Tonal System Research Articles

Variation in the tonal space of Yangliu Lalo, an endangered language of Yunnan, China

AbstractEndangered tone languages are not often studied within quantitative variationist approaches, but such approaches can provide valuable insights for language description and documentation in the Tibeto-Burman area. This study examines tone variation within Yangliu Lalo (Central Ngwi), a minority language community in China that is currently shifting to Southwestern Mandarin. Yangliu Lalo’s Tone 4, the rising-falling High tone, is lowering and flattening among young people, especially females, who also tend to use Lalo less frequently. Tonal range in elicited speech is shown to be decreasing as use of Lalo decreases. Concurrently, the standard deviation of the pitch of individual tones also decreases, while at the same time speakers with a narrow tonal range also show greater articulatory precision for each tone. Tonal range and standard deviation of pitch are both parameters of tonal space, the arrangement of, and relationship between, tones within the tonal system. The results from our apparent-time study suggest that tonal space provides a new avenue of sociolinguistic inquiry for tone languages.

Transformation Chains, Associative Areas, and a Principle of Form for Anton Webern’s Twelve-tone Music

AbstractMuch of Webern’s twelve-tone music relies on conventional formal types to structure extended composition and long-range compositional strategy. This article describes how these forms were absorbed into his personal twelve-tone style through an exploration of three entwined techniques. His techniques of serial row chaining and associative organization create a deep musical hierarchy that is frequently navigated by a formal principle of large-scale complementation. The analyses appearing here are drawn from across Webern’s twelve-tone period and are elucidated through spatial representations that describe compositional potential and musical realization. In addition to providing a means for analytical interpretation, the analyses reveal how Webern’s fusion of form and twelve-tone technique resemble characteristics of the tonal system while amplifying basic axioms of serial composition.

Computational Complexity and Sour-Grapes-Like Patterns

In this paper, we claim that attested sour-grapes-like patterns of featural and tonal spreading differ meaningfully from what we call the 'true' sour grapes spreading pathology. We propose that the 'false' sour grapes processes attested in some tonal systems are computationally less complex than the unattested true sour grapes pathology, due to the presence of what we refer to as 'zones of predictability' local to potential triggers of spreading. In particular, the false sour grapes spreading patterns can be shown to fall into the class of weakly deterministic mappings, while the true sour grapes spreading pattern does not.

The Acquisition of Mandarin Tonal Processes by Children With Cochlear Implants.

Purpose Children with cochlear implants (CIs) face challenges in acquiring tonal languages, as CIs do not efficiently code pitch information. Mandarin is a tonal language with lexical tones and tonal processes such as neutral tone and tone sandhi, exhibiting contextually conditioned tonal realizations. Previous studies suggest that early implantation and long CI experience facilitate the acquisition of lexical tones by children with CIs. However, there is lack of acoustic evidence on children's tonal productions demonstrating that this is the case, and it is unclear whether and how children with CIs are able to acquire contextual tones. This study therefore examined the acoustic realization of both lexical tones and contextual tones as produced by children fitted with CIs, exploring the potential effects of age at implantation and length of CI experience on their acquisition of the Mandarin tonal system. Method Seventy-two Mandarin-learning preschoolers with CIs, varying in age at implantation (13-42 months) and length of CI experience (2-49 months), and 44 normal hearing 3-year-old controls were recruited. Tonal productions were elicited from both groups using picture-naming tasks and acoustically compared. Results Only the early implanted group (i.e., implanted before the age of 2 years) produced normal-like lexical tones and generally had contextual tones approximating those of the normal-hearing children. The other children, including those with longer CI experience, did not have typical tonal productions; their pitch patterns for lexical tones tended to be flatter, and contextual tone productions were unchanged across tonal contexts. Conclusion Children with CIs face challenges in acquiring Mandarin tones, but early implantation may help them to develop normal-like lexical tone categories, which further facilitates their implementation of contextual tones. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.8038889.

