Music as a Language
This chapter offers some observations on music as a language. Some of the most important things about music seem to arise from the ways it is different from a language. Like music, the primary medium of language is sound. In themselves, however, these sounds are just sounds, with various physical characteristics such as pitch, amplitude, and timbre. They are not language. What makes them language is what human brains do with them. It seems that what human brains do is to attempt to map these sounds onto internal structures. When some kind of match has been made with these structures, then language can be said to have come into existence. These internal structures seem to be divided into these levels of in language: phonology, syntax, and semantics. Generally, some contact has to be made at each level for speech to be understood or created.
Keywords: music, language, sound, internal structures, phonology, syntax, semantics
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