Musicality and phonetic language aptitude

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Musicality and phonetic language aptitude

Davide Nardo and Susanne Maria Reiterer

1. Introduction

1.1. A question of definitions

Several concepts are related to – and relevant for – the issue of musical tal-ent. Musicality, musical ability, musical aptitude, musical intelligence andmusical giftedness are just some examples. Unfortunately, it is very trickyto provide a single and simple definition of (musical) talent, even becausesuch definition largely depends on both the theoretical and empirical con-text of a given author. However, most authors agree on two fundamentalcharacteristics of talent: i) it is regarded as something special, or rather anexceptional capability in a given domain; ii) it is regarded as a potential,e.g. something capable of development (Jørgensen 2008).

Musicality is rather a loosely used term with many meanings (Jaffurs2004). The term musicality refers to a sensitivity to, a knowledge of, or atalent for music. In psychology of music the term was first used by Ré-vész (1953) to denote the ability to enjoy music aesthetically. However,Reimer (2003) prefers the term musical intelligence rather than musical-ity, in order to highlight its cognitive content instead of its similaritieswith talent, skill, or ability. According to him, there are many ways to bemusically intelligent (i.e. in composing, performing, improvising, listen-ing, etc.), and different individuals may show different levels of achiev-ement in some of these abilities, but hardly in all of them. However, hisdefinition of musicality goes beyond performance to include also aspectsof music listening, which leads to an aesthetic experience.

As suggested by Jaffurs (2004), one way to define musicality in for-mal practice is to examine the standards for arts education, provided bythe National Association for Music Education (MENC, 1994): i) sing-ing, ii) performing on instruments, iii) improvising, iv) composing andarranging, v) reading and notating music, vi) understanding musicalexperience, vii) aesthetically evaluating, and viii) historical and culturalunderstanding. However, a survey with amateur musicians has shownthat qualities like playing with expressiveness or feeling, timbre sensi-

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tivity, repertoire readiness, imitating skills, and the ability to get alongwith other musicians were considered very important parts of an indi-vidual’s musicality (Green 2002). Thus, musicality is a multifacted con-cept, more than just a skill, partially innate and yet strengthened by anurturing environment.

On the other hand, talent can be defined as: i) a characteristic feature,aptitude, or disposition; ii) the natural endowments of a person; iii) aspecial, often creative or artistic aptitude; iv) general intelligence or men-tal power (ability). Aptitude can be characterized as: i) an inclination ortendency; ii) a natural ability (talent); iii) a capacity for learning; iv) ageneral suitability (aptness). A red thread draws a line throughout theseconcepts, conveying the meaning of something that is: i) somehowstrongly connoted as innate (a gift, thus clearly separated from practice);ii) oriented towards something (a propensity or potential); iii) excep-tional or extraordinary; and iv) closely related to a skill (ability, capac-ity). On these bases, we suggest a temporary definition of musical talentas a (predominantly) innate tendency to understand/appreciate, performor create music outstandingly.

1.2. Major issues

When one is concerned with the measurement of musical talent, a seriesof fundamental questions arise: i) is talent an exclusively and exquisitelyinnate phenomenon, or does nurture play any role?; ii) is talent normallydistributed in the population, or rather an “all-or-none” phenomenon?;iii) is talent a unitary trait, or rather a multi-dimensional one?; iv) if yes,how many sub-components make it up?; v) is talent similar to, or differ-ent from intelligence? In the present section, we will briefly introducesuch issues, in order to make the reader aware of the complexity of musi-cal talent and its measurement.

Although most authors agree that musicality is widely innate and her-editary, the “nature vs. nurture” controversy has been vivid also in thisfield, especially with respect to the amount of such innateness on the onehand, and the role contingent learning factors and the social environmentplay on the other hand, which should be neither neglected nor underesti-mated. Scientists devoted to talent measurement know how difficult it isto separate aptitude from achievement. This is another fundamentalissue, particularly with respect to the music domain, where the ability (i.e.playing an instrument, solmizate, categorizing notes) can be so finelytrained.

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In the next sections, we will see how the different authors conceivemusicality. However, we suggest that a helpful distinction could be drawnbetween talent (or aptitude) and musicality (or ability), where the formerrefers more to the innate component, and the latter to the resulting skilldeveloped in interaction with the environment (through training, prac-tice, etc.). This way, when we talk of talent, we are referring to an innatetendency to perform well in a given domain, the degree of which variesamong different individuals, and which is rather independent of experi-ence. Conversely, we could refer to an ability as the result of practice orlearning, although it is highly probable that given the same amount oftraining, a talented person will outperform a non-talented one.

Is talent normally distributed in the population, or is it rather an “all-or-none” phenomenon? Although the popular belief mainly considers itin the second way (on the basis of which some individuals would begifted, whilst others would not), the scientific literature reveals that musicaptitude, like most of all human characteristics, is normally distributed inthe population (Jørgensen 2008; Gordon 1989a). This implies that every-body has a certain degree of potential to achieve in music, with relativelyfewer very high- and low-talented persons, and the majority with an aver-age aptitude.

The concept of musicality is probably closer to the notion of skill,rather than to the traditional way psychologists see intelligence, unless weconsider approaches like that of Howard Gardner (1983), who proposedthe existence of several independent intelligences (see chapter by G.Rota). In section 3, we will review a series of experimental studies demon-strating a large independence between musicality and intelligence, whenthis latter is defined and measured as a general factor. Such evidenceclearly demonstrates that musical aptitude cannot be considered an as-pect (or a by-product) of intelligence, but rather an independent mentalcharacteristic.

According to Gordon (1989a), there are two general points of viewover music aptitude. The Gestaltists hold that music aptitude is a unitarytrait of which overall intelligence is a substantial part. Conversely, theAtomists contend that music aptitude is multidimensional, consisting ofvarious parts, none of which is significantly related to overall intelligence.The experimental evidence collected in almost one century of research onmusicality testing converge at showing that there are different identifiablesub-components within musical talent, and that such sub-componentsare rather independent of intelligence, defined as a unitary trait.

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1.3. What is measured

In section 1.1 we have provided some definitions of the various conceptsrelated to musicality. Yet the question “what is measured?” (that is, whatare the sub-components of musicality, or the fundamental abilitiesmeasured) can be risen. Nowadays there is good agreement on the im-portance of perception and cognition of musical patterns and structures.According to Shuter-Dyson (1999), there are five groups of fundamentalabilities: tonal, rhythmic, kinesthetic, aesthetic and creative abilities,each of which could be subdivided into other sub-components, all ofwhich are subject to improve with age and exposure (acculturation).

Tonal abilities comprise: i) pitch perception (i.e. the ability to discrimi-nate different pitches); ii) sense of tonality (tonal reference, i.e. the develop-ment of a pitch system in which tone relations are specifically defined onthe basis of their inferred relation to the tonic); and iii) harmony-polyphony(i.e. the ability to detect incorrectness or violations in chord sequences).

Rhythmic abilities1 are made up of different sub-components whichcorrespond to different aspects of rhythm, like meter abstraction, percep-tion of rhythmic structures, rhythmic anticipation (expectancy), practo-rhythmic factor (coordination of limbs in rhythmic movements), andtempo-tapping. Moreover, within rhythmic abilities a distinction betweena figural and a metric perception has been suggested (Bamberger 1982),in which the former refers to the grouping of sounds into meaningfulchunks, and the latter is focused on the steady pulse underlying the sur-face events of melody.

Kinesthetic abilities – the motor components – play a pivotal role inmusic performance like playing an instrument or singing. It has been ob-served that kinesthetic factors influence the ability to improvise (McPher-son 1993/1994), and the bodily movements made by the performers con-tribute to expressivity of the performer (Davidson 1993). However,kinesthetic abilities also play a role in auditory perception. For instance,Mainwaring (1933) reported that kinesthetic cues were used by his sub-jects in order to recall tunes. On the other hand, Baily (1985) highlightedthe need to study the way musical patterns may be represented cogni-tively as patterns of movements rather than as patterns of sound.

1. Rhythmic abilities are peculiar because on the one hand it has been shownthat rhythm is processed relatively independently from pitch (Peretz & Colt-heart 2003), whereas on the other hand there is evidence of reciprocal interac-tions between rhythm, melody and tonality (Gordon 1965; Sloboda 1985).

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Aesthetic abilities are fundamentally related to expression, appreciationand emotion. An interesting research by Clarke (1993) with pianistsrequired to imitate performances showed that the more the relationshipbetween structure and expression was disrupted, the more inaccurate andunstable was the attempt at imitating. Gabrielsson (1982) has shown thata balanced combination of the structural, motional and emotional aspectsadapted to the needs of a given individual and the actual musical contentmay be what is required for artistic performance. Swanick (1973) claimedthat much cognitive activity is involved in aesthetic response to music,and that the intensity and quality of any emotional experience dependson this activity. Moreover, the ability to make predictions (expectations)as to what may follow is central to the process of understanding music, sothat in general deviations arouse excitement.

