Syntax and music for interaction: ‘Music-taking-predicate’ constructions in Hebrew musician-to-musician discourse**This article received the Best Student Submission Award for the 18th International Pragmatics Conference, Brussels, 9 July to 14 July 2023.
Multimodal constructions which intertwine language and music are characteristic of the discourse of creative encounters among musicians. This interactional linguistic study reports on one such construction: the ‘music-taking-predicate’ (MTP) construction. MTP constructions consist of a projective verbal predicate, and a stretch of sung or played musical expression following it. Based on naturalistic video data of Hebrew-speaking musicians in rehearsals and production sessions, I show that instances of this construction emerge as formulae for the achievement of several interactional tasks integral to the process of joint music making.
Publication history
Table of contents
- Abstract
- Keywords
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Background
- 3.Data and methods
- 4.Designing MTP constructions
- 5Syntax and music for interaction
- 6.Discussion
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Background
- 3.Data and methods
- 4.Designing MTP constructions
- 5Syntax and music for interaction
- 6.Discussion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
- Funding
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
- References
- Address for correspondence
- Biographical notes
1.Introduction
When managing conversational exchanges in any setting, participants rarely rely on only one modality in order to get interactional work done. Participants do things using a myriad of linguistic, embodied, visual, and environmental resources; and they do so in an integrative, intertwined manner. Recent studies in interactional linguistics (IL) and multimodal conversation analysis reveal that depending on an activity’s specific ecology, potentially every detail of an encounter can be turned into a resource for social interaction (Mondada 2016Mondada, Lorenza 2016 “Challenges of Multimodality: Language and the Body in Social Interaction.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 20 (3): 336–366. , 338).
This study reports on a syntactic construction intertwining two distinct, yet interrelated modalities: language and music. The construction is intimately tied to the setting in which it is found: the discourse of creative encounters among musicians. I term it the ‘music-taking-predicate’ construction, or MTP construction, as a play on ‘complement-taking-predicate’ (CTP) constructions (Thompson 2002Thompson, Sandra A. 2002 “ ‘Object Complements’ and Conversation: Towards a Realistic Account.” Studies in Language 26 (1): 125–164. ). It is made recognizable as such due to its two-fragment structure, consisting of a finite or infinitive verbal predicate, and a musical demonstration (a brief, depictive burst of musical behavior) following it.
Consider the following example, taken from a video corpus of Hebrew-speaking musicians in rehearsals and production sessions. In it, Emma, a singer-songwriter, shares with her producer, Sean, her thoughts regarding a song’s arrangement.11.Clicking on the icon to the left of an excerpt’s title will lead to its corresponding (subtitled) video, which can be viewed online.
Emma needs to somehow share with Sean the musical idea she has in mind, and Sean needs to let her know he has understood her properly in order to musically produce and arrange it. These goals are reached by various means: a spatial metaphor (‘there was a very big gap between the verse and chorus’), a technical term (wanim ‘ones’), a bit of singing (tikitata), and finally, two instances of the MTP construction (12–13, “there was all of the (♫)”, 21–22 “I played there (♫)”).
In the first instance, the bit of music Emma produces functions as the subject complement of predicate of existence haya ‘was’, and the construction as a whole is used to orient Sean to a specific element of the song (the verse). In the second instance, the bit of music functions as the direct object complement of predicate of musical performance niganti ‘I played’, and the construction as a whole is used to explain Emma’s choice of playing style. Sean, in response to both instances, displays understanding of Emma’s actions. He affirms both via affirmative marker ken ‘yeah’ (14, 25), and offers verbal reformulations of what Emma has played on her guitar (15, dinamiyut hazoti ‘this dynamicity’, 26, wanim ‘ones’).
A picture emerges of the MTP construction as a construction that participants readily recognize and act upon in interaction, as well as a construction that is useful for forming actions integral to the process of music making. The following sections will be dedicated to filling in this picture. In Section 2 I present some theoretical background surrounding multimodal constructions. In Section 4 I describe how participants design this construction. In Section 5 I give an account of three of its recurring conversational functions. In Section 6 is a discussion and conclusion of the findings.
