Singing the Words: A Multidisciplinary Investigation of the Musical and Linguistic Melody
Junior Independent Project
Singing the Words:
A Multidisciplinary Investigation of the Musical and Linguistic Melody
Hana Shin
Department of Music
Princeton University
This paper represents my own work in accordance with University regulations.
A Multidisciplinary Investigation of the Musical and Linguistic Melody
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Introduction
“The sounds as they appear to you are not only different from those that are
really present, but they sometimes behave so strangely, as to seem quite impossible”
(Deutsch, 2003). These are the words from a famous demonstration by psychologist
Diana Deutsch, which repeats the phrase, “sometimes behave so strangely” over and over
again until it indeed starts to behave strangely. After hearing it a few times in isolation,
this speech phrase magically becomes a melody, and one can never again hear it the same
way. In fact, utterances in our daily lives seem to possess some “musical” qualities, a
certain “melody of speech.” People have given this phenomenon various names, from
“melody of language” and “Sprachmelodie,” to “chanson de la parole” and many others
(Monrad-Krohn, 1957, p. 326). Researchers have only started systematically
investigating the science behind it in recent years, although various traditions in the arts –
poetry, songwriting, music- have for a long time explored it under the name “prosody.”
There seems to be something captivating about the rhythmic flow, stress patterns, and
rhymes of speech, streams of vocal sounds nicely organized into orderly units and
structures, that is both utilitarian and aesthetically pleasing. In fact, we experience the
influence of prosody everyday, as we engage in and expect to hear from others certain
rhythmic and intonational ways of speaking, the unspoken rules which are nonetheless
essential in conveying proper meanings and creating a rich, “normal” conversational
context that we often take for granted.
Beyond these artistic and linguistic uses of prosody, a number of musicologists
and researchers have gone so far as to claim that the prosody of the language they speak
can influence composers’ musical styles. For example, musicologist Ralph Kirkpatrick
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has remarked that “[b]oth Couperin and Rameau, like Fauré and Debussy, are thoroughly
conditioned by the nuances and inflections of spoken French” (as cited in Abraham,
1974, p. 83). Neuroscientist Aniruddh Patel (2005) has recently demonstrated that this
claim may not be so outrageous, as his recent study using the “prosogram” model, which
allows tracing of the melodic contour of sentences, has shown that linguistic prosody is
often reflected in the musical melodies of at least two cultures, English and French. At
the same time, music therapists have long intuited about the benefits of singing in
improving speech. Not only have people believed for hundreds of years that singing
could improve stammering, pronunciation, and quality of voice in speech production, but
the Renaissance composer William Byrd wrote in his 1588 edition of Psalms, Sonnets,
and Songs a preface section advocating the use of music “to strengthen the respiratory
system, reduce fluency and voice disorders, and improve articulation” (as cited in Thaut,
2005, p. 165). Since melodies in songs can bring out and exaggerate the prosodic
elements of speech, it seems not too much of a stretch to imagine that there is an intimate,
biological link between the musical melody and the linguistic melody, which may indeed
allow music to influence speech output.
Exploring this mysterious relationship between prosody and melody is the topic
of the current study, and there is much to be uncovered. Where exactly does the boundary
lie? With how much confidence can we say that prosody, which does display certain
“musical” qualities like rhythm and intonation, is the linguistic equivalent of the musical
melody? Are they, in fact, sufficiently associated at the biological level as to produce any
synergistic therapeutic effects? To address these questions, the elements, functions, and
neurological basis of prosody and melody will be investigated, synthesizing current
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knowledge and debates in musicology, psycholinguistics, and neuroscience. A closer
examination of prosody and melody in context of related disorders such as aphasia,
amusia, and aprosody, will further clarify the complex biological interactions between the
two and bring us a step closer to demystifying the magic of music as a therapeutic tool.
Defining the Terms: What Are Melody and Prosody?
Before continuing with the task at hand, some terminology needs to be clarified,
and some concepts operationalized. The words “music” and “language” are often used,
especially in scientific investigations, either without reference to any particular culture or
time, or under the assumption of a vastly simplified “Western” culture. This study will be
adopting an approach closer to the former, focusing on the concept or phenomenon of
music or language, especially the moment-to-moment temporal, performative aspect that
sets them apart from, for example, the static notated form. The words “melody” and
“prosody” will be operating within this framework as well, referring to sequences of
pitches and rhythms occurring in time, which are meaningful within the context of music
and language, respectively.
The dictionary definition of “melody” is “pitched sounds arranged in musical time
in accordance with given cultural conventions and constraints” (Ringer, n.d.). This
definition is broad enough to account for the vast diversity of musical styles found across
different cultures, although for the purposes of the current investigation we need a bit
more precise characterization. What are the elements of melody, and where do they fit in
in the overall picture of music as a whole? Literature on melody, especially in the field of
music psychology, utilizes several different systems for organizing components of music,
and having a closer look at some of these systems provides some insight into how one
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might go about defining melody. One such approach is the physiological comparison
model used by Schneck and Berger (2006) in their book, The Music Effect. Here, they
draw attention to the parallels between elements of music and physiological mechanisms
that perceive, process, and are influenced by those elements. Naturally, their categories
are largely technical and devoid of aesthetic or philosophical judgments. These
components are: periodicity, melody, harmony, dynamics, timbre, and form. An
interesting feature of this system is the grouping of pitch and rhythm into the same
category of “periodicity,” defined as the “tendency of an event to recur at regular
intervals,” or well-defined cycles. This naturalistic view emphasizes the repetitive and
pattern-derived nature of rhythm and frequencies of pitch as the basis of our
physiological interaction with music. Such perspective sets apart “melody” as an
inherently different concept. It may contain some periodic elements like recurring phrase
structures or patterns, but at least in Schneck and Berger’s definition, it concerns, very
specifically, the relations between the pitches and rhythms of a sound sequence, as well
as the overall shape they create together, rather than the nature of each individual tone. It
unfolds and transforms linearly over time and operates in a way fundamentally different
from that of pitch and rhythm.
