Emergence of the Distinction Between “Verbal” and “Musical” in Early Childhood Development

Nikolsky, Aleksey

doi:10.1007/978-981-15-4250-3_7

Cited by 6 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 225 publications

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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 (performance) and passive (listening) uses 15 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%

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

Nikolsky¹,

Benítez‐Burraco²

2022

Preprint

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Together with language, music is perhaps our most distinctive behavioral trait. Following the lead of paleolinguistic research, different hypotheses have been proposed to explain why only humans perform music and how this ability might have evolved in the species. In this paper, we advance a new model of music evolution that builds on the theory of self-domestication, according to which the human phenotype is, at least in part, the outcome of a process similar to mammal domestication, triggered by a progressive reduction in reactive aggression levels in response to environmental changes. In the paper, we specifically argue that changes in aggression management through the course of human cultural evolution can account for the behaviors conducive to the emergence and evolution of music. We hypothesize 4 stages in the evolutionary development of music under the influence of environmental changes and evolution of social organization: starting from musilanguage, proto-music gave rise to personal and private forms of timbre-oriented music, then to small-group ensembles of pitch-oriented music, at first of indefinite and then definite pitch, and finally to collective (tonal) music. These stages parallel what has been hypothesized for languages and encompass the diversity of music types and genres described worldwide. Overall, music complexity emerges in a gradual fashion under the effects of enhanced abilities for cultural niche construction, resulting from the stable trend of reduction in reactive aggression towards the end of the Pleistocene, leading to the rise of hospitality codes, and succeeded by increase in proactive aggression from the beginning of the Holocene onward. This paper addresses numerous controversies in the literature on the evolution of music by providing a clear structural definition of music, identifying its structural features that distinguish it from oral language, and summarizing the typology of operational functions of music and formats of its transmission. The proposed framework of structural approach to music arms a researcher with means to identify and comparatively analyze different schemes of tonal organization of music, placing them in the context of human social and cultural evolution. Especially valuable contribution to the understanding of transition from animal communication to human music and language is the theory of so-called “personal song”, described and analyzed here from ethological, social, cultural, cognitive, and musicological perspectives. The emergence of personal song and its development into a social institution are interlinked with the evolution of kinship and placed into the timeline of cultural evolution, based on totality of ethnographic, archaeological, anthropological, genetic, and paleoclimatic data.

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Section: The Functional Typology Of Musicmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Nikolsky¹,

Benítez‐Burraco²

2022

Preprint

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“…Such syntactic pitch-parsing is as imperative for music as word-parsing is for language. Semantics provides yet another distinction: verbal syntax specializes in conveying referential meaning, whereas music specializes in emotional expression 7 ( Gabrielsson and Lindström, 2001 ; Juslin, 2001 , 2005 , 2011 , 2013 ; Cook, 2002 ; Krumhansl, 2002 ; Gabrielsson and Juslin, 2003 ; Dissanayake, 2008 ; Johnson-Laird and Oatley, 2010 ; Trainor, 2010 ; Perlovsky, 2012 ; Altenmüller et al, 2013b ; Eerola and Vuoskoski, 2013 ; Eerola et al, 2013 ; Peretz, 2013 ; Nikolsky, 2015a , 2020 ; Schiavio et al, 2016 ). Such distinction has been fundamental for the musical practices and theories of most musical traditions before Western classical music was swept away by the 20th century modernistic “revolution.” This distinction became revived after emotion and music attracted intense neuro-psychological research in the 1980s.…”

Section: Tonal Organization and Musical Modementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The need to formulate a "metatheory" applicable to all varieties of musics has been realized only in the 1890s and dealt with by the discipline of systematic musicology (Bader, 2018). However, this discipline too inherited the framework of Western "classical music, " which is just one of many (Nikolsky, 2015b(Nikolsky, , 2016(Nikolsky, , 2020Nikolsky et al, 2020). Since this framework is tailored to incremental frequency changes, the pitch-related AEs have been prioritized in Western musicology, covered by the dedicated disciplines of harmony, counterpoint, and musical form (Christensen, 2008).…”

Section: Tonal Organization and Musical Modementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such syntactic pitch-parsing is as imperative for music as word-parsing is for language. Semantics provides yet another distinction: verbal syntax specializes in conveying referential meaning, whereas music specializes in emotional expression 7 (Gabrielsson and Lindström, 2001;Juslin, 2001Juslin, , 2005Juslin, , 2011Juslin, , 2013Cook, 2002;Krumhansl, 2002;Gabrielsson and Juslin, 2003;Dissanayake, 2008;Johnson-Laird and Oatley, 2010;Trainor, 2010;Perlovsky, 2012;Altenmüller et al, 2013b;Eerola and Vuoskoski, 2013;Peretz, 2013;Nikolsky, 2015aNikolsky, , 2020Schiavio et al, 2016). Such distinction has been 7 Ontologically, it is necessary to distinguish between "meaning" in a natural language and "meaning" in a cultural system of symbols (such as music)especially in light of the difference in their acquisition: thus, under experimental conditions non-human primates can acquire some symbolic systems but not a fullfledged human language (Balari et al, 2011).…”

Section: Articulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For multifactorial patterning to emerge, each vocalizer must clearly hear his/her voice in order to track spectral changes without any contamination by a partner. This is how infants learn to make their own songs and how children acquire "musical ear" (Nikolsky, 2020). Even in non-European traditions that are exclusively polyphonic, such as Aka Pygmy, motherese and children-made music remain monophonic (Rouget, 2011).…”

Section: )mentioning

confidence: 99%

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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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The (Co)Evolution of Language and Music Under Human Self-Domestication

Benítez‐Burraco

Nikolsky

2023

Hum Nat

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Together with language, music is perhaps the most distinctive behavioral trait of the human species. Different hypotheses have been proposed to explain why only humans perform music and how this ability might have evolved in our species. In this paper, we advance a new model of music evolution that builds on the self-domestication view of human evolution, according to which the human phenotype is, at least in part, the outcome of a process similar to domestication in other mammals, triggered by the reduction in reactive aggression responses to environmental changes. We specifically argue that self-domestication can account for some of the cognitive changes, and particularly for the behaviors conducive to the complexification of music through a cultural mechanism. We hypothesize four stages in the evolution of music under self-domestication forces: (1) collective protomusic; (2) private, timbre-oriented music; (3) small-group, pitch-oriented music; and (4) collective, tonally organized music. This line of development encompasses the worldwide diversity of music types and genres and parallels what has been hypothesized for languages. Overall, music diversity might have emerged in a gradual fashion under the effects of the enhanced cultural niche construction as shaped by the progressive decrease in reactive (i.e., impulsive, triggered by fear or anger) aggression and the increase in proactive (i.e., premeditated, goal-directed) aggression.

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Emergence of the Distinction Between “Verbal” and “Musical” in Early Childhood Development

Cited by 6 publications

References 225 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 (Co)Evolution of Language and Music Under Human Self-Domestication

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