Author : Henkjan Honing
Publisher : Amsterdam University Press
ISBN 13 : 9056296892
Total Pages : 25 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (562 download)
Book Synopsis The Illiterate Listener by : Henkjan Honing
Download or read book The Illiterate Listener written by Henkjan Honing and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We have known for some time that babies possess a keen perceptual sensitivity for the melodic, rhythmic and dynamic aspects of speech and music: aspects that linguists are inclined to categorize under the term ‘prosody’, but which are in fact the building blocks of music. Only much later in a child’s development does he make use of this ‘musical prosody’, for instance in delineating and subsequently recognizing word boundaries. In this essay Henkjan Honing makes a case for ‘illiterate listening’, the human ability to discern, interpret and appreciate musical nuances already from day one, long before a single word has been uttered, let alone conceived. It is the preverbal and preliterate stage that is dominated by musical listening. See also the download version.