In Music, Language, and the Brain, on the other hand, Patel (2008) divides music
in a more hierarchical fashion, starting his discussion with the most concrete sound
components (pitch and timbre) and rhythm and eventually moving towards broader
concepts like meaning and evolutionary significance. In this view, melody fits in the
middle of this spectrum, encompassing the sound elements and rhythm but not quite as
broad as musical syntax, meaning, and evolutionary significance. Here, too, melody is
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considered separate from the elements it is composed of, and its global nature –the idea
of being the relationship between discrete elements- is again emphasized. Patel
characterizes prosody in a similar vein, as encompassing the relations between pitch and
rhythmic elements in speech, and thus draws a direct parallel between melody and
prosody.
Monrad-Krohn (1957), one of the first researchers to explore the neuroscience of
prosody, also mentioned in his early article that pitch, rhythm, and stress patterns are the
three elements of prosody (p. 326). A few decades later, Ross and Medulam came up
with the following definition for prosody: “the melodic line produced by the variation of
pitch, rhythm and stress of pronunciation that bestows certain semantic and emotional
meaning to speech” (Ross & Medulam 1979, p. 146). The “variation of pitch” is also
referred to as “intonation” and seems to be a direct counterpart to pitch variation in
melodies. “Variation of rhythm,” likewise, can be described in both melody and prosody
as the “grouping,” or “clustering of adjacent elements with respect to temporal proximity
into larger units,” and “meter,” or the periodic temporal-accentual scheme” (Patel, Peretz,
Tramo, & Labreque, 1998, p. 125). “Stress of pronunciation” is not explicitly addressed
in usual discussions about music, perhaps because the acoustic features involved in
differentiation of stress patterns already include both pitch and rhythmic elements, as
well as other elements like dynamics (putting a stress on a syllable may raise the pitch,
lengthen the duration, and increase the volume, all at the same time). Therefore, “stress”
seems to be a somewhat redundant feature, and may be best characterized as adding more
articulatory elements to the existing pitch and rhythm.
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Synthesizing ideas from the three distinct approaches, the common elements of
melody and prosody can be characterized as follows: “the pitch and rhythmic relations
between sounds in sequence, as well as the global contour produced by those relations,
which is further characterized by articulation, dynamics, and phrasing structure.” This
partial definition is by no means exhaustive, and it immediately calls for clarification of
words like “sequence” and “sounds.” For example, would a random sequence of pitches,
or a sequence of noises, count as melodies? Again, aesthetic and stylistic judgments will
be minimized here, although a common solution to this question seems to be to assume
the conventional rules of stepwise motion, variety in direction, tension and release,
etcetera, as characterizing “good” melodies. An entire literature could be devoted to
exploring what makes a “good” melody, as it is a question composers and theorists have
been grappling with for the past centuries. Since such discussion is beyond the scope of
this essay, suffice it to say that something like Mary Had a Little Lamb or the opening
theme of Mozart’s Symphony No.40 are closer to what people would generally
understand as “melodies,” whereas a random computer-generated sequence of pitches
within a range of several octaves would be less likely to be so. In addition, discussions in
the following sections will be involving melody and prosody more as forms of acoustic
phenomena, to be examined mostly in conceptual, acoustical, and biological, but not
aesthetic, terms.
Characterizing the Functions: What Do Melody and Prosody Do?
Perhaps the phrase “melody of speech” makes intuitive sense because of these
basic similarities in what makes up melody and prosody. In fact, in the broad acoustic
spectrum, both are in a special place, tightly linked to the concept of time. By nature,
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both melody and prosody are crucially grounded on the idea of transience and
progression over time. Of course, other acoustic features are also fundamentally
dependent on time, by virtue of the fact that acoustic information is presented within a
certain time frame. However, melody and prosody are especially closely tied to it, as their
essential feature is the relations, or transitions that unfold and transform over time. Shortterm memory, which allows one to hold the old information while receiving new
information so that they can be synthesized to produce a perception of a global structure,
plays an important role for mental representation of both melody and prosody, which is to
be discussed in due course.
However, there is an important, functional distinction between melody and
prosody. That is, “melodies are designed to be aesthetically interesting objects” while
“spoken pitch patterns perform [linguistic] functions without themselves becoming a
focus of attention for ordinary listeners” (Patel, 2003). One can easily see that “it is
common to find oneself humming a catchy musical tune, while one rarely notices or
explicitly remembers spoken pitch patterns” (Patel, 2006). Melody is arguably the most
salient feature in many musical contexts, “the tune” of a piece (this is not to overlook
pieces that instead seek to explore timbre, instrumentation, and other aspects of the sound
world, like Schoenberg’s Farben; but the very existence and rarity of such pieces testify
to the melody-oriented conception of music that still prevails in many musical cultures, at
least in the West). It is hard to say what the function of melody is in the context of music,
though it surely can be used to create tension and release, a sense of direction, and a
driving momentum, contributing to the expressive quality of a piece. In other words,
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through its ups and downs, and syncopations and pauses, it can express its own rhetoric
and purpose.
On the other hand, prosody is easier to describe in terms of its function in aiding
the communication of meaning. Monrad-Krohn (1957) characterized prosody as the
“third element of speech” along with vocabulary and grammar, suggesting its role in
conveying extra-linguistic meanings (p. 327). He and his contemporaries, as well as some
later researchers, described the function of prosody in communication as “marking the
boundaries of structural units, distinguishing pragmatic categories of utterance, and
signaling focus” (Lehiste, 1973; Beckman & Pierrehumbert, 1986; Bolinger, 1989; Price,
Ostenodrf, Shattuck-Hufnagel, & Fong, 1991), although more recent studies have shown
that semantics and syntax both rely so heavily on prosody that pseudowords,
delexicalized sentences, hummed intonations, computer muffled tones, and even pitch
contours of speech are often enough to convey meaning (Pannekamp, Toepel, Alter,
Hahne, & Friederici, 2005; Thompson, 2008). In addition, prosody provides rich
information about the context in which speech takes place, including the language or
dialect, gender, age, and emotion of the speaker (Bolinger, 1989). Even infants have been
found to babble with the prosody of their native language (Hallé, de Boysson-Bardies, &
Vihman, 1991). Therefore, prosody is undoubtedly an important feature of verbal
communication.
