Preservation of lexical tones in singing in a tone language

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaper, not in proceedingpeer-review

Abstract

Lexical tones are important for expressing meaning and usually have high priority in tone languages. This can create conflicts with sentence intonation in spoken language and with melodic templates in singing since all of these are transmitted by pitch. The main question in this investigation is whether a language (in our case the Mon-Khmer language Kammu) with a simple two-tone system uses similar strategies for preserving lexical tones in singing and speech. We investigate the realization of lexical tones in a singing genre which can be described as recitation based on a partly predefined, though still flexible, melodic template. The contrast between High and Low tone is preserved, and is realized mainly at the beginning of the vowel. Apparently, the rest of the syllable rhyme serves either for strengthening the lexical contrast or for melodic purposes. Syllables are often reduplicated in singing, and the reduplicant ignores lexical tones. The preservation of lexical tones in Kammu singing, and their early timing close to the vowel onset, is very similar to what we have found for speech.
Original languageEnglish
Pages1357-1360
Number of pages4
Publication statusPublished - 2014
EventAnnual Conference of International Speech Communication Association (INTERSPEECH) 2014 - Singapore, Singapore
Duration: 2014 Sept 142014 Sept 18

Conference

ConferenceAnnual Conference of International Speech Communication Association (INTERSPEECH) 2014
Country/TerritorySingapore
Period2014/09/142014/09/18

Bibliographical note

http://www.interspeech2014.org/public.php?page=home.html

The information about affiliations in this record was updated in December 2015.
The record was previously connected to the following departments: Linguistics and Phonetics (015010003), Malmö Academy of Music (014005009)

Subject classification (UKÄ)

  • General Language Studies and Linguistics
  • Musicology

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Preservation of lexical tones in singing in a tone language'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this