A Note on Speech Melody.

No aspect of Janáček's operas has been publicised more widely than their alleged use of ‘speech melodies’. Indeed, most commentators now assume the a priori existence of speech melodies in the composer's operas. However, only John Tyrrell has explored the matter in depth, and many basic questions about Janáček's speech-melody theory and practice remain unanswered. What follows is an attempt to investigate in detail one of the most prominent, and most misrepresented, issues of Janáček opera analysis. A brief initial digression into the principal characteristics of spoken Czech is unavoidable.

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Psychophysics of Speech-Melody

Language Typology and Universals ◽

10.1524/stuf.1957.10.14.337 ◽

1957 ◽

Vol 10 (1-4) ◽

Author(s):

B. CHAITANYA DEVA

Keyword(s):

Speech Melody

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Speech Melody and the Evolution of the Minimalist Aesthetic in Steve Reich’s The Cave

Circuit Musiques contemporaines ◽

10.7202/902250ar ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 12 (2) ◽

pp. 21-44

Author(s):

Eric Prieto

Keyword(s):

Social Problems ◽

Vocal Music ◽

Building Blocks ◽

Verbal Material ◽

Melodic Contour ◽

Musical Structures ◽

Innovative Solutions ◽

Speech Melody

This paper seeks to explain Reich's use of the "speech melody" technique in his video opera The Cave in terms of the minimalist reliance on impersonal processes and the economical use of musical material. For this piece Reich uses digitally sampled speech fragments with an emphatic melodic contour as the basis for composition. These speech melodies provide the primary building blocks out of which the work is constructed. Because the musical material is actually contained in the verbal material, Reich is able to provide innovative solutions to some of the traditional problems facing the composer of vocal music. This technique not only enables Reich to reintroduce a compelling expressive element into his work, but also enables him to reconcile the composer's search for rigorously autonomous musical structures with his documentary interest in the subjective concerns and social problems of the outside world.

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NONVERBAL MEANS OF INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION: A PROBLEM OF CONFORMITY

Foreign Languages in Uzbekistan ◽

10.36078/1618817899 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 104-114

Author(s):

Durdona ABDUAZIZOVA

Keyword(s):

Intercultural Communication ◽

Nonverbal Communication ◽

Nonverbal Behavior ◽

Emotional State ◽

Speech Act ◽

Different Cultures ◽

Speech Melody ◽

Verbal Utterance

The article substantiates the need to study the features of nonverbal behavior of representatives of different cultures due to the discrepancy of kinesic systems. English, Russian and Uzbek non-speech behavior, and the divergence of gestures are analyzed using the example of English, Russian and Uzbek kinesic cultures. Emotions can have a significant impact on the development, success or failure of the speech act and on the expression of the emotional state of each participant in communication. Gestures characterize national, territorial and social peculiarities of the communicant observed in temperament, emotional state and attitude to the interlocutor and, therefore, the author considers the problem of intercultural conformity, closely associated with interpretation of non-verbal text by different cultures. It is argued, for a complete and clear interpretation of the meaning of the statement transmitted by non-verbal means; it is necessary to avoid incorrect, incomplete, and excessive interpretation of non-verbal speech. The special nature of nonverbal communication explains the presence of universal, understandable signs, as well as specific signals used only within one culture. It is also analyzed the phonation phenomena of speech: melody, timbre, rhythm and strength of voice, articulation activity, which have the functions of supplementing and replacing a verbal utterance, which determine the physical and psycho-emotional state of the interlocutor.

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Prosody and Function Words Cue the Acquisition of Word Meanings in 18-Month-Old Infants

Psychological Science ◽

10.1177/0956797618814131 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 30 (3) ◽

pp. 319-332 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Alex de Carvalho ◽

Angela Xiaoxue He ◽

Jeffrey Lidz ◽

Anne Christophe

Keyword(s):

Language Acquisition ◽

Word Learning ◽

Syntactic Structure ◽

Word Meaning ◽

Lexical Acquisition ◽

Function Words ◽

Word Meanings ◽

Syntactic Information ◽

And Function ◽

Speech Melody

Language acquisition presents a formidable task for infants, for whom word learning is a crucial yet challenging step. Syntax (the rules for combining words into sentences) has been robustly shown to be a cue to word meaning. But how can infants access syntactic information when they are still acquiring the meanings of words? We investigated the contribution of two cues that may help infants break into the syntax and give a boost to their lexical acquisition: phrasal prosody (speech melody) and function words, both of which are accessible early in life and correlate with syntactic structure in the world’s languages. We show that 18-month-old infants use prosody and function words to recover sentences’ syntactic structure, which in turn constrains the possible meanings of novel words: Participants ( N = 48 in each of two experiments) interpreted a novel word as referring to either an object or an action, given its position within the prosodic-syntactic structure of sentences.

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