musical linguistics - something to do with emphasis and tone. Is there even a category for this?
Today at work I was analyzing (in my head) the emphasis of syllables, and how the tone was changed from one syllable to another. I was trying to see if there was a certain average jump of tone between the unemphasized syllables and the emphasized syllables, but it seems that it was anywhere from one to seven notes away on the words sampled.
That is to say, when I say the word, "Marvelous!" going from MAR- to -vel/ous was (in these sampled instances) like jumping a whole octave, from do to do (-vel- and -ous both being the same tone). Seven notes. But if I'm being sarcastic, it is possible that the same word might only have a distance of two and a half notes. Or it could have the full seven; it just depends.
There must be some sort of linguistic study on this from some university! I cannot be the sole person focused on linguistics from a musical/tonal perspective that has nothing to do with tonal languages itself.
Except...except this is WHY some tonal languages exist (in that it's to do with syllabic emphasis)! Take Ancient Greek, for instance. It was tonal in order to illustrate the long syllables and the short syllables, and some other stuff as well. Oh, it's quite fun! And we never learned to speak it in tones, but we still had to memorize where they went, just because. :p Well, because that would help when it came time to understand the morphology, and to be able to anticipate irregularities. It really did help.
I am going to stop right now, because I could go on for ages. :D
That is to say, when I say the word, "Marvelous!" going from MAR- to -vel/ous was (in these sampled instances) like jumping a whole octave, from do to do (-vel- and -ous both being the same tone). Seven notes. But if I'm being sarcastic, it is possible that the same word might only have a distance of two and a half notes. Or it could have the full seven; it just depends.
There must be some sort of linguistic study on this from some university! I cannot be the sole person focused on linguistics from a musical/tonal perspective that has nothing to do with tonal languages itself.
Except...except this is WHY some tonal languages exist (in that it's to do with syllabic emphasis)! Take Ancient Greek, for instance. It was tonal in order to illustrate the long syllables and the short syllables, and some other stuff as well. Oh, it's quite fun! And we never learned to speak it in tones, but we still had to memorize where they went, just because. :p Well, because that would help when it came time to understand the morphology, and to be able to anticipate irregularities. It really did help.
I am going to stop right now, because I could go on for ages. :D