VYAKARAN: South Asian Languages and Linguistics Net
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Dear Peter and all,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>First of all, I conclude from the lack of response
to my query that nobody among us is aware of any studies about the relation
of linguistic tone and song in Indo-Aryan languages, or even more generally
South Asian languages. This is kind of what I was expecting.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>It is interesting that you bring up Chinese, Peter.
There is a recent article by Patrick Wong and Randy Diehl on tone and song in
Chinese. It can be retrieved online from </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><A
href="http://www.communication.northwestern.edu/publication/173803fe932c6e3b93.doc">http://www.communication.northwestern.edu/publication/173803fe932c6e3b93.doc</A>.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Here is a quick summary of their findings: Chao
(1956) investigated the relationship between sung pitch and linguistic tone in
Chinese songs of various styles. In Chinese "Singsong" (a style that is
intermediate between speaking and singing), each tone is sung with a consistent
pitch pattern, which makes it relatively easy for listeners to identify tones
and, hence, word meanings. On the other hand, in contemporary Mandarin songs,
composers mostly ignore linguistic tones in their compositions, according to
Chao. Yung (1983) looked at Chinese opera and found a relatively consistent
relation between melody and tone, comparable to what Chao found for Singsongs.
In their article, Wong & Diehl themselves analyzed four contemporary
Cantonese songs. They looked at direction of pitch change over pairs of
consecutive syllables and found an overall correspondence of over 90 percent
between musical and tonal sequences. So, while the fundamental frequency
intervals and the shape of the contours that are normal for speech are not
reproduced exactly in these songs, there does seem to be a very strong tendency
for a rising sequence of tones to correspond with an ascending sequence of
musical notes, and for a falling sequence of tones to correspond with a
descending sequence of notes, at least in the style that Wong & Diehl looked
at.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>This week I have been applying this methodology to
a sample of Kalam Kohistani songs, and found that in about two-thirds (66
percent) of the instances in my sample, a rising sequence of tones corresponds
to rising pitch in the songs, and a falling sequence of tones to falling pitch
in the songs. This is a much weaker correspondence as compared to Cantonese (66
percent vs. 90 percent), which could be due to a number of factors, but one of
these is probably that the songs I have been looking at all use a fixed,
traditional tune. The tune is, as it were, imposed on the lyrics, rather
than newly composed to go with the lyrics.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>There is unpublished work by colleagues of mine who
have looked at Thai songs of various styles. They found the highest
correspondence (around 90 percent) of tones and sung pitches in some classical
and traditional Thai songs. For contemporary popular songs (that often borrow
elements from western popular music) the number goes down to 60-70 percent. For
a western hymn, translated into Thai, the number of matching correspondences was
42 percent. The worst case is the national anthem, with a correspondence of only
32 percent. This result confirms the notion, I think, that the degree to which a
melody is "imposed" influences the likelihood for tones and melody to match.
(The Thai national anthem used a pre-existing traditional melody to which new
lyrics were set.)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Anyway, what I have been learning so far is that
there is a wide range of variation as to tone-melody matching across languages,
and often also within languages.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Yours,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Joan</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=pehook@UMICH.EDU href="mailto:pehook@UMICH.EDU">Peter Hook</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=VYAKARAN@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
href="mailto:VYAKARAN@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU">VYAKARAN@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Monday, April 19, 2004 10:07 PM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Linguistic tone and song in Indo-Aryan</DIV></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT><FONT
face=Arial size=2></FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV><BR>Dear Joan,<BR> You may find
it useful to look at the relation between pitches and<BR>tones in the Chinese
"ci". Most of the "ci" melodies have been lost but<BR>there are 4 or 5 from the
Sung Dynasty that were somehow
preserved.<BR> However, I'm not
optimistic that you will find any relationship.<BR>While some classical Chinese
prosodies require the placement of words<BR>having specified tones at certain
points in a line of poetry, I have not<BR>heard of lexical tone having any
relation to the pitches in a melody. On<BR>the contrary, in Chinese, tonal
distinguishes disappear altogether when<BR>one sings. I suspect that will turn
out to be the case in Panjabi, SHina,<BR>Kohistani, and other S Asian tone
languages, too.<BR><BR> All the
best,<BR><BR>
Peter<BR><BR>On Mon, 19 Apr 2004, Joan Baart wrote:<BR><BR>> Dear
colleagues,<BR>><BR>> 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.)<BR>><BR>> 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).<BR>><BR>> If you are aware of any relevant work, please
let me know.<BR>><BR>> With best wishes,<BR>><BR>> Joan
Baart<BR></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
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