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Musical syntax


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. Claiming that syntax is a fundamental element of music, it is interesting to know, if there are also similarities in processing linguistic and musical syntax in the brain. By implication the processing of music in comparison to language could also give information about the structure of music.

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 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, 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.


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