Research Articles

Tone in speech and singing: a field experiment to research their relation in endangered languages of North East India

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Abstract

In the framework of a DoBeS project funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, a team of linguists, anthropologists and an ethnomusicologist is currently researching three language groups in Upper Assam, India, a region known for its linguistic diversity. The full project title, The traditional songs and poetry of Upper Assam – a multifaceted linguistic and ethnographic documentation of the Tangsa, Tai and Singpho communities in Margherita, Northeast India, indicates that the focus of our cooperation has been on artistic expressions of language in the three language groups.

This paper is about two of the language varieties that we are documenting for the DoBeS project: Singpho (Numphuk variety) and Tai Phake. We first present an analysis of the Singpho tonal system based initially on the intuition of one of the more linguistically aware native speakers (Manje La), but extending this with an alternative approach to the system that reanalyzes the lengthened vowels of some syllables to be one of the components of tone rather than a component of vowel length. We will then discuss the relation between tones and melody in Singpho and present a new method for investigating the relation of pitch in speech and singing in a field experiment...

Keywords: DoBeS project, endangered languages, Upper Assam, India, Singpho, Tai Phake, tonal system, singing

How to Cite:

Morey, S. & Schöpf, J., (2011) “Tone in speech and singing: a field experiment to research their relation in endangered languages of North East India”, Language Documentation and Description 10, 37-60. doi: https://doi.org/10.25894/ldd188