Linguistic and Musical Stress
in Russian Folk Songs
Melissa Michaud Baese1 and Richard Ashley2
Department of Linguistics, Northwestern University1
Department of Music Studies, Northwestern University2
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems,
Northwestern University1, 2
Baese, Ashley 1
Introduction
· Scholars in both linguistics and music cognition have examined whether rhythm in a culture’s language influences the rhythm of that culture’s music.
o Using Normalized Pair-wise Variability Index (nPVI) (Grabe and Low, 2002).
o Patel and Daniele (2003a) demonstrated by using this index that the nPVI for English instrumental music is more similar to the nPVI of English language. The nPVI for French instrumental music is also more similar to the nPVI of French Language.
o Patel and Daniele (2003b) and Huron and Ollen (2003) extended these findings to other nationalities and time periods.
· These studies only examine instrumental rhythm and do not utilize hierarchical rhythmic structures that are present in music and language.
o Hierarchical rhythmic structures in music – through metric structure.
o Hierarchical rhythmic structures in music – through stressed and unstressed syllables in words, and durational and stress differences across words.
Goals
· Examine how rhythmic structures in language and music interact when text is set to music.
o Do text settings reinforce the underlying rhythmic structures of language?
o Specifically, does the musical structure of Russian folk songs highlight the linguistic prosody?
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Methods
Materials:
· 15 Russian Folk Songs (Lavaska, 1949; Botsford, 1922)
· Chosen for primarily syllabic settings (one syllable per beat).
Procedure:
· Each word in each text was marked for linguistic stress according to a Russian dictionary (**CITATION**).
· Each musical score was marked for musical stress, separately from the lyrics.
o Unless notated otherwise in the score (with accents, melismas, longer notes), musical stress was assumed to be on ‘downbeats’, as appropriate for time signatures.
· Monosyllabic function words (e.g., prepositions, conjunctions, etc.) were not marked as having linguistic stress.
Analysis:
· The texts were compared to their musical score for matching and mismatching linguistic and musical stress.
· Texts were also compared for rhythmic and melodic changes between verses.
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Results
· Linguistic and musical stress always co-occurred on the same syllable in each word of the selected Russian folk songs.
· When material did vary from a syllabic setting using a melisma, inserting rests, subdividing longer notes, or otherwise altering the rhythm, this was caused by a polysyllabic word that, set to the previous syllabic pattern, would cause linguistic stress to occur on a musically weak beat.
Results (Example)[*]
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Conclusions
· When Russian texts are set to music in these folk songs the linguistic and musical rhythm co-occur on the same syllable in each word.
· Function words are placed on a musically stressed beat vary rarely.
· Therefore, text settings reinforce the underlying linguistic rhythmic structures of Russian.
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Implications
· Linguistic implication
o If music does reinforce underlying linguistic rhythmic structures, linguists can utilize text set to music as a means of examining into inherent rhythmic structures in languages.
· Musical implication
o The effect of a culture’s language, particularly the rhythm of the language, on its vocal and instrumental music can be better understood through analyses such as these.
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Future Directions
· Examining effects of linguistic stress on spoken recordings of these texts by native Russian speakers. Is the musical rhythm actually inherent in the spoken text as well?
· Native Russian speakers will be presented with short songs that match the aforementioned model and those that do not. They will then provide goodness-of-fit judgments. This will judge listener sensitivity to matching of linguistic and musical stress.
References
Patel, A.D. and Daniele, J.R. (2003a). An empirical comparison of rhythm in language and music. Cognition, 87: B35-B45.
Patel, A.D. and Daniele, J.R. (2003b). Stress-timed vs. syllable-timed music? A comment on Huron and Ollen (2003). Music Perception, 21(2): 273-276.
Huron, D. and Ollen, J. (2003). Agogic contrast in French and English themes: Further support for Patel and Daniele (2003). Music Perception, 21: 267-272.
Thompson, D.F. (1997). The Oxford Russian Dictionary: Russian-English, English Russian. Penguin Group.
Lavaska, A. (1949). Russian in Song. Seattle, University of Washington Press.
Botsford, F.H. (1922) Russian Folk Songs. New York, NY. The Women’s Press.
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· [*]Musical stress is marked with Linguistic stress is marked with . Text and music from Lavaska 1949.