Re: Perfect Pitch

At 7/24/00 12:24 AM -0700, you wrote:

While I also am not an expert, I did recently finish a course that discussed
the neurological activity associated with language use (fascinating class, but
difficult), and this topic did surface briefly.  The evidence as it was
presented to me does support a music/language connection in tone languages.

In summary, phonetic processing is typically carried out in the left
hemisphere.  Musical processing, on the other hand, is carried out in the
right
hemisphere.  In speakers of non-tone languages, the brain activity associated
with language and music are very distinct.  However, speakers of tone
languages
show activation of the language area when presented with musical stimuli.  It
seems that the language areas of their brains are searching the tones for a
linguistic signal.

I don't know if that would translate into perfect pitch in those speakers, but
I think the possibility is there.

>3. Tonal language speakers have perfect pitch (pitch to intonation
>correlation). Really! Hang a Chinese karaoke parlor (I mean it). It sounds
>like pigs going to slaughter. I seriously doubt that Thai crooners fare much
>better.
As I understand it (and I don't know much about music, so maybe I'm wrong)
perfect pitch is a matter of perception, not one of production.  Just because
they can recognize exactly what pitch a word/note is in does not necessarily
mean that they can reproduce it.

I definitely don't have perfect pitch.  I don't even have good relative
pitch.
Believe it or not, but give two notes back to back, I cannot always tell which
was higher, unless they are radically different.  Made learning Japanese quite
a chore.

Marcus