2.Background
Multimodal constructions the likes of Hebrew MTP constructions, which intertwine verbal descriptive behavior and embodied depictive behavior, are seemingly exotic, but are in fact common in various communicative contexts and across languages. Notable is Keevallik’s (2013 2013 “The Interdependence of Bodily Demonstrations and Clausal Syntax.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 46 (1): 1–21. , 2015 2015 “Coordinating the Temporalities of Talk and Dance.” In Temporality in Interaction, ed. by Arnulf Deppermann, and Susanne Günthner, 309–336. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.) work, which shows how in the context of dance classes, bodily demonstrations can be integrated into the syntax of utterances in English, Swedish and Estonian. Ladewig (2014)Ladewig, Silva H. 2014 “Creating Multimodal Utterances: The Linear Integration of Gestures into Speech.” In Body-Language-Communication: An International Handbook on Multimodality in Human Interaction, ed. by Cornelia Müller, Alan Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Silva H. Ladewig, David McNeill, and Jana Bressem, 1662–1677. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. shows similar patterns regarding gestures in German discourse. Moreover, researchers of the discourse among musicians in English, German and Italian have shown that musical demonstrations are prone to be integrated into utterances in the contexts of rehearsing and teaching music (Weeks 1996Weeks, Peter 1996 “A Rehearsal of a Beethoven Passage: An Analysis of Correction Talk.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 29: 247–290. ; Tolins 2013Tolins, Jackson 2013 “Assessment and Direction through Nonlexical Vocalizations in Music Instruction.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 46 (1): 47–64. ; Hsu et al. 2021Hsu, Hui-Chieh, Geert Brône, and Kurt Feyaerts 2021 “In Other Gestures: Multimodal Iteration in Cello Master Classes.” Linguistics Vanguard 7 (4): 2020086. ; Messner 2022Messner, Monika 2022 ““Abbiamo detto con te non che tu hai ta da di da dim (Moves Right Hand on the Beat)” – The Interplay of Semiotic Modes in Chamber Music Lessons under a Multimodal and Interactional Perspective.” Frontiers in Communication 7: 877184. ).
When integrated into verbal utterances, embodiments and depictions tend to inhabit certain syntactic and temporal slots. Embodiments and depictions tend to function as the complements of light verbs (e.g, ‘do’) as well as activity-specific verbs (e.g, ‘play’). More systematically, embodiments and depictions tend to appear in clause-final position, following projective, incomplete syntax. The general pattern found in multimodal constructions is, in Keevallik’s (2013) 2013 “The Interdependence of Bodily Demonstrations and Clausal Syntax.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 46 (1): 1–21. words: “language first, embodiment later”.
MTP constructions, as their name suggests, are much akin to ‘complement-taking-predicate’ (CTP) constructions. That is, constructions which feature a verb that takes a sentence-like complement as its object or subject (Noonan 1985Noonan, Michael 1985 “Complementation.” In Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Vol 2: Complex Constructions, ed. by Timothy Shopen, 42–140. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press., 53; Thompson 2002Thompson, Sandra A. 2002 “ ‘Object Complements’ and Conversation: Towards a Realistic Account.” Studies in Language 26 (1): 125–164. , 128). It is only that in the case of MTP constructions, the ‘sentence-like complement’ is a musical demonstration, that can function as an object, subject, or an adverbial element.
Traditionally, Hebrew CTP constructions have been analyzed as bi-clausal combinations of matrix verbs and their subordinated complements (Yoeli 1964Yoeli, Mordechai 1964 Taxbir ˈIvri (‘Hebrew Syntax’). Tel Aviv: Yesodot.). Usage-based and interaction-focused analyses of CTP constructions, most notably by Thompson (2002)Thompson, Sandra A. 2002 “ ‘Object Complements’ and Conversation: Towards a Realistic Account.” Studies in Language 26 (1): 125–164. , claim that CTP constructions are best conceptualized not as complex constructions, but as combinations of formulaic CTP-phrases, used to introduce the speaker’s stance and modify the upcoming clause, and stretches of talk referring to the issue or claim at hand. These studies also stress the importance of the CTP as a device for projecting upcoming actions (Keevallik 2011Keevallik, Leelo 2011 “Interrogative ‘Complements’ and Question Design in Estonian.” In Subordination in Conversation: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective, ed. by Ritva Laury, and Ryoko Suzuki, 37–68. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ). MTP constructions indeed lend themselves to be explained via similar functional and interactional parameters. As will be shown in Section 4, the construction features quite fixed lexical fragments, and carries much projective force.
