ABSTRACT
The relationship between music and language has been considered across several historical eras but their parallel study became systematic only in recent decades. The perception of emotional states, as well as isolated acoustic features, such as pitch, has received significant attention. We propose that the ability of the listener to appreciate aesthetic prosodic elements arising from individual differences in verbal and musical expressiveness needs to be considered as an integral part of one’s auditory perceptual experience. To this end, we present evidence of the perceptual distinction between these holistic aesthetic qualities and other prosodic features.
