{"title":"Microtonal Variation in Sung Cantonese.","authors":"Murray Schellenberg, Bryan Gick","doi":"10.1159/000493755","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background/aims: </strong>Both music and language impose constraints on fundamental frequency (F0) in sung music. Composers are known to set words of tone languages to music in a way that reflects tone height but fails to include tone contour. This study tests whether choral singers add linguistic tone contour information to an unfamiliar song by examining whether Cantonese singers make use of microtonal variation.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>12 native Cantonese-speaking non-professional choral singers learned and sang a novel song in Cantonese which included a minimal set of the Cantonese tones to probe whether everyday singers add in missing contour information.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Cantonese singers add in a rising F0 contour of less than a semitone when singing syllables with lexical rising tones. This microtonal variation is not observed when singing in a lower register.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Cantonese singers use microtonal contours to reflect rising contours of Cantonese linguistic tones.</p>","PeriodicalId":55608,"journal":{"name":"Phonetica","volume":"77 2","pages":"83-106"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1159/000493755","citationCount":"5","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Phonetica","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1159/000493755","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2018/12/5 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"ACOUSTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 5
Abstract
Background/aims: Both music and language impose constraints on fundamental frequency (F0) in sung music. Composers are known to set words of tone languages to music in a way that reflects tone height but fails to include tone contour. This study tests whether choral singers add linguistic tone contour information to an unfamiliar song by examining whether Cantonese singers make use of microtonal variation.
Methods: 12 native Cantonese-speaking non-professional choral singers learned and sang a novel song in Cantonese which included a minimal set of the Cantonese tones to probe whether everyday singers add in missing contour information.
Results: Cantonese singers add in a rising F0 contour of less than a semitone when singing syllables with lexical rising tones. This microtonal variation is not observed when singing in a lower register.
Conclusion: Cantonese singers use microtonal contours to reflect rising contours of Cantonese linguistic tones.
期刊介绍：
Contemporary research into spoken language employs a wide range of approaches, from instrumental measures to perceptual and neurocognitive measures, to computational models, for investigating the properties and principles of speech in communicative settings across the world’s languages. ''Phonetica'' is an international interdisciplinary forum for phonetic science that covers all aspects of the subject matter, from phonetic and phonological descriptions of segments and prosodies to speech physiology, articulation, acoustics, perception, acquisition, and phonetic variation and change. ''Phonetica'' thus provides a platform for a comprehensive understanding of speaker-hearer interaction across languages and dialects, and of learning contexts throughout the lifespan. Papers published in this journal report expert original work that deals both with theoretical issues and with new empirical data, as well as with innovative methods and applications that will help to advance the field.
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