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Research Article: The Association between Music and Language in Children: A State-of-the-Art Review

Date Published: 2023-04-28

Abstract:
Music and language are two complex systems that specifically characterize the human communication toolkit. There has been a heated debate in the literature on whether music was an evolutionary precursor to language or a byproduct of cognitive faculties that developed to support language. The present review of existing literature about the relationship between music and language highlights that music plays a critical role in language development in early life. Our findings revealed that musical properties, such as rhythm and melody, could affect language acquisition in semantic processing and grammar, including syntactic aspects and phonological awareness. Overall, the results of the current review shed further light on the complex mechanisms involving the music-language link, highlighting that music plays a central role in the comprehension of language development from the early stages of life.

Introduction:
Due to their similarities, the music-language link has received particular consideration among infants and preschoolers [1]. Indeed, music and language are two hierarchical systems [2] in which smaller and separate units (e.g., phonemes and notes) are combined into higher-order structures by specific rules (e.g., words, sentences, and musical compositions). Both systems are characterized by sequences of melodic and rhythmic patterns, relying on melody and rhythm in music and prosody in language [1]. According to…

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