3.Data and methods
The data is taken from a corpus I have been compiling of video recordings featuring Israeli rock musicians in rehearsals and production sessions. The corpus currently spans eleven hours and twenty minutes. It features twenty-one participants, belonging to six distinct musical projects. All have given their formal consent to scientific usage of the data.
I have identified constructions in the corpus as MTP constructions if they belonged to the syntagmatic environment to be presented in Section 4.1. I have extracted from the corpus a total of seventy-two MTP constructions. Excerpts were transcribed according to the conventions of the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English (Du Bois et al. 1992Du Bois, John W., Sussana Cumming, Stephan Schuetze-Coburn, and Danae Paolino 1992 Discourse Transcription. Santa Barbara: Department of Linguistics, University of California, Santa Barbara.), and prosodic analysis was done using PRAAT. Further analysis is conversation analytic and ethnomethodological in nature (see, for example, Schegloff 2007Schegloff, Emanuel A. 2007 Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ).
4.Designing MTP constructions
Forming an MTP construction is a multimodal effort, involving the lamination of lexicon, the voice, the body, and the material environment. In this section I present three salient resources which are recurrently, and orderly, deployed by participants in the data when forming MTP constructions: lexico-semantics, prosody, and embodied conduct.
4.1Lexico-semantic design
MTP constructions belong to the following syntagmatic environment (Figure 1), segmented into two parts based on its recurring prosodic design (to be elaborated on in Section 4.2).
Within the frame this scheme provides, some slots present more variety in their lexico-semantics, while some seem to have more fixed lexico-semantics. The slot of the musical demonstration, Part B, lacks lexico-semantics altogether. While it is in the nature of language to refer to things outside of itself, music is rather limited in its ability to refer to non-musical phenomena (Bright 1963Bright, William 1963 “Language and Music: Areas for Cooperation.” Ethnomusicology 7 (1): 26–32. , 29). The slot of the clause-initial NP, if present,22.It is not always present, as in Hebrew the subject of a verb can be expressed in the finite verbal form itself. is very fixed. In the data it is host only to pronominal forms referring to animate agents. Typically, they are used to refer to the author of the upcoming musical demonstration. There is no such systematicity is in the slot of the function word. It can be host to various modifiers, grammatical markers such as the accusative marker ˈet, cognitive discourse markers such as ˈeh ‘uhm’, or quotative markers such as kaze and keˈilu ‘like’.
Our interest is mostly in the predicate slot of part A, the MTP, realized as a finite or infinitive verbal form. The current data reveals twenty-two possible predicates that may fit into this slot. Table 1 shows the distribution of MTPs in the corpus, sorted according to frequency.
