Multilevel Grounding

** MULTILEVEL GROUNDING** develops a new approach to musical meaning - Multilevel-Grounded Semantics, addressing the well-known paradox that music seems full of meaning yet there is little consensus among listeners on what exactly it is that this meaning communicates.

Multilevel Grounding develops a new approach to musical meaning-Multilevel-Grounded Semantics, addressing the well- known paradox that music seems full of meaning yet there is little consensus among listeners on what exactly it is that this meaning communicates. Offering a balance between formalist and referentialist approaches, Antovi c 's theory proposes that musical signifi cation emerges from constant cross- space mappings between the musical structure and the listener's experience. The process is crucially constrained by several hierarchical and partly recursive levels of grounding: perceptual, schematically embodied, affective, conceptual, culturally elaborated, and individual. These levels are responsible for a range of phenomena that increase in complexity, from involuntary bodily responses to the manipulation of musical expectancies over cross- modal inferences relating the musical parameters to spatial domains to full- fl edged experiential narratives accompanying the music, as in opera or fi lm scoring. The book combines cutting edge insights from the fi elds of philosophy of mind, cognitive science, semiotics, linguistics, and music cognition, using a broad range of examples from traditional, classical, and popular world musics, into a theoretical system that shows how the focus on the grounding problem may help researchers convincingly resolve the apparent ungraspability of musical semantics.

Autorentext

Mihailo Antovi is Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy, and Head Researcher at the Centre for Cognitive Sciences, University of Ni , Serbia. He has published extensively in the areas of cognitive linguistics, semantics, semiotics, and music cognition, including three books in Serbian and numerous articles in international journals and edited volumes. He is the recipient of Fulbright and Humboldt Fellowships.

Klappentext

Multilevel Grounding develops a new approach to musical meaning-Multilevel-Grounded Semantics, addressing the well- known paradox that music seems full of meaning yet there is little consensus among listeners on what exactly it is that this meaning communicates. Offering a balance between formalist and referentialist approaches, Antovi 's theory proposes that musical signifi cation emerges from constant cross- space mappings between the musical structure and the listener's experience. The process is crucially constrained by several hierarchical and partly recursive levels of grounding: perceptual, schematically embodied, affective, conceptual, culturally elaborated, and individual. These levels are responsible for a range of phenomena that increase in complexity, from involuntary bodily responses to the manipulation of musical expectancies over cross- modal inferences relating the musical parameters to spatial domains to full- fl edged experiential narratives accompanying the music, as in opera or fi lm scoring. The book combines cutting edge insights from the fi elds of philosophy of mind, cognitive science, semiotics, linguistics, and music cognition, using a broad range of examples from traditional, classical, and popular world musics, into a theoretical system that shows how the focus on the grounding problem may help researchers convincingly resolve the apparent ungraspability of musical semantics.

Zusammenfassung
MULTILEVEL GROUNDING develops a new approach to musical meaning - Multilevel-Grounded Semantics, addressing the well-known paradox that music seems full of meaning yet there is little consensus among listeners on what exactly it is that this meaning communicates.

Inhalt

1. Defining the problem
2. The Basics
3. Level 1: Physiological Constraints
4. Level 2: Embodiment
5. Level 3: Connotation
6. Level 4: Conceptual Musical Meaning
7. Level 5: Elaborated Cultural Musical Meaning
8. Level 6: Individual Musical Meaning
9. Integration
10. Implications and Extensions