Creative abilities – like aesthetic abilities – are rather a fuzzy concept.What is then creativity? Supposedly, a cognitive process resulting in theproduction of something which is both original and highly valuable(Sternberg 1996). Webster (1988) has claimed that a “collection of musi-cal aptitudes” is necessary for a creative work in music: i) convergent skills(i.e. the above-mentioned abilities to recognize rhythmic and tonal pat-terns, musical syntax, etc.); ii) so-called divergent skills (i.e. musical exten-siveness, flexibility, and originality); and iii) other abilities, like concep-tual understanding, craftsmanship and aesthetic sensitivity. Musicalitytests which attempt to measure musical creativity (Vaughan 1977;Webster 1983; Wang 1985) mainly exploit improvisation. Although musi-cal creativity factors seem to be unrelated to other sub-components ofmusical aptitude (Swanner 1985), they show a certain degree of associ-ation with personality traits of imagination, curiosity and anxiety. Somestudies (Kratus 1989, 1991) have shown a negative correlation betweenmusical aptitude and the need to explore the musical pieces (a sub-com-ponent of the composition activity).

Correlations between general intelligence scores and musical abilitytests are mostly found to be positive, but low (generally about 0.30; seeShuter-Dyson & Gabriel 1981).

In his work on cognitive abilities, Carroll (1993) reanalyzed hundredsof test data-sets and proposed a model which specifies what kinds of in-dividual differences in cognitive abilities exist, and how they are relatedto one another. According to this model, there is a large number of dis-tinct individual differences in cognitive ability, and the relationshipsamong them can be derived by classifying them into three differentstrata: i) stratum I, specific abilities (among which the specific factors in

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perceiving music and musical sounds); ii) stratum II, broad abilities (i.e.fluid and crystallized intelligence, general memory and learning, retrievalability, cognitive speediness, etc.); iii) stratum III, general intellectualability similar to Spearman’s “g” factor (1927).

By analyzing the relevant literature, Carroll identifies 31 factors ofmusical talent, which he further divides into four subgroups: i) generalsound discrimination factors, comprising basic abilities to discriminatetones or patterns of tones with respect to their fundamental attributes ofpitch, timbre, intensity, duration, and rhythm; ii) sound-frequency dis-crimination factors, similar to those of the previous group, but focused ondiscriminations of the frequency attributes of tones (i.e. detecting achanged note in a melody, detecting the number of notes in a chord, de-tecting a changed note in a chord, etc.); iii) sound intensity and durationdiscrimination factors, focusing on discriminations with respect to inten-sity (loudness), duration and rhythm (amplitude and temporal attributesof sounds and sequential patterns of sound), which depend on sensitivityto temporal and rhythmic aspects of tonal passages; iv) musical sensitiv-ity and judgment factors, comprising judgments of the “musicality” ofshort musical passages (which sounds best?) based on phrasing, loud-ness, rhythm and harmony, in general independent of factors assessingsimple auditory discriminations. This factor can be further divided into atonal imagery subfactor, emphasizing melodic and harmonic aspects ofmusic, and a musical expression subfactor, stressing those aspects arisingfrom variations in phrasing, loudness and tempo.

Nearly all measures of musical aptitude depend to a great extent ontests of very elementary discriminations among tonal materials, withonly little musical contexts. According to Carroll (1993), this could bedue to the desire to minimize the effects of musical training (so that a testcan be used to predict success in such training), but also to a failure torecognize the possibilities of preparing a test including an appropriatemusical context. Expert musicians and music educators, so Carroll, tendto discredit simple tests of auditory discriminations (like Seashore’s) aspossible tests of musical aptitude because they contain little or no musi-cal meaning. However, it is difficult to develop tests with a desirable levelof musical meaning that do not at the same time become tests influencedby musical training and experience.

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2. How to measure musicality

Each author tends to have his own view of what exactly musical aptitudeis, and what subcomponents it is made of. As a consequence, each musi-cality test has been created from a different perspective, often criticizingthe works of predecessors and attempting to combine, complete or im-prove them. This fact has also generated a series of theoretical proposalsand empirical approaches that do not always coincide.

Several psychometric tests of musical talent and ability have beencreated in the last century, some approximate to tests used by musicians,others analyze music into its most elementary basic constituents. We can-not survey them all here (for a review, see Shuter-Dyson & Gabriel 1981),but we will examine the most popular ones, in order to highlight which is-sues emerge when attempting to measure musical aptitude, and whatsuch issues tell us about the nature and the characteristics of musical tal-ent. We will consider three major tests: Seashore’s test, especially for his-torical reasons; Wing’s test, for its cognitive implications; and Gordon’stests, for its flexibility and popularity.

2.1. Seashore’s measures of musical talents

Seashore’s Measures of Musical Talents is the oldest standardized musictest available, first published in 1919, and subsequently revised in 1939.The characteristic of this test is to focus on the very basic sensory capac-ities with a strong psychophysical approach, by presenting the subjects aseries of pairs of tones and requiring to discriminate a certain physicalcharacteristic between them.

The revised version of the test (1939) is made up of six subtests, eachassessing a specific domain of musical aptitude: i) pitch; ii) loudness;iii) rhythm; iv) time; v) timbre; and vi) tonal memory. In the first five sub-tests, the subject is required to compare two items (notes or rhythmicpatterns) and say whether they differ (and sometimes in which direction,i.e. higher/lower, stronger/weaker, longer/shorter). In the last subtest, thesubject has to listen to a series of pairs of consecutive tones formingno melody, and to identify within each pair which tone in the secondsequence differs in pitch from its corresponding tone in the first one.In each subtest only one factor is varied at a time, while others are keptconstant and as simple as possible. This way, the test should be equallyfeasible for young and old, musicians and non-musicians, because itmeasures immediate sensory acts that do not improve with practice.

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According to Seashore (1919), musical talent is a gift of nature, as itcan be inherited but not acquired, and the measurement of musical abil-ity chiefly regards inborn psychophysical and mental capacities as distin-guished from skills acquired by training. In his view, musical talent is notunitary, rather there would be a hierarchy of related talents which worktogether, and such hierarchy would present different organizations in dif-ferent individuals. Therefore, the main aim of the assessment of musicaltalent is to characterize the dominant traits, as well as determining bothqualitatively and quantitatively the composition of each hierarchy oftraits. Hence, the test permits a quantitative measure of the magnitude ofeach trait, and a description of the distribution of individual differencesfor each one as well. A collection of a large number of cases allows in turnthe creation of a curve of distribution which can be referred to as a normfor the interpretation of individual records (expressed in percentileranks).

Seashore proposes a classification of the essential traits of musical tal-ent considering on the one hand the characteristics of sound which con-stitute music, and on the other hand the mental skills which are neededfor the appreciation of musical sounds. As regards the characteristics ofsound, he identifies three elements relevant for testing: pitch, time and in-tensity. Pitch is defined as the quality or the essence of sound, a basic ele-ment underlying more complex music phenomena such as timbre, conson-ance and harmony. On the contrary, rhythm is a combination of morefundamental elements (i.e. time and intensity). Thus, according to theauthor, this classification permits the arrangement of musical talents intothe ability to appreciate and the ability to express respectively pitch, timeand intensity.

As regards the mental skills, Seashore divides the capacity for the ap-preciation and expression of music into four fundamental abilities: i) sen-sory (i.e. hearing music); ii) motor (i.e. expressing music); iii) associ-ational (i.e. understanding music); and iv) affective (i.e. feeling music andexpressing feelings in music). He claims that, by combining these twoclassifications – the elements of musical sounds and the capacities ofhuman individuals – the principal groups of musical talent would be ob-tained.

Seashore makes a clear distinction between what he calls cognitive andphysiological thresholds. The cognitive threshold is a limit due to cogni-tive difficulties such as ignorance, misunderstanding, inattention, lackof application, confusion, disturbances, misleading thought, etc. Con-versely, the physiological threshold is a limit determined by the character

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of the physical structure of the inner ear. The author states that the cog-nitive threshold is no measure at all, but rather an indication of a lack ofcontrol over other conditions. Instead, a correct measurement shouldgive the physiological threshold (or at least a proximate physiologicalthreshold), given that the former is scarcely attainable. Anyway, accord-ing to him we cannot get a measure below the physiological threshold,and any error is due to the cognitive threshold. He also warns againstwhat he calls the illusions, that is the influence of conscious or uncon-scious anticipation (expectation) on the judgmental process (i.e. illusionof pitch, intensity, timbre, etc.).

According to Seashore, absolute pitch2 is just an illusion cultivated bymany musicians. In fact, one could identify a note sounded in isolationnot by absolute pitch, but by memory of conditions of tuning, by differ-ence in timbre, or guess. However, the author believes that the sensitive-ness of the ear to pitch difference (as well as to other elements of sound)cannot be improved appreciably by practice. Practice can only improvethe cognitive threshold by clearing up difficulties (such as information,observations, development of interest, isolation of the problems, appli-cation to the task, etc.) which could hinder an actual measure of discrimi-nation. Thus, training in discrimination is not like the acquisition of askill, because only the meaning of pitch can be refined through training.

