Patel Aniruddh D, Daniele Joseph R
The Neurosciences Institute, 10640 John Jay Hopkins Drive, San Diego, CA 92121, USA.
Cognition. 2003 Feb;87(1):B35-45. doi: 10.1016/s0010-0277(02)00187-7.
Musicologists and linguists have often suggested that the prosody of a culture's spoken language can influence the structure of its instrumental music. However, empirical data supporting this idea have been lacking. This has been partly due to the difficulty of developing and applying comparable quantitative measures to melody and rhythm in speech and music. This study uses a recently-developed measure for the study of speech rhythm to compare rhythmic patterns in English and French language and classical music. We find that English and French musical themes are significantly different in this measure of rhythm, which also differentiates the rhythm of spoken English and French. Thus, there is an empirical basis for the claim that spoken prosody leaves an imprint on the music of a culture.
音乐学家和语言学家常常认为，一种文化的口语韵律会影响其器乐的结构。然而，一直缺乏支持这一观点的实证数据。部分原因在于，难以开发并应用可比较的定量方法来研究语音和音乐中的旋律与节奏。本研究使用一种最近开发的用于研究语音节奏的方法，来比较英语、法语及古典音乐中的节奏模式。我们发现，在这种节奏测量中，英语和法语的音乐主题存在显著差异，该测量也区分了英语和法语口语的节奏。因此，有实证依据支持这样的说法：口语韵律会在一种文化的音乐中留下印记。
