the interaction between melodies and tones of the lyrics in mandarin folk songs...

The Interaction Between The Interaction Between Melodies and Tones of the Lyrics Melodies and Tones of the Lyrics in Mandarin Folk Songsin Mandarin Folk Songs 國語歌曲國語歌曲

中旋律與歌詞聲調的交互作用中旋律與歌詞聲調的交互作用指導教授：鍾榮富研究生：李思恩報告人 : 林怡靜

na2c0005

Content of the research (What)

• The thesis investigated the interaction between melodies and tones of the lyrics in Mandarin folk songs.

• Chinese language, as tone language, utilize tones to contrast meanings at lexical level.

• Take Mandarin Chinese as example: A syllable read with different tones will have different meaning, i.e. when ma is read as Yin-Ping (a high level tone), it means “mother”; when ma read as Yang-Ping (a rising tone), it means “hemp”; when ma read as Shang-Sheng (a falling-rising tone), it means “horse”; when ma read as Qu-Sheng (a falling tone), it means “to scold.”

Content of the research (What)

• However, the tones of the lyrics will be replaced by the pitches of the notes in songs.

• Therefore, the key to the correct conception of the lyrics is depending on the conformity between melody contours and tone contours.

Background and Motivation

1. Chinese language, as tone languages, employ tone to distinguish meanings at the lexical level, in that an identical syllable imposed with different tones would convey different meaning (Wang, 1991; Katamba, 1989; Roca, 1994).

2. When lyrics are put into melody, the pitches of the melody prevail and replace the pitches of tones (Pike, 1948).

3. Since pitches of tones are replaced by melody contour, melody contours will have great influence on affecting our perception of the sung lyrics (Pike, 1948).

Purpose of the study (Why)

• To investigate whether there is a regulated interaction between tones and notes.

• To investigate how subjects perceived disyllable extracted from authentic Mandarin folk songs.

• To investigate the prolongation of syllables in folk songs.

Literature Review

• The similarities between language and music are universally granted. (Du, 1990; Wu, 1988; Wang, 1983, 1984a, 1984b).

• According to Connell (2000), in addition to Tone Height, there are three other tonal features accounting for distinction among tones. They are Tone Contour, Tone Length, and Tone Loudness. Among these four tonal features, Tone Height is considered as the primary acoustical correlate of tone.

Literature Review

• Chao (1948) has promoted a digitalized way to represent the four tones in a five-level chart, within which tone height is divided into five different levels from the lowest to the highest and numbered with 1 to 5, respectively.

Literature Review

• Chao (1972) also proposed that the range from 1 to 5 differs from people to people.

• The transcriptions of tones in Mandarin Chinese are as follow:

Research Questions

1. When a Mandarin syllable i is sung with different-pitched level melody contours, what range of the notes will be perceived as Yin-Ping, Yang-Ping, Shang-Sheng and Qu-Sheng, respectively?

2. When the Mandarin syllable i is sung with double length, will the subjects tend to perceive the stimuli as Yang-Ping or Shang-Sheng, which are two relative longer tones in Mandarin?

Research Questions

3. When the Mandarin syllable i is sung with rising melody contours, will the subjects tend to perceive the stimuli as Yang-Ping (a rising tone) or Shang-Sheng (ending with a rising tone contour)?

4. When the Mandarin syllable i is sung with falling melody contours, will the subjects tend to perceive this stimuli as Qu-Sheng (a falling tone) or Shang-Sheng (beginning with a falling tone contour)?

Research Questions

5. Since melody and words’ tone are highly mutually interacted, can we find examples easily to be misunderstood from Mandarin folk songs? Could we find the generalization among examples and what it will be?

6. Which subsyllabic segment is prolonged? How are more complicated syllables, such as CGVC ljn35(lotus) or CGVG mjaw51(seedling), prolonged? Will they have prolonged onsets as l-ljn and m-mjaw; or prolonged prevocalic glides as lj-jnand mj-jaw; or prolonged vowels as lj-n and mja-aw, or prolonged postvocalic glides as ljn-n and mjaw-w?