Once again, though, it conveys meanings for language. As demonstrated above,
intonation alone may be enough to deliver the meaning of speech, but it is exactly this
linguistic content that it delivers, not a meaning of its own, derived from its pitches and
rhythms. Now, it may be said that prosody does have a capacity to convey emotional
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contents independently of its linguistic relevance. Monrad-Krohn (1957) believed that the
origin of the use of prosody in communication probably goes back to the primitive times,
as even animals seem to make use of acoustically distinct features to display a wide range
of emotions:
Even if one does not accept Schielderup-Ebbe’s postulate that the dog has nine
and the hen ten different kinds of expressive sounds, anybody who is sufficiently
acquainted with dogs and chickens will know that they can express themselves to
a certain extent by prosodic means (cf. the dog’s high-pitched bark as a sign of
glee and the low-pitched bark as a sign of hostility –and the cock’s (or the
chicken-mother’s) syncopated and staccato calling to the hens (or the chicken)
when a nice bit of food has been found- both definitely semantic (or
propositional) expressions). (p. 327)
In addition, researchers have pointed out the parallels between affective prosodic cues in
speech and similar cues in music (Huron, 2011). For example, music and speech that are
commonly judged as representing “sadness” both tend to display lower pitch, smaller
pitch movement, lower volume, slower speed, more mumbled articulation, and darker
timbre, and indeed some argue that the reason these features can convey sadness through
music in the first place is because they mimic the appropriate physical responses,
including the prosodic elements, that a person feeling the emotion would be likely to
display (Huron, 2011). Prosody alone, then, seems able deliver affective meanings to a
certain extent. However, even then, it is often so tightly tied to the linguistic content it
carries along with the affective content, that it is hard to say prosody has the same degree
of autonomy as musical melody in conveying a meaning of its own.
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Uncovering the Mechanisms: How Is Melody Processed?
We have seen that melody and prosody share the basic “musical” elements yet
differ in their role in conveying meaning. How do they, then, relate in biological terms?
First, we will examine the neurological basis of melody. At the broad level, Schneck and
Berger’s description of the auditory scanning and tracking processes seems to provide a
conceptual understanding of how the auditory apparatus generally functions. Based on
this model, auditory scanning is “brain and auditory system’s ability to accurately scan
the sequential flow of melodic syntax in order to receive, perceive, and discriminate the
acoustic information in a one-to-one correspondence with the way it is being generated
and transmitted” (Schneck & Berger, 2006, p. 178). Our ears are constantly scanning the
“acoustic landscape” (think of a dog’s ears), resting on certain “focal points,” which are
then held in short-term memory while the next part of the stream of sounds is
continuously received (Schneck & Berger). Auditory tracking, primarily a responsibility
of the hippocampus, is then able to tag the auditory input in time to keep track of their
spatial and temporal identity. Schneck and Berger remark that, “[i]n effect, the brain of
the music listener is actually re-composing a composition the auditory system...and brain
have essentially de-composed into component parts” like frequencies, amplitudes, and
other acoustic features (p. 180). The information thus scanned and tracked is dispatched
to “information-specific sites” to be further processed based on the sensory modality (is it
auditory or visual information?) as well as temporal and spatial order. The brain then
integrates all of this information, creating a whole, unified auditory sensation. The
various steps involved in the process all happen very quickly, but subtle differences in
speed, short-term memory capacity, and other physiological factors can result in
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discrepancies in the way individuals perceive the same stream of sounds, and in more
extreme cases, an inability or lag in processing auditory input. This also provides some
support for the aforementioned idea that Mary Had a Little Lamb makes a “better”
melody than a random sequence of notes, since the tracking system can function more
efficiently when it is not jumping all over the place, trying to chase after the notes.
We will next consider Stewart’s (2011) model, which proposes, in more
biological detail, a series of steps involved in the perception and cognition of melody. At
the lowest level, the ascending auditory pathway, which starts at the choclea in the ears
and culminates in the auditory cortex of the brain, encodes the information on individual
pitches and differences between adjacent tones (Plack, 2005). The right secondary
auditory cortex is then thought to work in conjunction with the short-term memory
system to extract the contour of the incoming pitch stream (Stewart, 2011). How exactly
contour is represented in this system is not clear, although information on pitch direction
and intervals, represented by frequency ratios between successive notes, appear to help
provide information on contour (Zatorre & Berlin, 2001). Evidence also points to the
existence of a higher-level control that assesses the global shape of the stream, beyond
the local one-to-one comparisons of individual notes (Stewart, 2011). Even though it is
widely believed that neural processing of music is largely a responsibility of the right
hemisphere (the non-dominant hemisphere in right-handed individuals) of the brain, and
language is governed by the dominant, left hemisphere, both right and left sides of the
temporal cortex seem to be involved in evaluating information on pitch intervals. Here,
we begin to see a possible neurological connection between melody and speech
processing. This link is made even stronger by the fact that the inferior frontal gyrus
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(IFG) in the right hemisphere, whose counterpart in the left hemisphere is essential in
language comprehension and production, seems to be involved in the “anchoring”
process, which allows comparing of the incoming pitches to a stable tonal reference,
drawn from stored knowledge of hierarchical pitch relationships in long-term memory
(Janata et al., 2002). Note that this process is essential in musical “comprehension,” or
making sense of the relations between the pitches of an input sound stream, serving as a
counterpart to the roughly equivalent function in the language domain. This hemispheric
parallel will soon be discussed in more detail.
A common method used in neuroscience to identify the specific brain regions
associated with particular functions is to look at brain damage data and related deficits.
