Peter Kivy's contention that musical expressiveness is grounded in resemblance to expressive human gesture and vocal contour entails that some music possesses intrinsic expressive character independently of listener projection.

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Expressive human gesture(what Kivy claims music resembles): The physical movements, postures, and body language that people use when they're feeling and showing emotions (like throwing your hands up in excitement or slumping down in sadness).
Intrinsic expressive character(the conclusion about what Kivy's theory implies): The quality of expressing emotion that belongs to the music itself, not something the listener adds or imagines; the emotion is actually there in the music.
Listener projection(what would NOT be the source of music's expressiveness according to Kivy): The idea that we put our own emotions onto music—that the music seems sad only because we're imagining or projecting sadness onto it, not because the music is actually sad.
Peter Kivy(one of the main philosophers making an argument in this statement): A contemporary philosopher who specializes in aesthetics (the study of beauty and art) and has written extensively about how we judge and experience beauty.

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Vocal contour(what Kivy claims music resembles)

The rise and fall of pitch and tone in someone's voice when they speak—like how a sad voice might drop lower or a happy voice might go higher.

entails(describes a logical relationship between statements)

Logically forces or guarantees; if A entails B, then whenever A is true, B must also be true.

grounded in(whether distinctness or identity is explained by intrinsic features)

To be explained by or to have its reason or basis in something else—like how a tree being wet is grounded in (explained by) recent rain.

musical expressiveness(Levinson's account, distinguished from mere resemblance to emotional behavior)

The music's disposition to elicit the imaginative response in listeners of hearing the music as a literal expression of emotion.

resemblance(Ontology of universals and intelligibles)

A relation predicated on two subjects; a property belonging both to classes of intelligibles and to their individual members.

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