| MTP | N |
|---|---|
| ˈasa ‘do’ | 26 (36.11%) |
| haya ‘be’ | 20 (27.77%) |
| nigen ‘play (an instrument)’ | 3 (4.16%) |
| hosif ‘add’ | 2 (2.77%) |
| shama ‘hear’ | 2 (2.77%) |
| nixnas ‘enter’ | 2 (2.77%) |
| nihiya ‘become’ | 2 (2.77%) |
| hirgish ‘feel’ | 1 (1.38%) |
| lamad ‘learn’ | 1 (1.38%) |
| ˈahav ‘love’ | 1 (1.38%) |
| tafar ‘stitch up’ | 1 (1.38%) |
| shar ‘sing’ | 1 (1.38%) |
| hetsiˈa ‘suggest’ | 1 (1.38%) |
| tiken ‘fix’ | 1 (1.38%) |
| ratsa ‘want’ | 1 (1.38%) |
| ˈamar ‘say’ | 1 (1.38%) |
| ˈala ‘go up’ | 1 (1.38%) |
| histayem ‘be ended’ | 1 (1.38%) |
| yaxal ‘can’ | 1 (1.38%) |
| nigmar ‘be finished’ | 1 (1.38%) |
| hitkaven ‘mean’ | 1 (1.38%) |
| natan ‘give’ | 1 (1.38%) |
The predicate most often employed to introduce musical demonstrations in the data is the ‘light’ quotative predicate ˈasa ‘do’. ˈasa has been extensively described as one of the highly used predicates used to introduce verbal constructed dialogue in Hebrew, as well as paralinguistic actions, vocalizations, loanwords and ideophones (Polak-Yitzhaki 2017Polak-Yitzhaki, Hilla 2017 “Between Saying and Doing: The Verb ˈasa (‘Do’) and Other Verbs in Spoken Hebrew Discourse.” PhD diss. University of Haifa., 117, 141). Musical demonstrations fit easily into this paradigm of elements with “extra-systemic” properties, and depicting practices. The use of a predicate of manipulation as a quotative may be motivated by “the conduit metaphor” underlying human communication (Reddy 1979Reddy, Michael J. 1979 “The Conduit Metaphor: A Case of Frame Conflict in Our Language about Language.” In Metaphor and Thought, ed. by Andrew Ortony, 284–310. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.), according to which symbolic units are physical objects that can be handled (Streeck 2021Streeck, Jürgen 2021 “The Emancipation of Gestures.” Interactional Linguistics 1 (1): 90–122. , 101). The fact that in the minds of speakers, music is also viewed as an object that can be “done” and manipulated, is revealing.
The second most often employed MTP is the predicate of existence haya ‘be’. This is unsurprising, as in Hebrew the verb haya is also often used as part of quotative constructions (akin to English ‘be-like’ constructions) (Blythe et al. 1990Blythe, Carl Jr., Sigrid Recktenwald, and Jenny Wang 1990 “ ‘I’m Like ‘Say What?!’: A New Quotative.” American Speech 65: 215–227. ; Maschler 2001Maschler, Yael 2001 “ veke’ilu haragláyim sh’xa nitka’ot bifním kaze (‘And Like Your Feet Get Stuck Inside Like’): Hebrew kaze (‘like’), ke’ilu (‘like’), and the Decline of Israeli dugri (‘direct’) Speech.” Discourse Studies 3 (3): 295–326. ).
Rather more notable are the three instances of the predicate of musical performance nigen ‘play (an instrument)’. It seems reasonable that in the context of discourse among musicians, where talking about music and playing instruments are focal activities, nigen may emerge as a ‘musical quotative’ of sorts. Other musical settings have shown a similar pattern. For instance, in English-speaking orchestra rehearsals the predicate play was found introducing music alongside the more general quotative go (Weeks 1996Weeks, Peter 1996 “A Rehearsal of a Beethoven Passage: An Analysis of Correction Talk.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 29: 247–290. ). These humble three occurrences give us some insight into the intimate relationship between lexicon and usage.
For the most part, the lexico-semantics of the MTP in the MTP construction are rather fixed. The predicate tends to be realized as a predicate of doing, being, and, marginally, playing. MTP constructions are systematically host to these three lexical formulae, in a way that helps make the construction recognizable as it emerges.
4.2Prosodic design
Data shows that when uttering MTP constructions, participants tend to follow two basic prosodic principles. The first has to do with the segmentation of the construction into intonation units (Chafe 1994Chafe, Wallace 1994 Discourse, Consciousness, and Time: The Flow and Displacement of Conscious Experience in Speaking and Writing. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.). The syntagma of the MTP construction, as represented in Section 4.1, is segmented into two prosodic units. The first contains the predicate (as well as the possible NPs and function words accompanying it), and the second contains the musical demonstration. A minimal pause tends to separate the two units. The second prosodic principle has to do with the qualities of the final syllable of part A. In the data, this final syllable is always delivered with a continuing, “more to come” boundary tone.
