Haiduk Felix, Fitch W Tecumseh
Department of Behavioral and Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Vienna Cognitive Science Hub, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Front Psychol. 2022 Apr 22;13:786899. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.786899. eCollection 2022.
Music and spoken language share certain characteristics: both consist of sequences of acoustic elements that are combinatorically combined, and these elements partition the same continuous acoustic dimensions (frequency, formant space and duration). However, the resulting categories differ sharply: scale tones and note durations of small integer ratios appear in music, while speech uses phonemes, lexical tone, and non-isochronous durations. Why did music and language diverge into the two systems we have today, differing in these specific features? We propose a framework based on information theory and a reverse-engineering perspective, suggesting that design features of music and language are a response to their differential deployment along three different continuous dimensions. These include the familiar propositional-aesthetic ('goal') and repetitive-novel ('novelty') dimensions, and a dialogic-choric ('interactivity') dimension that is our focus here. Specifically, we hypothesize that music exhibits specializations enhancing coherent production by several individuals concurrently-the 'choric' context. In contrast, language is specialized for exchange in tightly coordinated turn-taking-'dialogic' contexts. We examine the evidence for our framework, both from humans and non-human animals, and conclude that many proposed design features of music and language follow naturally from their use in distinct dialogic and choric communicative contexts. Furthermore, the hybrid nature of intermediate systems like poetry, chant, or solo lament follows from their deployment in the less typical interactive context.
两者都由以组合方式结合的声学元素序列组成，并且这些元素划分相同的连续声学维度（频率、共振峰空间和时长）。然而，由此产生的类别却大不相同：音乐中出现了小整数比例的音阶音和音符时长，而语音则使用音素、声调以及非等时的时长。为什么音乐和语言会分化成我们如今所拥有的这两种在这些特定特征上有所不同的系统呢？我们基于信息论和逆向工程视角提出了一个框架，表明音乐和语言的设计特征是对它们在三个不同连续维度上的差异运用的一种回应。这些维度包括大家熟悉的命题 - 审美（“目标”）维度和重复 - 新颖（“新颖性”）维度，以及一个对话 - 合唱（“交互性”）维度，而这正是我们在此关注的焦点。具体而言，我们假设音乐展现出一些专门化特征，这些特征能增强多个个体同时进行的连贯表达——即“合唱”情境。相比之下，语言则专门用于在紧密协调的轮流发言——“对话”情境中的交流。我们审视了来自人类和非人类动物的支持我们框架的证据，并得出结论：许多关于音乐和语言的设计特征自然地源于它们在不同的对话和合唱交流情境中的运用。此外，像诗歌、圣歌或独唱悲歌等中间系统的混合性质源于它们在不太典型的交互情境中的运用。
