Is language merely a subset of music?

Which came first, the egg or the chicken?

            Cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists alike have long argued about whether music or language capacities develop first within humans. Some, such as Gary Marcus in his most recent book Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning say language must have come first, as there still isn’t any concrete evidence that proves music is required. On the other hand, Anthony Brandt and others at Rice University Shepherd School of Music and the University of Maryland, College Park recently released an article, “Music and Early Language Acquisition,” arguing that music comprehension develops prior to language and speaking abilities in humans. They provide evidence pertaining to newborn’s seemingly innate ability to distinguish between the differing sounds of language, the similarities in the time line of music and language comprehension, and the qualities of speech most similar to music being learned first.

In order for Brandt to make a valid scientific argument, music must first be defined: “the creative play with sound; it arises when sound meets human imagination.” This definition sets no rules on rhythm, time, or arrangement of pitches; nearly anything can be music. Whether this is a valid definition or not is difficult to say, as definitions between many people vary in their entireties, and everyone seems to have a problem with everyone else’s.

One point of Brandt’s is that research has been conducted demonstrating that newborn’s speech perception is dependent upon the discrimination of different sounds of language, “the most musical aspects of speech.” They primarily use pitch and rhythm cues in order to understand what or where a sound is coming from. In addition, infants are able to recognize and distinguish phonemes, or distinct units of sound, of all languages. Understanding the meaning of words and sequences of words comes after the fact; the identification of specific sounds and their variations must lay the foundation for the acquisition of language. One fantastic example of this, mentioned by both Marcus and Brandt, is the use of the so-called motherese voice; we’ve all heard it: mothers talk to their newborns with highly exaggerated pitches and rhythms; completely unlike they’d talk to any adult. Anyone who has talked to a baby knows it’s almost difficult not to talk in this manner – imagine a mother or father saying, “can you say mama?” to an infant. Does it sound plain and monotonous or melodious?

However, Marcus believes this type of speech could likely be due to non-innate qualities: parents may learn that infants “pay more attention to it, perhaps because it is easier for the infants to hear or because the high pitches of motherese intrinsically sound happy.” But Brandt argues that infants prefer infant directed speech because it “seems to reflect the musical aspects of motherese as this preference remains… even when the speech samples are filtered to remove lexical content while preserving the prosody.” Though this doesn’t quite prove that infants prefer motherese speech because it sounds happy or is easier to hear, it may be reason to believe that music precedes, if not presides over, language during development.

            As evidence against music being the foundation of language, Marcus states that while many people have a great deal of difficulty distinguishing between simple musical intervals and that nearly 5% of the population is tone deaf, toddlers have a remarkable capability in arranging syllables into sequences. This raises a valid point – if infants are so good at distinguishing between different pitches and phonemes, how could so many people have problems identifying simple musical intervals? But I might argue here that perhaps it is the mere comprehension, and complete comprehension that is, of exactly what, for example, a 3^rd or 5^th is that people have trouble with. They can distinguish the fact that the sounds are different, but perhaps the degree to which a 5^th is different just doesn’t quite make that neuronal connection. Whether it is due to the fact that the auditory area of the brain doesn’t make the right connection to the right comprehension centers or centers involved in singing and speech production, the lack of connection doesn’t necessarily mean music wasn’t a precursor to language – it could mean that detecting a different, just some difference, was enough to learn and differentiate patterns of speech.

            Marcus and Brandt agree that music and language are connected in some aspects, but the extent to which they agree varies. For example, Brandt explains that both recognizing the sound of differing consonants and the timbre of musical instruments require temporal lobe processing, and at nearly equal speeds. Marcus provides several examples of how language and music generally use the same areas of the brain, such as centers for memory or Broca’s area for combining smaller units of language or music into sentences or phrases, respectively. However, Marcus goes on to explain how though music and speech share their “neural real estate,” they use these regions in different patterns. Furthermore, though many different cognitive activities or functions require use of similar brain regions, no particular area of the brain has a single, absolute function.

            So, which is it then?

Though I’m not qualified to say, I’m going to have to side with music presiding over language during development. Marcus has many great points: language and music share brain regions primarily due to similarity in needed resources, adults being tone-deaf, and many others discussed in Guitar Zero. However, Brandt’s evidence for language being a mere subset of music, in addition to my own personal opinion that music is a more authentic, even primal, conveyor of feeling, leads me to believe that music precedes language.

Sources:

1. Marcus, Gary. Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning. New York: The Penguin Press, 2012. Print.

2. Brandt, Anthony, Molly Gebrian, and L. Robert Slevc. "Music and early language acquisition." Frontiers in Psychology. 3. (2012): 1-17. Web. 11 Oct. 2012.