Music and Language

Language is extremely referential and functional - objects, people, events 

Music is less specified in semantic meaning than music is, e.g directions "turn left, then turn right". Music is less tangible 

Tones in language signify specific cues, e.g rising pitch indicates a question

Tones in music are extremely organised, but less so in language (except from tonal languages such as Vietnamese - 6 tones that change the meaning of the word used). Tonal language speakers are more likely to have perfect/absolute pitch

Temporal periodicity is much less strict in language than in music - in music it functions as a framework for sound perception

Patel often says how music and language share a number of basic processing mechanisms 

Music is an attachment to language? Pinker's auditory cheesecake theory

Dunbar, 2000

music may have played a role in the lives of early homo-sapiens

• changes in group sizes
• bodily changes (vocal development, auditory system)
• vocal grooming may have imroved group cohesion and increased chances of survival (groupishness)

Musilanguage (Brown, 2000)

Early vocalisations >>> Divergence of language and music 

Brown states that both music and language have the same origins, yet at some point in early humans they split and evolved separately 

This suggests that music and language share many characteristics

Musical and linguistic syntax

Syntax - grammar, 'the way words are put together to make sense' 

Musical and linguistic syntax differ on constituent structure of syntactic linguistic trees

Musical syntax is organised by scale, chord and key structures

Statistical and implicit learning 

• Statistical learning (making…