Syntax and music for interaction

Abstract

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.