Linguistic tone and song in Indo-Aryan

[Peter Hook]

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Dear Joan,
        You may find it useful to look at the relation between pitches and
tones in the Chinese "ci". Most of the "ci" melodies have been lost but
there are 4 or 5 from the Sung Dynasty that were somehow preserved.
        However, I'm not optimistic that you will find any relationship.
While some classical Chinese prosodies require the placement of words
having specified tones at certain points in a line of poetry, I have not
heard of lexical tone having any relation to the pitches in a melody. On
the contrary, in Chinese, tonal distinguishes disappear altogether when
one sings. I suspect that will turn out to be the case in Panjabi, SHina,
Kohistani, and other S Asian tone languages, too.

        All the best,

                Peter

On Mon, 19 Apr 2004, Joan Baart wrote:

> VYAKARAN: South Asian Languages and Linguistics Net
> Editors:  Tej K. Bhatia, Syracuse University, New York
>           John Peterson, University of Osnabrueck, Germany
> Details:  Send email to listserv at listserv.syr.edu and say: INFO VYAKARAN
> Subscribe:Send email to listserv at listserv.syr.edu and say:
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>
> Dear colleagues,
>
> I am working on a short paper on prosody and poetry in Kalam Kohistani (Pakistan). Kalam Kohistani is a tone language, and one of the questions I am asking is if there is a systematic relation in this language between the pitches of a song and the phonological tones of the words of the song. (It would seem that there isn't; at least not in the styles I have recorded.)
>
> I am wondering if this specific question has been addressed before for any Indo-Aryan language. One would think, for instance, that somebody must have looked at Punjabi tone and songs, but I have no references to any work in this area. The only material that I am aware of at the moment concerns Vedic accents and the extent to which they are preserved in recitation (Wayne Howard: "Vedic chant" in the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Vol. 5).
>
> If you are aware of any relevant work, please let me know.
>
> With best wishes,
>
> Joan Baart
>
>
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