In tone languages where pitch is used to distinguish word meanings, questions arise about how tonal pitch is preserved in singing. While most studies focus on tone-melody matching by examining pitch changes between tones/notes, the pitch change of tones realized within individual notes is less investigated. This article explores how singers realized tones when singing in Chaozhou, a Southern Chinese language with a complex tonal system. It used a Chaozhou song containing 10 tonal patterns to collect data from 34 Chaozhou singers. Results show that tones are realized to varying degrees when sung, and pitch range, pitch level, and neighboring pitch of tones appear to be influential factors. Vocal training affected the realization of falling tones /53/ and /42/ by reducing the pitch fall and also affected rising tone /23/ with a larger pitch change being found for non-professional singers than for professionals. However, the singers’ experience of singing in Chaozhou did not greatly affect the tone realization. An effect of the metrical structure was only found for tones /53/ and /42/. In addition, tone sandhi affects tones /53/ and /21/. The analysis also hints at the potential effect of melodic intervals on the pitch change of tones when sung.

中文翻译：

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声调形注：潮州歌曲词汇声调的实现

在使用音调来区分单词含义的声调语言中，出现了如何在歌唱中保留音调的问题。虽然大多数研究通过检查音调/音符之间的音高变化来关注音调-旋律匹配，但对单个音符内实现的音调的音高变化的研究较少。本文探讨了歌手在潮州语（一种具有复杂声调系统的南方语言）演唱时如何实现声调。它使用一首包含 10 个声调的潮州歌曲来收集 34 位潮州歌手的数据。结果表明，歌唱时音调的实现程度不同，音高范围、音高水平和相邻音调似乎是影响因素。声乐训练通过减少音高下降影响了降调 /53/ 和 /42/ 的实现，并且还影响了升调 /23/，发现非专业歌手的音调变化比专业歌手更大。不过，歌手在潮州的演唱经历并没有对音色实现产生太大影响。仅在音调 /53/ 和 /42/ 中发现了格律结构的影响。此外，变调影响声调/53/和/21/。分析还暗示了旋律音程对歌唱时音调变化的潜在影响。