<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div><div>On Apr 3, 2009, at 7:24 PM, Dmitri Tymoczko wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">I'll just report that every psychologist, linguist, and evolutionary biologist I've talked to about this issue has told me that they find this suggestion implausible.</div> </blockquote><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">OK, Dmitri. If you base your arguments on consulting your linguist and biologist acquaintances—rather than on considering what actually takes place in music, or considering what might make music different from language in this respect—there may indeed not be sufficient methodological common ground for fruitful discussion.</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I didn't mean to offend; the question is whether it is plausible that humans have a much greater capacity to perceive recursion in the musical domain than in the linguistic domain. This really is a scientific question -- getting input from professional scientists (who study things like the limits of recursive perception in language) strikes me as a responsible thing to do. </div></div></blockquote><br></div><div>Hi Dmitri,</div><div><br></div><div>I agree that this is ultimately a scientific question that should be addressed in the framework of cognitive psychology. One thing to keep in mind is that the notion of "capacity" cannot be simply quantified, and there are active debates in psychology circles about this issue. However, it is generally agreed that this capacity depends on the specific type of mental coding involved, and cannot be simply defined in terms of the symbolic content of the stimulus at the surface level.</div><div><br></div><div>Our psychologist colleagues who study other domains have developed their expertise for mental codings different from the ones relevant for music (although I agree there may be some commonalities). As a result, these colleagues may not have accurate estimates on the limits of music information processing, at least not at the level of detail that we should be engaging in our music conversations. Other disciplines can offer useful methodological models, and often help us in formulating our hypotheses. But the burden of answering musical questions ultimately falls on us, and should be pursued with empirical research specifically designed for that purpose.</div><div><br></div><div>Best,</div><div>Panos</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; ">% ===================================================</span></font></div><div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; ">% Panayotis Mavromatis</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; ">% Music Theory Director, Music and Performing Arts</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; ">% The Steinhardt School, New York University</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; ">% 35 West 4th Street, Room 777</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; ">% New York, NY 10012</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; ">% Phone: (212) 998-5287</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; ">% <a href="http://theory.smusic.nyu.edu/pm">http://theory.smusic.nyu.edu/pm</a></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; ">% ===================================================</span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; "><br></span></font></div></div></div><div><br></div></div></body></html>