LISSIM 6

June 1-15, 2012@ Kangra

Selected Essays

 

Shireen Irani

Phd, the English and Foreign Language University.

 How LISSIM 6 will help sharpen my research questions:

An area of research seldom explored until very recently, involves the investigation of the universal computational mechanisms that govern two seemingly distinct cognitive systems unique to humans, namely the exact extent of parallel between the faculties of Language and Music.

In just the way that human language is observed to be consistently characterized by multiple levels of hierarchical organization of related elements, universally exhibiting syntactic characteristics like recursivity, agreement and structural dependencies between sets of elements, musical perception too in essence implies hearing sounds in significant relation with each other, rather than a succession of isolated sounds. Like language, music is also characterized by hierarchical inter-level interactions, and context sensitive grammatical functions that are part of the logical structure of communicative sequences. While there are obvious parametric variations within the grammars of both the cognitive systems, it seems that the   principles governing them are the same: sound relations, pitch and tone variations, rhythmic contours, and structural dependencies that determine the hierarchy of levels of representation.

Moreover, generative linguists, [one of them being Pesetsky himself] have already applied the same formal mechanisms used for linguistic representation, on to Musical structures, to make explicit all of the structured nodes and their inter-relations, by means of a Musical tree diagram.

Given that significantly established abstract and formal similarities between two seemingly dissimilar cognitive endowments do exist, I wish to examine the exact extent of similitude between Linguistic and Musical structures, with respect to the following theoretical questions:

1 can the dichotomy between lexical and functional projections in Language also apply to Musical structures? [and my hunch is yes.]

2 what would be the precise nature of the corpuses generated by Musical structures, on application of the same merge operations and other formal mechanisms determining node relations across all levels of representation?

3 where does one draw the line? i.e., at precisely which stage do Musical representations begin to differ from Linguistic ones?

4, and most importantly, would Linguistic/prosodic factors have any role to play in determining phrasal boundaries in Music? Exactly what factors influence the nature of phrasal boundary perception among humans with respect to Language and Music?

I wish to seek answers to such questions by actually testing phrasal boundary perception among trained and untrained musicians, to examine the variables interfering with their judgments about what exactly constitutes a Musical phrase, and/or structures larger than it. It can be done by artificially manipulating music with respect to pitch, loudness, duration, prominence etc, and simultaneously presenting subjects with Linguistic stimuli that may or may not influence their perception of distinct structures, and their interdependence.

At Lissim, I hope to interact extensively with David Pesetsky himself, and attain constructive insight into his own work in this area. I hope to gain ideas on the most productive forms of experimentation in order to eliminate possible errors of judgment, and to discuss his own findings and views on the questions raised above.

In his own co-authored book: The Identity Thesis for Language and Music, [revised January 2011], Pesetsky makes a direct correlation between the Internal merge for Language, and a phenomenon known as Cadences in Music, which in particular displays a clustering of properties identical to

those associated with Head Movement in language. Building on this analysis, the book argues that the output of musical syntax feeds a Tonal-Harmonic Component whose formal relation to musical syntax parallels that between linguistic syntax and semantic systems.

His latest paper on phrasal movement in Language, can be the next stepping stone in drawing further parallels and/or drawing the line.

Another aspect of LISSIM6 that is attractive, is the introduction of formal semantics to its repertoire. I look forward to getting to know Pancheva and Moltmann’s work, especially dealing with meaning relations [implicit and explicit,] and it’s effects on surface level representations.

As we have been offered a course in formal semantics this semester, I hope to have some fresh theoretical questions for investigation, for which Lissim 6 will be an excelant platform to interact with all the faculty and fellow students in the field. This subject has always gotten me ticking, and goes a long way in enticing me to come up with new and innovative ways to represent Language, and might perhaps surprisingly provide some insight into Musical representation as well!

[although an interesting aspect of difference would be the evident absence of literal Meaning in Music, as against in Language]

Who knows, this fact in itself might hopefully lead to some interesting points of departure…

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