18
COMPARISON BETWEEN
LANGUAGE AND MUSIC
Abstract
Similarities and differences between language and music processing are examined from an evolu-
tionary and a cognitive perspective. Language and music cannot be considered single entities; they
need to be decomposed into different component operations or levels of processing. The central
question concerns one of the most important claims of the generative grammar theory, that is, the
specificity of language processing: do the computations performed to process language rely on spe-
cific linguistic processes or do they rely on general cognitive principles? Evidence from brain imag-
ing results is reviewed, noting that this field is currently in need of metanalysis of the available results
to precisely evaluate this claim. A series of experiments, mainly using the event-related brain poten-
tials method, were conducted to compare different levels of processing in language and music.
Overall, results favour language specificity when certain aspects of semantic processing in language
are compared with certain aspects of melodic and harmonic processing in music. By contrast, results
support the view that general cognitive principles are involved when aspects of syntactic processing
in language are compared with aspects of harmonic processing in music. Moreover, analysis of the
temporal structure led to similar effects in language and music. These tentative conclusions must be
supported by other brain imaging results to shed further light on the spatiotemporal dynamics of the
brain structure–function relationship.
Keywords: Language and music; Music and language; Event-related brain potentials; Brain
imaging
Introduction
Once, a long time ago [...] it so happened that people took to uncivilized ways, were ruled by lust
and greed, behaved in angry and jealous ways with each other [...].Seeing this plight, Indra and
other gods approached god Brahma and requested him to give the people a toy, but one which
could not only be seen, but heard, and this should turn out a diversion (so that people gave up their
bad ways).
A. Rangacharya,Introduction to Bharata’s Natya-Sastra^1One main function of language is communication. Linguistic communication encom-
passes widely diverse uses of language, from the running of everyday life and basic interac-
tions between individuals (‘Give me the salt, please’.) to the esthetics of words, their