Under this paradigm, amusia, a musical deficit, provides valuable insight into the neural
mechanisms involved in melody processing. Amusia is generally defined as “disorder in
the perception and production of musical tones” (Jiang, Hamm, Lim, Kirk, & Yang,
2010), and can be divided into the congenital type and the acquired type. Congenital
amusia, also commonly referred to as “tone-deafness,” affects about 4% of the population
(Peretz & Hyde, 2003) and seems to be influenced at least partially by genetic
inheritance, as suggested by twin, pedigree, and DNA studies (Stewart, 2011). Acquired
amusia occurs as a result of brain damage, and is especially common after strokes
(Sarkamo et al., 2009). Both types of amusia can widely vary in intensity and symptoms,
but the general form of the disorder involves impairment in pitch discrimination,
resulting in the inability to recognize familiar melodies, detect pitch violations in
melodies, judge whether two melodies are the same, and many other manifestations
(Phillips-Silver et al., 2011). It could involve the receptive domain, responsible for the
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perception and recognition of music (or even musical notation) (Bautista & Clampetti,
2003), or the motor or expressive domain, associated with the production of music either
through instruments or voice, or through notation (Sacks, 2007; Bautista & Clampetti,
2003), or both. Classification of symptoms in amusia is further complicated by the fact
that there is a degree of dissociation in the processing of pitch, rhythm, and emotional
content in music (Sacks, 2007), and amusia may include impairment in any combination
of these, as well as added deficits in musical memory and recognition (Pearce, 2005).
Naturally, current neurological data on amusia are very complicated and
sometimes conflicting, but the vast majority of the literature seems to agree on the crucial
involvement of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) (mentioned briefly above in context of its
role in tonal referencing and a corresponding linguistic region in the left hemisphere) and
the superior temporal gyrus (STG). In addition, it has been shown that unilateral lesion
(damage in one of the two hemispheres) is sufficient to lead to amusia, and it is widely
believed that the hemisphere opposite to the one that serves language (again, generally
the left hemisphere in right-handed individuals) is involved in music processing
(Piccirilli, Sciarma, & Luzzi, 2000). Even though some evidence to the contrary has been
suggested (Piccirilli, Sciarm, & Luzzi, 2000), the current model as it stands proposes that
language and music are processed at least somewhat independently in their respective
hemispheres, though in roughly symmetrical regions like the IFG and the STG. One
caveat to this is that rhythmic aspects of music seem to rely less on these regions, and it is
in fact possible to have selective impairment in pitch processing without rhythmic deficits
(Murayama, Kashiwagi, Kashiwagi, & Mimura, 2004) and vice versa (Phillips-Silver et
al., 2011). This further complicates our model, as it has been shown that the right
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temporal auditory cortex is responsible for temporal segmenting of ongoing sequence of
music, whereas the left temporal auditory cortex is involved in temporal grouping of the
segments to understand the overarching beat or meter structure (Di Pietro, Leganaro,
Leeman, & Schnider, 2004). In fact, rhythm seems to draw from a wide variety of other
structures as well, including the cerebellum (Sakai et al., 1999) and the motor cortex
(which accounts for the coordinated nature of rhythm) suggesting that the neurological
processing of “melody” as we have defined it, involves complex interactions between
many parts of the brain in both hemispheres.
At least in terms of pitch contour processing, though, the IFG and STG regions
really do seem to play an important role. Abnormal STG is associated with deficit in
pitch perception and other musical characteristics, whereas damage to the IFG is
associated with deficits in more cognitive aspects of processing such as memory, which is
essential in holding information on one tone long enough to compare it to the next one, as
well as internally representing the overall contour and structure (Sarkamo et al., 2009).
Recent studies have suggested that the integration of information from the two regions
(and more broadly, the frontal and temporal lobes where they reside), is the key to
successful processing of melody. This is accomplished through the arcuate fasciculus
(AF), a large fiber bundle that connects the two areas. This area seems to be reduced in
volume in amusic brains (Stewart, 2011). Furthermore, it has also been shown that
amusic brains display abnormal cortical thickness in the IFG, which may have
compromised normal development of the fronto-temporal pathway, leading to inadequate
communication between the two lobes (Hyde et al., 2007). Some researchers have even
proposed that it is not the perception of the pitches themselves that is impaired in amusic
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patients (with some evidence that amusic brains can actually track fine pitch difference,
as small as quarter-tones), but rather the integration of perceived pitches with pitch
knowledge, which accounts for the patients’ lack of confidence in trusting their own
perceptual experiences and results in a behavioral failure to discriminate pitch (Peretz,
Brattico, Jarvenpaa, & Tervaniemi, 2009). Overall, neurological processing of melody,
especially in terms of pitch, is largely attributable to the IFG and STG regions of the nondominant right hemisphere, as well as a proper communication between them.
Uncovering the Mechanisms: How Is Prosody Processed?
How does the science behind prosody compare to that of melody? Before delving
into the neurological mechanisms of prosody processing in the brain, it is worth revisiting
and elaborating on the general characteristics of prosody. Although, at the basic level,
prosody has the pitch relations and rhythmic components that correspond to those of
melody, it displays some fundamental differences in terms of its function and usage.
Most notably, as mentioned above, since the primary significance of prosody is in
facilitating the delivery of something other than itself, the organization of its pitch and
rhythmic information is more loosely constructed. In other words, in contrast to musical
melodies, which are objects of intrinsic aesthetic value, prosody in normal speech is
“aesthetically inert” (Patel, 2008, p. 183) and therefore does not operate under any
particular scales, tonal centers, meters, or other unifying musical structures. In fact,
relative terms like “high,” “middle,” and “low” often suffice to describe the intonational
patterns of a sentence, as in the IPO approach utilized in much of the research in the field,
which takes the fundamental frequencies of speech and simplifies, or “standardizes” them
into the three categories (Patel, 2008, p. 213-4). Whether our mental representation of
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prosody makes use of a similar approach is a question to be explored further, but it is
clear that prosody and melody differ in terms of their principles of organizing the raw
sound materials.
