Commentary: The ‘Musilanguage’ Model of Language Evolution

Nikolsky, Aleksey

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00075

Cited by 8 publications

(13 citation statements)

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“…After providing a definition of music and identifying specific features of music, we shall list the types of functions typically performed by music, according to the ethnomusicological, cognitive, and sociological data [12,13,17,29,[50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67]. Active (i.e., performance) and passive (listening) uses 26 of music can be grouped in 14 general operational types, following the criteria of cross-cultural stability of their pragmatics and presence of specific structural means to distinguish each type of use.…”

Section: The Functional Typology Of Musicmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Music helps memorization of knowledge important for success: a) singing songs created by adults for children as mnemonic devices for remembering important information (e.g., alphabet songs [50]) -this active use seems to be rather recent; b) singing work-songs that contain instructions for executing a certain work (e.g., weavers' songs of Central Asia and China that name operations necessary for weaving a rug [675]) -rare; c) singing traveling songs that specify landmarks or encode a scheme of orientation optimal for a given topographic environment -rare (indigenous people in Siberia [53] and Australia [676]); d) fitting long epic poems into a formulaic melody -universally common in folk music [375].…”

Section: Learning Aidmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, if in language, iconicity occupies little place, confined to such rather rare phenomena as onomatopoeia or ideophones, 34 for musical communication iconicity constitutes the status quo. Multiple cross-modal (informally speaking, "synesthetic") correspondences between hearing music structures and associating their properties with properties of visible or tangible physical objects and patterns of their motion make perception of music quite intuitive, enabling music to represent objective reality [53].…”

Section: Differences Between Musical and Linguistic Transmissionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The evolution of human music in light of increased prosocial behavior: a new model

Nikolsky,

Benítez-Burraco

2024

Physics of Life Reviews

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Section: The Functional Typology Of Musicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Learning Aidmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Differences Between Musical and Linguistic Transmissionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The evolution of human music in light of increased prosocial behavior: a new model

Nikolsky,

Benítez-Burraco

2024

Physics of Life Reviews

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“…Animal communication usually employs male “chorus,” male-female “duetting,” or “antiphonal” formats ( Yoshida and Okanoya, 2005 ). Musicologically, this corresponds to a special type of texture—“isophony”: the ongoing out-of-sync multi-part reproduction of the same thematic material ( Nikolsky, 2018 ). Isophonic jumble precludes SFTO.…”

Section: The Scandinavian Tradition Of Kulning As a Model Of Neolithimentioning

confidence: 99%

The Pastoral Origin of Semiotically Functional Tonal Organization of Music

Nikolsky

2020

Front. Psychol.

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This paper presents a new line of inquiry into when and how music as a semiotic system was born. Eleven principal expressive aspects of music each contains specific structural patterns whose configuration signifies a certain affective state. This distinguishes the tonal organization of music from the phonetic and prosodic organization of natural languages and animal communication. The question of music’s origin can therefore be answered by establishing the point in human history at which all eleven expressive aspects might have been abstracted from the instinct-driven primate calls and used to express human psycho-emotional states. Etic analysis of acoustic parameters is the prime means of cross-examination of the typical patterns of expression of the basic emotions in human music versus animal vocal communication. A new method of such analysis is proposed here. Formation of such expressive aspects as meter, tempo, melodic intervals, and articulation can be explained by the influence of bipedal locomotion, breathing cycle, and heartbeat, long before Homo sapiens. However, two aspects, rhythm and melodic contour, most crucial for music as we know it, lack proxies in the Paleolithic lifestyle. The available ethnographic and developmental data leads one to believe that rhythmic and directional patterns of melody became involved in conveying emotion-related information in the process of frequent switching from one call-type to another within the limited repertory of calls. Such calls are usually adopted for the ongoing caretaking of human youngsters and domestic animals. The efficacy of rhythm and pitch contour in affective communication must have been spontaneously discovered in new important cultural activities. The most likely scenario for music to have become fully semiotically functional and to have spread wide enough to avoid extinctions is the formation of cross-specific communication between humans and domesticated animals during the Neolithic demographic explosion and the subsequent cultural revolution. Changes in distance during such communication must have promoted the integration between different expressive aspects and generated the basic musical grammar. The model of such communication can be found in the surviving tradition of Scandinavian pastoral music - kulning. This article discusses the most likely ways in which such music evolved.

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“…Facial expressions sometimes involuntarily communicate emotional states. For example, past research has shown that spontaneous facial mimicry facilitates congruent exchanges of facial expressions [ 12 ], and that top-down cognitive control is important to suppress facial mimicry [ 13 – 15 ]. Facial expressions can also be used deliberatively in a goal-oriented communication [ 5 , 16 – 18 ], and successful communication of emotional states can prevent potentially harmful encounters [ 19 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The face value of feedback: facial behaviour is shaped by goals and punishments during interaction with dynamic faces

Pärnamets

Olsson

2021

R. Soc. open sci.

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Responding appropriately to others' facial expressions is key to successful social functioning. Despite the large body of work on face perception and spontaneous responses to static faces, little is known about responses to faces in dynamic, naturalistic situations, and no study has investigated how goal directed responses to faces are influenced by learning during dyadic interactions. To experimentally model such situations, we developed a novel method based on online integration of electromyography signals from the participants’ face (corrugator supercilii and zygomaticus major) during facial expression exchange with dynamic faces displaying happy and angry facial expressions. Fifty-eight participants learned by trial-and-error to avoid receiving aversive stimulation by either reciprocate (congruently) or respond opposite (incongruently) to the expression of the target face. Our results validated our method, showing that participants learned to optimize their facial behaviour, and replicated earlier findings of faster and more accurate responses in congruent versus incongruent conditions. Moreover, participants performed better on trials when confronted with smiling, when compared with frowning, faces, suggesting it might be easier to adapt facial responses to positively associated expressions. Finally, we applied drift diffusion and reinforcement learning models to provide a mechanistic explanation for our findings which helped clarifying the underlying decision-making processes of our experimental manipulation. Our results introduce a new method to study learning and decision-making in facial expression exchange, in which there is a need to gradually adapt facial expression selection to both social and non-social reinforcements.

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Commentary: The ‘Musilanguage’ Model of Language Evolution

Cited by 8 publications

References 13 publications

The evolution of human music in light of increased prosocial behavior: a new model

The evolution of human music in light of increased prosocial behavior: a new model

The Pastoral Origin of Semiotically Functional Tonal Organization of Music

The face value of feedback: facial behaviour is shaped by goals and punishments during interaction with dynamic faces

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