The Influence of Mother Tongue on Young Children's Rhythmic Behaviour in Singing

The influence of mother tongue on young children’s rhythmic behaviour in singing Nozomi Azechi Institute of Education, UCL CCM/Music, PhD course 1 Declaration I, Nozomi Azechi confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Abstract Singing and speaking are closely allied to one other. They are both produced by the same anatomical structures within the human body, although the coordination with the neuroanatomy is differentiated between speech and song. For the young child, existing literature suggests that the border between singing and speaking is opaque, at least in the early years of human life. In order to understand the relationship (if any) between mother tongue in speech and children’s singing, a series of empirical studies was undertaken. In the first of these, a specialist rhythmic and linguistic analysis tool (nPVI) was applied to participant three- to five-year-old Japanese and English children’s singing of well-known songs. Two subsequent studies explored (2) the rhythmic basis of Japanese and English children’s printed song materials and (3) adults’ hand clapping of their remembered children’s songs from their childhood. Data analyses revealed that children’s singing development appears to be influenced in two dimensions by their mother tongue. One is through a direct influence of the mother tongue’s underlying rhythm (a distinctive characteristic of spoken language), and the other is an influence from the rhythm of the song materials that are common in the home culture. From the analysis of young children’s actual singing, it was found that the underlying rhythmic bias of the home language was differentially related to the singing behaviour according to age and location (England or Japan). Another finding was an apparent preference for certain rhythm patterns within each language group. From the analysis of printed song material, different trends in rhythmic structure were found in Japanese and English children’s songs. The influence of the home language rhythm appeared to be more direct in English songs, but not in Japanese songs. In particular, the difference between the bias towards an equal-timed rhythm of the Japanese language and the “childlike” nature of the songs brought an 3 intensive use of the 3:1 dotted rhythm pattern. The common use of dotted rhythm was also linked to the double structure of Japanese language rhythm. This bias was also confirmed by an analysis of example hand clapping of children’s songs by participant adults in the third study. Overall, the data suggest that any relationship between mother tongue and singing is culturally located and also developmental in nature. 4 Acknowledgement My heartfelt appreciation goes to Prof. G. Welch whose comments and suggestions were of inestimable value for my study. I am also indebt to Prof. Y. Minami and Dr. M. Sadakata whose comments made enormous contribution to my work. I would also like to express my gratitude to my family for their moral support and warm encouragement. Finally, I would like to thank Paul Rogers for all his support that made it possible to complete this study. 5 Index Declaration ........................................................................................................ 2 Abstract ............................................................................................................. 3 Acknowledgement ............................................................................................ 5 Index ................................................................................................................... 6 Chapter 1 Introduction: background to the study ................................... 13 1.1 “Japanese-ness”: Japanese musical identity ............................................. 13 1.1.1 The culturally diverse music environment in Japan ..................................... 14 1.1.2 The survival of musical “Japanese-ness” during over one hundred years of Western-based music education in schools .......................................................... 22 1.2 Comparative studies between cultures .......................................................... 27 1.2.1 Japanese vs. Western musical expressions ................................................ 27 1.2.2. Japanese-like performance among music learners .................................... 30 1.3. Degrees of enculturation and proficiency ..................................................... 32 1.4. Plan of the study .............................................................................................. 36 1.4.1 Hypothesis ................................................................................................... 36 1.4.2 Plan of the study .......................................................................................... 38 Chapter 2 Literature review: links between singing and speaking from an aspect of culture ............................................................................................. 41 2.1 Links between singing and speaking ............................................................. 41 2.2 Cultural differences in musical performance and perception ...................... 42 2.3 Influence of language on musical performance and composition ............... 45 2.3.1 The typology of language and nPVI ............................................................. 47 2.4 Empirical studies in Japan ............................................................................... 51 6 2.4.1 Concept of singing songs, rhythm, and communication: closer links between music and language in studies in Japan ............................................................... 51 2.4.2 Close links between music and language, and seeking the fundamental phonetic/prosodic unit of the Japanese language ................................................. 53 2.4.3 Differences between Western and Traditional Japanese music .................. 56 2.4.4 Warabeuta studies: Japanese children’s play songs ................................... 60 Chapter 3 Early childhood musical development and early language acquisition ....................................................................................................... 63 3.1 Some theoretical constructs: Concerning Culture and Development: Ecological Systems Theory and a Russian Dolls Model ..................................... 63 3.2 The boundary between singing and speaking development in infancy ...... 68 3.2.1 Precursors of singing in infants’ preverbal vocal development and pre-verbal language development .......................................................................................... 74 3.2.2 Infants’ word recognition .............................................................................. 75 3.2.3 Developmental process of singing and environmental influence in infancy . 76 3.3 Singing in musical development and influence of environment, society, culture and language .............................................................................................. 79 3.4 Language and Music development policy in Education in Japan .................... 84 3.5 Issues arising .................................................................................................... 92 3.6 Summary ............................................................................................................ 93 Chapter 4 Methodology .................................................................................. 95 4.1 General approach (methodology): The analysis of rhythm in vocalization . 95 4.1.1 Exploratory ................................................................................................... 96 4.1.2 Cross-cultural aspects ................................................................................ 100 4.1.3 Empirically-based ....................................................................................... 103 4.1.4 Ecologically sensitive recording; Japan in-playground, England in-school (open plan context) .............................................................................................. 104 7 4. 2 Method (specific details) ............................................................................... 105 4.2.1 Selection of locations ................................................................................. 105 4.2.2 Selection of participants ............................................................................. 108 4.2.3 Protocols .................................................................................................... 108 Choice of song material ...................................................................................... 108 Recording process .............................................................................................. 119 4.2.4 Analysis process ........................................................................................ 120 Segmentation for IOI (Inter-Onset Intervals) ....................................................... 120 4.3 Preliminary nPVI analysis .............................................................................. 122 4.4 Ethical issues .................................................................................................. 124 Chapter 5 Results from the Data analyses ................................................. 125 5.1 Analysis on “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”: singing in a duple time rhythm ...............................................................................................................................

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