Third Day: Tonal Languages and the Library

Today is the third to we have had to work on this project.  From now on, I shall be devoting time outside of class to researching music's effects on the brain, such as doing some supplementary reading.

That said, a Scientific American article titled "Music and the Brain" from September 2004 piqued my attention.  Along with other reading I have done so far, I have discovered that the brain processes speech and music in the same centers, meaning our minds deal with these two things in similar ways.  In a sense, speech and music are the same to us.  This discovery has led to new perspectives on how we perceive languages and music because of their similarities.  Some languages, like European languages, rely on the meaning of words.  Others, especially the East Asian languages like Chinese and Korean, heavily depend on tone to get the meaning across.  As a Chinese speaker myself, I use four distinct tones while speaking.  A specific sound in Chinese will have four tones that accompany it, meaning one sound (perhaps one combination of letters that represents a word in English) may actually have four meanings, or even more.  Thus, such languages almost bridge the gap between music and language, further blurring the line that separates these two.  The same Scientific American article also mentioned the properties of religious chanting and the cries of street vendors: both are tonal in nature, yet carry the meaning associated with a developed language.  Just another thing to consider when one thinks about what exactly music is, as opposed to language.  Increasingly, I am believing that these two are one and the same, based on evidence from the article that says humans have been innately connected to music for millenia.

That said, it is my ongoing task to investigate how music influences our language and music perception centers of the brain.  I have seen a promising book at the Lake Oswego Public Library titled The Power of Music : Pioneering Discoveries in the New Science of Song, by Elena Mannes.  I will place this book on hold and read it at a later date, which will possibly give me a new perspective on how music influences us.

For the time being, that is all for now.  I have unearthed other resources on the Internet and at the library, and this weekend I shall read more deeply into them, thereby allowing me to focus my research a little more.