Protomusic: The role of Prosodic Modulation in the Emergence of Language

Anastasi introduces an alternative vision about language development and music involvement to the current scientific discourse. Her view is based on a rigorous evolutionary perspective, through which she not only demonstrates the hypothesis of vocal continuity with other species via morphological data but, more importantly, also demonstrates how music is first and foremost a biological and cognitive trait. The bond between animal and human communication is here interpreted as an interspecific universal with a clear evolutionary impact on the speech’s natural history. Such continuity does not undermine the species-specificity of our linguistic system and, at the same time, supports the theory according to which music had a clear evolutionary role in the inception of the prosodic and musical components of speech. In leaning towards a bio-naturalistic approach, the most convincing view is that of a vocal and functional continuity of music. This appears to be demonstrable through the evolutionary past of vocality in other animal species, not constrained from having some form of cultural transmission.

The book evidences that the current research scenario on non-human animal communication benefits from the support of semiotics and, specifically, zoosemiotics. The latter approach enables us to interpret music and chant not only as a simple formal and meaningless exercise, but rather as a communicative element perceived and processed by organisms equipped with cognitive abilities. Anastasi argues that vocal continuity, made possible by biological constraints that mark its anatomical and physiological aspects, places human beings in a relationship of semiotic continuity with non-human communication forms. In turn, this enables us to better describe the phylogenetic processes which determined the development of musical behaviours in the Sapiens, as well as the way in which such behaviours interwove with the expressive vocality of the animal world.

LIST OF FIGURES
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PREFACE Music, Musicality, and the Nature of Human Language by Alessandra Falzone
INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1 MUSIC, LANGUAGE, AND COGNITIVE SCIENCES
1.1 Natural History, Music History
1.2 The Language of Sounds
1.2.1 Phonetic-phonological level
1.2.2 Syntactic-structural level
1.2.3 Musical Semantics
1.3 Towards a Theory of Musical Language
1.4 Cognitive Linguistics and Music Cognition
1.5 Revisiting Darwin’s Theory on Musical Protolanguage

Chapter 2 MUSIC FIRST, WORDS LATER
2.1 Parental Care: A Brief Overview
2.2 Prehistoric Mothers: The Biological Role of Maternal Singing
2.3 Motherese: A Comparative Perspective
2.4 From Sound to Speech: Prosodic Bootstrapping Hypothesis
2.5 The Adaptive Function of Speech

Chapter 3 THE ROOTS OF MUSICAL COMMUNICATION
3.1 Musical Communication in Non-Human Animals
3.1.1 Birdsongs
3.1.2 Singing in the trees
3.2 Learning or Imitation?
3.3 Species-Specific Traits of Musicality

Chapter 4 BIOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF MUSIC AND LANGUAGE
4.1 Music, Language, and Performativity
4.2 Vocal Performativity: Morphological Aspects and Biological Constraints
4.3 Music as Adaptation
4.4 Music as Exaptation
4.5 Music as a Natural Precursor of Language

CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

Alessandra Anastasi is a subject expert in Philosophy of language, Ethology of language and Psychobiology of language at the Dept. of Cognitive Sciences, Psychology, Education and Cultural Studies (University of Messina). Her research interests are mainly focused on the study of evolutionary perspectives in the science of language, as well as on the comparative ethology of species-specific components of cognition. She started to get interested in the relationship between music and language during her degree thesis. This topic became her project research during her PhD in Cognitive Sciences. Anastasi published several articles in national and international journals and her first book in 2016. She also participated in many conferences as a speaker and is a reviewer in various peer-reviewed journals, such as Biology & Philosophy (Springer), Brain Sciences (MDPI) and Pragmatics, Philosophy and Cognitive Science (SpringerPlus Series). Alessandra Anastasi has worked as an academic tutor and didactic support for the teaching module in “Psychology of art, aesthetics, semiotics and theories of language”, external consultant for the National Operative Program (PON) launched by the Ministry of Education, University and Research, Master Teacher Contract for the MA in “Didactics and psychopedagogy for students with autistic disorder” and Academic Tutor and didactic support for the Science of Language Lab.

Protomusic, prosodic language, motherese, speech, biological constraints, animal vocal communication, music, zoomusicology