Page 210 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

Say It in Singing! 185
.
To define melodic phrasing (anga) in grindmill songs, we would,
therefore, need to search combinations of melodic and prosodic
parameters. Indeed, these two notions borrowed from musicology
and linguistics cover the same physical (acoustic) reality, namely,
time/pitch structures, but the distinction makes sense at the cog-
nitive (musicological/phonological) level. The bundling of these cogni-
tive and physical aspects in either domain (musicology or linguistics)
may be achieved under the common label ‘intonation system’.
The following broad definition of intonation holds true with semi-
improvised music:

On the physical level, intonation is used to refer to variations of one
or more acoustic parameters. Of these, fundamental frequency (F0)
is universally acknowledged to be the primary parameter. Many
authors, however, have drawn attention to the pluriparametric
nature of intonation which besides fundamental frequency involves
variations of intensity and segmental duration. (Rossi et al. 1981;
Beckman 1986)

Some authors in particular include under the term intonation aspects of
temporal organisation or rhythm which besides intensity and duration
may be reflected in variations of spectral characteristics such as for
example distinctions between full and reduced vowels (Crystal 1969,
Hirst and Di Cristo 1998: 2).

Handling Subjectivity in Speech Prosody
Intonation may be considered a universal phenomenon with respect
to languages and cultures since every language relies on an intonation
system. Further, many of the linguistic and para-linguistic functions of
intonation systems seem to be shared by languages of widely different
origins, even though ‘the specific features of a particular speaker’s
intonation system are also highly dependent on the language, the
dialect, and even the style, the mood and the attitude of the speaker’
(Hirst and Di Cristo 1998: 1). Experiments have shown that the
awareness of intonation is found in infants from an early age, as early
as four days after birth—which suggests an acquisition during the
last months of uterine life—and it is used by them to distinguish the
prosody of their mother tongue from that of other languages (Mehler
et al. 1988). ‘The prosodic features of a language are not only probably