Transitional zones of meaning and semantics in music and language: Reply to comments on “Towards a neural basis of processing musical semantics”

✍ Scribed by Stefan Koelsch

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 90 KB
• Volume: 8
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1571-0645
• DOI: 10.1016/j.plrev.2011.05.011

✦ Synopsis

I thank all commentators for their contribution to this discussion on musical semantics, and I am grateful for their insightful, resourceful, and thought-provoking comments. Just reading the titles of their comments illustrates how interesting and multifarious this field is. While reading the comments, it became clear to me that, with certain specifications and clarifications, the conceptual framework of musical meaning and musical semantics provided in my article is useful and valid. It also becomes clear that, while there are differences in the semantic organization of music and language, there is agreement on the view that there is also huge overlap with regard to the cognitive processes, and the neural operations, underlying processing of meaning information in music and language. Here, I will respond to a few issues that appeared across several comments, rather than responding separately to each commentator.