Set The Tone: Tone-melody matching study on K-Pop in the context of tonogenesis in Seoul Korean

Abstract

Tone-melody matching has been a subject of great interest in the field of linguistics. Generally speaking, music in tone languages takes both linguistic pitch and melodic pitch into account, and attempts to match the direction of movement of the two. A yet understudied area, however, has been tone-melody matching in languages experiencing tonogenesis. Seoul Korean is one such language, where aspirated and plain voiceless stops are merging in terms of VOT, and difference in F0 is taking its place as the distinguishing feature. This study explores whether similar tone-melody matching patterns appear in the music of an emerging tone language as does in that of an established tone language. 1092 bigrams from nine K-Pop songs released in the last five years were analyzed, and no clear effect was observed, suggesting the Seoul Korean tonogenetic shift is not yet complete, or that it has not extended to K-Pop music. However, the study brought to light many intriguing questions which present opportunities for future research.