As a musician, I’ve always been fascinated with the phenomena of music. I greatly enjoy both listening to and playing music. I find it incredible that we are able to arrange sounds in a way that is pleasing to us yet have never quite unlocked the mysteries of exactly why it pleases us. One of the greatest joys of music as an art form is this uncertainty.
On the surface, language appears to be a very different phenomena from music. Human language is an entirely human construct, with all of its meaning arbitrarily assigned to equally arbitrary symbols. What we use as language is not found in nature outside of our race, yet we tend to find music all around us. Furthermore, the most common usage for the two differ: language for communication, music for expression.
However, I’m very curious about all the ways we can interpret music and language to be the same phenomena. My interest in the idea comes primarily from a TedTalk by Victor Wooten, one of the world’s premiere bass players. In the Talk, Wooten argues for a theory of music being an actual language. Born into a musical family, Victor was seemingly destined to play the bass when his four brothers, lacking a bass player to round out the family band, played music with Victor almost immediately. Wooten points out that “with language — even as a baby — you’re jamming with professionals, all the time, to the point that you don’t even know you’re a beginner.” Wooten’s tantalizing distinction that he makes between language and music is that with language, you’re not taught. You simply learn. For most people, music comes with rules — starting as a beginner, in beginning classes, only advancing to play with experts once you have the skill to do so. But with language, from birth we are “playing with the experts” — and there isn’t right or wrong, only do and learn for yourself. With language, we don’t learn the grammar before we learn the meaning, so why do we with music?
Wooten’s points all lead to an interesting thought experiment. If the fundamental difference between music and language is simply the way in which we learn them, how different can they really be? Both are simply manipulations of sound, often used as a form of communication from one person to others. The clearest way to entertain a solution to the idea is to imagine the roles of language and music switched. If we “spoke” music to our children from birth and only began to “teach” language later in life, would each adapt to the others’ functionality? Would music be able to acquire the nuance and practicality of language? Likewise, would language be practiced, honed, and performed? Would linguists be considered artists rather than scientists?
While this may seem like pure hypothetical speculation, and of little consequence, I believe that it actually holds several important implications for the way we view our species as a whole. Music and language are both defining features of our race, and the way we interact with each sets us apart from other animals. We spend so much time and energy trying to understand these phenomena and the others that are unique to our species. Examining the similarities between music and language may lead to finding similarities with these other phenomena and eventually more unified theories that explain our unique capabilities.
Hey Paul,
ReplyDeleteThis is an extremely interesting topic to me as well, as someone growing up around music, and being exposed to music therapy for the terminally ill. I looked into what scientists and linguists have found in this area, and I came across the work of a cognitive psychologist and linguist, Steve Pinker. He has done research on how art and music evokes emotion. He likens it to how good food affects our taste buds. He says we have “communicative instincts” that good art or music heavily affects—he thinks good music or art overloads our senses, causing lots of neural activity. Many musicians or artists do not support this theory, so I found some research by a different cognitive scientist, Mark Changzi. Changzi believes “music creates emotion in the listener because we associate the sound with human movement.” He thinks we envision “movement” in music we listen to. Even with all this research, I think that this remains a largely unanswered question, and I do not know if we can ever understand the quale of hearing music.
This is definitely a fascinating subject. While music may not fit into the rules of language that we learned a couple weeks ago, I do believe in it's communicative powers.
ReplyDeleteMaybe music is meant to push that definition of language that we hold so dear - in the same way digital and tactical communication may be doing the same.
On the point of artists - I think art has a loose enough definition that any sort of work can be considered art. But, I disagree that a linguist would be an artist in the definition that you are talking about. A linguist would be an art critic and historian - understanding the history and nuance of music as a language.
Just my two cents. Great post!
As a fellow musician, I found this post very interesting. I went to a performing arts high school where I studied classical voice and opera. When I told my friend (who is now studying vocal music at a conservatory) what classes I was taking this quarter, she said that I was taking more voice classes than her. I was initially shocked by this assertion, but came to realize that she might be right. IPA is heavily utilized in classical voice and drama when one is trying to practice pieces or characters who speak in varying languages and dialects. In addition, the study of vowel placement and articulation has vastly improved my technique as a vocalist in merely a few weeks. In this respect, I think my friend is right. Linguistics could easily be construed as another voice class. Therefore, linguists could be considered artists, maybe even musicians. I believe that art is defined by either the viewer/listener or the creator. Even though the speaker or linguist does not consider their language to be art, an observer could be moved emotionally by the beauty of a foreign language. Therefore, Introduction to Linguistics is truly an art.
