Prologue: Music and language

After Debussy ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Julian Johnson

The Prologue explores the tension between language and music and the place that musicology might occupy as a way of thinking through that tension. Rather than collapsing this difference into the assumption that language deals adequately with music or that, conversely, music remains ineffable to language, the relationship is explored as one of non-identity that is mutually constitutive – in other words, that we understand both music and language better through an exploration of their non-identical proximity. Music is taken here to mount a challenge to philosophy – specifically, that music embodies a kind of thinking through particularity rather than thinking through the abstraction of the concept. It sets out the rationale for a musical focus on Debussy and later French composers, and a parallel exploration of French writers from Mallarmé and Bergson to Derrida and Nancy.

Rhetorik ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Elvers

AbstractIn this paper I discuss the relationship of music and language as it was conceived in Greek antiquity. More specifically, I focus on central passages from the corpora of Plato and Aristotle that are concerned with the theory of the arts. I claim that under the notion of μουσική (mousiké) both Aristotle and Plato understood language and music as two modalities of the same kind of artistic (or »aesthetic«) communication. Both modalities typically appear combined, as in the case of song or drama, serving as two different means to achieve a common goal: the accurate depiction of affections, as well as the appropriate elicitation of these in the perceiver. This implies that typically both modalities are interdependent and complementing each other. Further, subsuming both language and music under the notion of μουσική supports the idea of shared resources and foundations between the two modalities, which is a necessary prerequisite for any musical rhetoric. Although the notion of musical rhetoric in antiquity did not exist as such, the intimate relationship of music and language laid ground and served as an important point of reference for later scholars, who worked towards elaborated forms of a musical rhetoric.


2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graeme Trousdale

Abstract This article explores possible connections between language, music and creativity, particularly in terms of change in linguistic and musical grammars. It considers parallels between properties of usage-based grammars (like chunking and schematicity) and musical structures. While some research into the relationship between music and language has tended to align itself more with formal approaches to knowledge about language, the discussion here is more focussed on functional, usage-based approaches. The article sets out some ways in which work on musical change might be used to think about parallels between language and music, and how this connects to creativity.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Robert Slevc ◽  
Brooke M. Okada

The relationship between structural processing in music and language has received increasing interest in the last several years, spurred by the influential Shared Syntactic Integration Resource Hypothesis (SSIRH; Patel, 2003). According to this resource-sharing framework, music and language rely on separable syntactic representations but recruit shared cognitive resources to integrate these representations into evolving structures. The SSIRH is supported by findings of interactions between structural manipulations in music and language. However, other recent evidence suggests that such interactions can also arise with non-structural manipulations, and some recent neuroimaging studies report largely non-overlapping neural regions involved in processing musical and linguistic structure. These conflicting results raise the question of exactly what shared (and distinct) resources underlie musical and linguistic structural processing. This paper suggests that one shared resource is prefrontal cortical mechanisms of cognitive control, which are recruited to detect and resolve conflict that occurs when expectations are violated and interpretations must be revised. By this account, musical processing involves not just the incremental processing and integration of musical elements as they occur, but also the incremental generation of musical predictions and expectations, which must sometimes be overridden and revised in light of evolving musical input.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Sarah Pawlett-Jackson

In this paper I offer a comparative evaluation of two types of “fundamental hope”, drawn from the writing of Rebecca Solnit and Rowan Williams respectively. Arguments can be found in both, I argue, for the foundations of a dispositional existential hope. Examining and comparing the differences between these accounts, I focus on the consequences implied for hope’s freedom and stability. I focus specifically on how these two accounts differ in their claims about the relationship between hope and (two types of) necessity. I argue that both Solnit and Williams base their claims for warranted fundamental hope on a sense of how reality is structured, taking this structure to provide grounds for a basic existential orientation that absolute despair is never the final word. For Solnit this structure is one of unpredictability; for Williams it is one of excess. While this investigation finds both accounts of fundamental hope to be plausible and insightful, I argue that Williams’s account is ultimately more satisfying on the grounds that it offers a realistic way of thinking about a hope necessitated by what it is responsive to, and more substantial in responding to what is necessary.


Author(s):  
Greti Dinkova-Bruun

This chapter examines the relationship between a text and its glosses, using examples from the later Middle Ages. It discusses interlinear glosses, marginal glosses, catena commentaries, as well as the layout of glosses. It argues that medieval glossing represented a new way of thinking and an important method for engaging with the literary and scholarly tradition.


2008 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 357-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANIRUDDH D. PATEL ◽  
MEREDITH WONG ◽  
JESSICA FOXTON ◽  
ALIETTE LOCHY ◽  
ISABELLE PERETZ

TO WHAT EXTENT DO MUSIC and language share neural mechanisms for processing pitch patterns? Musical tone-deafness (amusia) provides important evidence on this question. Amusics have problems with musical melody perception, yet early work suggested that they had no problems with the perception of speech intonation (Ayotte, Peretz, & Hyde, 2002). However, here we show that about 30% of amusics from independent studies (British and French-Canadian) have difficulty discriminating a statement from a question on the basis of a final pitch fall or rise. This suggests that pitch direction perception deficits in amusia (known from previous psychophysical work) can extend to speech. For British amusics, the direction deficit is related to the rate of change of the final pitch glide in statements/ questions, with increased discrimination difficulty when rates are relatively slow. These findings suggest that amusia provides a useful window on the neural relations between melodic processing in language and music.


