You probably know that there are many languages -- the most commonly-cited are Mandarin and Thai -- that are tonal. The pitch, and pitch change across a syllable, alter its meaning. For example, in Mandarin, the syllable "ma" spoken with a high steady tone means "mother;" with a falling then rising tone, it means "horse."
If your mother is anything like mine was, confusing these is not a mistake you'd make twice.
English is not tonal, but there's no doubt that pitch and stress change can communicate meaning. The difference is that pitch alterations in English don't change the denotative (explicit) meaning, but can drastically change the connotative (implied) meaning. Consider the following sentence:
He told you he gave the package to her?
Spoken with a neutral tone, it's simply an inquiry about a person's words and actions. Now, one at a time, change which word is stressed:
- He told you he gave the package to her? (Implies the speaker was expecting someone else to do it.)
- He told you he gave the package to her? (Implies surprise that you were told about the action.)
- He told you he gave the package to her? (Implies surprise that you were the one told about it)
- He told you he gave the package to her? (Implies the speaker expected the package should have been paid for)
- He told you he gave the package to her? (Implies that some different item was expected to be given)
- He told you he gave the package to her? (Implies surprise at the recipient of the package)
Differences in word choice can also create sentences with identical denotative meanings and drastically different connotative meanings. Consider "Have a nice day" vs. "I hope you manage to enjoy your next twenty-four hours," and "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned" vs. "I'm sorry, Daddy, I've been bad."
You get the idea.
All of this is why mastery of a language you weren't born to is a long, fraught affair.
The topic comes up because of some new research out of Northwestern University that identified the part of the brain responsible for recognizing and abstracting meaning from pitch and inflection -- what linguists call the prosody of a language. A paper this week in Nature Communications showed that Heschl's gyrus, a small structure in the superior temporal lobe, actively analyzes spoken language for subtleties of rhythm and tone and converts those perceived differences into meaning.
"Our study challenges the long-standing assumptions how and where the brain picks up on the natural melody in speech -- those subtle pitch changes that help convey meaning and intent," said G. Nike Gnanataja, who was co-first author of the study. "Even though these pitch patterns vary each time we speak, our brains create stable representations to understand them.""The results redefine our understanding of the architecture of speech perception," added Bharath Chandrasekaran, the other co-first author. "We've spent a few decades researching the nuances of how speech is abstracted in the brain, but this is the first study to investigate how subtle variations in pitch that also communicate meaning are processed in the brain."
Fascinating!
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