Subject: Re: They sometimes behave so strangely From: "James W. Beauchamp" <jwbeauch@xxxxxxxx> Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2006 09:19:48 -0600 List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>Branka said that >Ole said: >>There seems to be a switch between two perceptual modes in our cognition, a >>music mode and a language mode, prompting us to ask: How can we explain this >>switch? and What triggers it? Is it a purely cultural phenomenon, as some >>writers have suggested, or does it rest on biological properties as well? But in singing we have to have both modes operating simultaneously in order to understand both the music and verbal information. Granted that verbal intelligibility increases as the singing becomes more "speech- like". E.g., Tony Bennett is easier to understand than the Queen of the Night. Jim