COGS 300: Nancy Hedberg

Selected Topics in Cognitive Science

Spring Semester 2013

Tentative Class Schedule and Reading List

LANGUAGE, MUSIC AND COGNITION

WEEK 1. Jan. 8. PITCH

Required reading:

Patel, chapter 1, Introduction

Patel, chapter 2, sections on pitch. Lecture notes

Recommended reading.

Did Humans invent Music? ScienceNow debate between Gary Marcus and Geoffrey Miller. April 2012. NY Times article on Marcus.

Levitin, Daniel. 2006. This is Your Brain on Music. Penguin

Sacks, Oliver. 2007. Musicophilia. Vintage Canada.

Sacks, Oliver. 2006. The power of music. Brain 129. 2528-2532.

Marcus, Gary. 2012. Guitar Zero: The Science of Becoming Musical at Any Age. Penguin.

Recommended listening:

Scales, timbre, variation

Classical music history

WEEK 2: Jan. 15. TIMBRE

NOTE: First critical review is coming due on Jan. 29.

Required reading:

Extra slides on pitch. Lecture notes.

Patel, chapter 2, sections on timbre. Lecture notes.

Praat: Doing Phonetics by Computer

Additional reading: Using techniques from genetics to investigate historical linguistics.

1. NYTimes article on the original language being in Africa, and the correlation between number of phonemes and distance from geographical source. April 14, 2011. p. A1, Nicholas Wade. Phonetic clues hint that language is African born.

Here is a link to the original Science article.

2. Here is an open source article that talks about the work of Dedieu & Ladd 2007, which links languages with and without tone to genetics and genetic history. Here is a link to the original article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

3. A year and a half ago, I became very interested in the human trek out of Africa and had my DNA analyzed by the Genographic Project of the National Geographic Society. The story of my ancestors is most detailed in the Y-chromosome DNA analysis of my maternal uncle, which details the history of my mother’s father’s ancestors. This line ended up in Norway and then came to the U.S. in the 19^th century. You might be interested in reading my ancient history from the Genographic Project, which is typical of Europeans, and which you can find here. I also had my own DNA tested for the maternal line mitochondrial DNA analysis, but the results were not as detailed. Here is a TED video by Spencer Wells from a few years ago, who is the scientific leader of the Genographic Project.

WEEK 3: Jan. 22: TIMBRE & RHYTHM

Required Reading. Background for the evolution of language (and music).

1. Noam Chomsky. 2012. Interview 1. The Science of Language: Interviews with James McGilvray. Cambridge University Press. To be emailed to students.

2. Stephen C. Levinson. 2012. The Original Sin of Cognitive Science. Topics in Cognitive 4: 396-403.

Required reading:

Patel, chapter 2, section 2.4. Sound Category Learning as a Key Link . Lecture notes.

Patel, chapter 3, section 3.1-3.2. Rhythm in Music. Lecture notes.

Additional reading and listening for sound category learning as a key link.

Zatorre, Belin & Penhune. 2002. Structure and function of auditory cortex: music and speech. Trends in Cognitive Science 6(1). 37-46.

Hickok & Poeppel blog: Talking Brains, On the Dual Stream model of speech/language processing.

Hickok & Poeppel. 2007. The cortical organization of speech processing. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 8. 393-402.

Patricia Kuhl TED talk. Good discussion of babies’ statistical learning of /r/-/l/ contrasts in English versus Japanese.

Additional reading and listening for Rhythm.

Rhythm.

A music cognition blog by Henkjan Honing:

Evidence for rhythm as a learned sound category

Here is a TedxAmsterdam talk: Nov. 26, 2011. Message: What makes us musical animals is relative pitch and beat induction.

Lerdahl, Fred and Ray Jackendoff 1983/1996. A Generative Theory of Tonal Music.

WEEK 4: Jan. 29: RHYTHM

First critical review due.

Guest: Heather Sandison: Flamenco music and rhythms

Background video.

Here is the “sad” song that we heard at the end of Heather’s visit. It’s quite moving. How do we feel this song as “sad” when we feel nothing but pleasure listening to it? Question for the Semantics session in four weeks.

Required reading:

Patel, chapter 3, section 3.3. Rhythm in Speech. Lecture notes.

Patel, chapter 3, Rhythm. 3.5 Nonperiodic Aspects of Rhythm as Key Link. Lecture notes.

Additional reading and listening:

Here is the paper by Ramus et al.1999 in Cognition on rhythmic differences between languages, with some references indicating that it is not based on isochrony.

Here is the paper by Low, Grabe and Nolan 2000 that introduces the nPVI and also gives references arguing against isochrony in speech.

Here’s a video of Patel talking in 2006. Quite a lot about musical grammar (syntax) in the first half of the talk and about rhythm in the second half of the talk. And some fantastic video of a parrot singing the Queen of the Night aria from Mozart’s Magic Flute. It’s a long (50 minute) video.

A stress-timed musical piece? Sir Edward Elgar – Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1.

A syllable-timed musical piece? Claude Debussy – Clair de Lune.

WEEK 5: Feb. 4: MELODY

Required Reading:

Intonation: Slides

Patel, Chapter 4, Musical Melody: Slides

Recommended listening:

Melody

The mysterious melody and other musical illusions

WEEK 6: Feb. 18: MELODY (cont.), SYNTAX

Required Reading:
Melody in Language and Music: Key Link. Slides

The Syntax of Birdsong: Slides. Reading.

Bird Brains (Nova –Science Now). 13 minute video. 2010. [We will watch this video in class]

Syntax in Music: Slides