Study of drum language as a communication system in African societies

本研究旨在分析器乐声音传递言语信息的机制。材料是布基纳法索（西非）的莫西人使用的鼓语。在一些仪式场合，宫廷首席鼓手通过敲打本德雷来“背诵”皇室家谱：鼓语被逐句解释成摩西语（摩尔语），由另一名鼓手大声重复。我们通过计算机辅助声谱分析所有短语来研究材料。主要目的是：1)弄清鼓声与口语的超音段特征（以及某些音段特征）之间的对应关系。2)了解在将口头信息转化为鼓声信息时，在什么情况下如何发生删节或冗余。3)确定摩司鼓语言的习惯特征。这些点的检验结果是：1)至少在一个乐句的开头和结尾，鼓声特征和音调特征之间的对应关系是高频的。鼓声与口头信息中的某些片段特征之间的对应关系无法得到证实，因为它们是由鲜明特征的二元对立（Jakobson等人）定义的，例如急性/严重，紧张/紧张，中断/持续。2)在口头信息的缩短程度和相同公式信息的重复程度之间，或者在引用的国王的王室家谱中，没有发现任何规律性的相关性。3)对于超分段特征，我们只处理高/低音调对立，尽管其他两个方面，即重音和持续时间很重要。然而，无论是通过光谱分析，还是通过与摩西鼓手的实验，我们都可以发现鼓语言的一些习惯特征，这些特征是对某些短语的显著修改记录的识别。

This study aims at analyzing the mechanism to transfer verbal messages by means of instrumental sounds. The material is the drum language used among the Mosi of Burkina Faso (West Africa). On several ceremonial occasion, the chief of court drummers "recite" the royal genealogy, by beating bendre : the drum language is interpreted, phrase by phrase, into Mosi Language (moore) to be repeated in a loud voice by another drummer.We studied the material by computer-assisted sound-spectrographic analysis of all phrases. The main objective points are :1) To make clear the correspondence between the drum sounds and suprasegmental features (as well as certain segmental features) of the spoken language.2) To know how and under what circumstances abridgment or redundancy occurs in transforming the verbal message into the drum message.3) To determine the idiomatic characteristics of the Mosi drum language.The results of the examination of these points are :1) The correspondence between drum sounds features and tonal features is observed with a high frequency, at least at the beginning and at the end of a phrase. The correspondence between drum sounds and certain segmental features in verbal message, as they are defined by binary opposition of distinctive features (Jakobson, et al.), such as acute/grave, tense/1ax, interrupted/continuant, could not be confirmed.2) Any regularity of the correlation could not be found between the degree of shortening of the verbal message and the repeatedness of the same formulary message, or the earliness in the royal genealogy of the cited king.3) Of suprasegmental features, we treated only high/low tonal opposition, in spite of the importance of two other aspects, the stress and the duration. However, we could find some idiomatic features of the drum language, either by the spectrographic analysis or by the experiments with the Mosi drummers on the discernibility of significantly modified records of some phrases.