Consider how these two prosodic principles come into play in the following example. It is taken from a production session between the three members of disco band “Jacquard”. In it, the lead singer (Yoav) and the bass player (Eran) comment on an idea the band’s drummer (Itay) has just suggested: adding a soft vocal part upon the foundation of a song’s hard-hitting, “angular” beat.
There are two MTP constructions in this excerpt. One is uttered by Yoav in lines 7 and 9–10 (‘we can’t stay on the super tight and do (♫)’). The second is uttered by Eran in lines 17–19 (‘and on this there is (♫)’). In both instances, the construction is distributed across two separate intonation units: one carrying the predicate (9, laˈasot ‘do’, 18, yesh ‘there is’), and following it a unit host to a sung musical demonstration. In both instances an average pause separates the two units. Moreover, the final syllable of part A in both instances (sot and yesh) is delivered with continuing prosody, as can be seen by the small rise in pitch level in Figure 2 and Figure 3.
The prosodic packaging of the MTP constructions makes functional sense. Cognitively, the segmentation of the construction into two prosodic units helps participants control information flow. In a discursive situation that demands of participants to activate two ideas – one being the action or state referred to by the predicate (doing, being), and one being a musical reality (here, the soft vocal part proposed by Itay) – this segmentation allows them to focus on, and direct attention to, one new idea at a time, as is cognitively preferable (Chafe 1994Chafe, Wallace 1994 Discourse, Consciousness, and Time: The Flow and Displacement of Conscious Experience in Speaking and Writing. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press., 108). Relatedly, the average pause separating parts A and B of the construction buys the participants cognitive time for the “shifting of mental gears” (Givon 2001Givon, Thomas 2001 Syntax: A Functional-Typological Introduction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins., 71–72) necessary for the switch between ideas and modalities. These prosodic characteristics are also interactionally useful. In particular, the prosodic design of part A of the construction does the job of strongly projecting the upcoming musical demonstration, as well as helping the participant hold the floor.
4.3Embodied behavior
The projection of musical demonstrations via syntax and prosody is often matched by the projective micro-actions that participants do with their bodies and instruments throughout part A of the construction. This can mean producing the onset of a gesture, as can be seen with the onset of Eran’s wiggling gesture, which accompanies his MTP construction in line 18 of Excerpt 2 (Figure 4). This can also mean putting one’s hands towards a musical instrument, as can be seen in Emma’s movement of her strumming hand towards her guitar, accompanying her MTP construction in line 21 of Excerpt 1 (Figure 5). Alternatively, part A of the construction is accompanied by some manipulation of the instrument, like turning the volume knob, or pressing a button with one’s foot. The body and instrument are both recruited in order to form the construction, and foreshadow and draw attention to the upcoming musical demonstration.
5Syntax and music for interaction
5.1Music making
Music making is an inherently social process. Most if not all recorded and live-performed music is, or is the result of, cooperative and interactive creative labour. The social players involved in this kind of labour vary greatly according to context. Music making may consist of the institutionalized relationships between conductors and orchestras, teachers and students, or audiences and performers. It may also consist of the negotiable, dynamic relationships between co-performers, co-writers, artists and musical producers, and artists and recording technicians. In order to make music, these players must engage in routine social actions. They must make suggestions regarding the musical product they are creating, ask questions about it, explain certain aspects of it, repair possible problems within it, make requests regarding it, and more.
These actions pose a challenge to participants. This is not only because participants must engage in them without rupturing the complex social fabric of cooperative creative labour; but also, because they must do so while orienting to an object (music) that doesn’t lend itself to being communicated about using the conventionalized modality of talk.
In this section I show how these challenges are met using the MTP construction, throughout a single episode of music making. In this episode, the MTP construction shines as a format used to achieve three actions crucial to the process of music making: repairing musical errors, making musical suggestions, and navigating musical structure.