Author(s):  
Anthony Brandt ◽  
L. Robert Slevc ◽  
Molly Gebrian

Language and music are readily distinguished by adults, but there is growing evidence that infants first experience speech as a special type of music. By listening to the phonemic inventory and prosodic patterns of their caregivers’ speech, infants learn how their native language is composed, later bootstrapping referential meaning onto this musical framework. Our current understanding of infants’ sensitivities to the musical features of speech, the co-development of musical and linguistic abilities, and shared developmental disorders, supports the view that music and language are deeply entangled in the infant brain and modularity emerges over the course of development. This early entanglement of music and language is crucial to the cultural transmission of language and children’s ability to learn any of the world’s tongues.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Paula Cristiane Strina Juliasz ◽  
Sonia Maria Vanzella Castellar

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Spatial thinking, comprised of concepts, representations and spatial abilities, is a cognitive activity developed in everyday living, and can be systematized through different school disciplines, mainly Geography. The comprehension of this concept and the investigation of how it can be developed and systematized in schools are critical points, involving different languages that represent the space. Our main objective is to propose theoretical and methodological references for the spatial knowledge of children aged between 4 and 6 years old. The research is based on the following question: Which spatial abilities and concepts can be addressed in activities aimed at developing spatial thinking in children aged 4 to 6 years old? To answer this question and achieve the main objective, the specific objectives were: a) to investigate and analyze the pertinence, possibilities and approaches regarding the spatial notions in children’s education; b) develop teaching situations based on guiding theories about spatial thinking, children’s drawing and the concept construction under a historical and cultural perspective; c) understand the patterns in children’s graphic representations; and d) analyze the children’s dialogues. The analysis of the research data allowed us to conclude that drawing is part of the cartographic initiation, and words are fundamental elements that concretize the way of thinking, in this case, spatial thinking ability. In this research, we reaffirm the direct relationship between Geography and the development of spatial thinking, considering the very nature of this Science, and Cartography as the language used to materialize this way of thinking.</p>


Author(s):  
Jonathan Crowe

The role of implications in Australian constitutional law has long been debated. Jeffrey Goldsworthy has argued in a series of influential publications that legitimate constitutional implications must be derived in some way from authorial intentions. I call this the intentionalist model of constitutional implications. The intentionalist model has yielded a sceptical response to several recent High Court decisions, including the ruling in Roach v Electoral Commissioner that the Constitution enshrines an implied conditional guarantee of universal franchise. This article outlines an alternative way of thinking about constitutional implications, which I call the narrative model. I argue that at least some constitutional implications are best understood as arising from historically extended narratives about the relationship of the constitutional text to wider social practices and institutions. The article begins by discussing the limitations of the intentionalist model. It then considers the role of descriptive and normative implications in both factual and fictional narratives, before applying this analysis to the Australian Constitution. I argue that the narrative model offers a plausible basis for the High Court’s reasoning in Roach v Electoral Commissioner.


Antíteses ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (20) ◽  
pp. 979
Author(s):  
Celso Kraemer ◽  
Dominique Santos ◽  
Aniele Crescêncio

RESUMO Ao observar as relações de Nietzsche com seus contemporâneos verifica-se que ele estava ciente das principais discussões relativas à Unificação da Alemanha (1871). Para a unificação era necessário que os 39 estados alemães compartilhassem o sentimento de pertencimento a uma pátria comum. Nesse meandro, os historiadores prussianos do século XIX desempenharam papel fundamental ao produzir um ambiente filosófico nacionalista, uma maneira científica e objetiva de pensar sobre a história. O objetivo deste trabalho é compreender as interações de Nietzsche com estes círculos intelectuais. Para isto, foram selecionados quatro dos chamados fragmentos póstumos de Nietzsche datados entre 1871 e 1873. De acordo com o ponto de vista de Nietzsche, as pretensões dos historiadores, não tinham nenhuma crítica, pois acreditavam, ingenuamente, que a verdade era um alvo tangível. Por outro lado, ele indicou a necessidade de uma história ligada à cultura, que era trabalhada em conjunto com "instintos artísticos".  ABSTRACT By observing the relationship of Nietzsche with his contemporaries one can notice that he was aware of the main discussions related to the unification of Germany (1871). Unification required 39 German states to share the feeling of belonging to a common homeland. Prussian historians of the nineteenth century played a key role in producing such a nationalist philosophical environment, a scientific and objectivist way of thinking about History. This work aim is to understand the interactions between Nietzsche and this intelectual circles. For this purpose, four of the so-called posthumous Nietzsche fragments, dated between 1871 and 1873, were selected. According to Nietzsche's point of view, some historians had a naive pretension to reach the truth, as if it were a tangible target. On another hand, he pointed out the necessity of a link between History and Culture, which should be understood altogether with ‘artistic instincts’. 


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