Mapping between Lexical Tones and Musical Notes in Thai Pop Songs

Mapping between Lexical Tones and Musical Notes in Thai Pop Songs Chawadon Ketkaew Pittayawat Pittayaporn Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University, Phayathai Road, Pathumwan, Phayathai Road, Pathumwan, Bangkok, 10330, Thailand Bangkok, 10330, Thailand Chawadon.k@gmail.com Pittayawat.P@chula.ac.th Abstract The aim of this paper is to examine the parallelism between tonal transitions and musical note transitions in Thai pop songs based on the data from 30 current pop songs. The results suggest that there is a statistically significant parallelism between tonal transitions and musical note transitions. Interestingly, the results show that both contour tones, RISING and FALLING, typically pattern with HIGH with respect to the mapping between tonal transitions and note transitions. Nevertheless, when two FALLING occur consecutively, the offset of the second one is used for mapping. Our results seem to find further support for decomposability of contour tones in Thai. Furthermore, they suggest that Thai pop music composition does not strive to maximize parallel transitions but prefer to avoid opposing transitions. 1. Introduction Pitch is an important element in both language and music. In languages, pitch is used to convey different levels of meaning, e.g. lexical, sentential, attitudinal, emotional etc. In music, pitch serves the melodic structure, whether played on instruments or sung by voice, in order to express meaning to the listener. However, pitch in language and music differs with respect to how it is treated. While pitch in language is treated as a relative difference, pitch in music is treated as an absolute difference. Given their similarity and difference, it is important for our understanding of human cognition to examine the relationship between pitch in language and music. Of crucial relevance are languages that use patterns of relative pitch to convey lexical contrast. It is a puzzle how tonal languages relate their lexical tones to musical melody, which is made up of patterns of absolute pitch played on instruments or sung. One pertinent question is how contour tones are treated in the mapping between tone and melody. To answer this question, the Thai language is a great case study because its five tones, shown in Table 1, have been studied quite extensively both in terms of acoustics, perception, as well as phonology. However, little research has been done on the mapping between lexical tones and music in Thai, especially with respect to the treatment of contour tones. Tone Example Tone value MID kh : „to be stuck‟ [33] LOW khà: „galangal‟ [21] FALLING khâ: „value‟ [42] HIGH khá: „to trade‟ [45] RISING khǎ: „leg‟ [24] Table1: Thai lexical tones Since in Thai songs syllables and musical notes are typically mapped to each other in a one to one relationship, an interesting question is how these complex tones are treated. In this paper, we examine the tone-melody mapping in current Thai pop songs. Our results indicate that, like other genres, Thai pop songs show a degree of parallelism between tonal transitions and musical note transitions. In addition, they show that …

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