A Research on the Tonal Structures of ‘Bonnyeongsan’ of Jeongeup Julpungnyu

정읍줄풍류는 지역의 줄풍류에 국한되지 않고 영ㆍ호남지역의 풍류에 영향을 끼친 줄풍류이다. 정읍줄풍류의 음악적 특징과 활동한 인물 그리고 지역의 풍류 활동에 미친 영향 등을 고려하면, 정읍줄풍류의 음악적 중요성은 높다. 정읍줄풍류의 첫 번째 곡 상령산(上靈山) 즉, 본령산(本靈山)는 본풍류에서 뒷풍류까지 연주된 악곡의 출발점이며, 영산회상 관련 파생곡들에 영향을 준 중요한 악곡이다. 본 연구는 정읍줄풍류 중 본령산의 대금 음조직을 연구하기 위하여 정읍줄풍류와 국립국악원 줄풍류를 대상으로 비교・분석하였다. 그리고 전계문의 풍류대금 가락을 전수한 것으로 알려진 신달룡의 대금 가락도 일부 포함하였다. 본령산 대금선율에 함의된 음조직(Tonal System) 즉, 출현음ㆍ골격음(Structure Tone)ㆍ주음(Tonal Center)ㆍ음계(音階)ㆍ음의 시종(始終) 등을 분석하였다. 본 연구를 통하여 정읍줄풍류 중 본령산에 출현하는 대금 음조직의 특징은 첫째, 정읍 본령산 12음과 국악원 상령산 10음에 해당하는 출현음에 사용하는 장식음에 관한 악상기호는 총 6종이다. 본령산에서는 니레(∧)만 사용되었다. 둘째, 정읍 본령산 핵음은 黃, 국악원 상령산은 仲이다. 셋째, 본령산과 상령산의 기본 7음은 㑣ㆍ 㒇ㆍ黃ㆍ太ㆍ仲ㆍ林ㆍ無 이다. 본령산과 상령산의 음은 7음을 중심으로 옥타브 위의 음으로 확장되는 현상이 각각 2회 나타나지만, 확장의 결과는 상이 하다. 확장의 결과 본령산은 12음을 사용하지만 상령산은 10음에 그치고 있다. 상령산에서 淋ㆍ潕음은 사용하지 않았다. 정읍줄풍류 중 본령산의 음조직은 국립국악원 상령산과 유사하지만 기본음의 출현빈도와 음의 확장 그리고 주요 시김새의 사용방법 등에서 일부 차이점이 발견되었다Jeongeup Julpungnyu has widely influenced the chamber music in Yeongnam (Gyeongsang-do) and Honam regions (Jeolla-do) without confining the range to its indigenous music. Its musicality is significant considering its musical features, performers, and influences over the pungnyu activities in different regions. Sangyeongsan, the first piece also known as Bonnyeongsan, is the starting point played from the main piece to the last four pieces of the suite, which is a significant piece that influenced other derivatives of Yeongsanhoisang. This paper compares and analyzes the Jeongeup Julpungnyu and the Julpungnyu by National Gugak Center partly including the daegeum melodies by Shin Dal-lyong who is known to have initiated Jeon Gye-mun into the pungnyu daegeum melodies, in order to study the tonal structures of daegeum in Bonnyeongsan of Jeongeup Julpungnyu. The analyses include the tonal system implied in the daegeum melodies of Bonnyeongsan, that is, the structure tone, the tonal center, the scale, the beginning and terminating tones. The study results reveal the features of the tonal structures of daegeum in Bonnyeongsan of Jeongeup Julpungnyu as the following: Firstly, there are 6 musical symbols for ornaments for the 12 keys presented in Bonnyeongsan of Jeongeup Julpungnyu and the 10 keys in Sangyeongsan of Julpungnyu by National Gugak Center. Only one symbol, nire (∧) is used in Bonnyeongsan. The main key of Bonnyeongsan is ‘do’ (the Hwang key) while that of Sangyeongsan is ‘mi’ (the Jung key). Secondly, the basic 7 keys of Bonnyeongsan and Sangyeongsan are sol, la, do re, mi, sol , la . Although both pieces extend the 7 keys to an octave higher ones two times, the consequences are different. Sangyeongsan resultingly uses only 10 keys excluding the octave higher sol and la whereas Bonnyeongsan uses 12 keys. Bonnyeongsan is similar to Sangyeongsan in the tonal system but reveals some differences in the frequency of the basic keys in appearance, the tonal extension, and the usage of ornaments.

