published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

 In tone languages, tones, in addition to phonemes, are used to differentiate meanings. The tone of a word changes its meaning. This gives rise to a question regarding vocal music in such languages: does the melodic contour have to depend upon the lexical tones of the text so as to enhance the understanding of the text? This question has motivated a number of studies to examine the relationship between lexical tones and melody in different vocal genres of different tone languages. Yet a satisfactory answer is still missing. While existing studies reveal that the degree of conformity between speech tone and melody varies according to the genre as well as the language, some genres of Cantonese vocal music, such as Cantonese opera and Canto-pop, show a strikingly higher degree of tone-melody correspondence. Taking Canto-pop as the focus, the present study seeks to investigate the principles of tone-melody mapping—the underlying rules which govern the realization and perception of Cantonese speech tones in sung melody. It also seeks to gain a deeper understanding about how the constraints of speech tones affect the text-music interaction and why the preservation of speech tones is particularly prominent in this genre. Drawing insights from musicology, linguistics and psychology, the thesis presents an interdisciplinary research that casts new light on the subject of tone-melody relationship—the relationship between speech tones and sung melody in vocal music. It is found that the correspondence between musical intervals and tonal transitions in Cantonese speech can be crucial to tone perception in sung melody. But there are also occasions where the speech tones are still perceived correctly despite the occurrences of physical tone-melody mismatch, largely on account of the tonal, melodic, syntactic and semantic context. While a misperception of the speech tones may not always necessarily lead to a miscomprehension of the lyrics, it is still an aesthetic requirement for Cantopop to maintain perfect tone-melody mapping. This requirement even has an influence on the creative process of Cantopop. / published_or_final_version / Music / Master / Master of Philosophy

This PhD research aims at revealing the underlying complexity of the grammar of tone-melody mapping in Cantonese pop music. While linguists have shown a growing interest and invested painstaking effort in finding out whether lexical tones and musical melody interact in vocal music, the attention of these scholars mainly focuses on whether a lexical item remains intelligible to speakers of the given language when the tonal integrity is not preserved in the song. Others are interested in quantifying the degree of tone-melody correspondence and in carrying out cross-linguistic comparisons. The majority of such research studies fail to unravel the details of how tone and melody interact. This research challenges the methodologies and assumptions made in some previous studies that fail to account for the discrepancy between structural and perceptual ‘correspondence’ or ‘mismatch’. The notions of ‘correspondence’ and ‘mismatch’ are revisited and redefined from a perceptual perspective – a ‘perfect match’ refers to the mapping between a melodic transition and a tonal target transition that is satisfactorily accepted by native speakers of the language, whereas a ‘mismatch’ refers to a tone-melody pairing that sounds awkward to the native ear, whether or not the string of syllables are comprehensible, ambiguous or unintelligible when set to the song. Through conducting perception tests, songs are grouped into two main categories for two different purposes – the songs without perceptual mismatch are used for a profound analysis of the well-formed mapping patterns at the abstract level. The most frequently attested correspondence pattern concerns the pairing between tonal target transition and melodic transition progressing in the same direction. The directionality constraint is satisfied in about 80% of the cases. It is also revealed that level tonal target sequences can be mapped to non-level melodies and still remain well-formed. This mapping, however, is strictly conditional and only occurs when licensed. The other group of songs are those in which native speakers have identified cases of perceptual mismatch. By examining the ill-formed examples, other mapping constraints are uncovered – the interval constraint requires that the pitch distance of a melodic transition be comparable to that of the corresponding tonal target transition. The mapping criterion is therefore more like a ‘vector’, obliging the two transitions to agree not only in direction but also in slope. The Hidden Structure Alignment constraint is the third important mapping constraint discovered that succeeds in providing solutions to account for unusual pairings or mismatches that directionality and interval fail to explain. In order that a tonal target transition match a melodic transition, the hidden or phonetically unexpressed semitones on both tonal and melodic scales should be aligned to or absent from the same edge. This constraint is helpful to account for the extremely restricted mapping patterns at the song-final cadence. By investigating a large corpus of Cantonese pop songs written by various lyricists, this research proposes a detailed description of the grammar of Cantonese tone-melody mapping in terms of the interaction of the directionality, interval and hidden structure alignment constraints. / published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Music / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / Music / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Chinese Language and Literature / Master / Master of Arts

