Musical syntax: Difference between revisions

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{{POV|date=January 2015}}
When analysing the regularities and structure of [[music]] as well as the processing of music in the [[brain]], certain findings lead to the question of whether music is based on a [[syntax]] that could be compared with [[linguistic syntax]]. To get closer to this question it is necessary to have a look at the basic aspects of syntax in [[language]], as language unquestionably presents a complex syntactical system. If music has a matchable syntax, noteworthy equivalents to basic aspects of linguistic syntax have to be found in musical structure. By implication the processing of music in comparison to language could also give information about the structure of music.
 
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Syntax in general can be referred to as a study of the principles and rules needed for the construction of a language or as a term in particular describing these principles and rules for a special language.
 
===Linguistic syntax – three principles<ref name=Patel2008>Patel, A.D. (2008). Music, Language, and the Brain. Oxford University Press, USA</ref>===
Linguistic syntax is especially marked by its structural richness, which becomes apparent in its multi layered organization as well as in the strong relationship between syntax and meaning. That is that there are special linguistic syntactic principles that define how the language is formed out of different subunits, such as words out of [[morphemes]], phrases out of words and sentences out of phrases. Furthermore, linguistic syntax is featured by the fact that a word can take on abstract [[grammatical functions]] that are less defined through properties of the word itself and more through the context and structural relations. This is for example that every [[noun]] can be used as a [[subject (grammar)|subject]], [[object (grammar)|object]] or [[indirect object]], but without a sentence as the normal context of a word, no statement about its [[grammatical function]] can be made. At last, linguistic syntax is marked by abstractness. This means that only conventional structural relations and not psychoacoustic relationships are the basis for the linguistic syntax.<ref name=Patel2008>Patel, A.D. (2008). Music, Language, and the Brain. Oxford University Press, USA</ref>
 
===Musical syntax<ref name=Patel2008/>===
Concerning musical syntax these three aspects of richness in linguistic syntax as well as the abstractness should be found in music too, if one wants to claim that music has a comparable syntax. An annotation that has to be made concerns the fact that most of the studies dealing with musical syntax are confined to the consideration of Western European tonal music. Thus this article can also only focus on [[tonality|Western tonal music]].<ref name=Patel2008/>
 
====Multilayered organization====
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(4)Concerning harmonic aspects of major-minor tonal music, Musical syntax can be characterized by statistical regularities in the succession of chord functions in time, that is probabilities of chord transitions. As these regularities are stored in a [[long-term memory]], predictions about following chords are made automatically, when listening to a musical phrase.
 
====MMN and ERAN====
====MMN and ERANSource:<ref>Koelsch, S. (2009). "[http://www.stefan-koelsch.de/papers/Koelsch_2009_Psychophys_ERAN_MMN_Review.pdf Music-syntactic Processing and Auditory Memory – Similarities and Differences between ERAN and MMN]". Psychophysiology, 46(1): 179-190.</ref>====
 
The violation of these automatically made predictions lead to the observation of so-called [[Event-related potential|ERPs]] (event related potential, a stereotyped electrophysiological response to an internal or external stimulus). Two forms of ERPs can be detected in the context of processing music. One is the [[Mismatch negativity|MMN]] (mismatch negativity), which has first been investigated only with physical deviants like [[frequency]], [[sound intensity]], [[timbre]] deviants (referred to as [[phMMN]]) and could now also be shown for changes of abstract auditory features like tone pitches (referred to as [[afMMN]]). The other one is the so-called [[Electroencephalography|ERAN]] (early right anterior negativity), which can be elicited by syntactic irregularities in music. Both the ERAN and the MMN are ERPs indicating a mismatch between predictions based on regularities and actually experienced acoustic information. As for a long time it seemed to be, that the ERAN is a special variant of the MMN, the question arises, why they are told apart today. There are several differences between the MMN and the ERAN found in the last years:
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(4)At least a comparison between the actually incoming sound and the predictions based on the model is made. This process is partly the same for the MMN and the ERAN as well.
 
=== Comparison of the processing of musical and linguistic syntax===
Source:<ref name=Patel2008/>===
 
As the ERAN is similar to an ERP called [[Early Left Anterior Negativity|ELAN]] which can be elicited by violation of linguistic syntax it seems to be obvious that the ERAN really represents syntactic processing. Deduced from this thought an interaction between music-syntactic and language-syntactic processing would be very likely.There are different possibilities in [[neuroscience]] to approach to an answer to the question of an overlap between the neuronal processing of linguistic and musical syntax.