How Can the Lyrics of a Song in a Tone Language Be Understood?

Abstract

In a tone language, pitch variations are used to contrast word meaning. For example, the Cantonese syllable /si/ means "teacher" when spoken in a high pitch and "yes" when spoken in a low pitch. How is fundamental frequency (Fo) used to signal lexical tones that occur in songs? In an examination of Cantonese songs, it was found that songwriters abandon the ratio scale of Fo differences that is applied to lexical tones in carefully read speech and instead use an ordinal scale. For example, a high tone that is normally 12% higher than a mid-tone in speech can be realised as any higher Fo (but never a lower Fo) in songs. A perceptual experiment showed that native Cantonese-speaking listeners similarly apply an ordinal Fo scale to arrive at the lexical meaning of the lyric. This ratio-to-ordinal mapping in Cantonese songs ensures the musicality of the melody while preserving adequate identifiability of lexical tones in the lyric.