Language vs. Music? Exploring Music's Links to Language

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject American Studies - Linguistics grade: 20 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 2000 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