Contrastive Analysis in Phonetic Characteristics of Thai and Vietnamese Tones

This paper is a contrastive analysis of phonetic characteristics of Thai and Vietnamese tones using the phonetic characteristics based on the methodologies from the analyses of Arthur S. (1962), Hoàng Thị Châu (2009), Đoàn Thiện Thuật (2016) and Nguyễn Thị Hai, (2017). This analysis finds that, aside from the difference of quantity of toneme, there are additional differences including fundamental frequency, length, tone shape, pitch, and voice quality. Tho in the Thai tonal system does not occur in the Vietnamese tonal system. Conversely, hỏi, ngã and nặng in the Vietnamese tonal system do not occur in the Thai tonal system.

Didactic images in a thirteenth-century French music theory treatise: theScientia artis musiceof Hélie Salomon

AbstractTheScientia artis musice, a music theory treatise completed in the year 1274 by Hélie Salomon, a cleric from the village of St-Astier (Périgord/Dordogne), covers all the usual topics treated in such sources: letter names, hexachord syllables, the claves (letter + syllable(s)), the musical hand, mutation, staff notation, clef placement and chant genres. It includes an incomplete tonary with representative chant genres together with a commentary on the seculorum (differentiae) appropriate to various chant incipits. A lengthy instruction on the performance of parallel four-voice organum is also included. TheScientiais the only medieval theory treatise whose eight illustrations (called ‘figurae’) include human figures. These images relate directly to matters covered in the treatise and serve to make its main points more easily committed to memory. Of especial interest is the image of an enthroned bishop that serves as the focal point for a novel exposition of the tonal system of chant as (1) a set of logical relations modelled after the Tree of Porphyry and (2) a variant of the tree of consanguinity. Since the sole surviving copy of the treatise is the original, all these details must reflect the author's intention.

Walking and postural balance in adults with severe short stature due to isolated GH deficiency.

ObjectivesWalking and postural balance are extremely important to obtain food and to work. Both are critical for quality of life and ability to survive. While walking reflects musculoskeletal and cardiopulmonary systems, postural balance depends on body size, muscle tone, visual, vestibular and nervous systems. Since GH and IGF-I act on all these systems, we decided to study those parameters in a cohort of individuals with severe short stature due to untreated isolated GH deficiency (IGHD) caused by a mutation in the GHRH receptor gene. These IGHD subjects, despite reduction in muscle mass, are very active and have normal longevity.MethodsIn a cross-sectional study, we assessed walking (by a 6-min walk test), postural balance (by force platform) and fall risk (by the 'Timed Up and Go' test) in 31 IGHD and 40 matched health controls.ResultsThe percentage of the walked distance measured in relation to the predicted one was similar in groups, but higher in IGHD, when corrected by the leg length. Absolute postural balance data showed similar velocity of unipodal support in the two groups, and better values, with open and closed eyes and unipodal support, in IGHD, but these differences became non-significant when corrected for height and lower-limb length. The time in 'Timed Up and Go' test was higher in IGHD cohort, but still below the cut-off value for fall risk.ConclusionIGHD subjects exhibit satisfactory walking and postural balance, without increase in fall risk.