At the perceptual level, too, prosody displays several unique features that are not
found in the domain of music perception. One such phenomenon is “declination,” “a
gradual lowering of the baseline pitch and narrowing of pitch range over the course of an
utterance” (Patel, 2008, p. 184). It may have to do with the physical decline in air
pressure that vibrates the vocal folds, and thus does not seem to have a direct equivalent
in the perception of production musical melodies. Interestingly, listeners of speech seem
to take this expectation into account when they are perceiving speech, adjusting their
judgment of tone equivalence depending on the temporal position of the sound they are
listening to (Patel, 2008, p.184). This not only testifies to the extent to which our
sensations can already be “tinkered with” at the perceptual level, but also demonstrates
how differences in function can be served by differences in the way melody and prosody
are perceived. Another interesting example is the “perceptual transformations” that
underlie our perception of speech. That is, there is a significant degree of simplification
that takes place between the input of raw fundamental frequencies and complicated,
continuous fluctuations among them (traceable and recordable thanks to modern
technology), and the relatively discrete tones that we perceive as making up the tones of
prosody. Details of these transformations are beyond the scope of this essay, but together
they set up a series of thresholds that determine: a) how a stream of continuous sound is
to be segregated into syllables, and b) how much fluctuation of difference in pitch and
duration is needed before certain tones are perceived as one discrete tone as opposed to
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another discrete tone (Patel, 2008, p. 214-5). The result is something resembling more of
a musical melody, often with nice stepwise motions, although again, prosody operates
under a completely different set of rules, if any, that do not rely on the same scalar and
tonal principles that melodies generally follow.
Initial insights into the neurological basis of prosody processing have come from
a series of anecdotes and early observational studies. Most notably, Ross and Medulam
reported in their 1979 article the case of two patients with lesions in the right hemisphere,
who could speak but only with monotonous voices “that were devoid of the prosodicaffective qualities of speech” (Carroll, 1996, p. 6). From this early study, it was
concluded that the right hemisphere is key to properly functioning prosody in speech, and
its possible link to music, another right-hemisphere function, was suggested. More recent
studies have qualified this initial claim, characterizing the neurology of prosody as “a
mosaic of multiple local asymmetries” and “a large-scale spatially distributed network in
both hemispheres” (Tong et al., 2005). Prosody presents an interesting tension between
two different forces, as it is a linguistic function yet maintains some ties to music. It has
been suggested that the right hemisphere is responsible for the emotional interpretation of
speech phrases, which may have closer links to music, and the left hemisphere is in
charge of linguistic understanding of prosody (Pell, 2006). It is also believed that the
pitch contour information of prosody is processed by the left hemisphere along with other
language functions, in contrast to the pitch contour information in musical melodies,
which, as we have seen, is largely controlled by the right hemisphere (Tong et al., 2005).
But as in the case of melody, proper perception and production of prosody requires
collaboration of both hemispheres. (Mitchell & Ross 2008).
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As with amusia, cases of aprosody (or aprosodia), defined as the “absence, in
speech, of rhythm and the normal variations in pitch and stress” (MediLexicon, n.d.),
provides valuable insight into the neurological mechanisms governing prosody
processing. Aprosody was originally thought to be a deficit of affective perception, more
closely linked to emotions, although recent studies have demonstrated some fundamental
deficits in pitch and temporal elements of speech that seem to underlie the disorder (Van
Lancker & Sidtis, 1992). Again, aprosody can involve damage to either of the two
hemispheres, (Patel et al., 1998) and as expected, emotional aprosody seems to involve a
more consistent pattern of damage to the right hemisphere, especially in the distributed
fronto-temporal-parietal network, while the lateralization pattern for linguistic prosody is
less clear (Rohrer et al., 2010).
The vast complexity of neural patterns, as well as the multi-dimensional nature of
prosody (with associations in the emotional, linguistic, and musical domains) suggests
that its underlying neurological mechanism may best be characterized in context of other
disorders such as amusia and aphasia. In fact, it is not uncommon for aprosody to
accompany aphasia, a deficit in language functions. Like amusia, and perhaps even more
so, aphasia displays a complicated pattern of symptoms and neurological associations,
and its general definition is all-encompassing: “impaired or absent comprehension or
production of, or communication by, speech, reading, writing, or signs, caused by an
acquired lesion of the dominant cerebral hemisphere” (MediLexicon, n.d.). About 1 in
272 Americans are said to suffer from some form of aphasia (Norton, Zipse, Marchina, &
Schlaug, 2009), although only 60% of patients fall under any existing classifications
(Kolb & Whishaw, 2003). These categories are commonly distinguished by symptom
A Multidisciplinary Investigation of the Musical and Linguistic Melody
19
types or affected brain areas, and two of these categories, Broca’s aphasia and
Wernicke’s aphasia, will be discussed briefly in the following section. The former is a
type of nonfluent, expressive aphasia, or deficits in the productive aspect of speech. In
fact, Broca’s aphasia is characterized by “slow, laborious, non-fluent speech” but often
good auditory verbal comprehension (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association,
2012). It is named after an important language region in the brain, called “Broca’s area,”
which is located in the IFG of the dominant hemisphere (again, this means left
hemisphere in most right-handed individuals, and the opposite side of the region
responsible for melody processing). This region is also part of the motor association
cortex, and is said to be involved in the dorsal “sound to action” pathway in language
processing, suggesting an important role of precise motor control in speech production. In
contrast, Wernicke’s aphasia is often characterized as fluent and receptive, because
patients with this deficit seem to display fluent yet nonsensical speech. They also have
difficulty comprehending others’ speech as well as mistakes in their own speaking. This
form of aphasia is associated with Wernicke’s area in the posterior section of the STG of
the dominant hemisphere and is thought to be part of the ventral, “sound to meaning”
pathway (Johansson, 2010).
Aprosody is more commonly associated with Broca’s aphasia, as important
aspects of prosody, such as speech timing, are influenced by motor control (Marotta,
Barbera, & Bongioanni, 2008). In addition, Broca’s aphasics have often been observed
with dysprosodic speech output, characterized by impairment in melodic modulation,
isochrony of syllables, and alteration of speech timing (Marotta et al., 2008). In
particular, “a general flattening of the pitch contour” is found in these aphasic patients, as
A Multidisciplinary Investigation of the Musical and Linguistic Melody
20
well as a reduction in the melodic range, resulting in overall monotonous speech (Marotta
et al., 2008). In addition, an abnormal rising at the end of utterances is also found, which
is thought to derive from a general difficulty in programming and coordinating linguistic
performance (Sarno, 1998). An interesting effect of rhythm in particular, is an increase in
the number and duration of pauses, resulting in hyper-segmentation of speech and a
mismatch between intonational phrases and syntactic or pragmatic groupings that would
normally be synchronized (Marotta et al., 2008) Therefore, these rhythmic and
intonational impairments can work hand in hand to exacerbate the deficits already faced
by Broca’s aphasics.
