Abstract
During the course of the past 30 years, comparisons between music and language have proved extremely fruitful in terms of the breadth and depth of the analogies discovered or generated by researchers: from the transfer of morphological and syntactical rules from one system to another (Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983) and the sketching of common evolutionary and developmental trajectories between the two systems (Cross, 2001; Mithen, 2005), to the mapping of interactions between music and language instruction (Cutietta, 1995; Ho, Cheung & Chan 2003) and the investigation of cognitive resources employed by the two systems (Peretz & Hyde, 2003; Patel, 2008), music and language parallels have long fascinated researchers from a variety of backgrounds. Language and Music as Cognitive Systems is an excellent depiction of the current state of play in the relevant research, owing its success both to the quality of the contributions and to the original perspective and organization of the book itself.
Language and Music as Cognitive Systems is the publishing spin-off of an extremely successful homonymous conference held in May 2007 in Cambridge, UK, hosted by the Centre for Music and Science (CMS) and the Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics (RCEAL); the conference structure of keynote addresses and panel discussions has been applied almost directly to the book. The four core areas around which the conference had been developed, (1) Structural comparisons, (2) Evolution, (3) Learning and processing and (4) Neuroscience, also appear as such in the book, with the addition of a brief introduction, co-authored by the four editors, and a Conclusion by Ian Cross. As each of the four core areas in the conference featured, amongst others, a keynote presentation – or two, in the case of Neuroscience – followed by a panel discussion, the same cyclical structure has been transferred in the book: each section begins with a paper based on the original keynote address and is followed by three to five response articles, in which the original panellists expand, debate, or offer additional perspectives on the issues presented in the target article; the section then concludes with a final response to the commentaries by the author, or authors, of the keynote paper.
There are overwhelming advantages to this cyclical format, both in terms of the comprehensiveness of the scope offered for each subject and in terms of readership: it is not very often that a single volume manages to present such a pluralistic and global approach to so many intertwined subjects. Furthermore, the very literal discussion which the contributors engage in throughout the whole book, via numerous cross references and direct argument exchanges, results in a superbly tightly-knit book that not only makes for an extremely captivating read but also conveys the spirit of the original conference panels, stimulating the reader to reflect critically on issues analysed, touched upon or even parallel to the ones discussed in the book.
The first section, ‘Structural Comparisons’, revolves mainly around parallels between phonological and metrical systems in language and music respectively. In the target article, Nigel Fabb and Morris Halle propose a detailed system of hierarchical metrical grids, applicable to stress contours in speech, feet in metrical poetry and rhythmic structures in music; they argue that the common abstract grouping processes in all three cases might point to a possibility for the existence of a common underlying mechanism determining stress patterns in speech, well-formedness in metrical poetry and our perception of musical rhythm. In the first response article, Laura Dilley and Devin McAuley emphasize the framework of metrical stress theory which the Fabb–Halle approach falls into and consider an alternative approach which attempts to elicit a common perceptual basis for prosodic and metrical patterns in language and music. They underline weaknesses of the iterative rules proposed by Fabb and Halle relating to the existence of extrametricality in language, but not music, and to the arbitrariness of parsing mechanisms in their approach; the last comment gives Fabb and Halle the opportunity to explain in their concluding response that the proposed abstract hierarchical structures constitute a necessary element of a comprehensive formal account of any acoustic signal morphology. Bert Vaux and Neil Myler argue in their response article that a mapping, as opposed to a projectional, approach of linguistic structures provides a more efficient account of the similarities between music and language and use the analogy between silent beats and catalexis to illustrate their point, prompting a response from Fabb and Halle in which they apply a set of additional rules from their theory to the same example. Brechtje Post argues for the need to add a prosodic constraints framework on the Fabb–Halle theory in order to account for cross-linguistic differences; Ian Roberts, in his commentary, puts forward the idea of a unifying computational system for music and language, which is based on the Fitch, Hauser and Chomsky (2005) distinction between a broad sense and a narrow sense faculty of language and accounts both for similarities and differences in the two systems.