Effects of focus and tone on vowel space in Chongming Chinese

The formant frequencies of vowels are prone to change according to contexts, but the effects of focus on vowel space are rarely studied. This study attempts to investigate how focus and tone may influence the vowel space in Chongming Chinese with a production experiment. Chongming Chinese is a Chinese dialect with a complex tonal system. Twelve syllables with the vowel /ae/ were chosen and the syllables spread over eight lexical tones (two level tones, four contour tones, and two checked tones). The target syllables were embedded in carrier sentences with different preceding and following syllables. Four focus conditions were manipulated: broad focus, initial focus, medial focus, and final focus. During the experiment, twelve participants were elicited with precursor questions to produce sentences with different focus locations. The frequencies of the first two formants (F1 and F2) were extracted over the middle 50 ms of the vowel interval for each target syllable. Formant tracks were calculated with the Burg algorithm in Praat. F1 and F2 values under each focus condition and tone will be compared. It is hypothesized that F1 and F2 will be increased under focus because focus might make the vowels more open and front. The formant frequencies of vowels are prone to change according to contexts, but the effects of focus on vowel space are rarely studied. This study attempts to investigate how focus and tone may influence the vowel space in Chongming Chinese with a production experiment. Chongming Chinese is a Chinese dialect with a complex tonal system. Twelve syllables with the vowel /ae/ were chosen and the syllables spread over eight lexical tones (two level tones, four contour tones, and two checked tones). The target syllables were embedded in carrier sentences with different preceding and following syllables. Four focus conditions were manipulated: broad focus, initial focus, medial focus, and final focus. During the experiment, twelve participants were elicited with precursor questions to produce sentences with different focus locations. The frequencies of the first two formants (F1 and F2) were extracted over the middle 50 ms of the vowel interval for each target syllable. Formant tracks were calculated with the B...

Phonetic structure in Yoloxóchitl Mixtec consonants

While Mixtec languages are well-known for their tonal systems, there remains relatively little work focusing on their consonant inventories. This paper provides an in-depth phonetic description of the consonant system of the Yoloxóchitl Mixtec language (Oto-Manguean, ISO 639-3 codexty), a Guerrero Mixtec variety. The language possesses a number of contrasts common among Mixtec languages, such as voiceless unaspirated stops, prenasalized stops, and a strong tendency for words to conform to a minimally bimoraic structure. Using a controlled set of data, we focus on howword sizeandword positioninfluence the acoustic properties of different consonant types. We examine closure duration, VOT, and formant transitions with the stop series, spectral moments with the fricative series, the timing between oral and nasal closure with the prenasalized stop series, and both formant transitions and qualitative variability with the glide series. The general effect ofword sizeis discussed in relation to work onpolysyllabic shortening(Turk & Shattuck-Hufnagel 2000) and demonstrates the importance of prosodic templates in Mixtec languages (Macken & Salmons 1997). The prenasalized stop data provides evidence that such stops are best analyzed as allophones of nasal consonants preceding oral vowels (as per Marlett 1992) and not as hypervoiced variants of voiced stops (as per Iverson & Salmons 1996).

A phonetic and phonollogical study of the tonal system in Yeongwol dialect

A phonetic and phonollogical study of the tonal system in Yeongwol dialect

Annotazioni sulla fenomenologia della tonalità nel pensiero di Giovanni Piana

Giovanni Piana's phenomenology of music was directed against any conventionalist point of view about the musical experience. According to Piana, each compositional system depends on the phenomenological structure of sound that determines the musical perception. Tonal system is not prescribed by natural laws, however it is based on the essential difference between consonance and dissonance. So the perceptual meaning of a tonal piece is not founded on subjective (culturally acquired) habitudes, but on phenomenological data.

