Re: Minor third calls (Pierre Divenyi )


Subject: Re: Minor third calls
From:    Pierre Divenyi  <pdivenyi(at)EBIRE.ORG>
Date:    Sun, 30 Jan 2005 12:13:23 -0800

Jeremy, My take on the minor-third issue is as follows: First, I am unsure of how melodic intervals translate into prosody but I have the hunch that the universality of precise intonation (beyond contours) would need to be proven by a large database both within and across languages. I personally am unaware of the existence of such a database but you, as a linguist, should have answers to this question. Second, the near-universality of minor thirds as the interval of base for conveying melody has been an accepted tenet by ethnomusicologists -- they reach from Western music to Asian and native American cultures (where pentatonic scales dominate). I agree with Al Bregman in that we need to look at the interval from the point of view of streaming but I want to turn the issue upside down by noting that the minor third is the **smallest** interval arguably involving two neighboring critical bands, i.e., two streams consisting of notes that are "different". And difference is what music is based on. My favorite (and unfortunately little-known) theory is the one by Friedrich Neumann ("Die Zeitgestalt", Kaltschmidt, Vienna, 1959) who argues that music is the fluctuation between tension-bearing ("Spannungston") and tension-relaxing ("Ruheton") elements. In that vein, nursery tunes with only minor-third leaps back and forth are probably the simplest fluctuations between the higher Spannungsto:ne and the lower Ruheto:ne. Because a major second involves overlapping critical bands, M2 alternations would not bring the required difference. One could speculate why larger intervals are not found (as often?) in two-note nursery tunes, but I would yield the soap box to others prepared to do so. Pierre Divenyi At 02:29 PM 1/29/2005, Jeremy Day-O'Connell wrote: >Dear Colleagues, > >As the author of the original query, allow me to clarify. > >Linguists who study the intonation patterns of English have widely >reported use of the descending minor third in chants and calls (e.g., >Lieberman; Bolinger) or more generally, in "stereotypical" or >"predictable" speech (Ladd). Similar phenomena have been reported >across many languages (e.g., in Hirst and DiChristo, eds., 1998). > >It is frustrating, however, that such claims appear to be mostly >anecdotal rather than empirical. ("Air Ball" is one exception: see >musicologist Cheryl Heaton's article in _PMS_ 1992.) It's more >frustrating still that many linguists tend not to measure pitch with >any precision (and among those who do, some use pitch _difference_ >instead of pitch _ratio_!). > >Nevertheless, the phenomenon is extremely recognizable to this >English-speaker, and I find the universality claim entirely plausible. > >Hence my plea: If anyone knows of any responsible research that bears >on this purported universality, I'd be grateful for the reference. > >Now as for my hypothesis. Perhaps "scene analysis" conjured up the >wrong ideas. As Al Bregman writes (here and in his excellent and >well known publications), grouping by pitch proximity is a common >strategy in forming auditory Gestalts. What I'm imagining isn't >grouping but something more like salience or conversely, habituation. >Let's assume a natural environment in which most sounds are noise, >and the few relatively "tonal" sounds (the whistle of the wind, the >creaking of trees) change in pitch only slightly and only slowly. >Then a good way to be heard, or rather, "noticed," would be to >project two clear tones at some significant interval; listeners would >be liable to infer that something non-random (i.e., >information-laden) had happened. > >But of course, as Bregman would also point out, grouping by _timbre_ >stands to preserve the unitary identity of the sound source. Since >both the timbre and the loudness of the (amateur) human voice vary >with pitch, the caller faces an opposite constraint as that described >in the previous paragraph. Hence, make the interval big, but not too >big. > >(I had been tempted by the critical band but couldn't imagine its >relevance to what is, after all, a _melodic_ phenomenon; I think >Christian Kaernbach's idea is a good one.) > >Hope that's clearer. Thank you all for your thoughts, and I welcome more. > >Jeremy >-- > >Jeremy Day-O'Connell >Postdoctoral Fellow in Music Theory >Music Department >University of Chicago >1010 E. 59th St. >Chicago, IL 60637 > >W (773) 702-8668


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