5.2Music making with MTP constructions
5.2.1Introducing the “Freezers”
I base my argument on three extracts taken from a video documentation of a rehearsal by the band “Freezers”. The Freezers are a rock band consisting of five members: a vocalist and guitarist (Ari), a lead guitarist (Waleed), a bass player (Naor), a keyboard player also providing backing vocals (Alon), and a drummer (Dari). Although there are differences in ethnicity, gender, and musical authority between the members of the band, music making is conducted among them amicably, as a rather democratic process in which each member is invited to contribute ideas regarding the musical product.
The Freezers are primarily an “art rock” band, playing rock music drawing from postmodern, eclectic, and avant-garde approaches (Mcdonald 2013Mcdonald, Chris 2013 “Art Rock.” In Grove Music Online, ed. By Deane Root. Accessed 17/4/2023.). Improvisation, sonic experimentation, and loose song structures are characteristic of their style. This is a fact that plays part in shaping the interactions happening between the members of the band in rehearsal. Much of their interactions are about trying to put these “untamed” elements in order, and creating a musical product that can be jointly performed, repeatedly, with all members knowing what they must do at any given moment.
The following extracts take part right after the band has finished rehearsing such an “untamed” piece of music – a long song entitled “Plastic Drastic”.
5.2.2Repairing musical errors
“Plastic Drastic”’s ending can be conceptualized as featuring four parts. Consider Figure 6:
The first part is a section the band members dub haˈaliya ‘the ascent’. As part of it, the band plays three chords (G, Bb and C) in an increasingly loud manner, with Dari’s drums helping build the crescendo. The third is a section I dub the “war chant” section, in which the band loudly plays the same chord progression, but in a climactic, blustering fashion. The most expressive element of the “war chant” is Dari’s drum part, consisting of repeating drum rolls, reminiscent of military drums. Following this climax is the fourth part, featuring a gradual dissolvement of all the instruments into silence as they play a conclusive chord progression. Linking between “the ascent” and the “war chant” is a brief drum transition.
In the iteration of the song that was played right before this extract, Dari did not play the repeating drum rolls of the “war chant” section. Consider how the band members address this mishap as they finish playing:
Using the discourse marker tov ‘well’ (1), Ari transitions the group from the joint playing of the musical piece, to a discussion surrounding it. The discussion begins with an evaluation of the performance: ‘now we know what’s going on there, but it, it still sounds a bit messy” (2, 4–5). As Ari utters this evaluation, in line 3 Naor tries to take the floor via an elongated negation marker, expressing some negative stance towards the previous discourse. Ari then continues the discussion with the beginning of an assessment: ‘we need to figure out how to uhm’ (6). However, this assessment is cut off as Naor re-takes the floor, turns to Dari and poses a question to her and to the group: ‘don’t we go into the (♫)’ (7–11).
This utterance is designed with all the formal properties of an MTP construction. It features in its part A the predicate of movement nixnasim ‘enter.prs.1mpl’ and its dependent preposition la ‘to.def’, projective prosody, and projective embodied behavior (the positioning of the hands in a drumming position, foreshadowing that a depictive drumming segment is to follow). Its part B features a sung musical demonstration functioning as an adverb (tu tu ka tu tu), depicting the repeating drum rolls Dari should have played during the “war chant”.
The construction as a whole carries several functions. Firstly, it does the regulatory job of helping with floor management. Naor utilizes the strong projective force of its part A as a means to take the floor from the current speaker (Ari). This is made evident by Ari halting his turn the moment Naor starts producing the construction (6–7). The construction thus doesn’t only present a musical demonstration into discourse, it also presents it as something worthwhile listening to; as something the band will find worthwhile discussing.
More focally, the construction is used as a format to other-initiate repair for a problem of expectation. While the construction is designed as a negative interrogative, it hardly does the job of seeking information. Instead, it helps Naor categorize the previous iteration of the song as a trouble source, and convey that it was somehow in contradiction with his own knowledge or expectations regarding the song’s structure (cf. Heritage’s 2002Heritage, John 2002 “The Limits of Questioning: Negative Interrogatives and Hostile Question Content.” Journal of Pragmatics 34: 1427–1446. discussion of negative interrogatives in news interviews). Through it, Naor conveys that he expected Dari to play the repeating drum rolls, and that it is a matter of common knowledge between the members of the band. The following turns verify that this has been an attempt at repair. Lines 12–15 see both Alon and Dari acknowledging that ‘we really didn’t do that’ (13) and that ‘oh, right, there’s also that’ (14–15), thus self-repairing and owning up to the error made.
