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Examples of Coevolution in Music and Language Communication
Music and language both evolved as systems to communicate meaning via sound organized in the dimension of time. They have in common:
- Metrical structure: strong and weak beats
- Melodic contour: rising and falling pitch
- Group structure: phrases within phrases
- Phrase duration
- Communication of emotion (although music dominates)
However there are some clear and important differences between music and language:
- Language conveys information as well as emotion. Music communicates emotion only.
- Everybody can easily create language competently (talk meaningfully), whereas not everybody can create music competently. It may well be that this difference stems from the fact that everybody gets constant practice in language in everyday communication, whereas, after infancy and after learning to talk, musical communication as a survival necessity falls off dramatically, and therefore into disuse.
- Language does not have an equivalent of the musical phenomenon of harmony. In harmony, two separate pitches are produced at the same time and the brain makes sense of the resulting sound. However, in speech, two separate words produced at the same time sound garbled. The brain cannot make sense of the resulting sound.
Overall, the similarities between music and language in the brain are striking, and outweigh the differences, indicating a common origin.