The present paper proposes an articulatory and acoustic study of the representation of Yorùbá tones in gángan (a talking drum). The video and spectrographic analyses of the data collected from five native drummers in Nigeria show the number of syllables in a word directly corresponds to the number of strikes on the drum membrane. As the talking drum resonates from the strikes, the drummers tightened and loosened the drum membrane to articulate the three tones in Yorùbá. Furthermore, tonal processes such as tone contour formation on the second tone in HL or LH sequences are musically rendered. Based on this evidence, this paper concludes that drummers are able to represent syllables, lexical tones and tonal processes of Yorùbá speech with a talking drum.
This paper explores how the domain of vowel harmony can be affected by conditions involving minimality and the requirement for an onset within optimality theory (OT) framework. This work is based on the description and analysis of vowel harmony in Fungwa, an endangered Kainji, Benue-Congo (Niger state, Nigeria) language. In Fungwa, the root vowels trigger backness harmony which targets the vowels of onsetful prefixes and clitics. However, this harmony does not target vowels of onsetless prefixes. In this work, I argue that prosodic word (PWd) is the domain vowel harmony, a minimality condition and an onset condition. The vowel of the onsetful prefixes and clitics undergoing harmony is as a result of the minimality condition which dictates the occurence of the onsetful prefixes and clitics in the PWd. However, the onset condition on PWd results in the misalignment of the onsetless prefixes with the PWd, which is the domain of harmony.
Bodomo (1997) describes Dagaare (Gur; Ghana) as having a single low vowel, [a], which is neutral to ATR harmony. This paper presents acoustic data from a study of Dagaare <a> which is inconsistent with this description. A list of sentences was elicited from five native speakers of Dagaare. Each sentence contained <a> in one of four verbal particles situated in one of four contexts: ATR _ ATR, ATR _ RTR, RTR _ ATR, and RTR _ RTR. Formants of the low vowel were measured and compared across contexts. Results showed a substantial, significant difference in F1 values and a smaller but still significant difference in F2 values in contexts where <a> is followed by an ATR word compared to when it is followed by an RTR word. All speakers and all particles showed the same pattern. We conclude that, contrary to previous claims, the Dagaare low vowel is not neutral to harmony, but rather has acoustically distinct variants in RTR versus ATR contexts. Bodomo, A. (1997). The structure of Dagaare. California: CSLI publications. [Funded by SSHRC.]
It is widely known that Yorùbá drummers communicate through their native drums. This paper investigates the grammar of gángan, which belongs to a family of Yoruba drums called dùndún. The results of this study show that Yorùbá drummers represent the phonetic realisation of lexical and grammatical tones of their language with the drum. Statistically, the speech tones and the acoustic correlate of the corresponding drum representations have a significant positive relationship. In both spoken and drum communication, vowel (V) and consonant-vowel (CV) prosodic units have different statuses. To conclude, Yorùbá drummers communicate via the gángan drum by transposing certain and maybe phonological conditions of their language to musical forms.
The present paper proposes an articulatory and acoustic study of the representation of Yorùbá tones in gángan (a talking drum). The video and spectrographic analyses of the data collected from five native drummers in Nigeria show that the number of syllables in a word directly corresponds to the number of strikes on the drum membrane. As the talking drum resonates from the strikes, the drummers tightened and loosened the drum membrane to articulate the three tones in Yorùbá. Furthermore, tonal processes such as tone contour formation on the second tone in HL or LH sequences are musically rendered. Based on this evidence, this paper concludes that drummers are able to represent syllables, lexical tones and tonal processes of Yorùbá speech with a talking drum.
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