Seminar: (dis)connections between Music and Language (advanced!)
Friday January 9, then Monday-Thursday January 12-15
Block 1: 8:30-9:45 am (NY) / 3:30-4:45 pm (Kyiv) / 4:30-5:45 pm (St. P.)
In recent years, the field of music cognition has witnessed an immense growth and the cognitive link between music and language has been subject to various debates across disciplines. One particular domain, in which similarities between music and language has been frequently discussed, concerns the cognitive “grammatical” principles of musical structure building.
In this seminar, after a brief general introduction to the study of Music as a cognitive system, we will discuss various aspects of the connections (or lack thereof) of Music and Language. We will discuss basic music theoretical principles, the underlying formal models, and their cognitive, computational and philosophical foundations. Particular focus will be on 4 areas of itnerest:
i) the grammar of music, incl. the well-known “GTTM” model (Lerdahl & Jackendoff 1983), rth Katz-Pesetsky hypothesis, and the more recent “top-down” model of Rohrmeier 2020.
ii) acquisition of musical abilities in childhood
iii) the evolution of music as it relates to the evolutionn of language
iv) musical genres and linguistics dialects
This seminar requires basic musical knowledge - the ability to play some instrument and/or read musical notation. It is intended for those interested in music, language, and cognitive science of mind. Some formal training in linguistics is also a plus.