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Chapter 1 Language and Music in Optimality Theory

Jackendoff and Lerdahl (1980) point out the resemblance between the ways both linguists and musicologists structure their research objects. This insight gave rise to the proposal of a formal generative theory of tonal music (Lerdahl and Jackendoff 1983), in which they describe musical intuition. Above all, insights from non-linear phonology (cf. Liberman 1975; Liberman and Prince 1977 among others) led to scores provided with tree structures, indicating heads and dependent constituents in the investigated domains. In this way, composer Lerdahl and linguist Jackendoff bring to life a synthesis of linguistic methodology and the insights of music theory. Gilbers (1987) shows that music theory in turn can be useful to describe linguistic rhythmic variability (cf. also Gilbers and Schreuder 2002). Further examples of musical and linguistic cross-pollination include among others Jacobson (1932), Guéron (1974), Liberman (1975), Attridge (1982), Oehrle (1989), Wallin (1991), Raffman (1994), Hayes and Kaun (1996), Hayes and MacEachern (1998), Patel (1998, 2003), Patel et al. (1996, 1997, 1998a,b), Repp (2000). Liberman (1975) claims that in principle every form of temporally ordered behaviour is structured the same way (cf. also Gilbers 1992). If this claim is true, language and music should have much in common, since both disciplines are examples of temporally ordered behavior. In this chapter we offer additional arguments for this proposition. In both fields the research object is structured hierarchically and in each domain the important and less important constituents are defined. In Lerdahl and Jackendoff’s music theory,