SIR World Languages Investigation Abstract
TONE AND MELODY INTERACTION IN MANDARIN AND CANTONESE, REVISITED
Presenter:
Wei Luo, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy
Advisor:
Dr. Alan Yu, University of Chicago
Abstract:
Tone and melody are both conveyed by pitch, or fundamental frequency. Two languages that use tones to contrast word meaning are Mandarin, which has four lexical tones, and Cantonese, which has six. Conflicts between tone and melody often arise when a tone language is put into songs. A previous study in this area conducted by Chan (1987) showed that Cantonese songs preserve tones better than Mandarin ones do. However, Chan's results are suspect because her methodology involved comparing songs with greatly dissimilar melodies. This study improves on her methodology by studying Mandarin and Cantonese songs of the same melody. Wong (2002) also analyzed the interaction between tone and melody, but in Cantonese songs only. We expanded on his methodology to include Mandarin songs as well. For our study, six songs, three Mandarin and three Cantonese, were analyzed by using two methods borrowed from both Chan and Wong. The first method, similar to Chan's, consisted of comparing the lyric tones in parallel stanzas; the second method, similar to Wong's, was to compare a tone with the direction of the previous tone and melody. Our results confirmed that Cantonese songs do indeed preserve tones much better than the Mandarin songs do.