Tecumseh Fitch, in his target paper in the Evolution section of the book, concentrates on three components of human rhythmic behaviour: motor pattern generation, beat extraction and entrainment capacity, to explain the unique phenomenon of the emergence of rhythm in humans as the evolutionary vestige of a musical protolanguage similar to the one presented in Darwin’s evolutionary theory. Simon Kirby expands on this idea in his commentary, illustrating how the Investment in Learning Hypothesis accounts for the preservation of highly complex features in music, whilst semantic and expressive loads prevented the eventual simplification of language; Kirby and Fitch engage in a stimulating exchange of views on the role of syntactic capacity in the shaping of linguistic evolution. Steven Mithen stresses the potential and importance of archaeological evidence in substantiating any evolutionary theory of a musical protolanguage; Iain Morley highlights the interdependence of orofacial expression, vocalization and corporeal gesture in music and language as a basic aspect of the two systems’ integrated origin. Elizabeth Tolbert offers an ethnomusicological perspective on the treatment of parallels, especially between animal and human music, offering Fitch the opportunity to debate in his response the usefulness of the distinction between intentional and unconscious music making and to clarify further his position on the paradoxicality of the absence of rhythm entrainment in most animal species. A common thread in the Evolution section is the repeated request, voiced by all contributors, for more research in the field of music evolution, whether it be oriented towards the empirical verification of developmental and evolutionary hypotheses, the synthesis of data from archaeology, anthropology and psycholinguistics, or the comparative examination of music phenomena across cultures and species.
In the third section on Learning and Processing, Bharucha, Curtis and Paroo approach music as a communicative channel that has the capacity to communicate affect, structure and motion towards the achievement of a range of sociofunctional objectives. They compare the communicative capacities of music with those of propositional language and present a formal framework for modelling brain states as vector sets. Dienes, Kuhn, Guo and Jones provide an alternative explanation for the communication of affect, structure and motion, based on implicit learning, and argue that simple recurrent network (SRN) and fixed buffer models predict human behaviour more efficiently than the adaptation of the MUSACT model presented in the target article. John Williams discusses the concept of alignment in music in relation to the notion of alignment in verbal communication, and suggests that research into repetition priming mechanisms in music is necessary for the further investigation of alignment. Geraint Wiggins criticizes the modelling approach followed in the target article, prompting responses from its authors regarding the utility of non-perfect, general models of cognition and the importance of integrating the communicative objectives of synchronization and alignment in any model of music cognition.
The fourth section of the volume, ‘Neuroscience’, features two target articles, in which Aniruddh Patel and Isabelle Peretz present two different frameworks for the comparative study of music and language. In the first target article, Patel presents the resource sharing framework, focusing on domain-specific representations of musical and linguistic syntax. In the response articles that follow, Stefan Koelsch presents further evidence supporting the resource sharing hypothesis and points out the need for determining the specific syntactic processes that share neural resources; Jessica Grahn reviews the developments in neuroimaging techniques used to analyse neural overlap, stressing the potential of multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) for corroborating the accuracy of Patel’s model; and finally, Justin London tackles theoretically the possibility of existence of direct parallels between linguistic and musical syntax. In the second target article, Peretz presents the modularity position in relation to music and speech and proposes ways in which modularity and the resource-sharing models could be tested empirically. In the following commentaries, Skoe and Kraus highlight the importance of subcortical auditory processing data in framing and further investigating modularity; Handel, Wakefield and Wilkins present data suggesting that specific types of working memory constitute further examples of shared mechanisms between language and music. Usha Goswami presents developmental data that do not support domain specificity and advocates the comparative study of prosody and rhythm in music and language during development; finally, Besson and Schön discuss the complexity of genetic data and their possible interpretations, the evolution of modularity theories, the merits of the comparative approach versus the definition of elementary functions and the inferential power of different methodologies.
In the concluding chapter, Ian Cross discusses the diversity of the music phenomenon and argues for the need to reconsider the range of musical activity explored by scientists; he describes the characteristics of music that render it functional in social terms and presents music as a temporal framework for human interaction. Finally, he summarizes the ways in which language and music are distinguishable, offering a unifying perspective on the future of research on music and language as manifestations of a shared capacity for communication.
In sum, this collection constitutes an invaluable contribution to the music and language literature, both because it provides a rich source of information and also, perhaps even more crucially, because it exemplifies the interdisciplinary discussion and synthesis that is necessary for further advances in the field. The decision of the editors to follow the conference format leads to an inevitable focus of the discussion around specific subjects of interest expressed in the target articles; the depth and breadth, however, in which these subjects are covered, is exemplary and all contributors ensure that extensions and applications of their research are mentioned and credited. These elements render the book interesting both for specialized researchers and for students in linguistics, music, cognitive science, anthropology and other related subjects, and an essential read for anyone interested in the comparison between music and language.