Perfect pitch and Tone Languages
A presentation and questioning of
studies by Diana Deutsch
Background
What is Perfect Pitch?
About a year ago, the radio program Radio
In Diana Deutsch’s own words, PP is “the ability to produce or identify the pitch of a tone without
Lab aired a special feature episode called Mu-
reference to an external standard”. She mentions that less than 1 person in 10,000 (.01%) has got
sical Language. Among other things, they dis-
this ability.
cussed “the line between language and music”
and their guest Diana Deutsch (professor of
A common analogy for PP is the ability of most people to easily discern colors without any external
Music Psychology at the University of Cali-
standard. In other words, if we are presented with an object, we can name its color without having
fornia) presented some research results that
to add additional multicolored objects as a reference.
really caught my interest: she had found that
rin and Vietnamese were much more likely to
What are Tone Languages?
have Perfect Pitch (hereafter abbreviated PP)
In a Tone Language “pitch serves to help distinguish words and grammatical categories […] pitch
than were speakers of non-tonal languages.
characteristics are used to differentiate one word from another word that is otherwise identical in
speakers of tone languages such as Manda-
its sequence of consonants and vowels”.
100
Studies and results
China. The other group spoke nontone languages,
Diana Deutsch’s first study from 1999 has the
in Rochester, New York. According to Deutsch,
somewhat unabashed title Tone Language Speak-
these schools are “prestigiuos” and “renowned”.
ers Possess Absolute Pitch. In the study, speakers
This time, a proper test for PP was made, and
of Mandarin and Vietnamese twice read out a list
the results were astounding. It turned out that as
of words in their native language. A few days later
many as 60% of the Chinese students met the cri-
they read the same list two more times, and the
terion for absolute pitch, compared to 14% of the
objective of the study was to see if the speakers
American students. If we include subjects who
pronounced the same words with the same pitch
missed the target note by one semitone, the Chi-
on these different occasions. The result showed an
nese number now rises to 75%, while the Ameri-
amazing consistency: 90% of the words differed
can number stays more or less the same.
in a pitch range of 0-.75 of a semitone, i.e. at most
The figure to the right clearly shows that age is of
something like 4–11 Hz (assuming that the differ-
great importance when it comes to PP. The young-
ent speakers’ pitch ranged from 80 to 250 Hz).
er the students were when they began their musi-
languages, the acquisition of absolute pitch dur-
So, if you always pronounce a word with the
cal training, the greater the probability that they
ing musical training is analogous to learning the
same pitch, would that mean that you could just
will have PP. Even with this factor considered, the
tones of a second language” (my italicizing). Ac-
as easily connect e.g. the pitch 740 Hz with the
Chinese results are staggeringly superior: among
cordingly, this puts forward the idea of a criti-
“label” or “meaning” F#? This would become the
the American students who began their musical
cal period in musical training, like in language
topic of a second study in 2004.
training at the age of 8 and upwards, no one has
learning. Then, just as languages are supposed to
The 2004 study is named Perfect Pitch in Tone
got PP. For the Chinese students who began their
be universal (i.e. a new born child can grow up
Language Speakers Carries Over to Music, and it
musical training at the age between 8 and 9 years,
to speak any language on the planet, given the
“examines the prevalence of absolute pitch in two
over 40% have got PP, far more than the Ameri-
right circumstances), the possibility to acquire
groups of music students”. Of course, the mem-
can students who began at age 4 and 5.
PP would also be universal.
bers of one of these groups all speak Mandarin:
Deutsch now refines her claim from the origi-
In the 2006 radio program, Diana Deutsch
the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing,
nal study. She suggests that “for speakers of tone
sums up her findings and theories like this: “here
Beijing
Rochester
Subjects with Perfect Pitch (%)
and they studied at the Eastman School of Music
75
50
25
0
4–5
6–7
8–9
10–11
12–13
Age of Commencement of Musical Training
we have a faculty that had been thought to be
results, I recorded a few speakers of nontone lan-
confined to a few rare individuals who are just
guages and one speaker of Mandarin. On two dif-
extraordinarily gifted, that might in fact be avail-
ferent days, the subjects read a list of words twice,
able to any individual provided they’re given the
and they were recorded in Praat.
right exposure at a critical period.”
My Mandarin subject indeed had very consis-
One of the things I reacted to in the 1999 study
was that Deutsch never mentions to what degree
speakers of nontone languages vary in their pronunciation of words. Where was the control group
that the Mandarin and Vietnamese results could
be compared with? In order to get such control
Mandarin
170
0
tent pitch curves. In the uppermost figure to the
3.13905
Time (s)
330
right, my Mandarin subject pronounced the two
Pitch (Hz)
first curves to the left, while the four other curves
are from Deutsch’s data.
Romanian [vin]
As the middle figure shows, the pronunciation
170
0
of one single word can vary a lot. In this case,
all the three first curves are pronunciations of the
[mult]
2.17433
Time (s)
230
Romanian word [vin]. However, the same subject had a rather stable ponunciation of the word
Swedish [ʁ̞oːd]
Pitch (Hz)
My own thoughts,
studies, and results
Pitch (Hz)
330
[mult]. The figure at the bottom shows unconsis-
French [m�]
tent pronunciations in French and Swedish.
70
0
My recording equipment was simple, and I only
Time (s)
recorded 5 subjects. A larger study would surely
Sources
• Deutsch, Diana, 1999. Tone Language Speakers Possess
Absolute Pitch. Paper presented at the 138th Acoustical
Society of America meeting in Columbus, USA.
• Deutsch, Diana et al, 2004. Perfect Pitch in Tone Language Speakers Carries Over to Music. Paper presented
at the 148th Acoustical Society of America meeting in
San Diego, USA.
• http://psy.ucsd.edu/~ddeutsch/
• http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/
get more detailed and more interesting results,
but there is no doubt that the pitch variation that
connections at an early age, the idea of a “criti-
occurs in some of the Romanian words would be
cal period” not only in language learning. I rec-
impossible in Chinese.
ommend that you listen to the aforementioned
episode of Radio Lab, it contains a lot of interest-
Diana Deutsch’s studies are interesting in many
ing and entertaining facts about music and lan-
ways: the sometimes fuzzy line between music
guage.
and language, the importance of creating neural
by Felix Ahlner
1.3927