Music & Language

Project leader: Louis Grijp

Research staff: Marc van Oostendorp

Finance: NWO-Horizon

Short description:

Music and language have a lot in common. Both are rule-governed and subject to recursion, the ability to indefinitely lengthen sentences or musical pieces. Infants acquire both music and language effortlessly, suggesting an innate ability. This project will investigate the nature of the relationship between music and language. More specific the questions will be raised whether relative pitch is an innate or a spontaneously developing skill, and whether or not it is shared with language in perception.