Language as music distorted by semantics
- Date
- Jul 21, 2015
- Time
- 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM
- Speaker
- Prof Dr. Uli Reich
- Language
- en
- Main Topic
- Gesellschaft, Philos., Erzieh.
- Other Topics
- Gesellschaft, Philos., Erzieh.
- Host
- Prof. Dr. Martin Rohrmeier
- Description
- Both music and language organize sound to create meaning and both are universal and particular for the species: All and only humans have them. What is the difference, then? In my talk I will elaborate the claim that language and music share many, but not all levels of meaning: illocutionary, emotional and conversational meanings can be observed in both music and language, but propositional semantics based on truth conditions and driven by logical operators is a notion that makes sense to describe linguistic, but not musical utterances. To express propositional semantics, language makes use of double articulation, a twofold structure that is absent in music: the linguistic sound system organizes not only itself in prosodic categories like syllables, feet and phrases, but also codes an abstract morphological system which contains lexical and grammatical meaning in order to create propositions. This second system exploits phonetic events of all kinds, from single articulatory features to the positions of accents, in order to establish contrasts between words and sentences. The same phonetic events are organized in music without the need to construct propositions: They can be organized obeying metrical, rhythmic and harmonic principles strictly, while these principles only have a secondary force in linguistic utterances. The shared levels of meaning coincide very often also in ways of expression: pitch, speed and loudness. Thus, music and language are different by the ranking of constraints on common principles. These observations may help to defend a connectionist view on the cognitive architecture of the two domains. Contact: Carolin.Thiele@tu-dresden.de 0351/ 463-35711
- Links
Last modified: Jun 17, 2015, 3:04:52 PM
Location
TUD (Institut für Kunst- und Musikwissenschaft August-Bebel-Str. 20, Raum E08, 01219 Dresden)
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Organizer
TUD Philosophische FakultätZellescher Weg1701069Dresden
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- +49 351 463-34022
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- +49 351 463-337112
- TUD Philosophische Fakultät
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- http://tu-dresden.de/die_tu_dresden/fakultaeten/philosophische_fakultaet/index_html/document_view?set_language=en
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