Holistic communication and the co‐evolution of language and music: resurrecting an old idea
This chapter argues that we should return to ideas about the relationship between language and music advocated by scholars such as Rousseau, Darwin, and Jespersen. It further articulates the view that language and music co-evolved — a view that is tied in with recent arguments to the effect that protolanguage was holistic. It is argued that the proposal of a music-like protolanguage enables us not only to explain certain continuities between human speech and primate vocal communication but also to explain the seeming alacrity with which newborn infants respond to language and music alike, and the significant overlaps of the respective brain regions recruited for language and music. In addition, the chapter cites different reasons for assuming that protolanguage used holistic phrases, not compositional ones. It discusses a number of reasons why so-called hominin holistic phrase communication would have had a degree of musicality. In interweaving various strands of evidence, the chapter illustrates the extent to which work on language evolution has become an interdisciplinary endeavor.
Keywords: language development, language capacity, music, evolution, protolanguage, speech, holistic phrase communication
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .