Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics

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Tone, Music, and Singing
(2,590 words)

1. Musicality of Tone

Linguistic tone is typically manifested as pitch, itself a musical quality. Consequently, linguistic tone and music are likely to be correlated either in the musicality of the linguistic tone itself or in how linguistic tones and musical tune may be mutually constrained when singing.

Linguistic tone refers not to the modulation of pitch over an utterance, but rather to pitch features that are lexically…

Cite this page
Lian-Hee WEE, “Tone, Music, and Singing”, in: Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics, General Editor Rint Sybesma. Consulted online on 28 March 2023 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2210-7363_ecll_COM_00000424>
First published online: 2015



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