Ling 247, S20, Notes on prosody

Notes on prosody

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Notes
Excursus on crossmodal metaphors for pitch

The following notes supplement the sections on prosody in the readings for this week, which focus on ASL. (Though Auslan is historically unrelated to ASL, prosody in Auslan is expressed in largely the same way as in ASL, so we won't mention it separately.) The discussion and questions belows zoom out from the detailed level of the readings. The intention is to help us better understand the concept of prosody in spoken and signed languages in the most general way possible.

A natural way of thinking of prosody is that it concerns the musical aspects of language.¹ According to the very first sentence in the wikipedia entry for music, "[m]usic is an art form, and cultural activity, whose medium is sound" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music, accessed 23 March 2020). Given the reference to sound in this definition, sign language prosody might seem like a contradiction in terms. But since we know that sign languages have phonology, which also seems impossible at first glance, the fact that they have prosody becomes a bit less surprising. So let's turn to exploring that concept. As just mentioned the prosody concerns the musical aspects of language, so let's begin by taking a closer look at the elements that the Wikipedia entry cited above lists as being fundamental to music. The table below relates these elements to other musical and psychological concepts and to the corresponding acoustic (that is to say, physical) properties of sound. The quotation marks around some of the terms are intended to highlight their metaphorical nature.

Element Psychological properties Physical properties
pitch (intonation, melody) "high" vs. "low" frequency
dynamics loud vs. quiet ("soft") amplitude
rhythm (duration, meter, tempo, articulation) long vs. short, stressed vs. unstressed, fast vs. slow, "smooth" (legato) vs. "choppy" (staccato) organization of units in time
timbre, "color" ("texture" is irrelevant for our purposes) piano vs. oboe; my voice vs. your voice overtones

Element	Psychological properties	Physical properties
pitch (intonation, melody)	"high" vs. "low"	frequency
dynamics	loud vs. quiet ("soft")	amplitude
rhythm (duration, meter, tempo, articulation)	long vs. short, stressed vs. unstressed, fast vs. slow, "smooth" (legato) vs. "choppy" (staccato)	organization of units in time
timbre, "color" ("texture" is irrelevant for our purposes)	piano vs. oboe; my voice vs. your voice	overtones

Spoken language prosody is able to use these elements (or at least some of them) right off the shelf, as it were. But how can these elements be expressed in or translated into the visual-gestural modality? Here is a list of questions intended to help us explore that question. In some cases, the questions are closely related and just different ways of getting at the same point.

In answering the questions, the following information about sound may be helpful:

Sound is produced by the movement of waves through a medium such as air. The wave displaces the molecules from a state of rest.
Frequency refers to the speed of the wave - that is, how fast does a molecule cycle through the wave pattern? Faster waves sound higher.
When producing higher sounds, speakers tense their vocal cords; in other words, higher sounds require more effort.
Amplitude refers to the size of the wave - that is, how far does a molecule move from its state of rest? Larger waves sound louder.
Timbre concerns the complexity of the wave pattern. Tuning forks generate simple waves; various musical instruments have characteristic patterns of complexity.

Are some of the elements in the table above already expressed in a medium other than sound?
Hint: In the wikipedia entry for music, look at the line under the Greek vase - the one that starts with "Medium".
Which elements translate easily from the aural-oral modality to the visual-gestural modelity. Which elements translate less easily? Why is that?
Hint: Skim the wikipedia entry for dance or Conducting:technique
Are some of the above elements linguistically more important and relevant than others? What we mean is: If I take some sentence and change the (sign equivalent of) timbre, does that result in a big meaning difference? What if I change the (sign equivalent of) pitch or intonation?
We talk of "high" and "low" sounds". It's not exactly clear what the basis of the metaphor is, since pitch depends on a sound wave's speed (see above). But let's take the metaphor at face value. Would it be possible for some sign language to translate pitch into height in the signing space? In other words, since speakers can signal questions by producing the words in the question with a higher pitch at the end, could signers signal questions by signing the signs in the questions increasingly higher in the signing space? What problems might arise?
Or let's take the underlying physical reality of pitch at face value. Could signers signal questions the signing the signs in the questions with increasing speed? (In music, this would be referred as 'accelerando'.)
If neither of the above possibilities is exploited, how is intonation expressed in sign languages?
In the visual-gestural modality, which elements are expressed by the hands? Which are expressed non-manually?
Say you've identified the counterpart of loudness for the visual-gestural modality. Does talking loudly correspond to signing "loudly"?
More generally, do the auditory/acoustic elements above and their sign language counterparts play the same linguistic role? For instance, focus on a word in spoken language is often reflected by greater loudness, longer duration, and higher pitch. How about in sign languages?
In spoken language, intonation is expressed by exactly the same channel as the rest of the linguistic message; it "rides" on the same sound waves. How about in sign languages? Which linguistic modality is more like a flute? Which is more like a piano?

Notes

1. In fact, the -ody in prosody comes from the Greek word for 'song', which also gives us ode, as in Ode on a Grecian Urn, the famous poem by John Keats.

Excursus on crossmodal metaphors for pitch

Thanks to Mark Liberman and Jian-jing Kuang for the following information.

The basis for the high-low metaphor for pitch might be that high sounds tend to require more effort to produce (watch Diana Dammrau sing the Queen of the Night aria), just like things that are high require more effort to get down or it requires more effort to jump higher. Low sounds, on the other hand, require lowering of the larynx, which we can perceive kinesthetically.

Not all languages use the high-low metaphor for pitch. In Classical Greek and Latin described high-pitched sounds or accents on vowels as 'sharp' (Classical Greek oxys, Latin acutus). Low-pitched sounds were described as 'heavy' (Classical Greek barys, Latin gravis).

English also uses 'sharp' and 'flat' to describe deviations from an intended pitch in music. So the same type of mixed metaphor as Greek and Latin.

According to Mark Liberman, "In one of the West African languages we studied in field methods (Yoruba?), I recall that in drum ensembles a high-pitched drum is called the 'father drum' and the low-pitched one is the 'mother drum' because the high-pitched drum plays a free solo while the low-pitched drum plays a steady supporting accompaniment. (This memory needs to be checked...)"

Here are two references that look comprehensive:

Metaphors for musical pitch vary, but the basic principles are the same

The thickness of pitch: Crossmodal metaphors in Farsi, Turkish, and Zapotec