This extract shows that the MTP construction is readily recognized as an attention-grabbing format for repairing a specific musical problem. It is especially efficient as such, since the object of repair is alluded to not verbally, but musically. Part B of the construction (Naor’s vocalization tu tu ka tu ku) is immediately recognized by the participants as depicting the repeating drum rolls of the “war chant”, allowing them to quickly locate the problem regarding it, and acknowledge it. Activating this specific musical referent in the recipient’s minds would have taken much more linguistic material, and would have been much less efficient, had Naor used a verbal formulation instead.
5.2.3Making musical suggestions
The discussion regarding the song’s ending continues. This time, its object is a different element: the short drum transition Dari plays right before entering the “war chant” section:
In lines 16–21, Naor poses another issue for the band to solve. He asserts the band needs to take a moment to figure out what to do as Dari plays the “middle bit” drum transition leading up to the “war chant” section. He follows up this assertion with two interrogative utterances: ‘do we let her play by herself?’ and ‘do we do some (♫)’ (22–24). These are used by Naor not to seek information, but rather to suggest possible artistic choices for the band to make.
The format of Naor’s second suggestion is an MTP construction. Its part A (23) features the projective predicate of doing ˈosim ‘do.prs.1mpl’ and indefinite modifier ˈeize ‘some’, delivered with continuing prosody and projective embodied behavior (the putting of the hands to the bass guitar). Its part B (24) features a vocal musical demonstration (♫buwau♫) functioning as a direct object complement, accompanied by a swing of the bass guitar upwards, and depicting a burst of distorted sound.
Line 26 sees Ari agreeing with Naor via affirmative marker ken ‘yeah’, giving us evidence for its ascription as a suggestion. Naor, however, finds this agreement unsatisfactory, and as the following extract shows, the discussion continues.
5.2.4Navigating musical structure
All pieces of music are structured. They feature elements (notes, chords, rhythms, sections) that are placed next to each other and on top of each other in a manner that follows certain aesthetic principles. When rehearsing and performing music, musicians act according to its structure, dynamic as it may be. When deciding on what specific element to play, a musician must consider its structural context within a certain piece of music – that is, what happens before, after, and during it in the sound stream. It is through this consideration that the process of musical navigation is achieved.
In many contexts of music making, musical navigation is supported by the use of printed or digital musical scores, alleviating the constraints of memory and “acting as a joint focus for activity” (Duffy 2015Duffy, Sam 2015 “Shaping Musical Performance Through Conversation.” PhD diss. Queen Mary University of London., 189). The Freezers, however, do not have scores they can orient to as part of their rehearsals. This means that in order to make creative decisions, they must find other strategies by which to navigate the musical structure of their songs.
In the following extract is a continuation of the band’s discussion regarding the drum transition in “Plastic Drastic”.
After he has made some suggestions about what the band should do as Dari plays the transition in the previous extract, and given Ari’s approval, in lines 27–28 Naor turns to Ari with the question ‘in this transition, what do we do?’. Through this question he poses on Ari the responsibility of responding with a new musical suggestion the following turn. Ari, however, doesn’t provide such a musical suggestion right away.
He prefaces his turn with the disjunctive negation marker lo ‘no’ (29), hinting at a resistance to the type of response pursued by the preceding question (Hayashi and Kushida 2013Hayashi, Makoto, and Shuya Kushida 2013 “Responding with Resistance to Wh-questions in Japanese Talk-in-Interaction.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 46 (3): 231–255. , 252), and continues his turn not with a suggestion, but with the beginning of an assessment. Ari states: ‘I think that when it’ (30), projecting an expression of his personal knowledge surrounding the drum transition – an action which Naor categorizes as dispreffered via the use of elongated interrogative pronoun ma ‘what’ (31). Ari then continues his turn, in which he shares his knowledge surrounding the drum transition. He first states that while the drum transition is played, he “strums” (32). However, he quickly upgrades this rather general, purely verbal statement, to a more specific, multimodal one: ‘I do (♫)’ (33–34). This statement is designed as an MTP construction, in which a string of high notes played on the electric guitar functions as the direct object complement of predicate ˈose ‘do.prs.1msg’.
