This paper provides a preliminary analysis of some mapping phenomena at the tone-melody interface in Cantonese popular songs. Pitch is one of the common acoustic properties shared by language and music. In tone languages in particular, pitch variations are contrastive and therefore play an important role in differentiating word meanings. The question that arises is whether the lexical tones correspond to the melody of a song written in these languages, and if so, to what extent and how tone and tune match. This study investigates a sample of popular songs written in Cantonese, a language with a relatively complex tonal inventory. In all the Cantonese songs collected and analyzed, it is observed that tone and tune correlate closely, and the patterns of correlation are found to be quite systematic. It is suggested that these regular mapping characteristics can be accounted for by constraint interaction from the optimality-theoretic perspective. Optimality Theory, being one of the current central linguistic theories in the areas of phonology and syntax, is adopted as the theoretical framework in this study, and is extended to address tonal issues at the interface of language and music.
Cite as: Ho, V.W.S. (2006) An optimality-theoretic analysis of the tone-melody mapping in Cantonese popular songs. Proc. 2nd International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages (TAL 2006), 69-72
@inproceedings{ho06_tal,
author={Vincie W. S. Ho},
title={{An optimality-theoretic analysis of the tone-melody mapping in Cantonese popular songs}},
year=2006,
booktitle={Proc. 2nd International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages (TAL 2006)},
pages={69--72}
}