Finally, Seashore asserts that the actual psychophysical capacity forpitch discrimination (and other elements of sound) does not improvewith age and does not vary with sex. In fact, the records of youngerchildren are just slightly inferior to those of the older, and this could beaccounted for by the presence of conditions for observation which areovercome as experience grows with age. Furthermore, although scoresof girls are normally superior to those of boys, this could be better ex-plained by the relative lack of interest in music typically shown by pre-adolescent boys.

The historical importance and the scientific influence of Seashore’stest should not be underestimated, because it was a pioneering work andthe first to be fully standardized. Nevertheless, its atomistic approach hasbeen heavily criticized, and its weakness in predicting musical ability hasbeen demonstrated, being even scarcely more efficient than general intel-ligence in predicting musical achievement (for a review see Wing 1970).

2. Absolute pitch (or perfect pitch) is the ability found in a minority of listenersto name an isolated musical tone presented without an objective referencetone or, conversely, to produce a tone identified by name only.

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Let us briefly follow the major critiques Wing raises against Seashore’sapproach.

Of course, by choosing pitch, intensity, rhythm, time, timbre and mem-ory, Seashore has selected the most commonly accepted basic qualities ofmusical capacity. However, the elementary way he had tested them, hasmoved him from “music” (made up of patterns and relationships oftones) to mere sensory perception. To the musician, the pitch subtest istoo simple, and measures too fine a degree of discrimination. The timeand intensity subtests are probably the least satisfactory of the battery,because of their “distance” from actual music. In fact, they do not testfor time and intensity as they are used in music. In an actual music per-formance, the correct length of a note is not based on a comparison withthe note just played, but on the dynamic rhythmic progression of the mel-ody. In the same way, intensity does not merely consist in noticing thatone note is louder than another, but in getting an intensity change suitedto the melodic line and the whole character of the piece. Memory andrhythm are probably the best of the Seashore’s subtests, because of their“closeness” to actual music. Nonetheless, it is questionable whether a testfor memory on nonsense material is fully valid for musical (and therefore“meaningful”) material. Moreover, there is the possibility that a subjectcould score low in those subtests which do not gain his “attention”, be-cause they are far away from actual music.

2.2. Wing’s standardised tests of musical intelligence

The Wing’s test has been devised and revised by the author between thelate 1930s and 1970. In his work, the author intended to reconcile thepragmatic experience of musicians with the experimental experience ofpsychologists by creating a test of music aptitude independent frommusical training, and capable of pointing out: i) the mental processes im-plicated in music fruition; ii) the distribution of musical aptitude in thepopulation; iii) its development with age and learning; and iv) the in-fluence of the environment and culture. In conceiving such measurement,the opposition between a nativist and an empiricist approach has beenmediated by cognitivism, according to which music results from mentalprocesses of organization and transformation of the physical stimuli. Inorder to find these processes, the author has devised a series of standard-ized subtests which employ structured musical material instead of elementsof music (as in Seashore’s test).

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By surveying the psychological literature of his time, Wing identifies aseries of weaknesses in the previous tests of music aptitude (includingSeashor’s): i) ignoring qualities a musician regards as desirable (i.e. ap-preciation), or emphasizing qualities a musician regards as of little im-portance (e.g. absolute pitch); ii) measuring only one aspect of music andtreating it as a measure of a general musical capacity; iii) validating testson very small groups; iv) lack of an adequate standardization of the testscores; v) application to a narrow age range, or difficulty in re-testingprocedures; vi) lack of any attempt to correlate with teachers’ ranking;vii) neglecting the effect of musical training on the test scores. The authorintended to conceive a test which would have compensated for all theabove-mentioned weaknesses.

According to Wing, the ultimate version of its test satisfy the criteria ascientific psychological test of music aptitude should: i) being acceptableto musicians; ii) not being influenced by training; iii) allowing the assess-ment of a wide range of different capabilities; iv) providing informationon several relevant aspects of musical talent; v) being statistically reliable;vi) providing a standardized score; vii) requiring short times for the ad-ministration; viii) correlating well with scores provided by music teach-ers; ix) being of practical use in musical education; x) being easy to ad-minister even with younger children. Wing has standardized the scoresfor the English population of different age cohorts, calculating on thisbasis a musical age and a musical quotient. His test is split into two sub-tests, the first one measuring perceptive aspects (ability subtests), and thesecond one measuring more cognitive components (appreciation sub-tests).

Two terms which are central in Wing’s view of musical talent are musi-cal ability and musical appreciation. Although strictly speaking the firstrefers to the ability to play an instrument, in a wider sense it includes thespeed in learning to play, the ability to perform an aural test, and the abil-ity to carry out musical activities such as composing. On the other hand,musical appreciation (which is distinguished from musical ability bothby musicians and psychologists), is the power to recognize and evaluateartistic merit in music, and involves the deliberate aesthetic judgmentsof music as it actually exists in compositions, rather than ability to solveproblems connected with the elementary materials of which music iscomposed. However, the author claims that music ability and apprecia-tion should be connected in some way. Wing regards his measurement ofappreciation as a revolutionary innovation, since previous tests did notdeal with the essential aesthetic element involved in music, but were al-

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most exclusively concerned with the simpler perceptual processes or withthe knowledge of musical technicalities.

For Wing, nature is far more important than nurture, and he offers thefollowing support for his stand: i) 11 year olds who score in the lowestquartile on his test take music lessons as often as those in the highestquartile; ii) test scores may continue to climb for some time after musiclessons are over; iii) Wing scores of children, tested again after 5 years,correlate about 0.9 whether or not the subjects have had music lessons inthe meantime; iv) high testing children do as well on unfamiliar musictest items as on the more familiar; v) having two musical parents is as-sociated with higher test scores than having only one such parent.

In comparison with previous tests, Wing’s test is characterized by theemployment of original material, higher reliability and validity, and an ea-sier and more uniform administration. The subtests are designed in such away that they require no special knowledge of musical technicalities, andwithin each, difficulty is graded so that the easiest items are suitable forchildren, while the hardest ones may be used to test the capacities of pro-fessional musicians. The items are made up of quite short melodic extracts,usually consisting of eight bars only, with each subtest containing 20 itemsas a rule. The whole set takes about one hour to be administered.

In the last version (Wing 1970), there are seven subtests which involvethe following tasks: i) chord analysis, i.e. detecting the number of notesplayed in a single chord (sometimes made up of just one note); ii) pitchchange, i.e. detecting an alteration of a single note in a repeated chord; iii)memory, i.e. detecting an alteration of a note in a short melody; iv) rhyth-mic accent, i.e. choosing the better rhythmic accent in two performances;v) harmony, i.e. judging the more appropriate of two harmonizations; vi)intensity, i.e. judging the more appropriate mode of varying loudness(crescendo, decrescendo, etc.) in two performances of the same melody;vii) phrasing, i.e. judging the more appropriate phrasing (grouping ofnotes by pauses, legato and staccato playing, etc.) in two performances.Wing claims that it is important to assess not only the individual’s gen-eral capacity for musical appreciation, but also the particular type ofmusical appreciation in which one is weak or strong.

Wing (1941) performed a factor analysis on a large dataset collectedwith his test, in order to characterize the dimensions underlying the vari-ous subtests. Results have identified three factors. The first factor couldbe treated as measuring the same group of mental processes that Wingdubs general musical ability. The second factor was found to divide theseven subtests into two classes, the first including those in which the

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essential task of the listener is to judge the more appropriate musical ar-rangement (e.g. appreciation), the second comprising those in which thetask is merely to perceive a change (e.g. ear acuity). According to Wing,this factor resembles the finding of similar bipolar factors in other testsof artistic and intellectual abilities, for example the opposition betweenthe synthetic activity described as “intuition” (in which we implicitlycomprehend the essential meaning or character of a whole), and the ana-lytic activity which essentially consists in explicitly analyzing the wholeinto its component parts and the relations between them.

The third factor Wing extracted showed saturations with the two sub-tests of harmony and chord analysis. These are the only ones which es-sentially depend on listening to notes sounded simultaneously, whereasthe others deal mainly with the melodic or rhythmic contour of the musicplayed. Thus, according to Wing, this factor distinguishes those personswho have a better appreciation for harmony than for melody or rhythm.

Finally, Wing reports that rhythm seems to have a comparatively weakassociation with the general musical ability, this way anticipating whatmore recent research has firmly demonstrated (Peretz & Coltheart 2003).He claims that of all musical capacities, the ability to recognize rhythm isprobably the most elementary, in fact, it develops early, is the most widelydiffused, and may exist in almost complete independence of any deeperappreciation of higher developments of musical art.

2.3. Gordon’s measures of music audiation

As from the 1960s, Gordon has devised a series of musicality tests forvarious purposes, which have become very popular in the literature forseveral reasons: i) they can be used with subjects belonging to various agecohorts; ii) they can be used with subjects of different levels of expertise;iii) they measure different aspects of musicality, such as pitch ability,rhythmic ability, performance and expression preferences, ability to im-provise, ability to score reading, etc; iv) they have been re-mastered fol-lowing the digital era and recorded on CD.

