Dear Branka, Your representation of my notated phrase is misleading. In my posted example at the caption to the notation states: 'The repeated phrase, as it appears to be sung'. In my posting of December 14 (copied below) I wrote: ' in the subject’s rendition, the contour of each syllable spans a smaller range in terms of f0 than it does in the original – considerably smaller for some syllables. The contours of the syllables in the original are not flat – some of them, such as for ‘some’ and ‘so’ span a large range – but they become flat when listeners who hear the effect as music repeat what they hear. The fact that the contours in my original are not flat has led to some small disagreement as to what the ‘notes’ actually are. Although the large majority hear the phrase as I notate it, some people argue that the first syllable ‘some’ should be notated a semitone lower, and others argue that the last syllable ‘ly’ should be notated a semitone lower (see for example, Linda Seltzer’s posting). There is in fact no ‘correct’ answer, because the pattern of f0s is consistent with a number of interpretations. (This is true even taking amplitudes into account.) It may well be that most of us ‘opt’ for the phrase as I notate it because it enables an interpretation in terms of a well-formed tonal melody.' In my talk at the ASA/ASJ meeting, I displayed the pitch contours of the original - spoken - phrase and those of a subject repeating the phrase after multiple repetitions. This illustration showed that in the subject's rendition, each syllable spanned a small pitch range - appropriate to a musical note; however in the original - spoken - phrase the pitch ranges of the syllables were larger - in a couple of cases substantially so. (see also my commentary in Your 'No wonder' statement is opaque - - - . Diana Deutsch --------------------------------- Professor Diana Deutsch Department of Psychology University of California, San Diego 9500 Gilman Dr. #0109 La Jolla, CA 92093-0109, USA 858-453-1558 (tel) 858-453-4763 (fax) Bruno wrote:
Jeff wrote:
Jeff's posting raises a long debated question whether song originally arouse from speech. It may well be that by applying stepwise pitch changes, and fairly regular rhythm, one goes from speech to a talking song and eventually a clearly perceived song. Now, when yue analyse the sentence "sometims behave so strangely" you get the the following: 1) None of her vowels was said on a mono-tone that could be represented by a single note (unlike the notation offered at http://philomel.com/phantom_words/description.html#sometimes). 2) Four out of 7 vowels are diphthongs - (easy to lengthen and "sing" without distorting the vowel's identity) 3) The tone sequences of vowels are: Word Tone "sometimes": rising monophthong + falling diphthong "behave": falling monphthong + rising diphthong "so": rising diphthong "strangely": a fall-rise on diphthong followed by a rise and + a falling monophthong No wonder that we perceive it as "song" especially when repeated sufficiently. The site below offers an interesting voice anaylsis software that turns any pitch contour into a "melody" played by a musical instrument Best to all Branka ________________________________________ Branka Zei Pollermann PhD Psychologue Psychiatrie de Liaison Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève 51 Bvd. De la Cluse, 1205 Genève tél. : 0041 22 382 48 81 Portable : 0041 79 203 92 17 |