The strange aesthetics of language

I explain how speech provides a window into the weird aesthetics of language, and defend Steven Pinker's controversial claim that music is "auditory cheesecake".

Years ago, I wrote an assignment about the aesthetic principles of music. It introduced me to a big debate starting in the late 90s (and apparently still going), inadvertently started by Steven Pinker when he claimed that music was a superstimulus for the brain’s machinery for interpreting speech. Apparently, his fatal mistake was to use the phrase “jus…