28.03.23 - Kathleen Wermke

At a very early stage of language evolution, our hominin ancestors "invented" an acoustic communication system that eventually led to the development of spoken language. This process involved the challenge of expressing a complex social and natural environment (a multidimensional variety) in a linear phonatory phrasing (a one-dimensional sound stream). In baby sounds, remarkable traces of this phrasing process are found in the early unfolding of melodic contours as part of an innate program. This unfolding process seems to be relatively independent of the surrounding language, but from the beginning, it also reflects the "interpretation" of the "musical" elements of the mother tongue perceived intrauterine - Swedish newborns cry more melodically than German ones, but with as much variation as newborns with tonal mother tongues. The lecture demonstrates the unfolding process in image and sound.