that it is wrong to dichotomize its forms in speech and music.Phonolo-
gists describing speech phrasing and musicologists describing musical
phrasing often talk about exactly the same processes,but with two dif-
ferent sets of terms.Therefore it is important to subsume these phrasing
mechanisms intoa unified set of concepts and terms (figure 16.4) that
are rooted in biological notions of common evolutionary ancestry.
Before talking about these mechanisms,I would like to introduce one
concept that has general relevance to this topic:sentic modulation.The
term “sentic”I borrow from Manfred Clynes (1977);however,I do not
use it in exactly the same sense that Clynes did.I use it in a more limited
sense,as expressed in Clynes’ equivalence principle:“A sentic state may
be expressed by any of a number of different output modalities...
gestures,tone of voice,facial expression,a dance step,musical phrase,
etc.”(p.18,emphasis in original).My take on Clynes’ equivalence prin-
ciple is to say that the sentic system is a general modulatory system
involved in conveying and perceiving the intensityof emotive expression
along a continuous scale.It expresses intensity by means of three graded
spectra:tempo modulation (slow-fast spectrum),amplitude modulation
(soft-loud spectrum),and register selection (low-pitched-high-pitched
spectrum).This system appears to be invariant across modalities of
expression in humans,such as speech,music,and gesture,on which
Clynes’ equivalency is based.It also appears to function in a similar way
in emotive behavior in nonhuman animals (Morton 1977, 1994),287 The “Musilanguage”Model of Music
Figure 16.4
Four mechanisms of expressive phrasing are described along two dimensions,acting first
either at the global level or the local level of the phrase,and second in either a graded
manner (local and global sentic modulation) or in a more discrete,categorical manner
(contour-meaning associations and prominence effects).See text for details.Fig.16.4