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- All Subjects: Chinese tones
- All Subjects: Languages, Modern
- Creators: Zhang, Xia
Description
When singing in tonal languages, there seems to exist a natural conflict between the pitch of a song’s prescribed melody and the tonal pitch demands of its lyrical content. How does a tonal language adapt to one of the defining characteristics of the adopted western musical tradition: a strong melody developed without regard for linguistic tonal features of its lyrical content? This paper reviews the existing literature on the topic and proposes a research design to further explore this question for Standard Mandarin Chinese. Overall, existing literature demonstrates that the tonal features of some languages such as Cantonese are not only negotiated by songwriters during the composition of a musical piece but also negotiated by singers while performing these songs. One notable and one-of-a-kind study by Murray Schellenberg and Brian Gick, specifically, finds evidence that Cantonese singers use microtonal pitch contour variation to reflect the rising contours of Cantonese linguistic tones. This paper discusses and evaluates the strengths of Schellenberg and Gick’s research model and proposes that future research into microtonal variation within songs of other tonal languages like Mandarin Chinese follow their example.
ContributorsByrd, Noah (Author) / Liao, Jianling (Thesis director) / Zhang, Xia (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor)
Created2022-05
Description
Research in foreign language (FL) acquisition has shown that connectives, a key linguistic element contributing to cohesion and sentence complexity, pose a great challenge for FL learners at all proficiency levels. In spite of the importance of connectives in foreign language acquisition, little research has been conducted to explore how connectives are taught and presented in foreign language classrooms and textbooks.
The primary purpose of this study is to examine the presentation and introduction of connectives as well as the pedagogical activities provided for learning connectives in Chinese textbooks for novice to intermediate FL learners. To achieve the purpose of the study, three different sets of widely-used Chinese textbooks were selected and compared. The results show that while the amount of coverage varies greatly among the three sets of textbook, the sequence of presenting connectives in each series of textbooks closely follows the ranks suggested in the HSK Grading Standards and Grammar Outline (HSK is the shortened form for Chinese Proficiency Test). As for the activities, although all three textbooks claim to adopt a communicative approach to FL teaching, they differ considerably in the type of activities provided. In addition, it is evident that more traditional form-focused exercises are included in those textbooks than meaning-focused communicative tasks.
The primary purpose of this study is to examine the presentation and introduction of connectives as well as the pedagogical activities provided for learning connectives in Chinese textbooks for novice to intermediate FL learners. To achieve the purpose of the study, three different sets of widely-used Chinese textbooks were selected and compared. The results show that while the amount of coverage varies greatly among the three sets of textbook, the sequence of presenting connectives in each series of textbooks closely follows the ranks suggested in the HSK Grading Standards and Grammar Outline (HSK is the shortened form for Chinese Proficiency Test). As for the activities, although all three textbooks claim to adopt a communicative approach to FL teaching, they differ considerably in the type of activities provided. In addition, it is evident that more traditional form-focused exercises are included in those textbooks than meaning-focused communicative tasks.
ContributorsGuo, Yifan (Author) / Zhang, Xia (Thesis advisor) / Oh, Young K. (Committee member) / Tanno, Koji (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015