offers new insights into migration-based linguistic diversity and patterns of language variation and change, making this ideal reading for students and scholars in general linguistics and language structure, sociolinguistics, creole studies, diachronic linguistics, language acquisition, anthropological linguistics, language education and discourse analysis.