In lines 35–36, Alon contextualizes Ari’s previous assessment as a trouble source, and accuses him: ‘the question is not what you do, the question is what we do’. He thus holds Ari accountable for not providing an adequate answer to the question originally posed by Naor (‘in this transition, what do we do?’). The following turn, Ari clarifies his intentions and repairs his trouble source turn. First, a ‘no’-preface (37) is used by Ari to reject Alon’s categorization of his assessment as somehow inadequate. Then, the reformulating utterance ˈaz ˈani ˈomer ‘so I’m saying’ (38) is deployed in order to mark the beginning of an account. Ari’s account directly touches upon the concept of musical navigation, explaining that ‘according to what I am doing, we can think about what you are doing’ (39–40). Ari thus provides us with the pragmatic analysis of his MTP construction. He used it in order to navigate the group to a particular element of the song, so they could to make the artistic decision of what to play before, during, and after it.
6.Discussion
In this paper I reported on the forms and functions of a particular construction typical of the discourse of creative encounters among musicians: the MTP construction. MTP constructions are frames which – through their lexico-semantic, prosodic, and embodied design – allow musicians to smoothly and effectively intertwine the modalities of talk and musical expression. They are also recognizable formats for the formation of particular social actions. Apart from helping, through their strong projective force, with the routine interactional tasks of floor and turn management, crucial for any kind of multiparty communication; they also serve participants in completing tasks particular and integral to the process of joint music making: giving explanations regarding music, repairing problems within the musical process, making musical suggestions, and navigating musical structure.
MTPs teach us something about syntax. They show that the morpho-syntactic boundaries of ‘complex’ constructions featuring predicates and complements, such as CTP constructions, are not rigid. They can be stretched to host all sorts of embodied phenomena, including demonstrations of musical behavior. MTP constructions encourage us to see the distinct components of ‘complex’ constructions not as ‘syntactic’ phenomena as such, but rather as temporal slots, which participants can use to achieve social actions in a multimodal manner. MTP constructions thus shed a light for linguists on what exactly constitutes a ‘construction’. A construction, it seems, is the sedimented lamination of any type of behavior – embodied and musical behavior, alongside verbal behavior.
Finally, looking into MTP constructions has the potential of providing researchers with some new answers to a much-discussed, age-old question: “what’s the relationship between language and music?”. In the discourse of creative encounters among musicians, we see that the similarities between the two distinct yet interrelated faculties are not only structural (as shown, for instance, by Bernstein 1973Bernstein, Leonard 1973 The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press., Lerdahl and Jackendoff 1983Lerdahl, Fred, and Ray S. Jackendoff 1983 A Generative Theory of Tonal Music. Cambridge: MIT Press., and Patel 2003Patel, Aniruddh D. 2003 “Language, Music, Syntax and the Brain.” Nature Neuroscience 6 (7): 674–681. ), but also very much functional. Both language and music are types of human behavior that are performed by social actors in a complementary manner in order to fulfill a quotidian task: that of interacting and maintaining intersubjectivity.
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Acknowledgements
This paper accompanied a presentation given in IPrA 2023, as part of the panel ‘Complex Syntax for Interaction’, organized by Prof. Yael Maschler, Prof. Jan Lindström, and Prof. Simona Pekarek Doehler. I thank Prof. Yael Maschler, Dr. Hilla Polak-Yitzhaki, and Dr. Anna Inbar for their help with refining the presentation. I also thank Dana Brenner for the illustrations. Finally, I thank the musicians mentioned in this paper for allowing me to document them for research purposes.