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SUMMARY:The pragmatic bases of musical meaning - Dr Ian Cross and Ghofur W
 oodruff (Faculty of Music\, University of Cambridge)
DTSTART:20090528T160000Z
DTEND:20090528T173000Z
UID:TALK14668@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Ruth Cumming
DESCRIPTION:Music in present day western society is generally conceived of
  either as a consumable commodity or as an abstract aesthetic object. Howe
 ver\, evidence from non-western societies together with a more detailed co
 nsideration of music outside the institutions of the academy and of commer
 ce\, supports the view of music as an active\, interactive\, and universal
 ly accessible communicative behaviour which shares significant features wi
 th language. In this paper we shall present evidence to support the view t
 hat music is a communicative mode optimised for the management of situatio
 ns of social uncertainty\, and explore the implications of this view for t
 he interrelationships between music and language. We shall evaluate the ad
 equacy of conventional approaches to understanding propositionality in mus
 ic within a teleosemantic framework\, which appears to provide an effectiv
 e means of articulating and distinguishing the scope of meaning relations 
 within music and language. We shall discuss preliminary evidence which sug
 gests that common processes rooted in biological affordances and predicate
 d upon pitch structures underlie inferences about communicative attitudes 
 in both language and music. We shall also assess the extent to which tempo
 ral features of musical and linguistic structures and interactions can be 
 understood from the perspective of theories of entrainment. \n\n
LOCATION:GR06-7\, English Faculty\, 9 West Road (Sidgwick Site)
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