Songs in African Tonal Languages: Contrasting the Tonal System and the Melody
Over the past fifty years there has been a dramatic increase in studies investigating the rules of tone-tune correspondence in vocal music performed in tonal languages. In this paper we argue that considering structural properties of tonal systems is important for studying the interaction between tone and melody. Using songs in Guinean Kpelle and Guro as test cases, we prove that contour tones are less preserved in melody than level tones, and surface tones are reflected in melody rather than underlying tones. We also show that syllable structure as well as style, genre and structure of songs affect tone-tune correspondence.
Does Language Determine Music in Tone Languages
I is conservatively estimated that between fifty and sixty percent of the world’s languages are tone languages—languages where pitch contributes to the meaning of words (Yip 2002). Tone in these languages is phonemic, which means that changing the pitch (or pitch contour) of a word can drastically change the meaning of the word. Since pitch is so closely tied to meaning in these languages and pitch is also one of the main components of music, the interaction of speech melody and song melody in tone languages has fascinated scholars for years. As may be expected, there have been a variety of methodologies, a variety of conclusions, and, significantly, a variety of assumptions. (In a previous article [Schellenberg 2009] I have discussed these different assumptions.) This paper is a closer examinination of one of the assumptions: the idea that speech melodies in a tone language dictate song melodies. On the surface, this seems a fairly reasonable assumption: if changing the pitch can change the meaning, the song melody must, perforce, preserve the meaning and, consequently, the speech melody. This assumption shows up frequently in the literature. Schneider (1961:204), for example, states that “speechtone [sic] and musical tone must be definitely correlated.” Rycroft (1959:28) says that “the setting of words to music in a ‘tone language’ either places limitations upon melodic freedom . . . or else makes word selection a more exacting matter.” Jones (1959) and Schneider (1942, 1950, 1961) devote most of their articles to trying to provide prosodic explanations for differences between speech melody and song melody in specific languages. This article looks at the collective evidence and concludes that language is not a determinant of music in tone languages, but rather that music accommodates language when it is convenient but is perfectly willing and able to override linguistic requirements. The following section looks briefly at the
Unraveling the relation between Mandarin tones and musical melody = 旋律中的声调
It is physiologically impossible for the same set of vocal chords to simultaneously produce two distinct and different pitch contours. Thus when singing songs from a tonal language such as Mandarin, it is likely that there will be conflicts between articulation of the linguistic tone and the articulation of the musical melody. Envisage for example, a syllable that is linguistically specified for a rising tonal contour being associated to a melody requiring a falling contour or a flat contour. In such a situation, satisfaction of the melody would result in incomprehensibility of language. The reverse is equally devastating since then song would be totally superfluous. Nonetheless, a survey of Mandarin songs indicates that linguistic tones are often not faithfully preserved in tune, consequently giving rise to the question on how listeners are able to decipher the words that are sung. This paper argues that the crux of the matter lies in the identification of two elements, headship in music and headship in linguistic tones. A head, in music or language, is a special position where the features of the residing element are prominent. In essence, it is the preservation of contrasts between prominent features at these special positions that listeners of Mandarin songs are able to reconstruct the lyrics from partial segmental and tonal information.