Gordon stresses the distinction between aptitude and achievement. Hedefines music aptitude as “the potential to learn or achieve in music” (aninner possibility), whereas music achievement represents “what somebodyhas already learned in music” (an outer reality). According to the author,those students who show a high level of music achievement, must alsohave a high level of music aptitude, whereas vice-versa is not necessarilytrue, as revealed by their scoring on a music aptitude test. In fact, stu-

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dents with low music aptitude who receive proper instruction mayachieve more success than students with average music aptitude who re-ceive improper instruction.

Another important distinction, is that between a developmental stageand a stabilized stage within music aptitude. According to Gordon, musicaptitude is basically innate, but not inherited. Thus, heredity influencesmusic aptitude, but it does not entirely determine it. In fact, although in-nate, it also depends on a rich music environment to come to fruition.Hence, music aptitude becomes a product of an innate potential plussome early environmental musical influences, remaining lacking in thecase of an inappropriate environment. In Gordon’s view, music aptitudeis therefore a product of both nature and nurture.

Gordon calls developmental music aptitude stage the period from birthto approximately age nine, a period in which according to him the en-vironment would have a pronounced effect on music aptitude. Duringthose years, a child’s music aptitude level would constantly fluctuate,and the potential may go up or down, according to the modulation of theenvironment. However, the effect of the environment would start to de-crease shortly after birth and keep on diminishing with age, until aboutage nine music aptitude would stabilize and remain in what he calls sta-bilized music aptitude stage throughout adulthood.

The author claims that it is very important that children receivethe highest quality of both informal music guidance and formal musicinstruction during the developmental music aptitude stage, because thiswould increase their immediate level of achievement, their overall levelof music aptitude, and their life-time potential for music achievement.The younger the children, the better they may benefit from a high-qualitymusic environment. On the contrary, inappropriate or lacking instruc-tions or no exposure to music whatsoever would drastically reduce achild’s developmental music aptitude. However, although early environ-mental influences promote music aptitude, in Gordon’s view one’s musicaptitude cannot reach a higher level than that with which one is born,and no one would be able to reach a level in music achievement higherthan that at which his aptitude has stabilized.

Gordon considers unlikely the existence of completely separate apti-tudes for composition, improvisation, instrument and vocal perfor-mance, rather, he suggests there would be different personality traits andpsychomotor abilities, as well as separate sub-components of music apti-tude, including preference and non-preference. According to him, apti-tude would be unique but not unitary, and best represented by the inter-

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action of several human attributes. Nonetheless, it would have very littleor even no relation to any other human trait, comprising race, religion,nationality or sex, and it would be also unrelated to the instrument oneplays. It would be multidimensional, including a tonal aptitude (relatedto melody and harmony), a rhythm aptitude (related to tempo and meter),and expressive (related to phrasing, balance, style), improvisatory andcreative aptitudes. Moreover, scores on both developmental and stabil-ized music aptitude tests would be normally distributed.

To better describe musical aptitude, Gordon coins the term audiation,defining it as the capacity to assimilate and comprehend in our mindmusic for which the sound is not physically present (delayed musicalevents). On the contrary, aural perception occurs when we hear sounds inthe very moment they are being produced (immediate sound events). Ob-viously, we are able to audiate actual sounds only after we have aurallyperceived them. Gordon claims that, although audiation would be funda-mental to both aptitude and achievement, it would work differently ineach. In fact, while audiation potential cannot be taught, “how to audi-ate” could, i.e. how to use one’s intrinsic audiation (aptitude) to maximizeone’s own acquired music achievement (as influenced by the environment).From Gordon’s perspective, sound becomes music only through audi-ation, when we translate it in our mind and give it a meaning, althoughsuch meaning would differ on different occasions, as well as from one per-son to the other. According to him, we audiate when listening to, recalling,performing, interpreting, creating, improvising, reading, or writing music.

Gordon makes a comparison between music and speech, claiming thatin the same way as speech communicates the meanings we have in mind,music performance communicates audiation (that is, the meaning ofmusic). In fact, while listening to speech, we give meaning to what is saidby connecting it with what we have heard on other occasions, and we cre-ate expectancies of what we will hear next, on the bases of our experienceand understanding. Similarly, while listening to music, we give meaningto what we hear by connecting it with what we have heard on other occa-sions, and we create expectancies of what we will hear next, on the basesof our music achievement. Audiating is therefore the process of summar-izing and generalizing from the specific music patterns we hear as a wayto anticipate or predict what will follow. However, audiation is differentfrom both imitation and memorization. We are able to store specific ma-terial in our memory without understanding it, but then we quickly for-get it, and music makes no exception. Audiation leads to understanding,whereas imitation and memorization – when separated from audiation –

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228 Davide Nardo and Susanne Maria Reiterer

lead at best to emotional reaction. In the same way, without audiation aperformer can neither improvise nor create.

Gordon identifies seven types of audiation, which serve as readiness forothers, but are not hierarchically organized, and describes six stages ofaudiation, which conversely are hierarchical and cumulative, each ofwhich establishing the basis for – and combining with – the next one.

Gordon has devised several tests, which can be divided into two groupswith different features in accordance with the music aptitude stage theyare designed for. The developmental music aptitude tests employ eithertonal or rhythmic patterns, but not melodic patterns which combine bothaspects. They use “same/different” or “same/not same” responses, andeach question is identified by a simple picture of a familiar object. Devel-opmental tests are audie (1989b), for children aged three to four, PMMA(Primary Measures of Music Audiation, 1979), for children in gradesfrom kindergarten through three, and IMMA (Intermediate Measures ofMusic Audiation, 1982), an advanced version of PMMA designed forchildren aged six to eleven with a higher music aptitude. The patternsare always performed on electronic instruments, because according tothe author, students in the developmental music aptitude stage are moreinterested in how music is constructed, rather than in its expressivecomponents. Vice versa, the stabilized music aptitude tests (i.e. MAPand AMMA), employ music excerpts composed on purpose, performedwith actual music instruments. They employ “same/different”, “like/dif-ferent”, and “yes/no” responses, because options like high/low, up/down,short/long risk to transform a music aptitude into a music achievementtest. Moreover, they also contain so-called “preference measures”, andeach question is identified by a progressive number.

AMMA (Advanced Measures of Music Audiation, 1989a) is a test de-signed for high school students and college/university music and non-music majors. It is made up of 30 items, each of which consists of a shortmusical statement followed after four seconds by a short musical answerwith the same number of notes. The subject is asked to decide whetherthey are the same or different. When the answer is different from thestatement, the subject is asked to decide whether the difference is a tonalor rhythm change. Within a certain item there may be either one or moretonal changes, or one or more rhythmic changes, but not both, and thedifference between the statement and the answer may occur at the begin-ning, in the middle, and/or at the end of the item. All items are pro-grammed on a computer and performed on an electronic instrument.AMMA is also the test we chose in our current experiments.

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MAP (Musical Aptitude Profile, 1965) is an eclectic battery designedto measure seven separate dimensions for students in grades four throughtwelve. It consists of three main sections: tonal imagery (comprising amelody and a harmony non-preference subtests); rhythm imagery (includ-ing a tempo and a meter non-preference subtests); and musical sensitivity(including three preference subtests: phrasing, balance, and style). Thenon-preference subtests work in a similar way to those of AMMA, con-versely, in the preference subtests, the subject listens to two versions of amelody, and he is asked to decide which of the two “sounds better”. Inphrasing the two versions are performed with different musical ex-pression; in balance they begin in the same way, but end in a differentway; and in style the two versions are performed at different tempos.

Gordon has also devised also other tests, to determine whether a stu-dent has the necessary readiness and ability to improvise (HIRR andRIRR), to help students to choose an appropriate musical instrument(ITPT), and to measure tonal, rhythm and notational audiation (ITML).

3. Musicality meets language talent

3.1. A common ground for music and language

Many authors claim that, beyond their respective differences, languageand music share some common characteristics. Both of them are audi-tory phenomena that follow a time line (temporal aspect). Moreover,rhythm and melody in music can be compared to stress and intonation inlanguage (Arleo 2000). Both of them are human universals consisting ofperceptually discrete elements organized into hierarchically structuredsequences, be it from the individual note to the larger constituent of amusical composition, or from phonemes to the discourse units (Sloboda1985; Patel 2003). Both of them share a series of fundamental character-istics, such as the processing of sounds, the conveyance of messages, thelearning by exposure, the sharing of intrinsic features like pitch, volume,prominence, stress, tone, rhythm, and pauses (Fonseca Mora 2000). Ithas also been suggested that, in the same way in which rhythmic struc-tures in the prosody influence the meaning of segments in English, rhyth-mic structure or patterns of accent strength affect the relative importancewith which musical events are interpreted (Palmer & Kelly 1992). Infant-directed speech is music-like in a number of aspects (e.g., regularrhythms, slow tempo, pitch contours expanded and repeated with altered

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230 Davide Nardo and Susanne Maria Reiterer

lexical or segmental content and varying tempo, extended vowels) andhas a distinct suprasegmental structure (Trehub & Trainor 1993). More-over, musical abilities probably play an important role in the acquisitionand the processing of language. In fact, infants acquire much in-formation about word and phrase boundaries (and possibly even aboutword meaning), through different types of prosodic (thus musical) cuesof language, such as speech melody, metre, rhythm and timbre (Jusczyk1999). Finally, tonal languages rely on the decoding of pitch relations be-tween phonemes, and non-tonal languages also require an accurateanalysis of speech prosody to decode structure and meaning of speech(Koelsch & Siebel 2005).