Research Questions

7. Based on the prolongation of Mandarin syllables, we would also turn to examples of Southern Min to see how will siu33(nest) and sui51(beautiful) be lengthened, because both i and u could be medial glide, a nucleus vowel, or a vocalic ending (Chung 1996).

Research Methods (How)

• Two tests were conducted to investigate the correlation between music notes and Mandarin tones.

• The first one is focused on Note-tone correlation (NTC), expected to figure out the perceptual interaction between notes and tones.

• The second test, the extracts perception test (EPT), concerned whether lyrics extracted from Mandarin folk songs are correctly perceived as they were expected.

Subjects

• 32 subjects, consisting of 16 males and 16 females, were involved in this study.

• The age of the subjects ranged from 16 to 55, divided into four stages with every 10 years as a division.

• According to the diversities of age and sexuality, all the subjects were divided into eight subgroups, marked as F1, F2, F3, F4, M1, M2, M3, M4, respectively.

Subjects

Female Male

Group AgeThe number of the subjects

Group Age The number of the subjects

F1 16-25 4 M1 16-25 4

F2 26-35 4 M2 26-35 4

F3 36-45 4 M3 36-45 4

F4 46-55 4 M4 46-55 4

Instruments

• Questionnaire • The questionnaire has two parts, designed to

investigate the perceptual interaction between notes and tones and whether lyrics extracted from Mandarin folk songs are correctly perceived as they were expected.

Stimuli of Test 1

• Mandarin syllable i is used for the test. The subjects were asked to choose an optimal response corresponding to the stimulus among i55, i35, i214 and i51. The syllable i is able to form meaningful characters with any one of the Mandarin tones, in that i55 refers to 衣 (clothes), i35姨 (aunt), i214椅(chair) and i51義 (righteousness).

• Four groups of stimuli were designed for NTC tests. The stimuli used for the test were right-tuned and produced by a 26-year-old male.

Stimuli of Test 1-1 (Level melody contour test)

• In Research Question One, the correlation between stimuli with different pitches and Mandarin tones is investigated. The syllable i was sung with thirteen notes, from a middle do to an octave ‘do.

• The tempo was maintained at =120, referring to 120 quarter notes in a minute. As a result, a quarter note had the duration of 0.5 second.

Stimuli of Test 1-2 (Lengthened note test)

• The stimuli in LNT had identical tempo with that in LMCT, set as 120 quarter notes in a minute. However, the stimuli in LNT were sung with two beats and had longer duration for each stimulus. The duration of each stimulus in LNT was 1 second.

Stimuli of Test 1-3 (Rising melody contour test)

• In RMCT, all the stimuli consist of two different-pitched notes, in which all start with do, but end with different notes. The point of Research Question Three is the correlation between rising melody contours and tones.

Stimuli of Test 1-4 (Falling melody contour test)

• The stimuli in FMCT differed from those in RMCT on the direction of the melody contour. Each stimulus in FMCT started at ‘do but was followed by another lower note to form a falling melody contour.

Procedures of Test 1

1. Mandarin syllable i is used for the test. The subjects were asked to choose an optimal response corresponding to the stimulus.

2. The stimuli were played to all the subjects in an identical sequence, but not according to the order in a scale.

3. An interval with five seconds was placed between two stimuli for the subjects to circle what he or she had perceived among the options. The five-second interval was used to prevent relative perception.

The sequence of each test

Results discussion of Test 1-1 (LMCT)

• Except that the lowest-pitched note do was perceived as Yang-Ping, most of the notes with level melody contour were perceived as Yin-Ping.

• Only five subjects in the test did notice the differences in pitches among the notes.

Results discussion of Test 1-2 (LNT)

• It was found that the length of the note was an influential factor in note perception in LNT.

• Due to the lengthened stimuli, an obvious transition of the perception results from Yin-Ping to Yang-Ping was provoked.

Results discussion of Test 1-3 (RMCT)

• The subjects preliminarily heeded to the melody contour and chose either Yang-Ping or Shang-Sheng as corresponding tone to RMC, for Yang-Ping itself is a rising tone; Shang-Sheng ended with a rising tone contour.

• They based on the pitch of the second note in RMC to decide the corresponding tone between the alternatives of Yang-Ping and Shang-Sheng.