ReplyDeleteBraddah Paul,
ReplyDeleteFirst, Rage. This comparison between music and language is so cool to think about, especially when it comes to singing. In my opinion, singing is the bridge between music and language, as it utilizes both. Just as we can notice differences in the way someone speaks a language with different accents, we notice different things in the qualities of a singer's voice.
Relating to what Tori said above, the technical aspects of linguistics are extremely applicable to singing. I love this because singing is great, but singing with a group of singers, or in a cappella is entirely different. No matter the quality and tone of each individual singer's voice, in order to sound good, the group much be able to adjust their individual singing to fit the group's dynamic. In practice, this is the music director telling the group to round their vowels, sing less nasally, etc. Different types of music call for different types of "accents". A barbershop tag might have a lot more dynamic range, and calls for the group to have similar vowels and enunciation in general, while a pop song can be more aggressive, with individual voices sticking out, mostly in solos.The range and styles of singing can extend just as far as the variations in spoken language.
I also find this topic fascinating because like Victor Wooten, I was born into a highly musical family and I grew up “destined” to play the piano. In fact, music came very naturally to me – it was just like learning a language. I have perfect pitch, so if someone plays a note on the piano, I can name the note without looking at the keys. Rhythm is not a problem, and music theory makes sense to me (maybe even more so than English)!
ReplyDeleteI agree that music has all the qualifications of a language. However, despite the potential, I do not think music can ever “acquire the practicality of language.” Music is produced in a variety of ways –playing the piano, strumming a guitar, ringing a bell, etc. It is not practical to carry around a violin everywhere just so that you can communicate with others. Also, how will we communicate using different instruments, when their pitch range is so vastly different? If we accidentally break our flute, does that mean we can’t communicate anymore? In a nutshell, music simply cannot be a practical language. We can’t “speak” music in this sense.
I think the only way music can become a language is through singing. Not words, but purely pitch, rhythm, tone, etc. I think this might be the only way we can “speak” music. All we need are lungs, mouth, and nose, and voila! We can communicate. We don’t need to carry anything around and we don’t need to worry about differences in our instruments. In fact, it’s quite similar to talking!
This conversation reminds me of the notion of a critical period for language. Studies have shown, for example, that deaf students exposed to American Sign Language (ASL) as a first language at a later age are less morphologically proficient than those exposed to ASL since birth (Newport & Supalla). Similarly, proficiency in English has been linked to the age at arrival (immersion) in the United States (Johnson & Newport, 1989). Both of these facts support the idea of a critical period for language spanning both vocal and visual mediums, meaning that those who are exposed to language at an earlier age gain some sort of proficiency that is unattainable by those who are not. Research has been done in order to investigate whether this may be true, but the results are inconclusive despite the numerous “child-prodigies” that span musical history. Additionally, not everyone is a musician, and the sample pool is self-selecting (those who choose to be musicians), making proficiency among the general population difficult to study. “Expert” musicians train a different sort of fine motor skills, but parts of music are also, as you point out, similar to a language. Part of the joy of music is the freedom of interpretation, where each individual relishes in the ability to break all the rules. These factors make it difficult to distinguish between the proficiency of experts, when there is no obviously “correct” answer. Case studies like Wooten, Mozart, Michael Jackson, etc. support your argument, but the complexities of musical proficiency in the general population require further investigation.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting post, and a very interesting topic in general. There seems to be a lot of discussion as to whether linguistics is a science or an art – whether something is musical or non-musical. But I think it doesn’t necessarily have to be only one or the other. Dylan mentioned the idea of a “bridge between music and language.”
ReplyDeleteI think it’s interesting to discuss this idea of a bridge (or bridges) between music and language – of something that is both musical and linguistic – of something that is not purely one or the other. I think one instance of such a bridge is poetry and, more specifically, spoken word performances. In spoken word, there is a heavier reliance on rhythm and other musical (or poetic) devices to convey meaning than there is in everyday speech (though this is in no way to assert that everyday speech is devoid of rhythm); at the same time, though, there is more reliance on words’ direct denotations (and connotations) in spoken word than there is in purely-instrumental music.
