Linguistics Program
Workshops
Semester 2 2006
Linguistics of Song
A workshop on linguistic aspects of traditional songs and related poetic genres.
Monday 25th September
10.00am -3.00pm
Room 329 David Myers Building East,
Bundoora Campus La Trobe University
The workshop was intended to provide researchers with an interest that sits somewhere across the connections between linguistics and ethnomusicology with the opportunity to meet and share ideas explore each others' research interests. As part of the data collection process, many of us have collected songs in a range of minority / endangered languages over the years. This workshop was an opportunity to share this material with others and consider the types of analysis and description that could be explored in conjunction with the material.
We were interested in all linguistic aspects of the songs/poems, and in the way those relate to musical norms, as well as the issues involved in the setting of performance and the transference of these songs from person to person or generation to generation.
More specific issues and approaches are outlined below. We would like to thank both Bob Dixon and Reis Flora for their advice in this regard and note that the points listed below are heavily summarised from notes they sent to us.
From the perspective of linguistics two general themes that emerge are the differences between song and speech and the modification of linguistic forms to fit the musical structure of the melody. Although the modification of linguistic forms to fit the melody is an obvious motivation for differences between song and speech, differences may also arise through the different social values of songs and speech. For example, where songs exist as stable forms passed through generations they may maintain arachisms (in terms of morphology, syntax and vocabulary) that are lost in everyday speech; conversely where songs are valued as a means of personal expression they may allow greater innovation than is found in everyday speech. In settings where songs are commodified in some way and shared across communities they may exhibit elements from other dialects or languages in the area.
Specific questions relating to the differences between song and speech can be organised in relation to different types of linguistic structures:
- Do songs differ phonologically from normal speech, for example in terms of their phonemes, phonotactics, use of stress or tone?
- Do songs contain morphological forms or patterns or syntactic structures not found in speech?
- Do songs contain special vocabulary, for example words uncommon or not found in speech? Do words have metaphorical extensions in songs that they do not have in speech?
Questions relating to the modification of linguistic forms to fit the melody may also be organised in relation this schema:
- How is the phonology of the language adapted, for example, is there word truncation to fit metre, or are there special 'filler' words with no meaning, included to complete metre?
- Can words be shortened (for example., dropping an inflection) to fit song metre? Are there restrictions on the types of grammatical structures found in song?
- Are there special 'song words' that are not found in normal speech?
- From the perspective of musicology we can consider the song as a performance and ask questions relating to the elements involved in performance or consider the song in terms of musical style.
Questions that relate to the song as performance include:
- Is the song performed with instrumental music or by singer(s) alone? (Any instruments may be identified according to the four basic families used in ethnomusicology: idiophones, membranophones, chordophones, and aerophones)
- Does the song involve a changing mixture of vocal and instrumental music?
- What social roles do the performers hold? (gender, age, qualifications)
- How many people are involved in the performance? (solo, duo, trio, a small ensemble, a medium-sized ensemble, a large ensemble...)
In terms of style we can consider the following characteristics of the performance:
- Time/metre/rhythm – what happens through time?
- Pitch/scale/mode/melody - what pitches can be discerned and how do they relate to each other?
- Tone quality – the most difficult parameter to describe without using value-laden terminology. Can be determined on a continuum from simple to highly complex.
- Texture – how many lines are there relating to the melody, how many people perform the melody?
- Form or structure – how a performance is organized (eg. improvisatory; pre-composed, composed in a particular form...). What determines its organization? A text, a dance context, a festival or ritual context, entertainment?
- Words and music – how a text is set to music.
- Amplitude: low, medium high. Consistent – why? Changeable – how so? When? Why?
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Abstracts
(Mike) Tianqiao Lu tilu@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au
My topic is "The flirting implications in Maonan welcome songs". Maonan people are very conservative. They often convey their feeling of love in a round-about way. The Welcome Song is an example. I have recordings of this song and can sing it. I will explain the strange syllables expressed at the end of the song.
Graeme Smith graeme.smith@arts.monash.edu.au
My main interests in this field recently have been in sung Australian accents in Australian country music, and especially the shifts in these amongst female singers. I am interested in whether this can be seen as evidence in current shifts in the strategies of covert prestige employed within the genre, and in popular music accents generally.
I would be interested in contributing a paper on this. If you would like a title, provisionally it would be: "Dialect, covert prestige and gender in Australian country music"
Nicholas Thieberger thien@unimelb.edu.au
Ririal, a song from Efate , Vanuatu
The focus for this paper is a song from South Efate in Central Vanuatu . Vanuatu is renowned for its linguistic diversity, with over 110 languages, as well as Bislama, a Melanesian Pidgin lingua franca. Singing has played a central part in traditional (or kastom) life (Crowe 1981) as well as in the Christian practices that have been almost universally adopted by the population of Vanuatu since missionary activity started in the nineteenth century and in stringband performance. This paper will use a performance of one song - Ririal - as a point of discussion. The song displays epenthetic phones to satisfy rythmic requirements, and is in an archaic form of the language. It was recorded in 1998 and forms part of a corpus of recordings in South Efate transcribed with time-alignment and archived with PARADISEC. This corpus contains several what I will call 'traditional' songs as well as church services with hymn singing and a stringband performance of songs in current South Efate language.
Sheena van der Mark s.vandermark@latrobe.edu.au
The linguistic aspects of Tolai contemporary music. One of the things that has kind of held me back is my lack of any knowledge of musical stuff. Anyways, you say that you're interested in traditional music, but I was wondering if contemporary stuff might also be of interest. The Tolais have quite a history in the contemporary music of PNG, but I'm not really sure of how it fits in with Tolai traditional stuff (I only have one recording of a traditional Vinitiri song, and I don't have it translated because I wasn't focusing on that stuff and my informants that I asked about it didn't actually know what the words meant - presumably they are in an earlier stage of the language).
Anyways, my analysis would cover most of the linguistic aspects you mentioned below, but also include the code-mixing that occurs with Tok Pisin (and sometimes between Vinitiri/Kuanua for the songs that are in Vinitiri) - sometimes I think this code-mixing may be used for some of the reasons that you mentioned.
Max Richter m.richter@latrobe.edu.au
Will play and briefly introduced some of the songs recorded for his recently submitted PhD thesis in anthropology at LTU, titled 'Musical Worlds in Jogjakarta : Contexts, Genres, Identities'. The thesis has 7 CDs accompanying the text (5 of field recordings and 2 commercial recordings). Among them are different versions of the same songs, soundscapes, etc.
Stephen Morey s.morey@latrobe.edu.au
Rice pounding songs in Northeast India
This paper will present data from a single genre, Rice Pounding Songs, from two distinct language communities Phake (Tai Kadai) and Singpho (Tibeto-Burman). Rice pounding songs in both communities exhibit some similar features, both in terms of the refrain of the song, the content of the lyrics and the overall rhythms. The paper will concentrate on the interplay of linguistic and musical features.
Tonya Stebbins t.stebbins@latrobe.edu.au
Mali Baining Songs: An overview of the repertoire.
This paper provides an overview of the different song types encountered in Mali society with samples of a number of traditional styles: Day dance songs, Night dance songs, Feast songs, Children's songs, Hymns, Choruses, Popular music. Distinguishing features of each style will be noted with particular reference to linguistic differences between the styles, there are also interesting commonalities across the repertoire. Possible avenues for future research of the corpus will also be considered.
Auditors
Meiki Apted m.apted@ugrad.unimelb.edu.au
Sally Ann Horman s.horman@ugrad.unimelb.edu.au
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