Two issues at the interface between speech and music

Abstract

In what ways are speech and music subserved by domain-specific mechanisms, and in what ways by common neural substrates? This issue is addressed with respect to absolute pitch, which has generally been considered to be a musical faculty accessible only to rare individuals. Based on several findings obtained from speakers of tone languages, it is argued that absolute pitch originally evolved to subserve speech, and that it may be acquired readily during the first year of life, if infants are given the opportunity to associate pitches with verbal labels. It is further conjectured, based on other findings, that the early acquisition of pitch accent languages, such as the Tokyo and Osaka dialects of Japanese and the Hamkyeng and Kyengsang dialects of Korean, might also be conducive to the acquisition of absolute pitch. Perceptual relationships between speech and song are next considered. These generally differ in their features; however, a spoken phrase can be perceptually transformed to appear as song rather than speech, simply by repeating it several times over without any alteration in the signal (Deutsch, 2003). This phenomenon is demonstrated, its parameters are explored, and its implications for the mechanisms underlying perception of speech and song are discussed.