Special Sessions

Musical power: The effect of musicality on prosodic learning

Organizers:

Aoju Chen (Utrecht University)

Jianjing Kuang (University of Pennsylvania)

Musicality, an individual’s cognitive capability for music shaped by both innate aptitude or musical training, has been shown to have a positive effect on various aspects of language development. However, research is still scant on the effect of musicality on prosodic development in spite of the parallels between musical structure and prosodic structure and the known benefits of musicality in detecting subtle changes in pitch and timing. In this special session we aim to bring together researchers from different disciplines to shed light on the strengths and possible limits of musical aptitude or training regarding prosodic development. We invite submissions addressing the influence of different types of musical training (e.g., vocal vs. instrumental) and different aspects of musicality (e.g. melody vs. rhythm) on different areas of prosodic development (e.g., lexical tones, focus marking), and the effect of age-related factors (e.g., age of music training, stages of prosodic development). Submissions on related topics are also welcome.