I've been interested in how in songs conversational intonations of a language interplay with melodies. Marked this topic "for further research"... Recently I came across an article that makes an interesting, even though not too much related to my initial interest point:
new research from the University of California, San Diego has found a strong link between speaking a tone language - such as Mandarin - and having perfect pitch ("The ability to identify a note on the musical scale without a single reference point" - M.I.), the ability once thought to be the rare province of super-talented musicians.
The first large-scale, direct-test study to be conducted on perfect pitch, led by psychology professor Diana Deutsch of UC San Diego, has found that native tone language speakers are almost nine times more likely to have the ability.
Read the whole article for more details.
