Yoad Winter
Utrecht University

A hallmark of human language is its use for communicating complex symbolic representations of reality. This propositional nature of linguistic communication distinguishes it from other communicative modalities like gesturing and musical expression. Another central characteristic of human language is the way it organizes perceptually discrete elements into hierarchical structures. Much work in cognitive science has assumed that this structural organization of language is determined by its use for propositional communication. This hypothesis expects musical structures, which are lacking in precise propositional content, to be clearly distinguished from linguistic structures. However, many works in Musicology, Linguistics and Neuroscience have pointed out structural similarities between language and music. Here we show that language-like constructions in Senegalese drumming may systematically correspond to spoken language expressions, while being experienced by hearers as mainly musical expressions. We demonstrate speech-like grammar rules in the musical and poetic traditions of the Senegambian *sabar* drum, and show that they are partly independent of the rules in languages spoken by players.

Grammar in this distinct "musical language" family, called Sabar, enables players to creatively and consistently encode spoken utterances in rhythms without acoustically mimicking speech as in other `drum languages’. At the same time, in normal use hearers do not interpret the propositions associated with Sabar rhythms. These findings disagree with the common assumption that grammar rules must rely on propositional communication between speaker and hearer. We hypothesize that rhythms carrying propositional meanings may create a musical or rhetoric affect in the hearer without interpretation of the propositional content, and show that this hypothesis is consistent with previous proposals about structural and cognitive similarities between language and music.

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On sabar traditions:
Patricia Tang. Masters of the Sabar: Wolof Griot Percussionists of Senegal. Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 2007.

On African drum Languages:
- France Cloarec-Heiss. From natural language to drum language: an economical encoding procedure in Banda-Linda (Central African Republic). In Catherine Fuchs and Stèphane Robert, editors, Language Diversity and Cognitive Representations, pages 145-157. John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 1999.
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- Joseph Hanson Kwabena Nketia. Drumming in Akan Communities of Ghana. Thomas Nelson and sons, Edinbourgh, 1963.
- Amanda Villepastour. Ancient Text Messages of the Yorùbá Bàtá Drum: Cracking the Code. Ashgate Publishing Limited, Surrey, England, 2010.