Singing in tone: Text-setting constraints in Southeast Asia

这个项目将研究如何用像泰语或汉语这样的声调语言唱歌。例如，在泰语中，音节“khaa”可以表示五种不同的意思之一，这取决于它是用高、中、低、上升还是下降的音调说话。既然音乐是由不同音高的音符组成的，那么像泰语这样的语言使用者怎么可能理解歌词呢？这种问题实际上与讲英语等西方语言的人所熟悉的问题非常相似。例如，大多数以英语为母语的人都会有这样的直觉：打油诗的开头“曾经有一位来自达拉斯的女士”比“曾经有一位来自因弗内斯的老妇人”要好得多。为什么我们认为第一行比第二行“听起来更好”？这种直觉反映了说英语的人对英语单词的节奏结构以及打油诗形式所施加的结构的共同认识。要想写出一首合适的打油诗，关键是要弄清楚如何把这两种打油诗搭配起来。很明显，至少说一些声调语言的人对某些词是否与特定的旋律匹配有类似的强烈直觉。我在这个项目中的目标是理解和解释这些直觉背后的音乐和语言因素。为了理解说话者是如何完成这项任务的，我们首先需要很好地理解音调语言在单词与音乐的搭配上是否不同，如果不同，又是如何不同的。其次，有必要了解音乐风格或流派在这个过程中所起的作用。就像打油诗不同于圆曲一样，不同的歌曲风格也会对语言语调和音乐旋律的关系施加不同的约束。在这个项目中，我将重点关注两种特殊的声调语言，泰语和越南语。这些语言有不同类型的音调系统，提供了一个机会来看看音调语言在文本设置方面是如何不同的，但也有丰富多样的音乐传统，使它们成为研究流派作用的理想语言。我项目的一部分目的是使我的研究成果能够被非学术读者所接受。与语言结构相比，音乐结构可能更容易被广泛欣赏，也更容易被直观地欣赏；通过强调语言和音乐之间的密切相似之处，我希望提高公众对语言学的认识，并更广泛地激发人们对语言学的兴趣。此外，我打算研究的两种语言都有几千年的音乐传统，但也有受现代西方习语深刻影响的充满活力的现代音乐场景。全球化对整个东南亚的音乐和语言产生了明显的影响，这在整个地区引发了关于不同形式的音乐表达的价值的争论，这些音乐表达是基于对艺术语言的传统约束的坚持。这个项目的结果可以通过展示音乐中语言使用方式的差异如何反映不同的艺术目标来为这些对话提供信息。这将为我未来的研究提供信息，并为学术界以外从事语言和音乐工作的人提供潜在有用的新框架和概念。

This project will study how it is possible to sing in a tone language like Thai or Chinese. In Thai, for example, the syllable 'khaa' can mean one of five different things depending on whether it is spoken with high, medium, low, rising, or falling pitch. Since music is made up of notes with different pitches, how is it possible for speakers of a language like Thai to understand song lyrics at all?This kind of problem is actually very similar to one familiar to anyone who speaks a Western language like English. For example, most native speakers of English will share the intuition that 'There once was a lady from Dallas' is a much better start to a limerick than 'There once was an old woman from Inverness'. Why do we think that the first line 'sounds better' than the second? This intuition reflects the shared knowledge that English speakers have about the rhythmic structure of English words, as well as about structure imposed by the form of a limerick. The trick in coming up with a suitable limerick is in figuring out how to match up one to the other. It is clear that speakers of at least some tone languages have similarly strong intuitions about whether certain words are well-matched to a particular melody. My goal in this project is to understand and explain the musical and linguistic factors that underlie these intuitions. In order to understand how speakers accomplish this task, we first need a good understanding of whether tone languages differ in how words are set to music, and if so, how. Second, it is necessary to understand the role that musical style or genre plays in this process. Just as a limerick differs from a roundelay, different styles of song may impose different constraints on the relationship between linguistic tone and musical melody. In this project, I will focus on two particular tone languages, Thai and Vietnamese. These languages have different types of tone systems, providing a chance to see how tone languages differ in terms of text-setting, but also have rich and varied musical traditions, making them ideal languages in which to examine the role of genre.Part of my project aims to make the findings of my research accessible to a non-academic audience. Musical structure is perhaps more widely appreciated, and possibly more intuitive to appreciate, than linguistic structure; by emphasising the close parallels between language and music, I hope to increase general public awareness of and stimulate interest in linguistics more broadly. Furthermore, both of the languages I propose to look at have musical traditions stretching back thousands of years, but also vibrant modern music scenes that have been profoundly influenced by modern Western idioms. Globalisation is having an obvious impact on music and language throughout Southeast Asia, and this has sparked debate throughout the region about the value of different forms of musical expression based on their adherence to traditional constraints on artistic language. The results of this project can inform these conversations by showing how differences in the way that language is used in music can reflect different artistic goals. This will both inform my future research and provide potentially useful new frameworks and concepts for those working with language and music outside academia.