MEANING, STRUCTURE, AND TIME IN LANGUAGE AND MUSIC

The aim of this paper is to present an overview of the research that w e have conducted on the comparison between language and music processi ng using electrophysiological approaches. Language and music are compa red at different levels of organization: semantic, syntactic, prosodic , on one side, and harmonic, melodic and rhythmic, on the other side. The main conclusion is that semantic processing seems to be specific t o language, in that the changes recorded in the brain electrical activ ity are different for semantic than for any other kinds of processing. By contrast, syntactic and prosodic processing elicit some patterns o f brain waves that are similar to those found for harmonic, melodic, a nd rhythmic processing. Furthermore, in order to directly compare lang uage and music, experiments are reported in which we used opera, as a perfect combination of both. Results clearly showed that different pat terns are found when listeners heard semantically incongruous words an d congruous words sung out of tune.