黃志偉. / 手稿本影印本. / Thesis (M.A.)--香港中文大學傳播學部, 1991. / Shou gao ben ying yin ben. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves i-iv). / Huang Zhiwei. / Thesis (M.A.)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue Chuan bo xue bu, 1991. / Chapter 壹 --- 導　論 --- p.1 / Chapter 貳 --- 文獻參閱 --- p.11 / Chapter (一) --- MISC´ؤ小國音樂工業研究計劃 --- p.11 / Chapter (二) --- 媒介帝國主義 --- p.33 / Chapter (三) --- 跨國公司 --- p.41 / Chapter (四) --- 其他有關文獻 --- p.54 / Chapter 参 --- 研究方法 --- p.66 / Chapter (一) --- 研究目的 --- p.66 / Chapter (二) --- 基本概念 --- p.73 / Chapter (三) --- 研究方法 --- p.80 / Chapter 肆 --- 歐美流行音樂與五大國際唱片集團 --- p.99 / Chapter (一) --- 歐、美流行音樂發展概況 --- p.101 / Chapter (二) --- 五大唱片集團壟斷下之國際唱片業 --- p.115 / Chapter 伍 --- 跨國唱片公司的發展、業績及組織結構 --- p.131 / Chapter (一) --- 五大跨國唱片公司在香港之發展 --- p.131 / Chapter (二) --- 跨國唱片公司的組織結構及其輸入外國流行音樂信息之模式 --- p.158 / Chapter (三) --- 五大跨國唱片公司壟斷下之粤語流行樂壇 --- p.183 / Chapter (四) --- 跨國唱片公司組織結構對粤語流行曲改編歌曲之影響 --- p.202 / Chapter 陸 --- 香港粤語流行曲的外來成份 --- p.216 / Chapter (一) --- 五、六十年代作品分析 --- p.228 / Chapter (二) --- 七、八十年代作品分析 --- p.248 / Chapter 柒 --- 總結 --- p.271 / Chapter (一) --- 研究成果摘要 --- p.271 / Chapter (二) --- MISC　互動模型的分析結果 --- p.285 / Chapter (三) --- 討論 --- p.305 / 參考書目 --- p.i / Chapter 附錄 --- 附件(一)：香港電台中文歌曲龍虎榜 一九七七年至八九年 每周榜首歌曲名單 --- p.v / 附件(二)：歷屆十大中文金曲入選作品（1978-1989） --- p.xii / 附件(三)：個人訪問之基本問題(1)´ؤ作曲家、樂評人、電台工作者 --- p.xviii / 附件(四)：個人訪問之基本問題(2)´ؤ跨國唱片公司國際部行政人員 --- p.xx

published_or_final_version / abstract / Asian Studies / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Chan Ka Yan. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves p. 93-100). / Discography: p. 101. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter Chapter 1 --- Introduction: Resistance & Incorporation in Subcultural Studies --- p.1 / Research Objective --- p.1 / The Case --- p.2 / Conceptualizing Subcultures --- p.3 / Resistance: An Antagonistic Relation between Subculture and Dominant Culture --- p.9 / Incorporation: An Exploitative Relation between Subculture and Dominant Culture --- p.12 / A Critique on Post-war Youth Subculture Studies --- p.15 / Local Studies on Subcultures and Alternative Music --- p.17 / Conceptual Framework --- p.21 / Research Methods --- p.22 / Major Argument and Outline of Paper --- p.28 / Chapter Chapter 2 --- Subcultural Discourse: Textual Analysis on LMF Music --- p.30 / Lazy Clan: Dominant Values vs. Subterranean Values --- p.31 / Hong Kong for Sure: Distrust of SAR Government --- p.34 / Challenging Music Industry --- p.35 / Attacking the Media: 'Uknuwudafuckimsayin' --- p.36 / Dramatized Masculinity --- p.38 / Subcultural Resistance? --- p.40 / Chapter Chapter 3 --- Youth's Body as a Battleground: Reception Studies --- p.45 / Domination --- p.50 / Negotiation --- p.57 / Resistance --- p.66 / "Conclusion: Discursive Struggle - Domination, Negotiation and Resistance" --- p.70 / Chapter Chapter 4 --- Dialectic between Incorporation and Excorporation --- p.73 / LMF in Mainstream Record Industry --- p.73 / LMF in Advertisements --- p.75 / LMF in Media --- p.77 / Conclusion: Dialectic of Incorporation and Excorporation --- p.80 / Chapter Chapter 5 --- "Conclusion: Populist Resistance, Multiple Identities and Imagined Authenticity" --- p.84 / Populist Resistance --- p.85 / Multiple Identities --- p.87 / Imagined Authenticity --- p.89 / References --- p.93

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / English Studies / Master / Master of Arts