声调与旋律匹配理论中的两个问题

Two Problems in Theories of Tone-melody Matching

近期关于词汇声调与音乐旋律如何匹配的研究表明,通常情况下音符之间的音高方向要与其对应声调的音高方向相同才是合适的匹配。这一原则同时适用于亚洲和非洲的本身并无谱系关系的声调语言。该原则和其他原则之间的相互作用通常是基于一些可排序的制约条件组成的序列,并且至少有一项研究已经明确采用了优选论的操作框架。然而,对一些实证和理论问题的理解还有待完善。本文基于近期关于现代粤语流行音乐的研究,旨在讨论如下两个问题:其一,讨论所谓的“倾斜”(oblique)匹配问题,即音调音高在音乐旋律上升或下降时保持不变,或者不同旋律音高在不同的声调上保持同一音高水平。这通常被看作是相近匹配,研究表明这种匹配在经验层面上是不正确的,但目前并不能清楚地说明该匹配违背了哪些限制条件。其二,本文还讨论轮廓声调如何决定一个合适的匹配—轮廓声调在不同语言中的处理方式不同,且有研究表明,轮廓声调本质上很难和音乐旋律完美匹配。

Recent work on how lexical tones are matched with musical melodies has shown that a satisfactory match generally requires the pitch direction between musical notes to be the same as the pitch direction between the corresponding tones.This principle applies in a number of unrelated tone languages in both Asia and Africa.The interaction of this pitch direction principle with other principles is often approached(at least implicitly)in terms of ranked violable constraints,and at least one study has made explicit use of the descriptive framework of Optimality Theory.Nevertheless,some empirical and theoretical issues remain poorly understood.This paper considers two such problems on the basis of recent studies of modern Cantonese popular music(“Cantopop”).First,it discusses so-called“oblique”matches,where either the tone sequence is unchanging while the musical sequence rises or falls,or the musical pitch stays level across a sequence of different tones.These have often been treated as near-matches,but investigation shows this to be empirically incorrect,with unclear implications for the idea of violable constraints.Second,the paper discusses the treatment of contour tones in determining a good match:contour tones are handled differently in different languages,and there is evidence that they may be intrinsically difficult to accommodate in a well-matched melody.