Nonetheless, the consideration of language from the point of view of music is illuminating, and has the potential to provide valuable insight into a number of disciplines, including aesthetics and literature, and may serve as a means for explicating some of the more subjective aspects of language, such as beauty, persuasiveness, humor, and emotion. enhanced forms of communicative elaboration. Speech, in the context of human interaction, is fundamental and vital for communication, while music functions as a cultural artifact for ritual or expressive purposes or for entertainment, i.e. Much of the research in this area has taken language as its starting point, perhaps because the innate musical ability most humans demonstrate is far inferior to their language ability, and mastery of music appears to require special training. Lehiste ( 1977) and Couper-Kuhlen ( 1993) have suggested that isochrony is largely perceptual and, hence, subjective, relying upon the tendency of the human brain to seek rhythm in events occurring in a near regular manner. Rhythm in language depends upon isochrony, the tendency of a speech item to be repeated at regular intervals. Lexical stress and pitch and amplitude variations for emphasis tend to be absent, giving the impression that languages of this type are very regular in rate (see McCarthy, 1975). In a syllable-timed language, syllables tend to be of regular duration and maintain regular time intervals. Stress-timing refers to the recurrence of stressed syllables in a regular pattern, which may also require expansion or contraction of individual syllables to maintain the pattern (see Fox, 2000). English and German are stress-timed languages, while French and Spanish are syllable-timed. Research has also focused on the phenomenon of stress-timing versus syllable-timing in describing the rhythm of language. Further work in this area, comparing English and French as well as several other European languages was carried out by Huron and Ollen, ( 2003), who were able to replicate Patel and Daniele’s ( 2002) findings. Patel ( 2003) also addressed the issue of language’s effect on music. Ramus ( 2002) had previously found significant differences in the speech rhythms of English and French, which seems to coincide with the work of Patel and Daniele.
Patel and Daniele ( 2002), for example, found that such a hypothesis was somewhat supported by their comparison of prosody in spoken language and the structure of formal music in English and French speaking societies. Zoller ( 1991) described the general application of musical activities to foster language and personal development in children without specific problems in these areas.Īn interesting area of inquiry has centered on the extent to which language might influence the nature of instrumental music in a particular culture. Similar results were reported by Overy ( 2003) in the context of dyslexia. McCarthy ( 1985) noted that music can play a part in aiding language development in children. The parallel development of language and music has also been investigated, often in the interest of better understanding human language deficits arising from a variety of causes. Patel ( 2003) noted that language does not appear to have a periodic structure comparable to music, but statistical patterning of event duration suggests that rhythm in language influences musical rhythm in a given culture. The perception of musical pitch and the understanding of linguistic syntax and semantics appear to be separate, however. Lerdahl ( 2001), for example, treating a poem as music, found a similarity in brain localization and function with respect to meter, duration, contour, and timbre in processing language and music. For example, a number of researchers have considered the nature of cognitive processing of language and music in the brain. This research crosses disciplines, and tends to focus on certain aspects of the relationship. The literature contains a significant body of work on the relationship between language and music.
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