There seems to exist a gradated continuum between the purely linguistic and the purely musical; but I don’t know whether or not anything exists at either extreme. In other words, is there a language that is one hundred percent devoid of any musical elements? And is there a type of music which does not convey at least some meaning in the way that language does?
“I find it incredible that we are able to arrange sounds in a way that is pleasing to us yet have never quite unlocked the mysteries of exactly why it pleases us.”
ReplyDeletePaul brings up a very interesting point: what makes some combinations of sounds pleasing to some people. In music, we have so many genres, some more popular than others, but ultimately all with some degree of following. What makes me love Maroon 5, and my older brother love EDM? Why is upbeat pop music so, well, popular, when Scottish folk music is so…not. But this is something people consider often; after all, we often ask our peers what type of music they like and listen to.
Never, though, have I asked a friend what type of language they like to hear. But when I think about it, people like the sounds of different languages, and some are more popular than others. Italian, for example, love the sound of. You’ll probably find fewer people who think German or Chinese are attractive sounding. Why? Is it that Italian is more lyrical in its pronunciation, perhaps? Of course, these are broad generalizations, but still something to consider.
I find Paul’s questions very interesting. To the question if music would be able to acquire the nuance and practicality of language, I would say no. From my point of view, although it might be possible for some people to learn music ‘naturally’, for many of us, it is not really possible to do. A very important element in music is the melody. In order to convey some information, people need to be very accurate about melody. This poses a large difficulty for a number of people. Some people are genetically incapable of being very accurate in producing the melody. And I also noticed that many very little children are unable to produce accurate sounds. By the principles of a language, a language need to be easy enough to produce, receive, and acquire. Music doesn’t have that property. Therefore, music can’t acquire the same practicality of language. This is my view for this question. I’m also very curious about other questions.
ReplyDeleteI too find the question interesting. I would agree with XinyIJ, I don't think that music could quite acquire the practicality of language without the use of other language. I do believe that there is a significant amount of nuance that can be found in music that may not be able to be expressed in any other manner. However, In an aria or another form of music with words, I believe that you can achieve more expressive power in the combination of music and language. Music without words, on the other hand cannot, in my opinion, achieve the same level of communication that is achieved through language. Sure, some emotions and ideas can be communicated strictly through music, but these are much more open to interpretation than words that have strict definitions. Because of these distinctions, I don't think that music could achieve the practicality of language. However, it can certainly be used to aid language and increase the expressive power of our words.
ReplyDeleteYour blog post got me wondering whether a musician’s native language influences the kind of music he composes, the kind of music he finds pleasing, and by extension, the kind of poetry he finds pleasing, given that many poems sound very lyrical. Although I did not find a conclusive answer to this question online, I did find an interesting paper by Bidelman and Hutka (2013), which found significant differences between tonal language speakers of Cantonese and non-tonal language speakers of English in their performance on measures of auditory perception. In their study, professional musicians, Cantonese-speaking non-musicians, and English-speaking non-musicians were given tasks to assess auditory pitch acuity and music perception. The professional musicians scored high on all auditory measures, which is not surprising, given their extensive musical training. What is interesting, though, is that Cantonese speakers’ scores were very similar to those of professional musicians, while English speakers scores were lower than those of professional musicians. Apparently, experience with a tonal language is positively correlated with auditory sensitivity. Although the data from this study were behavioral rather than neural, they may suggest that music and language are processed in overlapping brain networks, such that undergoing training in music leads to benefits in the language domain, and conversely, undergoing training in language leads to benefits in the music domain. However, the extent of the benefits of training may be modulated by the extent to which the training exercises skills that are shared rather than distinct between the two domains. As far as real-world applications are concerned, the results of this study made me wonder: If a parent wants his/her child to become a talented musician, should that parent push his/her child to learn a tonal rather than a non-tonal language?
ReplyDeleteReference: Bidelman, G., & Hutka, S. (2013) “Tone Language Speakers and Musicians Share Enhanced Perceptual and Cognitive Abilities for Musical Pitch: Evidence for Bidirectionality between the Domains of Language and Music.” PLOS ONE, 8 (4). doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0060676.