The Influence of Linguistic Perception on Musical Perception

participants with different language backgrounds. Previous research has discovered

that linguistic ability could have an effect on musical perception. The following studies cover the effect of linguistic ability on musical perception.

Deutsch et. al (2009) studied absolute pitch (being able to recognize a musical note when there are no other notes provided as a reference) in relation to the fluency in a tonal language. The participants were music students and orchestra members in California. The participants with an East Asian ethnicity differed in their fluency in a tonal language. The three levels of fluency were very fluent, fairly fluent and not fluent. The participants were asked to name each musical tone they heard, which ranged from C3 (131 Hz) to B3 (988 Hz). It was found that the

very-fluent-in-a-tonal-language group had higher accuracy in naming the tones than the fairly-fluent group, and the fairly-fluent group was higher than the not

fluent-group. This result shows that the proficiency in a tonal language might be correlated with the perception of musical tones.

In Wong et al. (2012), Cantonese speakers from Hong Kong and English speakers from Canada were recruited to take a musical test. They had to identify whether there was an incongruity in the musical pattern they heard, e.g., offbeat or out of key. It was found that, generally speaking, the Cantonese speakers surpassed the English speakers in detecting the musical incongruities. The most striking difference between the two groups was in identifying out-of-key patterns. The Cantonese

speakers’ superior ability in spotting musical pitch incongruities was attributed to their native language. Their pitch perception was enhanced because their native language, Cantonese, is a tonal language. This study associated the perception of musical patterns with the speakers’ native language.

Roncaglia-Denissen et al. (2013) investigated the rhythmic perception in participants who were learners of a second language. The study recruited Turkish speakers who learned German as an L2 and German speakers who learned English as an L2. As mentioned by the author, the rhythmic properties of German were

considered closer to English than Turkish. Both English and German are stress-timed languages, and trochee is the preferred metrical pattern in the two languages.

However, Turkish is a syllable-timed language, and the metrical pattern preferred in Turkish is iamb. With participants that differed in the similarity between their two languages, the study was able to investigate whether learning a language with a different rhythmic system would enhance musical rhythmic perception. The

participants were asked to judge if the two rhythmic phrases they heard were the same or not. It was found that the Turkish speakers’ performance in rhythmic perception was better than the German speakers. The author associated the Turkish speaker’s outperforming with the dissimilarity of metrical properties between Turkish and German. Learning a second language with a different rhythmic system (German)

facilitated the Turkish speakers’ ability in perceiving rhythms, which resulted in their better performance in musical rhythmic perception. On the other hand, learning a second language with a similar rhythmic system (English) did not help improve German speakers’ ability in perceiving rhythms. Therefore, they were less sensitive in perceiving the difference in musical rhythms. This study manifested the effect of second language acquisition on musical perception.

Roncaglia-Denissen et al. (2016) examined the rhythmic and melodic perception in monolingual participants as well as participants who learned a second language.

The participants included Mandarin-speaking learners of English, Turkish-speaking learners of English, Dutch-speaking learners of English and Turkish monolinguals.

The Turkish monolinguals were not exposed to a second language, but they were exposed to the compound meter in Turkish music, which was considered a kind of musical complexity. A comparison between the Turkish monolinguals and the non-monolinguals was used to examine which kind of exposure (L2 or musical complexity) could facilitate musical perception. The participants were required to identify whether the melodic phrases they heard were the same or not in the melodic aptitude test. In addition, they had to identify the rhythmic phrases played to them as the same or different in the rhythmic aptitude test. The result turned out that the non-monolingual groups outperformed the Turkish monolingual group in both the

melodic aptitude test and the rhythmic aptitude test. The result suggested that L2 exposure, rather than musical complexity exposure, enhanced melodic and rhythmic perception. This study demonstrated that acquiring a second language could lead to better language perception.

2.5.3 Summary

The relation between musical perception and L2 perception has been shown in the direction of “music to language” in Section 2.5.1 and in the direction of “language to music” in Section 2.5.2. Increased experiences in musical perception could improve L2 perception, and acquiring a second language could enhance musical perception.

Though only one study presented above (Boll-avetisyan et al., 2016) is specifically about the strengthening effect of musical ability on stress perception, others studies altogether showed that musical ability and linguistic ability could facilitate each other in general. Therefore, in the current study, Mandarin speakers’ perception of English stress will be investigated in relation to their musical perception, in order to see if the music-language relation could explain Mandarin speakers’ performance.

Chapter Three: Research Design

This chapter presents the research design of the current study. A perception test of English lexical stress and a perception test of pure tones are presented in terms of their participants (in Section 3.1), materials (in Section 3.2), procedures (in Section 3.3) and data analysis (in Section 3.4).