Essay on Discovering Further Links between Language and Music

Utilizing the groundwork proposed by this essay, we can expand to research other texts in which music seems to function as a form of communication. In doing so, we can study the similarities and differences between the mechanism as a way to arrive at a larger claim about the role of nonverbal communication amongst humans. With this new claim, we can begin to understand to recognize other forms of communication that may not appear as readily accessible and challenging, in order to ensure that we do not neglect the music of emotion another person may be performing in their own

Music may have proceeded speech as a form of human communication (Darwin; Mithen, cited in Thompson, Russo & Quinto 2008, p. 1468) and its place in human interaction stems from its relationship with emotional expression (Swaminathan & Schellenberg 2015, p. 189). The perception of emotion in music begins in early childhood (Dalla Bella,

For as long as mankind has walked on this earth, music has been an important part of our culture and lifestyles. Each walk of life beats to a different drum. Different cultures use music for many aspects of their lives; for religious purposes, for celebrations, for comfort, for sorrow, for relaxation, for sports, for dances, for energy, for learning, for sleeping, and for sexual experiences. Everyone uses music for something. Music connects with people and reaches them in ways that words simply cannot. Music is a representation of what feelings sound like. It expresses emotion and brings that characteristic out from within us; it tells us a story. Every generation has its’ own sound and different music styles have emerged and become

Throughout history, music has evolved and branched off into many different categories, each of which have distinct styles and orchestrations; there is classical music that is centuries old and today there is modern contemporary music that is often synthesized or played with electronic instruments. There are also many ways that the two styles can cross over each other; this is seen in popular music and a lot of video game music. Though many people cannot see any similarities between modern and classical music, modern music is really an evolution of classical music; the roots of modern music go back to classical era.

Phonology – use of sounds and how sounds are organized and used in natural languages.

Some argue that music is special due to its status as a universal language. Their argument is indeed rather convincing: there is not a single known culture that does not have some form of music as part of its cultural identity. As a vocalist, who is capable of juxtaposing music with text, this communication-based argument holds even more significance. Perhaps the rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic aspects of music add extra dimensions to the realm of oral communication that either work in harmony (pun intended) with the text or even as a standalone component that may or may not imply an underlying textual message. However, I find this literary and cultural interpretation of the meaning of music and its importance to be, at the very least, incomplete. If I appreciate music due to its communicative powers, then why do I prefer singing over simply talking? Singing is harder than simply reciting a passage. Why would I be happy to take the burden of adding additional dimensions to my oral communication? What is so innately special about the added dimensions

This is interpreted as because the capacity of the phonological loop is limited in time (in Smith, 2007).

Before analyzing its first worth noting how language sounds works. Phonemes are a unit of sound languages. For words, there are also distinctive

(Franceschini et al. 2017) The dual route model involves the grapheme-phoneme conversion, requiring the serial left to right processing, thus causing the length of the words to determine the time it takes to say them. The parallel processing has little to no effect based from the length or the time taken to say the words. It is the length that generally has more effect on the pronunciation of the words than the actual word itself. (Eysenck and Keane, 2015) In the text Jalbert et al. (2011) found there was an important confounding between word length and orthographic neighbourhood. (Eysenck and Keane, 2015) Like what the study was attempting to resolve, since the English language is more orthographic than most languages.

II)Baddeley, Thomson, Buchanan(1975) found that systematically explored the effect of word length in terms of pronunciation time. They demonstrated that even when items are equated for number of syllables and word frequency, if one set of words takes less time to pronounce than another set, memory will be better for the shorter items.

“Evidence suggests that music remains just as essential to the human race now as it did 70,000-80,000 years ago.” (Harvey, 2011) Music, song, and dance as art forms have completely integrated with the art works to tell a whole story of the human culture, its history, and its beliefs. The art of music implements cohesion among a society and acts as a framework to our social architecture. “For many, the evolution of art in Homo sapiens is a unique event that is linked to the evolution of the cognitively modern mind.” (Harvey, 2011) As the human mind has evolved, so has art. Sounds, especially music has had a direct effect on the evolution of mankind. Recent studies have shown how the mnemonic structure of music aids and promotes memory, learning, and the organization of knowledge. It is also proven to add structure to time. Cultures and the human species have continued to do and create art over several time periods because it allows humans to not only

The question “Can language be acquired through music?” has already been asked, and the literature has already agreed on the benefits of using music to stimulate learning (Medina (1990) cites Jalongo and Bromley, 1984, McCarthey, 1985; Martin, 1983, Mitchell, 1983, and Jolly, 1975). For instance, musical training is proven to improve L2 speech contrast recognition (Gottfried, 2007) and prosodic processing (Magne, Schön & Besson, 2006). Empirical researches show that students can benefit from musical stimuli, and, in fact, music has been used inside the classroom to motivate students to practice all four language skills. Medina (1990), for instance, provided empirical support to the claim that “music is a viable vehicle for second language acquisition,” and Lowe (1995) demonstrated that learners who received musical stimuli performed better in grammar and reading comprehension French tests.

Suprasegmental variables are the melodic and rhythmic components of speech across segmental boundaries, also called prosody. They can affect intelligibility as well as imply additional meaning. The main variables are intonation, stress, and rhythm. These deal with pitch, prominence, and length across a phrase, respectively, although each of these variables have significant interconnections. Intonation is the suprasegmental factor that can greatly affect the meaning of a phrase. An intonation pattern is a measure of how pitch varies across a phrase. Specific patterns, like rising pitch at the end of a phrase, can imply a question and other patterns can imply other meanings. Intonation can also inform the listener as to when the speaker is finished talking by raising or lowering pitch at the end of a phrase. Monopitch, or lack of intonation, produces a reduction in intelligibility. When studying pitch related to speech a conversion from frequency to semitones is often calculated because this gives an equalized representation across male/female speakers. Stress can be found within words and within sentences. Stress is a change in the force or effort given to a word. This can be seen in fundamental frequency, intensity, duration, or any combination of these factors at once. Stress changes the prominence of certain words in a phrase, as well as possibly changing the meaning of a word. Through changing the prominence of certain words stress has an effect on intonation patterns.

When people think of the term literacy, they most commonly define it as the ability to read and write, in the verbal sense. But there is a wide range of literacy apart from that, which also requires mastering a set of crucial skills. One such example is musical literacy, which is the ability to read, write, or appreciate music. Musical literacy is not all that different from the verbal kind. Leonard G. Ratner, when speaking of 18th and 19th century music, writes "Both language and music had their vocabulary, syntax, and arrangement of formal structures, subsumed under the title Rhetoric" (xiv). In other words, music, like language, is based on its own set of learned rules, and both serve as a form of

Every language constitutes its own sound system, and this sound system is a very important aspect when learning or studying a language. Along with this sound system are the prosodic features of a language. This study is about the phonological system and the prosodic features of