How do we detect the meaning of music? We can gain some insight by looking at an unlikely source, sign language, concludes a linguistic analysis.

Philippe Schlenker:

“Musicians and music lovers know intuitively that music can convey information about an extra-musical reality. Music does this through abstract musical animations reminiscent of iconic, or picture-like, meaning components that are common in sign language, but rare in spoken language.”

Sign Language Music

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