3.2. Music training and language acquisition

We have already seen that musical aptitude is different from musical abil-ity, in that the latter is affected by training. Before treating the relation-ships between musical aptitude and language acquisition, it is worth totake a look to those studies considering the relationship between musictraining and language acquisition.

The existence of a positive influence of music training on language ac-quisition in children and adolescents has been consistently reported. Onestudy showed that students who receive a musical training are more suc-cessful in discriminating and performing French pronunciation thanthose who do not (Harrison 1979). Another reported that Asian studentsof English distinguished between minimal pairs more effectively whenthe sounds were presented contextually in songs and chants rather thanwhen they were presented in word lists (Karimer 1984). It was also foundthat listening to music in a second language class improved auditory dis-crimination relevant to learning proficiency (Pinel 1990; Tomatis 1991).Moreover, it was demonstrated that a group receiving music lessons per-formed significantly better in both oral grammar and reading compre-hension of French (Lowe 1998). On the other hand, Deutsch (1991) hasdemonstrated that the perception of pitches is influenced by the motherlanguage spoken by the listener.

In a study by Spychiger (1993), primary school children received extramusic lessons in place of other school subjects over the course of threeyears, and results showed that these children performed better than theirpeers in language and reading skills. Douglas and Willatts (1994) carriedout a study in which children with reading difficulties were given a musictraining, whilst a control group undertook exercises in non-musical ac-

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tivities. Significantly, reading scores for the music group increased,whereas scores for the control group did not. Similarly, Costa-Giomi(1999) demonstrated that two years of piano instruction significantly im-proved verbal abilities of ten to eleven year olds compared with controls.Finally, it was found that a musical training at a young age caused a sig-nificant improvement in short-term verbal memory in adulthood (Chanet al. 1998). On the other hand, Stokes (2001) found no correlation be-tween music training and L2 acquisition in adult learners. Musical abilitycan predict aspects of first-language (L1) verbal ability, such as readingability in children (Atterbury 1985; Anvari et al. 2002). Jakobson et al.(2003) reported enhanced verbal memory performance in musicians.

Milovanov et al. (2007) have studied the phonemic processing skills ofmusicians and non-musicians with the dichotic listening task3 in childrenand adults with varying degrees of musical aptitude (as assessed by Sea-shore’s test). Subjects were given phonetically meaningful – but semanti-cally irrelevant – consonant/vowel syllables pairs presented to both ears,always two different pairs at a time. Results showed superior left earmonitoring skills among the adults who practiced music regularly, indi-cating altered hemispheric functioning, whereas other musically talentedsubjects did not have the ability to control left ear functioning in an equalmanner, that is, the performance of musical children and their non-musi-cal controls in the left ear condition did not differ. Thus, regular musicpractice may have a modulating effect on the brain’s linguistic organiza-tion.

An improving effect of musical practice on pitch processing in speechhas been recently also demonstrated with the ERPs technique (Schön etal. 2004; Besson et al. 2007), suggesting that a set of common processesmay be responsible for pitch processing in both music and in speech.

A very recent study (Pastuszek-Lipinska 2008) has investigatedwhether music training and education influence the perception and pro-

3. The Dichotic Listening Task is a technique devised to investigate the func-tional hemispheric specialization. It exploits the physiology of the auditoryascending paths, so that two thirds of the fibers in the auditory nerves go tothe contralateral hemisphere, whereas one third of the fibers remains ipsilat-eral. When two different stimuli (e.g. two different words, or two differentpitches) are presented simultaneously at the two ears, the subject typically re-ports the stimulus for which the hemisphere is specialized, i.e. the left hemi-sphere (right ear) for verbal material, and the right hemisphere (left ear) formusical material.

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duction of L2 sounds. Subjects were Polish native speakers either musi-cians or non-musicians, who were asked to reproduce as accurately asthey could sentences in the following foreign languages: English, BelgianDutch, French, Italian, Spanish and Japanese. Results revealed thatmusicians outperformed non-musicians, in that the former producedmore sentences, encountered fewer difficulties with the task, and wererated as more fluent with respect to the latter, demonstrating that musiceducation exerted a measurable impact on speech perception and pro-duction. The author concluded that since the influence of musical exper-tise extends to speech processing, music education should be consideredan enabling factor in the successful acquisition of L2.

On which basis would a musical training be able to improve languageprocessing? Some explanations have been given, mainly based on the rolemusical (specifically rhythmic) processing would play in the developmentof short-term verbal memory (Karimer 1984; Chan et al. 1998) and tem-poral processing ability, i.e. the fine discriminations between rapidlychanging acoustic events (Jakobson et al. 2003), and on the basis of acommon neural substrate between musical rhythm processing and lan-guage reading (Douglas & Willatts 1994).

Furthermore, music has been employed as an alternative treatment forlanguage impairments. For example, Benson et al. (1994) have used amusic-based therapy (Melodic Intonation Therapy) in aphasic patientswith severe left-hemisphere brain damages. In this therapy, word se-quences are incorporated into a song, and after some time the melody isremoved until the patient can speak without singing. Such therapy ex-ploits the intonation and singing abilities preserved in the right hemi-sphere, which memorizes the phrases through music. Music therapy hasalso been employed to help children with speech and language impair-ment (SLI), who may have sufficient speech sounds and vocabulary, butmay stop expressing themselves fully through speech. Sutton (1995) ob-served an interesting parallel between SLI children’s progress in musicand their progress in language: as they began to build music into phrasesand structures, they also began to express themselves with their voicesand construct simple sentences.

3.3. Music aptitude and language acquisition

There is evidence of a relationship between music skills and the acquisi-tion of the mother tongue (L1). By investigating the relationship betweenreading and auditory abilities in English native speakers, Ewers (1950)

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found significant correlations between reading scores and musical skillssuch as pitch discrimination, loudness, musical rhythm and tonal mem-ory. In another study (Wheeler & Wheeler 1954), the Seashore pitchsubtest was found to correlate with an auditory discrimination test forEnglish sounds, and with a test of reading skills, but not with general in-telligence. Holmes (1954) also reported that various auditory abilitiesplay an important role in L1 spelling ability both in high school students(i.e. tonal movement, pitch, tonal memory, intensity, rhythm and melodictaste) and college students (i.e. tonal memory and pitch), irrespective ofintelligence. More recently, Douglas and Willatts (1994) found an associa-tion between rhythmic ability and reading, rhythmic ability and spelling,but not between pitch discrimination ability and reading.

On the other hand, there is vast evidence of a significant relationshipbetween music skills and second language (L2) acquisition. Dexter andOmwake (1934) investigated the relationship between the ability to dis-criminate pitches (Seashore’s pitch subtest) and pronunciation ability inFrench, and found that pitch correlated significantly with accent ratings.Another study (Eterno 1961) reported that both musical aptitude andmusical training were capable of predicting foreign language pronuncia-tion success. A study by Pimsleur et al. (1962) found that pitch andtimbre discrimination were consistently related to the auditory compre-hension of French. Interestingly, Leutenegger et al. (1965) investigatedboth the effects of musical aptitude on language learning ability (inFrench and Spanish), and the effects of language learning on musical ap-titude, also controlling for sex and intelligence. Although results on thewhole did not show strong relationships between the Seashore subtestsand foreign language achievement, in the female group the tonal memoryscores significantly predicted the achievement scores in French.

By using the Seashore test and some pronunciation tests, Arellano &Draper (1972) found a strong correlation between timbre and intonation,timbre and phones, rhythm and intonation, rhythm and phones, andtonal memory and phones, demonstrating the existence of a relationshipbetween perceptual musical skills and productive phonetic aspects.Moreover, Fish (1984) found a strong correlation between pitch discrimi-nation and sound discrimination, as well as between sound discrimi-nation and the playing of a musical instrument. However, no correlationsbetween pitch discrimination ability and pronunciation ability of Ger-man (L2) phonemes, pronunciation ability of Germans phonemes andmusical background, and sound discrimination ability and pronuncia-tion ability of German phonemes were found. Therefore, music was re-

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234 Davide Nardo and Susanne Maria Reiterer

lated to language perception, but had little influence on language pro-duction.

Similarly, by using the Seashore test and some pronunciation produc-tion measures Brutten et al. (1985) found no significant correlations. Byexamining the association between musical and language aptitude, Ste-venson (1999) found a correlation between rhythmic ability and the abil-ity to reproduce words in a foreign language, as well as between the abil-ity to sing back melodies and the ability to reproduce foreign languagewords. Tucker (2000) examined foreign language aptitude in English andJapanese native speakers by using the MLAT (and its Japanese trans-lation) and self-assessments of foreign language proficiency, and Sea-shore’s test. Results showed significant correlations between the MLATand self-assessments and the tonal memory subtest, as well as betweenthe MLAT and the rhythm subtest. Moreover, Anvari et al. (2002) foundsignificant correlations between musical aptitude and both phonologicalawareness and reading development.