Lexical tone or foot structure in Hong Kong English? A response to Lian-Hee Wee

As is common in work on prosodic typology, the notions 'tone' and 'stress' play a key role in Wee's 2016 study of the tone system of Hong Kong English (HKE). Based on the absence of phonetic correlates of stress and the distribution of tone in polysyllabic words, Wee claims that HKE must have lexical (high) tone. In this reply, we argue that, even in the absence of phonetic correlates of stress, foot structure provides a more parsimonious account of the distribution of surface tones. Multiple high tones within words follow from predictable morphological structure and/or tonal spreading, rather than from lexical tone.

표준중국어 성조 분포의 유형적 특성

Earlier literature on tones of Chinese tends to report the tonal inventory and tone sandhi observed in a certain variety of the language. However, given that Chinese is one of the major tonal languages, a typological investigation of Chinese tones is needed to achieve a better understanding of not only the tonal systems of the Chinese varieties but also the universals of tones across languages. To understand the Mandarin tones from a typological perspective, this study examines the tonal distribution patterns in 518 tonal languages collected in PHOBLIE and compares them with the tonal distribution analyzed from a Mandarin lexicon corpus. Results of a quantitative analysis of the two corpora reveal several important typological features of the tone types and distribution of Mandarin as well as tonal languages in general: (1) Approximately 63% of the tonal languages contain 2 or 3 tone types, and about 19% of the languages, including Mandarin, contain 4 tone types, (2) Implicational relation between tone types (e.g., the existence of contour tone(s) implies the existence of level tone(s)) are observed both across tonal languages and in Mandarin. (3) The distribution pattern of ‘level tone > simple contour tone > complex contour tone’, which is in negative relation with tone markedness, is found across tonal languages. However, falling tone(T4) being the most frequently occurring tone type, Mandarin shows the distribution of ‘simple contour tone > level tone > complex contour tone’.

“Total Trash”

“Total Trash”

Conditional Asymmetry and Spontaneous Asymmetry of Harmonic Progressions

The theory of harmonic vectors (THV) postulates that, of the six possible root progressions in a given tonality, those up a fourth, down a third, and up a second (+4, -3, +2) are present in significantly greater numbers than the complementary root motions down a fourth, up a third, and down a second (-4, +3, -2) (Meeùs 1988; 1989; 2000). This imbalance sheds light on a specific aspect of the tonal system (Meeùs 2001, 63). The progressions +4, -3, +2 arise almost accidentally in pre-tonal polyphony through the constraints of contrapuntal rules, but in later repertoires they become a decisive syntactical feature that actively constrains tonality. A model combining voice leading and harmonic progression is tested against a body of madrigal cycles by Verdelot, Arcadelt, Lassus, Rore, Wert, and Monteverdi. These cycles, published between c. 1530 and 1638, contain about 50,000 chord progressions, permitting a close examination of the phenomena that reflect the changing status of the prevalent root progressions, the technical aspects that may have fostered it, and the compositional possibilities that result from the evolution outlined.

Corpus-based learning of tonal expectations with expectation networks

ABSTRACTAlthough tonal expectations are an essential element of musical meaning in Western art music, it remains unclear whether the distinct melodic expectations associated with distinct scale degrees can be derived directly from musical corpora. Drawing on an analogy to neural learning, the current study outlines expectation networks, a novel and computationally simple method of measuring the expectation of encountering a given pitch followed in relatively close temporal proximity by another given pitch under a particular tonal system. Comparing expectation networks with listener ratings of asymmetrical pitch similarity and goodness of continuation between pitches reveals a large and highly significant effect, pointing to overlap between listeners’ judgments of tonal distance and corpus-derived expectations as to which pitches tend to be grouped close together in time.

From Munsell color system to a new color psychology system

AbstractShigenobu Kobayashi, the founder of Nippon Color and Design Research Institute Inc., developed a Hue and Tone System based on the Munsell Color System, referring to the ISCC‐NBS method of designating color and a dictionary of color names during the process. A particularly noteworthy feature of this system is its tone settings, which successfully represent the entire world of color in just 130 colors. Kobayashi used these 130 systematically and psychologically representative colors as research samples in various studies using methods such as the semantic differential technique, and developed a Color Image Scale that clearly demonstrated the semantic space of colors. The present article will describe the development and impact of the Hue and Tone System and Color Image Scale since Kobayashi's article The Aim and Method of the Color Image Scale was published in Color Research and Application in 1981.