Results discussion of Test 1-4 (FMCT)

• Though Qu-Sheng was considered a falling tone, it was not considered most corresponding with FMC.

• The choice among Yin-Ping, Yang-Ping and Shang-Sheng also relied on the pitch of the second note in FMC, similar to the conclusion in RMC test.

Stimuli of Test 2

• The extracts of song used for the test were not directly duplicated from the original album. They were re-recorded in order to prevent the inaccuracy of the results of the test, for the subjects would be likely to recognize the singers’ voices and recall what the lyrics were if they had heard those songs before.

• According to the melody contours, the stimuli were divided into five types, namely Level Melody Contour (LMC), Rising Melody Contour (RMC), Slightly Rising Melody Contour (SRMC), Falling Melody Contour (FMC), and Slightly Falling Melody Contour (SFMC) respectively.

Stimuli of Test 2--Level Melody Contour (LMC)

Stimuli of Test 2-- Rising Melody Contour (RMC)

Stimuli of Test 2-- Slightly Rising Melody Contour (SRMC)

Stimuli of Test 2-- Falling Melody Contour (FMC)

Stimuli of Test2-- Slightly Falling Melody Contour (SFMC)

Stimuli of Test 2

• Among 34 stimuli in EPT, 27 are the authentic extracts from Mandarin songs. The other 7 are designed to complement certain melody types, hard to find in authentic extracts.

• The authentic extracts from Mandarin songs were presented in shadowed form, while those unshadowed were added as distracters, sharing identical segments with the authentic extracts but differing in tones.

• TiTj was used to manifest the tone of the all the options in the EPT, i.e. T1 refers to Yin-Ping, T2 Yang-Ping, T3 Shang-Sheng, T4 Qu-Sheng and T5 Neutral tone.

Procedures of Test 2

1. The extracts of song used for the test were not directly duplicated from the original album. They were re-recorded in order to prevent the inaccuracy of the results of the test, for the subjects would be likely to recognize the singers’ voices and recall what the lyrics were if they had heard those songs before.

2. The stimuli were played sequentially. Subjects were asked to scan all the options in each question before the melody contours were played to them.

3. After they heard the melody contour, they chose an option they regarded as the most related to the played melody contour.

Results discussion of Test 2

• In the following table, TC most correlated with certain types of melody contours is listed below. The number in the bracket refers to the times being chosen.


• T1T1, a combination of two level tones, is certainly has the closest relationship with LMC than any other TC does. T1T2 and T1T3 are TC suitable for FMC.

• T2T2 is suitable for RMC. T2T3 not only has correlation with RMC but also with FMC. T2T4 can fit well with HSF and LSF.

• T3T4 is mainly correlated with RMC.• Most of the TC beginning with a T4 has a good fit

with the FMC.


• A following T1 generally fit well with a high-pitched notes.

• A following T2 is regarded as a rising tone; however, as a lower tone when T1 and T4 are preceding.

• A following T3 is mostly regarded as a low tone, and hence makes TiT3 suitable for FMC.

• A following T4 is apt to be mapped with melody contour having contrastive direction from its preceding one. Therefore, T2T4 is suitable for FMC, but T3T4 is suitable for RMC.

Results discussion of the third investigation-1

• Through the examination of authentic folk songs, a unanimous result was obtained that the prolonged segment is exclusively vowel.


• It was the vowel that could function as a carrier of notes and, thus, got prolonged.


• In the Southern Min syllables, only a Southern Min vowel was prolonged.


• Most of the Ciu syllables were prolonged as Ciu-u; Cui syllables as Cui-i.


• When a trisyllabic adjective is contracted to a disyllabic one, the first and the second would merge into one syllable, in which the vowel is prolonged.

Findings of the study-1

• Most of the subjects perceived i with level melody contours as Yin-Ping, for the subjects focused on the shape of the melodies but not exactly on their pitches.

• The lengthening increased the number of the subjects choosing Yang-Ping and Shang-Sheng as corresponding tones to the lengthened notes.

• The subjects tended to perceive i with rising melody contours as Yang-Ping and Shang-Sheng.

• The subjects did not perceive the falling melody contour as Qu-Sheng, but perceived according to the end note of the falling melody contours.


