Ross, Edmondson, and Seibert (1986)
ROSS, Elliott D., Jerold A. Edmondson, and G. Burton Seibert. “The Effect of Affect of Various Acoustic Measures of Prosody in Tone and Non-Tone Languages: A Comparison Based on Computer Analysis of Voice.” Journal of Phonetics 14 (1986): 283-302.
Ross, et al. set out to compare the ability to signal affect through prosody in three tone languages (Taiwanese, Mandarin, and Thai) with such ability in English. The results indicate that the presence of tone in a language severely restricts the manipulation of local pitch frequencies (referred to as F0, or fundamental frequency), for the purpose of signalling affect. This is primarily due to the fact that such local pitch manipulations might result in changes of semantic meaning:
In non-tone languages such alterations will not disturb linguistic information. However, in tone languages, in which the relative height between and among tones may be contrastive, such alterations could disrupt linguistic information. For example, if one had a low-mid sequence of two flat tones, a change in F0 Variation might produce a low-high sequence. (298)
In English, it is known that the right hemisphere tends to be dominant for the processing of prosodic features of speech. However, this study was largely motivated by difficulties in finding such effects for speakers of tone languages. Interestingly, the researchers note:
if the modulation of a specific acoustical parameter is lateralized in the brain to either the right or left hemisphere, the lateralization is dependent on the behavioral properties of the parameter and not on its acoustical properties. (300)
Again, we have further evidence, therefore, that a major factor involved in the process of audition, human minds are largely influenced by expectancies regarding what type of stimuli they are receiving. This leads one to suspect that much of this can be voluntarily altered by a listener, in order to perceive an input signal in various ways. For instance, it is quite possible that a skilled listener could choose to hear a spoken sentence as melody and rhythm, ignoring its linguistic function. Indeed, the composers Janáček and Mussorgsky are known to have made just such claims.
