The apparent link of music to speech is because of a trait calledprosody, which seems to be a separate skill, also impacted by NF1.In linguistics, prosody is the difference between speaking in amonotone compared with adding expression by varying pitch,loudness, duration, stress and rhythms. People exaggerate theprosody in their speech when talking to young children because ofthe impact dynamic expression has on comprehension andengagement. Those with the NF1 disorder, most of whom suffermusical challenges, often don’t perceive prosody in speech. Thatsuggests that our fully functioning NF1 gene also helps us withprosody.

reading prosody is an important aspect of reading fluency

prosody

Several of the books he wrotewere read for the Dictionary resulting in him being quoted eighteen times forlinguistic prosody terms such as acatalectic, not short of a syllable in the lastfoot; disyllabize, to make disyllabic; hypercatalectic, having an extra syllableafter the last complete dipody; and pyrrhic, a metrical foot consisting of twoshort syllables.