Morgan (2003) has investigated the relationship between both recep-tive and productive aspects of music (Gordon’s IMMA and vocal notesreproduction), and those of French as L2 (vowel discrimination and ac-cent production). Her results showed correlations between perception ofrhythm and speech perception, perception of rhythm and accent produc-tion, music production and speech perception, and between music pro-duction and accent production, thus demonstrating crossed influenceswithin the same experimental design. Gilleece (2006) has investigated therelationship between musical and foreign language aptitude in Englishnative speakers, also controlling for the role played by general intelli-gence. She also assessed both receptive and productive aspects, theformer by means of Bentley’s test for music, and a test based on MLATplus a discrimination task of Chinese and Czech words for language; thelatter by means of imitation of short rhythm patterns for music, and imi-tation of Korean words and Spanish sentences for language. Resultsshowed a significant correlation between receptive musical and languageaptitudes, as well as a significant correlation between productive skills inlanguage and music, both irrespective of general intelligence.

Slevc and Myiake (2006) have investigated the relationship betweenmusical aptitude (as assessed by Wing’s test) and L2 proficiency (i.e.,receptive and productive phonology, syntax and lexical knowledge) inadult Japanese native speakers who were learning English as L2, whilecontrolling for age of L2 immersion, patterns of language use and expo-sure, and phonological short-term memory. Their results showed that

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musical aptitude predicted both receptive and productive L2 phoneticalability, but not syntax and lexical knowledge, thus demonstrating thatmusical skills may facilitate the acquisition of L2 sounds.

Finally, Milovanov et al. (2008) examined the relationship betweenmusical aptitude (as measured by Seashore’s test) and L2 pronunciationskills (word discrimination and repetition), comparing children with su-perior performance in foreign language production with children withless-advanced production skills. Sound processing accuracy was exam-ined by means of Event-Related Potential4 (ERP) recordings and beha-vioral measures. Results showed that children with good linguistic skillshad better musical skills than children with less accurate linguistic skills.Moreover, the ERP data showed that children with good linguistic skillshave more pronounced sound-change evoked activation with the musicstimuli than children with less accurate linguistic skills. The authors con-clude that musical and linguistic skills could partly be based on sharedneural mechanisms.

3.4. Empirical evidence from our study on musicality and phonetic ability

In our current research project we pursued the question whether musical-ity as a whole, as well as various more detailed musicality measures, cor-relate with linguistic abilities, especially talent for L2 pronunciation. Forthis aim we employed various measures for musicality:1) Gordon’s AMMA (extensively reviewed in section 2.3.), composed of

two subscales: i) a scale for rhythm discrimination ability; and ii) ascale for pitch discrimination ability; which results in a total score ofmusicality.

2) An additional introspective questionnaire eliciting self reported abil-ities in the domain of music: i) singing capacity (performance) and theliking for singing; ii) dancing ability (performance) and the liking fordancing; and iii) instrument playing (the number of instruments

4. Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) are a neurophysiologic technique consistingin the systematic averaging of many Electroencephalografic (EEG) samples fol-lowing the presentation of a certain stimulus. By averaging many samples, thenoise in the evoked signal is reduced, while the commonalities are enhanced.This results in a graph representing the electrical activity of a given neural poolas a function of time (expressed in milliseconds). Each electrical (positive ornegative) peak appearing in the graph is then identified as a “component” as-sociated with a specific stage of the cognitive processing of the stimulus.

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236 Davide Nardo and Susanne Maria Reiterer

played, the performance therein, and the degree of enjoyment con-nected to the playing of an instrument). The scale for the self scoringranged from 1 point (minimum) to 5 points (maximum).

We correlated these scores revealing musicality to the second languagerelated tests, which comprised:1) an L2 pronunciation talent score (see chapter 2);2) an L2 pronunciation performance/proficiency score (see chapter 2);3) the MLAT (Modern Language Aptitude Test by Carroll & Sapon),

short form, (described in more detail in chapter 2) with three subtests:3a) MLAT3 (phonetic coding ability);3b) MLAT4 (grammatical sensitivity);3c) MLAT5 (vocabulary learning);3d) MLAT total score subsuming the three subparts;

4) a subtest of the TOEFL battery for English grammar (see chapter 2)

Results and discussion

Results are reported for a cohort of 66 individuals (33 males, age range20–40 years, males: mean age 26.49 years +/– 5.36; females: mean age25.31 years +/– 4.47) taking part in the study. Correlation coefficient (r)was computed after Pearson, 2-tailed, with a level of probability of P <.05 (*) and P < .01 (**).

Gender differences were not detected, with the exception of the likingfor dancing (t-test for independent samples yielded highly sig. difference,P = .001**, higher scores for females) and the performance or capacity todance (with P = .033*, higher scores for females). However, as we will seelater, dancing was not amongst the musical abilities to predict any of thelanguage related skills.

First of all, a trivial result emerged. All musicality tests were highlycorrelated amongst each other and likewise, all linguistic measures werehighly correlated amongst each other with correlation coefficients rang-ing from .3 to .9, P < .01**. This underlines the validity of our tests andmeasures taken.

Our aim was to see how the linguistic measures for the various L2 abil-ities (aptitude and performance) interact with the musicality measures.

Results are summarized in Fig.1 (see Figure Nardo & Reiterer 1 in theColour figure section).

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Colour figure section 23

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Musicality and phonetic language aptitude 237

Most importantly, the two L2 aptitude measures which correlated in asignificant way with all the employed musicality scores were: our ownpronunciation talent score and MLAT4 score (grammatical sensitivity).

Within the musicality measures, the pronunciation talent score corre-lated most highly with both the liking for singing and the self reportedsinging capacity (r = .4, P = .000**, see figure 1) and secondly with Gor-don’s rhythm score (r = .24, P = .01*).

The aptitude test for grammatical sensitivity (MLAT4) also yielded itsstrongest and highest correlation with the musicality measures of singing(r = .31, P = .001**), followed by the liking for playing an instrument (r =.26, P = .005**).

Further language ability measures which correlated with the scoresmeasured by Gordon’s AMMA (pitch and rhythm) and the questionsabout singing (but not with playing or liking instruments) were: the actualpronunciation performance, MLAT3 (perceptive phonetic coding ability)as well as MLAT total score and the TOEFL grammar test. (For detailssee Fig. 1.)

The only test from the linguistic measures with almost no significantcorrelations (except for a correlation at the lower end for the rhythm per-ception – r = .19, P = .034*) was the MLAT5, the vocabulary learningsubtest of the aptitude battery. In this test the task was to quickly learnnew unknown L2 vocabulary, which is a skill that belongs to the lexico-semantic domain and draws on the capacity for associative memory.

In conclusion, we can say that the strongest correlations for musicalityas measured by almost all our subtests (except for dancing ability) werefound in productive phonetic talent (as measured by our pronunciationtalent score) as well as the aptitude for grammatical sensitivity.

Among the musicality measures, the score which correlated in a signifi-cant way with all the language measures, was the rhythm subscore, closelyfollowed by the score for pitch discrimination and then by the self evalu-ated singing scores (liking singing and singing capacity). The score com-plex instrument playing (number of instruments played and self reportedability and liking for this instrument) provided fewer interactions with thelinguistic measures, except for MLAT4 and the pronunciation talent score(see Fig. 1). Within the last mentioned interactions, the strongest corre-lation was found between aptitude for grammatical sensitivity and the de-gree of enjoyment with which one plays an instrument (liking to play theinstrument; r = .26**, P = .005). Furthermore, our instrument measuresdid not result in any significant correlations to the pure performancescore of pronunciation, the phonetic coding ability (a perceptive aptitude

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238 Davide Nardo and Susanne Maria Reiterer

measured by the MLAT3), vocabulary learning (MLAT5) and the TOEFLtest.

No correlations were found between the language measures and self re-ported dancing score (capacity and liking for dancing). In our opinion,this result is not unexpected, since liking to dance was not hypothesizedto be related to pronunciation ability in L2, and largely depends on socialenvironment and conventions. Liking for dancing was also the onlymeasure that yielded highly significant differences between the sexes.

In short, the conclusions we can draw from this ongoing research arethat musicality, ideally in the form of a well developed rhythm perceptionability together with a good pitch perception ability and an enhancedability and liking for singing, are the best ingredients for achieving talentand expertise in foreign language pronunciation from the experimentalpoint of view based on our current studies.

4. Neuroscientific evidence

4.1. Overview

In the previous sections, we have reviewed empirical contributions whichdemonstrate the existence of a relationship between language and musicprocessing. There is evidence that musical training and expertise in-fluence language processing and that certain musical abilities (above allrhythm and pitch discrimination) are associated to a certain degree withlanguage abilities, especially in the phonetic/phonological domain.

In the last decade, the issue of a common neural substrate of languageand music has become central. The recent advancements in neuroimag-ing techniques (PET, fMRI, MEG) have allowed scientists to investigateboth the neural structures and the functioning underlying higher-ordercognitive processes in a new way. There is an increasing number of studieswhich give empirical support to the hypothesis that language and musicare processed, at least partially, in the same brain structures.

