Abstract
The speech-to-song illusion has attracted interest as a probe of the perceptual interface between language and music. One might anticipate differential speech-to-song effects in tonal vs. non-tonal languages, since these language classes differ importantly in the linguistic value they assign to tones. Here we addressed this issue for the first time in a cohort of 20 healthy younger adults whose native language was either tonal (Thai, Mandarin) or non-tonal (German, Italian) and all of whom were also fluent in English. All participants were assessed using a protocol designed to induce the speech-to-song illusion on speech excerpts presented in each of the five study languages. Over the combined participant group, there was evidence of a speech-to-song illusion effect for all language stimuli and the extent to which individual participants rated stimuli as “song-like” at baseline was significantly positively correlated with the strength of the speech-to-song effect. However, tonal and non-tonal language stimuli elicited comparable speech-to-song effects and no acoustic language parameter was found to predict the effect. Examining the effect of the listener's native language, tonal language native speakers experienced significantly weaker speech-to-song effects than non-tonal native speakers across languages. Both non-tonal native language and inability to understand the stimulus language significantly predicted the speech-to-song illusion. These findings together suggest that relative propensity to perceive prosodic structures as inherently linguistic vs. musical may modulate the speech-to-song illusion.
Highlights
Speech and song constitute complex pitch and rhythmic patterns: these patterns have distinctive acoustic characteristics but engage shared perceptual mechanisms and brain circuitry (Merrill et al, 2012; Hausen et al, 2013)
To the extent the effect is inhibited by linguistic mechanisms “capturing” speech prosody, the effect should be relatively attenuated by prior familiarity with a tonal language
While the speech-to-song illusion is well documented in non-tonal languages other than English (Falk et al, 2014; Margulis et al, 2015) and conditions to induce the effect in a tonal language (Mandarin) have been described (Zhang, 2010), little information is presently available concerning the relative strength of the speech-to-song illusion experienced by tonal vs. non-tonal language speakers
Summary
Speech and song constitute complex pitch and rhythmic patterns: these patterns have distinctive acoustic characteristics but engage shared perceptual mechanisms and brain circuitry (Merrill et al, 2012; Hausen et al, 2013). The strength of the speech-to-song illusion is enhanced if the source language is relatively more difficult for the listener to pronounce (Margulis et al, 2015), further suggesting that the effect may depend on the extent to which language circuitry is “captured” by the auditory speech stream and potentially by previous linguistic experience and perceptual competence (Falk et al, 2014). Tonal languages present an interesting test case for interpreting the mechanism of the speech-to-song illusion In these languages (exemplified by Thai and Mandarin Chinese), the pitch of syllables carries linguistic semantic value and has been shown to be processed by dominant hemisphere language networks (in contrast to pitch information in languages that the listener does not understand, which is processed by right hemispheric or non-lateralized networks: Zatorre and Gandour, 2008). While the speech-to-song illusion is well documented in non-tonal languages other than English (Falk et al, 2014; Margulis et al, 2015) and conditions to induce the effect in a tonal language (Mandarin) have been described (Zhang, 2010), little information is presently available concerning the relative strength of the speech-to-song illusion experienced by tonal vs. non-tonal language speakers
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