Cantonese Tone Identification in Three Temporal Cues in Quiet, Speech-Shaped Noise and Two-Talker Babble

Purpose: Cochlear implant processors deliver mostly temporal envelope information and limited fundamental frequency (F0) information to the users, which make pitch and lexical tone perception challenging for cochlear implantees. Different factors have been found to affect Mandarin tone perception in temporal cues but the most effective temporal cues for lexical tone identification across different backgrounds remained unclear because no study has comprehensively examined the effects and interactions of these factors, particularly, in languages that use both pitch heights and pitch shapes to differentiate lexical meanings. The present study compared identification of Cantonese tones in naturally produced stimuli, and in three temporal cues, namely the amplitude contour cue (TE50), the periodicity cue (TE500), and the temporal fine structure cue (TFS), in three different numbers of frequency bands (B04, B08, B16) in quiet and two types of noise (two male talker-babble and speech-shaped noise).Method: Naturally produced Cantonese tones and synthetic tones that combined different acoustic cues and different number of frequency bands were presented to 18 young native Cantonese speakers for tone identification in quiet and noise.Results: Among the three temporal cues, TFS was the most effective for Cantonese tone identification in quiet and noise, except for T4 (LF) identification. Its effect was even stronger when the tones were presented in 4 or 8 bands rather than 16 bands. Neither TE500 nor TE50 was effective for Cantonese tone identification in quiet or noise. In noise, most tones in TE500 and TE50 were misheard as T4 (LF), demonstrating errors in both tone shapes and tone heights. Types of noise had limited effect on tone identification.Conclusions: Findings on Mandarin tone perception in temporal cues may not be applicable to other tone languages with more complex tonal systems. TFS presented in four bands was the most effective temporal cue for Cantonese tone identification in quiet and noise. Temporal envelope cues were not effective for tone, tone shape or tone height identification in Cantonese. These findings have implications for future design of cochlear implants for tone speakers who use pitch heights or a combination of pitch heights and pitch shapes to differentiate meanings.

La universalidad fonética de la poeísa de Taras Shevchenko en la traducción Espaňola: tempo, ritmo, métrica

The article deals with the phonetic system of the Ukrainian and Spanish languages on the example of Spanish translations of poetry “Kobzar” by Taras Shevchenko. This paper investigates the strategies of phonetic and phonemic recombinations of translation, that contribute to the Ukrainian identity reproduction in Spanish. The research states that the reflection of Ukrainian euphony, in particular the language of Taras Shevchenko, excites due to phonetic, grammatical, syntactic and semantic reconstruction of language units. It also determines that the ethnic paradigm encoded into the language worldview of Ukrainians is explicated in Spanish by preserving ethnic symbols in their phonetic and / or lexical and semantic interpretation. Moreover, it states that the reproduction of rhythm and melody in the poetry of T. Shevchenko is fragmentary in Spanish translation. It is possible due to the structural elasticity and the euphony of the Spanish language. The other reason is connected with synthetic origin of Ukrainian and analytical nature of Spanish. It should be mentioned that even though the special selection of the proper vocabulary, which is not similar to syllabic system of the original poems, allows creating close mimic sounding of rhythms in Shevchenko poetry. In fact, the impossible reproduction is observed at the level of letter combination, since the letters in each language of the world have their own emotional and semantic characteristics, dependent on mentality. During the analysis of the syllabic and tone system of original verse writing in Taras Shevchenko poetry and its Spanish translation, a phonetic universality of the writer’s works is discovered, which is characterized by a tonal manifestation.