Cross-Relationships: How Are Melody and Prosody Related?
We have seen that the biological basis of prosody is most clearly seen through
aprosody and its cousin aphasia, and similarly, the mechanisms underlying melody
processing is largely revealed by examining amusic brains. However, some interesting
cross-relationships exist between these seemingly separate entities, and they provide a
clearer picture of how melody and prosody might be related at the neurological level. The
first such relationship to be examined is that of amusia and aprosody, and the prosodic
function in amusic patients in general. Although amusia and aprosody are separate
disorders with distinct sets of characteristic symptoms, the two have often been observed
in conjunction. However, the pattern and degree of such concurrence vary widely across
patients, and a study by Patel et al. (1998) made a side-by-side comparison of two such
cases. One amusic patient displayed extensive damage to the left STG and some damage
to the right STG, and showed deficits in both prosodic and musical discrimination tasks.
On the other hand, the second patient had less extensive, partial bilateral lesions in the
A Multidisciplinary Investigation of the Musical and Linguistic Melody
21
STG and showed preserved abilities in both domains. The latter patient was diagnosed as
amusic primarily due to her deficits in long-term memory, such as in recalling a tune and
perceiving tonality, but apparently displayed normal ability to detect both pitch and
rhythmic changes in melodies, based on the test measures used in the study. What is
interesting is that she also displayed competency in detecting similar changes in prosody,
whereas the other patient failed at both tasks. This pattern suggests that perception of
both musical and linguistic melody may rely on some common neural resources, and that
these resources are dissociable from those used for long-term musical recognition. It is
also notable that the patient with deficits in both areas had more extensive lesions in the
STG of the right hemisphere than the left hemisphere, and these lesions were also larger
than those of the other patient.
Other studies have reported a variety of patterns in the concurrence of amusia and
aprosody, ranging from simultaneous progressive development of amusia and aprosody
in a patient with right frontal and temporal damage (Confavreux et al., 1992), to
concurrence of expressive amusia and expressive aprosody with preserved receptive
function in a patient with a lesion in the right temporo-occipital region (Bautista &
Ciampetti, 2003), to a case of “pure” amusia with no observed deficits in prosody
function (Peretz, 2006). Evidently, data on this topic are scant, scattered and often not
suitable for direct comparison. We can broadly infer that the right hemisphere appears to
be involved more extensively than the left in prosody processing, although lack of a
systematic approach in the field limits what we can conclude from these preliminary,
observational studies.
A Multidisciplinary Investigation of the Musical and Linguistic Melody
22
A number of researchers have also examined prosody perception in amusic
individuals via more experimental approaches, and these, too, have created some debate
over the relationship between prosody and melody processing. Several studies have found
that amusic individuals do not show impairment in speech prosody perception (Ayotte et
al., 2002; Peretz et al., 2002). At the same time, a similar study looking at speakers of
Mandarin, a tonal language, has suggested that, although speaking a tonal language does
not seem to prevent or compensate for amusia, further supporting the view that musical
contour and speech intonation are processed separately, the Chinese amusic participants
did show deficits in intonation discrimination tasks for both speech and non-speech
stimuli (Jiang et al., 2010). Moreover, even in the context of non-tonal languages like
English, it has been shown that amusic individuals have impairment in the ability to
discriminate intonation contours extracted from speech (Patel, Foxton & Griffiths, 2005),
and that some amusic individuals perform worse than controls on tasks measuring
sensitivity to emotional prosody (Thompson, 2007). At the same time, it is true that few
of these patients, in both tonal and non-tonal linguistic cultures, report inconveniences or
self-perceived deficits in everyday speech (Jiang et al., 2010; Stewart, 2011).
These discrepant results bring to attention some possible flaws in experimental
design, as they may not actually be measuring the degree to which prosody perception is
spared in the case of musical deficit, but simply the fundamental differences in the
contexts in which prosody and melody perceptions take place. That is, linguistic stimuli
are equipped with extra cues, such as the actual linguistic content (the words and
syllables) which may be more easily “tagged” and tracked even in the absence of
information on intonational contour (as may be the case for amusic individuals). Even
A Multidisciplinary Investigation of the Musical and Linguistic Melody
23
without this information, they may still be able to follow the speech using the other cues.
When these cues are removed, as in the case of musical melodies or wordless speech
contours, the amusic patients could no longer rely on the linguistic cues, and would
inevitably score worse on the tests, but these results would not necessarily mean that the
participants were better at detecting prosodic contours than melodic contours (Patel,
2008). In addition, conversations often involve visual and contextual clues that may
compensate for the lack of intonational information, and this may explain why so few
amusic patients actually experience inconveniences in their daily lives even as they score
lower on laboratory test measures of prosody perception (Stewart, 2011). Some
researchers have also suggested that the pitch differences used in speech, especially those
distinguishing between a statement and a question, are larger (5 to 6 semitones) than
those in melodies, which tend to utilize smaller step-wise motions (Peretz, 2006).
Considering that amusia is characterized by deficits in perceiving fine-grained pitch
differences, it may well be the case that amusic patients fail to discriminate the small
pitch differences presented in the standard tests used in the laboratory setting, but have
little problem in their daily use of prosody in conversations.
