Summary
The full musilanguage model can now be presented.It posits that music
and language evolved as two specializations from a common ancestor,
such that a series shared ancestral features evolved before either analo-
gous or distinct features.This model is distinguished from those holding
that music evolved from a dedicated linguistic capacity (music outgrowth
model) or that language developed from a dedicated musical capacity
(language outgrowth model).It argues instead that shared ancestral fea-
tures of music and language should be thought of as musilinguistic rather
than either musical or linguistic.The model’s principal contribution to
the study of language evolution is to provide a new chronology for the
development of language’s structural features:language evolved out of
a sophisticated referential emotive system;phonological syntax preceded
propositional syntax;tone languages preceded intonation languages;
speech could have evolved early,due to its exploitation of lexical tone
instead of enlarged segmental inventories;lexical tone,combinatorial
syntax,and expressive intonation were ancestral features of language
that were shared with music;broad semantic meaning preceded precise
semantic meaning;and language’s acoustic modality preceded its repre-
sentational state of amodality.
The model begins with a referential emotive system (figure 16.5) that
in its most basic form provides for the dual acoustic nature of the musi-
language system:sound as emotive meaning and sound as referential
meaning.This by itself establishes the functional spectrum that will later
define music and language as two separate specializations.From this we
see the development of the musilanguage stage,which is thought to have
occurred in two steps.The first step was the use of level tones (discrete
pitches) and pitch contours for referential communication.The second
step was the development of meaningful phrases,generated through
combinatorial rules for joining discrete elements into phrases,these
phrases being subject to four levels of modulation:local sentic rules for
expressive modulation;global sentic rules for the overall level (intensity)
of expression;local categorical rules for prominence;and global cate-
gorical formulas for generating phrase-level contour-meaning associa-
tions.These devices make independent but related contributions to the
overall acoustic properties of the phrase.Semantically,the musilanguage
device is a sophisticated referential emotive communication system that
generates meaning at two levels:first,from the relational juxtaposition
of unitary elements (local level),and second,from overall contour-
meaning associations (global level).
The next step in this evolution is the simultaneous occurrence of diver-
gence and interaction,with continued retention of the shared ancestral294 Steven Brown