The first studies that investigated the neural substrates of music pro-cessing on the basis of neuropsychological evidence (Milner 1962; Kimura1964), pointed at a difference in the hemispheric lateralization, suggest-ing that language processing was lateralized to the left, whereas musicprocessing was processed on the right side. However influential, suchfindings have been proved wrong by subsequent studies. First, it wasfound that the lateralization of music processing was affected by the level

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Musicality and phonetic language aptitude 239

of expertise (Bever & Chiarello 1974), which is able to modify the net-works on the basis of neural plasticity (for expertise and plasticity in L2,see also chapter by S Reiterer). Second, it was claimed that music (likelanguage) is no single entity, but should be decomposed into differentcomponents (or levels of processing) which the literature has shown to beprocessed in different brain structures (Besson & Schön 2001). Modernconcepts emphasize the modular5 organization of music cognition, thatdifferent aspects of music are processed in different (although partlyoverlapping) neuronal networks of both hemispheres (Altenmüller 2001).

In an influential paper, Patel and Peretz (1997) have focused on themusic-language relation, criticizing the literature reporting cases of amu-sia6 without aphasia (and vice versa) as evidence of no cognitive overlapbetween music and language. In fact, according to them, such an argu-ment does not take into consideration the subcomponents of music andlanguage. Moreover, cases of aphasia without amusia are generally foundin exceptional individuals such as conductors and composers. Finally,aphasia does not include all disorders of language. Patel and Peretz sug-gest that music–like–language is a confluence of interacting cognitiveprocesses rather than an indivisible whole, and report various studies in-vestigating different aspects of musical structure and their relationship tolinguistic structures (Patel & Peretz 1997). Aspects under considerationinclude melody (melodic contour7, pitch, and tonality8) rhythm (tempo9,

5. Modularity of mind is a theory of mental architectures proposed in 1983 byJerry Fodor. According to him, some psychological mechanisms (typicallyperceptive and language systems) would be organized as mental modules,having at least more than one of the following characteristics: rapidity of op-eration, automaticity, domain-specificity, informationally encapsulation (thatis independency from other modules and from the central processing), neuralspecificity and innateness.

6. Amusia refers to a disorder which consists in the inability to recognize musi-cal pitches, melodies or rhythms or to reproduce them. Amusia can be con-genital (if present at birth), or acquired, (i.e. following a brain damage).

7. Melodic contour is the general shape of a melodic line, that is its patterns ofups and downs in pitch directions over time, without regard to the exact pitchintervals, a very salient feature in melodic perception.

8. Tonality can be defined as a system of organizing pitch in which a single pitch(the tonic) is made central and serves as a reference point for the others. It isreferred to as “the musical syntax” because it involves orderly structural re-lations embodied in the implicit knowledge of an experienced listener.

9. Tempo refers to the rate of auditory events in music.

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grouping10, and metre11) and song. Results suggest an association betweenperformance on musical contour and linguistic intonation tasks, as well ascommon mechanisms between grouping in language and music.

4.2. Music and language processing meet in the brain

Previous functional imaging studies have reported that musical tasks ac-tivate language areas and vice versa, suggesting that music and languageshare neural substrates (Gaab et al. 2003; Gaab & Schlaug 2003; Koelschet al. 2003; Reiterer et al. 2005, 2008). The majority of studies investigat-ing the common neural substrate of music and language processing havepredominantly focused on syntax. However, in a study on basic acousticprocessing (discriminating subtle differentiations in timbre) performedby our own research group (Reiterer et al. 2008), we found evidence thattimbre or quality of tone presented in isolated synthesized tones (neitherin the context of music, nor language) activated left Broca’s area.

The notion of a musical syntax has been proposed (Swain 1997; Koelschet al. 2004), but its rules are difficult to define concretely. Although musicconsists of discrete elements, its organization is largely relational, es-pecially in Western culture. In fact, in the Western tonal system, the lis-tener’s interpretation of a given note is substantially influenced by boththe preceding and the simultaneous notes, and each note contributes toform the framework within which the subsequent notes will be inter-preted (Limb 2006). This principle of contextual influence or “embedded-ness” into a surrounding frame is similar to the theory of co-articulationin the field of phonetics (see chapter by H. Baumotte). This feature ofWestern music leads to the notion of musical key (i.e., the relational char-acteristic of musical pitches), which allows the transposition of a melodyinto different keys, where although the absolute frequencies of pitchesare altered, the contour of the melody is preserved. Similar relational or-ganizations are also valid for rhythmic and harmonic principles.

10. Grouping is the clustering of adjacent elements into lager units (phrases)while listening to music.

11. Metre is the periodic temporal-accentual scheme, or the number of pulsesbetween the more or less regularly recurring accents. In music groupingboundaries are not predictable from the metrical scheme, that is, metre andgrouping are separate though interacting aspects of rhythm (see Lerdahl &Jackendoff 1983).

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One of the most important consequences of such relational nature ofmusic is the creation of strong expectations in the listener, based on theinternalization of certain variables as a consequence of exposure and en-culturation. This way, the vast majority of music listeners are accustomedto hear notes that fit the melodic, rhythmic, or harmonic contextual ref-erence. In music, these expectancies are considered as a sort of vague butrobust syntax (Limb 2006) and can be exploited by violating them in acontrolled way in order to provoke cerebral responses capable of reveal-ing what happens in the brain when musical “syntax” is violated. For in-stance, if the last note of a melody played within a single key is out of key,the listener immediately detects a syntactic aberration. This procedurehas proven to be very effective also with non-musicians, who are very sen-sitive to this kind of violations (Koelsch & Friederici 2003). In languagestudies a similar paradigm would be semantic or syntactic mismatchstudies, where anomalies in syntactic or semantic structure have to be de-tected.

Patel (2003) has pointed out the contradictory findings of the researchon the neural correlates of syntax in language and music. In fact, whilstneuropsychological evidence shows that linguistic and musical syntaxcan be dissociated (Peretz 1993; Peretz et al. 1994; Griffiths 1997; Ayotteet al. 2000, 2002), neuroimaging data support the idea of an overlap inthe processing of syntactic relations in language and music (Patel et al.1998; Maess et al. 2001; Tillman et al. 2003; Koelsch et al. 2002). Accord-ing to the author, this fact can be accounted for by claiming that syntaxin language and music share a common set of processes (instantiated infrontal brain areas) that operate on different structural representations(in posterior areas).

Support to the idea of a common neural substrate for syntactical pro-cessing in music and language mainly rely on two kinds of finding, theevidence of a recruitment of the same neural structures (especiallyBroca’s and Wernicke’s areas, and their homologues on the right side),and the evidence of similar brain wave responses. A study with musiciansby Patel et al. (1998) compared ERPs elicited by syntactic structural in-congruities in language and music. By employing the violation of prin-ciples of phrase structure and principles of harmony and key-relatedness,the authors constructed sequences where an element was either congru-ous, moderately incongruous, or highly incongruous with the precedingstructural context. Results showed that both linguistic and musical in-congruities elicited the same component (P600), previously considered tobe language specific.

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Another study (Maess et al. 2001) investigated the relational (syntacti-cal) properties of Western tonal music with MEG. In this study, non-musicians were presented a series of key musical chord sequences that oc-casionally contained so-called Neapolitan or sixth chord (which containstwo out-of-key notes while being both major and consonant in char-acter), allowing the examination of responses to musical chords that varyaccording to the musical expectancies created by the preceding chords.Results showed the formation of an early right anterior negativity (ERAN)during the Neapolitan chord presentation, generated in left Broca’s areaand its right homologue, well-known key regions for syntactic processingof language.

An fMRI study (Levitin & Menon 2003) examined the brain responsesof participants who listened to classical music and scrambled versions ofthat same music (the latter disrupting the musical structure while holdingpsychoacoustic features). Comparing music to its scrambled counterpart,the authors found an activation in the left inferior frontal cortex (Brod-mann area 47), a region closely associated with the processing of lin-guistic structure in spoken and signed language, and its right hemispherehomologue, suggesting that this region may be responsible for processingfine structured stimuli that evolve over time, and are not merely lin-guistic.

A series of studies have systematically employed the violation of expec-tations in chord sequences with various groups of subjects (male andfemale, children and adults, musicians and non-musicians). An fMRIstudy by Koelsch et al. (2002) revealed that unexpected chords activatedBroca’s and Wernicke’s areas, superior temporal sulcus, Heschl’s gyrus,planum polare and temporale, and anterior insula, structures previouslythought to be domain-specific for language processing. In another study(Koelsch et al. 2003), where ERPs were recorded in 5- and 9-year-oldchildren, it was found that the degree of inappropriateness of the chordsmodified brain responses according to music-theoretical principles inboth age cohorts. Moreover, gender differences were found, resemblinglateralization patterns typical of language processing (left predominantin boys, bilateral in girls). Finally, another fMRI study (Koelsch et al.2005) confirmed and extended previous findings in three groups of sub-jects: 10-year-old children, adults non-musicians, and adult musicians. Inadults, irregular chords activated structures mediating cognitive aspectsof musical syntax processing, such as the inferior frontal gyrus, anteriorinsula, superior temporal gyrus and sulcus, and supramarginal gyrus.Whilst in the right hemisphere the activation pattern of children and

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adults was similar, on the left, adults showed larger activations in pre-frontal and temporal areas. Moreover, in both adults and children, musi-cal training correlated with stronger activations in the frontal operculumand superior temporal gyrus.