The debate over the degree of dissociation or overlap between prosody and
melody processing in amusic individuals remains unresolved. Some confounding
variables would have to be removed and a more systematic method would need to be
devised in future research in order to acquire more precise data. Nonetheless, researchers
at this point could probably agree on a general model in which melody and prosody
processing mechanisms draw from at least some common resources, including the
choclea and the initial detectors of acoustic information. Reliance on short-term memory
A Multidisciplinary Investigation of the Musical and Linguistic Melody
24
for holding pitch and temporal patterns (Patel et al., 1998, p. 137), as well as brain
regions in the right hemisphere, also seem to be shared in the processing of linguistic and
musical melodies. At the same time, they do not rely entirely on the same set of
mechanisms, nor do they operate under the same circumstances in our daily lives.
Specifically, prosody processing seems to involve both the dominant and the nondominant hemispheres to a larger extent and rely on a wider range of non-acoustical cues,
while melody processing seems to lie a little more deeply and uniquely in the nondominant hemisphere.
The reverse relationship, that of melody processing in aprosody or aphasia, also
calls for further research, although it is quite common for Broca’s aphasia to be
accompanied by expressive amusia (Hebert, Racette, Gagnon, & Peretz, 2003). Since
lesion in the left hemisphere is the major cause of aphasia in such patients, these cases
support the idea that both hemispheres are involved in vocal production for speaking and
singing (Schlaug, Marchina, & Norton, 2009). Therefore, even though much of music
processing is believed to be a responsibility of the right hemisphere, the ability to express
the music may be dependent on Broca’s region in the left hemisphere, much like the
motor control over speech is. However, it is also possible that the neurological cause of
amusia in such cases does not lie in Broca’s region but some other region in great
proximity, since cases of “pure” aphasia without amusia have also been reported
(Yamadori, Osumi, Masuhara, & Okubo, 1977). Patient C.C., for example, could produce
the musical parts of songs normally, although his ability to repeat the words of the songs,
either spoken or sung, was impaired (Hebert et al., 2003). This shows that speech and
music can be dissociable even in songs, at least at the level of production, and again
A Multidisciplinary Investigation of the Musical and Linguistic Melody
25
testifies to the complexity that underlies the relationship between language and music.
Some researchers have pointed out, however, that most other cases of aphasia without
amusia involve composers, conductors, or other high-level professional musicians, whose
brains have been shown to be different in many ways from the brains of non-musicians
(Patel, 2005, p. 65). Again, further research is needed to isolate the true effect of aphasic
brain on melody processing.
Putting It All Together for a Good Cause: The Melodic Intonation Therapy
We have looked at the relationship between melody and prosody from a number
of different angles, and evidence from these different approaches collectively suggest that
musical and linguistic processing in the brain have both unique and overlapping
mechanisms and resources, with the former mainly served by the non-dominant, usually
right hemisphere, and the latter served by the dominant, left hemisphere. In fact, fMRI
studies have revealed that singing and speaking share some bilateral fronto-temporal
neural correlates, although singing or intoned speaking additionally activate the right
more than left superior temporal regions, compared to the speaking condition (Vines,
Norton, & Schlaug, 2011). Additionally, it is known that there is a “bihemispheric
network for vocal production,” regardless of whether the output is intoned or spoken
(Kalisch, Tegenthoff, & Dinse, 2008). That is, both musical and linguistic melodies
involve at least some parts of both hemispheres. At the same time, this means that both
hemispheres are capable, to a certain extent, of producing either melody or prosody, and
might be able to compensate for each other in case of damage. In fact, this hypothesis is
the basis for several music therapy methods, including an approach known as Melodic
Intonation Therapy (MIT), designed to help aphasic patients regain speech.
A Multidisciplinary Investigation of the Musical and Linguistic Melody
26
The MIT method was developed in 1973 by Sparks, Helm, and Albert, who were
working with aphasic patients in the Aphasia Research Unit in the Boston VA hospital
(Marshall & Holtzapple, 1976). The initial inspiration for development of the method was
the observation that aphasic patients could often produce “well-articulated, linguistically
accurate words while singing, but not during speech” (Schlaug et al., 2009). The
preliminary results, involving success cases of three patients, were promising. All three
were severely aphasic, unable to produce more than grunts or a few repeated phonemes
despite reasonably good comprehension. Other therapeutic methods available at the time
had not worked, but a few weeks of MIT was sufficient to bring out of these patients
varying degrees of grammatically correct sentences and response to questions, as well as
much more facilitated conversations (Albert, Sparks, & Helm, 1973).
The method involves a repetition of a series of “intoned” phrases and sentences as
well as left-hand tapping for each syllable, exaggerating both the pitch and rhythmic
aspects of speech. The therapy is rather intensive and takes place 1.5 hours per day for 5
days a week until the patient has mastered all three levels, which usually takes 75-80 or
more sessions (Schlaug et al., 2009). Each level consists of 20 high-probability words and
social phrases like “water” and “I love you.” (Norton et al., 2009). The therapist sits
across a table from the patient and introduces each word or phrase with a visual stimulus
(Norton et al., 2009). The standard method utilizes only two pitches, high and low. For
example, the phrase “Thank you” is presented one syllable at a time, with the first,
accented syllable in the “high” pitch (comfortably within the patient’s vocal range) and
the second, unaccented syllable a minor third below (Norton et al., 2009). The therapist
and the patient might sing in unison or call and respond, and later the therapist’s voice
A Multidisciplinary Investigation of the Musical and Linguistic Melody
27
fades out midway as the patient continues to sing the entire phrase. Eventually the
therapist asks questions to induce the learned phrases from the patients, who then attempt
to respond in the “song” they have learned, and finally verbally without the music (Thaut,
2005, p. 167). There are three levels in the method, increasing in difficulty from 2-3
syllable phrases to 5 or more syllables (Norton et al., 2009). There are considerable
variations in practice, with some therapists using as many as 7 or 8 pitches instead of 2
pitches, using larger intervals, longer durations (Laughlin, Naeser, & Gordon, 1979), and
utilizing instruments like the piano to aid the process (Norton et al., 2009).
