295 The “Musilanguage”Model of Music
Figure 16.5
The full musilanguage model begins with a hominid referential emotive vocalization
system,which provides for the dual acoustic nature of the musilanguage stage:sound as
referential meaning and sound as emotive meaning.Next,the musilanguage stage is
thought to evolve by a two-step process,beginning first with a unitary lexical-tonal system,
followed by a phrase system involving both combinatorial syntax and expressive phrasing
properties.This musilanguage stage provides for the shared ancestral features of music and
language.The next step is divergence from the musilanguage stage,leading eventually to
the mature linguistic system and music’s acoustic mode.This occurs through reciprocal
elaboration of either sound as referential meaning (language) or sound as emotive meaning
(music’s acoustic mode).This involves not only different fundamental units at the phono-
logical level but different interpretations of these units at the meaning level.An important
aspect of the divergence process is the formation of different syntax types:propositional
syntax in the case of language,and blending syntax in the case of music.The final step is
development of interactive properties by a coevolutionary process.This leads to,among
other functions,music’s vehicle mode of action,which involves such things as verbal song,
iconic representation,and musical narration (see footnote 2 for details).