In a further study by our own research group (Reiterer et al. 2005) onbasic pitch and duration discrimination, we found that task difficultyand not the stimulus characteristics per se, was another modulating fac-tor affecting hemispheric involvement within the classical auditory pro-cessing areas. We found more right hemispheric involvement for both,the pitch and the duration discrimination task, when the task was easier,i.e. the discrimination between two stimuli could be achieved easily.

Speaking of semantics in the music domain seems strange, given thatmusic is rather abstract and has little explicit reference to the externalworld. However, although still under debate, the question has been posedwhether a musical phrase can convey meaning, and whether this can beproven.

According to Koelsch (2005), music can transfer meaningful in-formation and is an important means of communication. Theorists dis-tinguish between four different aspects of musical meaning: i) emergingfrom common patterns or forms (e.g., musical sound patterns that re-semble sounds or qualities of objects); ii) arising from a particular mood;iii) inferred by extramusical associations; and iv) stemming from combi-nations of formal structures that create tension (e.g., an unexpectedchord) and resolution (Meyer 1956). The emergence of this latter kindrequires an integration of both expected and unexpected events into ameaningful musical context. The processing of such musical integrationseems to be reflected in a late negative component evoked by unexpected(irregular) chords, which is substantially similar to the N400 componentelicited by the processing of semantic integration during the perceptionof language. The N400 amplitude correlates with the amount of semanticintegration required by a word and, similarly, with the amount of har-monic integration required by a musical event (Koelsch et al. 2000).

In an electrophysiological study with healthy subjects, Koelsch et al.(2004) examined whether the priming effect caused by presenting se-mantically related words in sequence (which evoke the N400 component)could also apply to music. Results showed that a semantic priming effectwas also observed when target words (i.e., semantically unrelated to apreceding musical excerpt) followed musical excerpts. The N400 compo-nent did not differ between the language condition and the music condi-tion with respect to amplitude, latency or scalp distribution, and the ef-

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fect was observed for both abstract and concrete words. Moreover, inboth conditions the main sources of these effects were localized bilat-erally in the posterior part of the medial temporal gyrus (BA 21/37), inproximity to the superior temporal sulcus, regions implicated in the pro-cessing of semantic information during language processing (Friedericiet al. 2000; Friederici 2001, 2002; Baumgaertner et al. 2002). Such find-ings demonstrate that music can activate representations of meaningfulconcepts, and that the cognitive operations underlying meaning decodingcan be identical in language and music processing.

On the other hand, Besson and Schön (2003) have carried out an ex-periment which shows that lyrics and tunes seem to be processed in an in-dependent way, giving support to a domain-specificity of semantic pro-cessing. Conceptually similar, research with fMRI by our own groups(Riecker et al. 2000) investigating overt singing and speaking found thatsinging is predominantly lateralized to the right and speaking to the lefthemisphere.

4.3. The neural substrate of musicality

Unfortunately, the neural correlates of musicality have been very poorlyinvestigated to date. An interesting study (Norton et al. 2005) has com-pared children who were about to begin an instrumental training withcontrols who were not, in order to determine whether there are: i) a prioristructural neural differences (i.e., innate markers of musical ability) be-tween the groups; ii) differences in other cognitive skills between thegroups; iii) correlations prior to music training between perceptual musi-cal skills (as measured by Gordon’s PMMA) and other outcomes (cogni-tive, motor, or neural) possibly associated with music training. Resultsshowed no pre-existing neural, cognitive, motor or musical differencesbetween the groups, as well as no correlations between music perceptualskills and brain or cognitive measures. However, correlations were foundbetween music perceptual skills and phonemic awareness, suggesting theexistence of a common neural substrate for language and music in thephonetic domain.

Recent findings suggest that Heschl’s gyrus12 could constitute a pos-sible marker of musicality (as well as linguistic talent, see chapter by SReiterer). Schneider et al. (2002) have conducted a magnetoencephalo-

12. Heschl’s gyrus is the primary auditory cortex in the human brain, locatedwithin the Sylvian scissure and corresponding to Brodmann area 41.

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graphic (MEG) and structural imaging study in which professional musi-cians, amateur, and non-musicians performed an auditory processingtask. Professional musicians showed a significantly greater increase inMEG activity within primary auditory cortex compared to non-musi-cians, which in turn was found to correlate with increased volumetricmeasurements of gray matter within Heschl’s gyrus in musicians com-pared to non-musicians. Moreover, psychometric testing revealed a posi-tive correlation between the size of Heschl’s gyrus and musical aptitudeas assessed by Gordon’s AMMA. These results were confirmed in a sub-sequent study (Schneider et al. 2005), and although the question ofcausality could not be addressed, these findings suggest a fundamentallink between musical exposure, musical aptitude, and the physiologic andanatomic development of Heschl’s gyrus.

5. Conclusions

In this chapter we have examined the concept of musicality and reviewedthe major experimental contributions concerning its relationship withlanguage talent, ability and linguistic processing in general. We havestarted with definitions of musicality and related concepts in order to in-troduce and disclose the complexity of the topic. We have referred tomusicality as a multi-faceted and fuzzy concept conveying the meaningof a collection of musical abilities which rely on both innate predisposi-tions and experience. We have defined “talent” (or “aptitude”) as the in-nate component, and “musicality” (or “musical ability”) as a complexskill stemming from the interaction between innate and acquired factors.

To date, the “nature vs. nurture” problem seems far from a solution,because both standpoints are supported by evidence. Clearly, both ofthem play an important role in the shaping of the actual musical abilities.However, we suggest that the debate and the efforts towards a precise de-termination of the relative contribution of nature and nurture could bemisleading, and possibly out of reach. Thus, future research could startfrom the assumption of the necessity of both factors, and focus more ontheir interrelation rather than on their relative pre-eminence.

We have seen that both theories and evidence support the idea of musi-cality as something different from general intelligence. However, someauthors (i.e., Wing, Gardner, Reimer) use the term “musical intelligence”to refer to the cognitive component implied in musical abilities. Yet suchmusical intelligence is by no means meant as something related to the

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logical-abstract ability which we normally associate with general intelli-gence, but rather with an independent skill. On the basis of the reviewedliterature and our own current research, we can assert that, far frombeing a unitary entity, musical ability is made up of several sub-compo-nents which align themselves along a continuum ranging from mostbasic psychophysical skills (i.e. pitch discrimination, rhythm perception,timbre and intensity sensitivity, etc.), to the highest cognitive abilities(tonal representation, aesthetic appreciation, ability to create or impro-vise, etc.), also including motor skills (from tempo-tapping to accurateperformance and improvisation). These sub-components are probablynot isolated, but interact with each other, as well as with abilities in otherdomains (i.e. sub-components of language processing like phonetic per-ception and production, memory, imagery, creativity, etc.). We suggestthat future research about musicality and language processing shouldtake into account the complexity of these phenomena and would benefitfrom considering their sub-components in major details.

As regards the tests of musical aptitude, we have reviewed the mostpopular ones. To date, Seashore’s test has been heavily criticized for itsatomistic and psychophysical approach. However it is still employed inthose studies aimed at investigating the basic levels of musical talent. Onthe other hand, Wing’s and Gordon’s tests are more “cognitive”, and sev-eral versions of the latter make it particularly suitable for research withdifferent age and expertise cohorts.

Our own research as well as the literature reviewed consistently showthat language and music are not independent phenomena, but perhapstwo sides of one coin with a lot of similarities, yet not being exactly thesame. We have seen that music practice improves language processing,and that some aspects of music and language processing are correlated,especially rhythmic processing and phonetic aspects. In our own researchwe found that there are strong links between rhythm and pitch perceptionand singing capacity on the one hand, and pronunciation talent, pronun-ciation performance/proficiency, phonetic encoding ability and evengrammatical sensitivity and proficiency on the other.

Moreover, when considering the neural substrates, it clearly emergesthat the syntactic, semantic and phonetic aspect of both linguistic andmusical processing share the same networks in a substantial way. Thisevidence contrasts the idea of a strict domain-specificity and suggeststhat language and music share some common cognitive operationswhich are involved in both processes. Conversely, the investigation of theneural correlates of musical talent has just begun, and will certainly in-

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crease in next years, hopefully taking into account the complexity ofmusicality.

Finally, on the basis of the present work, the important arising questionis “what is the exact relationship between musical skills, language skills, andcognitive processes?” Future research is still needed to investigate the natureof this relationship, in order to determine which cognitive operations under-lie the various musical and language abilities, to bring forth the commonal-ities between both. This would advance our understanding of how thesingle components could best be exploited to improve one another.

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