Several studies have attempted to explain the mechanisms of MIT. Broadly, it has
been observed that rhythm and accent patterns of speech –that is, prosodic elements- are
uttered correctly before proper articulation of the actual words –the linguistic content- is
achieved (Thaut, 2005, p. 167). Also, focusing on the melodic line, rhythm and points of
stress in the intoned verbal speech stimuli seem to help patients process the structural
aspect of the speech better (Sparks & Holland, 1976), highlighting the role of these
prosodic elements in providing “the foundation or structural support for the organization
of speech communication (Leung, 1985). MIT, by amplifying the magnitude of such
elements, seems to stimulate appropriate prosody production that prepares the patient for
real speech. At the same time, it does not seem to be relying on the patient’s knowledge
of familiar tunes, which was commonly believed in music therapy as a way to take
advantage of the “automatic ability present” (Rogers & Felming 1981, p. 34) and induce
a reflex-like verbal output facilitated by this capacity. In contrast, it has often been
observed in MIT that use of familiar songs often interferes with associating the new
A Multidisciplinary Investigation of the Musical and Linguistic Melody
28
words with the melodies and does not help the patients overcome their deficit in
producing meaningful and communicative speech (Carroll, 1996, p. 9).
Instead, in their original proposal of the method, Sparks et al. (1973) offer a
hemispheric argument, in which MIT “facilitates use of language by the nondominant
right hemisphere, which had been suppressed by the dominant left hemisphere, even
[after] the dominant hemisphere was damaged” (p. 131). This claim is supported by the
fact that the best candidates for MIT, those that show the most improvement over the
course of the therapy, are Broca’s aphasics, usually those with no additional lesions in
Wernicke’s area, and notably, the right hemisphere (Naesser & Helm-Estabrooks, 1985).
More recent neurological research has revealed that recovery from aphasia can be
accomplished through recruitment of either the regions around the site of damage in the
affected hemisphere, or homologous regions in the unaffected hemisphere, and that “for
patients with large left-hemisphere lesions, recovery through the right hemisphere may be
the only possible path” (Schlaug et al., 2009). Specific regions believed to participate in
this recovery process have also been identified, including the superior temporal lobe, the
posterior IFG, and the primary motor cortex, connected via the arcuate fasciculus (AF)
(Schlaug et al., 2009). The AF, in particular, is thought to be a structural link between
Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area in the left hemisphere, as well as a functional unit that
facilitates speech production mechanisms (recall that it plays an important role in the
right hemisphere as well, connecting the IFG and the STG together), and increased
amounts AF fibers have been detected in the right hemisphere of patients who showed
more improvement after MIT (Schlaug et al., 2009).
A Multidisciplinary Investigation of the Musical and Linguistic Melody
29
In addition to possibly inducing these structural changes, MIT seems to take
advantage of what the right hemisphere is specialized for, which is processing global
features, such as melodic contour and overall meter structures. Many aspects of MIT
focus on the globality of the melodic shape of speech, as well as exaggerated contrast and
more “slowly modulated signals” (Norton et al., 2009), which all seem to be suitable for
the right hemisphere’s global processing strategy. This, perhaps, allows a hemispheric
substitution in processing of speech. In addition, the left-hand tapping has received more
attention in recent research as a possible trigger for engaging the sensorimotor network in
the right hemisphere, which would facilitate articulatory movements (Norton et al., 2009;
Schlaug et al., 2009). In support of all this, an experiment involving transcranial direct
current stimulation (tDCS) has shown that excitatory stimulation of the right IFG during
MIT sessions temporarily augments the speech output as much as a direct stimulation of
Broca’s area does (Vines, Norton, & Schlaug, 2011).
In addition, the therapy sessions themselves may play a role, as the sessions
naturally lead to incorporation of proper breathing techniques, increased motivation, and
a feeling of competence that builds up over time, especially for successful patients, which
may all contribute to the general recovery process (Hebert et al., 2003). Although MIT
works best for a select population of aphasic patients and even then doesn’t seem to work
all the time (Hebert et al., 2003), it has received attention in recent years as one of the
few effective methods available for treatment for nonfluent aphasia, and has shown some
reliable and replicable results in various other populations, including children with Down
syndrome (Carroll, 1996) and non-verbal autistic children (Miller & Toca, 1979), as well
as Romanian aphasic patients with buccolingual apraxia (motor deficit in the cheeks and
A Multidisciplinary Investigation of the Musical and Linguistic Melody
30
the tongue) (Popovici & Mihailescu, 1992). Its success in the West has also inspired a
Japanese version of the therapy (Seki & Sugishita, 1983). Most notably, Harvey Alter,
now the president and founder of the International Aphasia Movement, gave an inspiring
speech at the 2008 Music Has Power Awards Benefit (the YouTube video is worth taking
a look), describing, in his lilting but clearly recognizable speech, the struggles he faced
after a sudden stroke that had left him speechless for years, and the power of music that
has allowed him to regain his voice, once lost deep in the “land of aphasia” (Alter, 2008;
Barrow, 2008).
Conclusion
Let us now revisit the questions we had posed at the beginning of our
investigation. The boundary between linguistic prosody and musical melody, an
ambiguous one in the aesthetic world, seems at least as complex in the neurological
domain. This question has received attention of the scientific community only in the
recent years, and as we have seen, the field is still at its infancy. However, combining
insights drawn from the multi-dimensional approaches taken in this study, we can derive
a general model of how the two are related. At the most fundamental level, both are
concerned with the global structure of a stream of acoustical information, the relations
between the individual units it consists of. Their functions clearly diverge, though, as a
musical melody is an aesthetic object in and of itself whereas prosody serves to facilitate
transfer of linguistic meaning. In biological terms, they both draw from the same basic
auditory mechanisms that allow us to hear, with some modifications geared towards the
specific functions they serve. However, melody processing, and musical functions in
general, tends to be lateralized to the right hemisphere, and language processing generally
A Multidisciplinary Investigation of the Musical and Linguistic Melody
relies on the left hemisphere. Prosody, possessing characteristics of both music and
language, seems to depend on both hemispheres to a larger extent. It is precisely this
coexistence of overlaps and dissociations, the incredible plasticity of our brain and the
fuzzy boundary between language and music at the deepest level, that continues to
fascinate artists, researchers, and therapists alike.
31
A Multidisciplinary Investigation of the Musical and Linguistic Melody
32
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