• When the first tone in the disyllable is Yin-Ping or Qu-Sheng, it is suitable for higher-pitched notes.

• When the second tone in the disyllable is Qu-Sheng, the melody contour of it has opposite direction with its preceding one.

• When the disyllable ends with Shang-Sheng, the Shang-Sheng is suitable for a lower-pitched note in order to form a falling melody contour.


• In a syllable, the vowel is the only segment that can bearing pitched of the notes.

• No matter in Mandarin or Southern Min folk songs, a syllable is prolonged because two (or more) different-pitched notes are mapped to the vowel.

• According to the prolongation of Ciu and Cui syllables in Southern Min folk songs, we found that the i in Cui is the vowel and so is u in Ciu.

• Through the investigation of yelling response and syllable contraction, we also proved that the i in Ciu and u in Cui are the vowels.

Limitation of the study

• Though we have based on the collected results to make some statements, it is till improper to claim the validity of our perception results completely incontestable. There are still some possibilities that would influence the perception of informants.

• For example, we cannot assure each informant has identical sensitivity on pitch of notes. Also in EPT, some informants might subjectively exclude some distracters as corresponding TC, for they have judged some TC as infeasible choice according to their experience on listening to authentic folk songs.

Limitation of the study

• As a result, the author is not willing to suggest utilizing the proposed results to be standard principles for composition. For this thesis is only a premiere of experimental note-tone correlation test, we need more involvement in this field before we make more assertive proposal.

Suggestions for further studying-1

• Adoption of other vowels as tested stimuli--In the note-tone perceptual test, only the vowel i was used as the tested stimuli. It is suggested that more vowels can be used in the perception tests, for different vowels differ not only in their formant frequencies but also in fundamental frequencies. Therefore, we can try to explore whether i, u, and a mapped with identical note would be perceived as different tones.


• Qu-Sheng and Tone sandhi--In note-tone correlation test, Qu-Sheng is seldom chosen as the optimal corresponding tone, for compared with the other three tones, Qu-Sheng is more stress-like but less tone-like. The rising and falling of pitch in Qu-Sheng are the concomitant effects of the sudden release of air stream. As a result, Qu-Sheng is featured with greater intensity and shortness than the other three tones. Based on this, we can design a set of stimuli with different intensities to investigate the relation between Qu-Sheng and intensity.


• Shang-Sheng tone sandhi is a common phonological phenomenon in Mandarin, in which a Shang-Sheng will become Yang-Ping when followed by another Shang-Sheng. It would be also intriguing to test whether T2T3and T3T3 have different corresponding melody contours, i.e. may35ma214(埋馬 ) and may214ma214(買馬 ). If there is, can we make a generalization about their relationship? Similarly, the tone of 一 (i55), 七 (ti55), 八 (pa55) and 不 (pu51) will all become Yang-Ping when followed by a Qu-Sheng. Thus, we can also investigate whether T1(一 )T4(Sj), T1(七 )T4(Sk), T1(八 )T4(Sl), and T4(不 )T4(Sm)have identical corresponding melody contours with and T2(i)T4(Sj), T2(ti)T4(Sk), T2(pa)T4(Sl), and T2(pu)T4(Sm).


• Function word—English function words, i.e. a and the (articles); on, in, at and for (prepositions), are usually relative shorter than content words, i.e. computer, university, and thesis (nouns), to calculate, to speculate, and to apologize (verbs). In English songs, due to the less semantic salience, function words are apt to be mapped with relative short beat. However, since each character in Chinese language has identical word length, whether function words should differ from content words in composition?


• In the example below, the question marker 嗎(ma55) is mapped with relative higher note than its preceding content word 你 (ni214,you) and hence is very likely to be perceived as 媽 (ma55, mother).

• Therefore, a further study can focus on whether a function word highlighted by a strong beat or a higher-pitched note is perceived correctly?


• Segment peculiarity in lyrics--In a song, it is very common for t33(的 ) and l33(了 ) to be sung as ti33and ljaw214, respectively. We may wonder what is responsible for this transition, the neutral tone, the vowel , or their being grammatical words?

The end

the interaction between melodies and tones of the lyrics in mandarin folk songs...

Documents