60秒科学:Perfect Pitch Related to Language

Can you name those notes? Probably not—perhaps one in 10,000 speakers of European languages has perfect pitch, the ability to recognize a note without having heard any reference note first. But there’s a much better chance you could successfully name the notes if you’re a fluent speaker of an East Asian tonal language, such as Vietnamese, Mandarin¹ or Cantonese. [Cantonese audio clip] That’s the finding of a study by U.C. San Diego and U.S.C. researchers presented May 21st at the Acoustical² Society of America meeting in Portland, Oregon.

Two hundred three U.S.C. music students listened to musical notes. The Asian musicians who spoke³ a tone language fluently exhibited almost perfect perfect pitch, far outperforming Caucasians fluent in a nontone language like English. And they also outdid other musicians of Asian ancestry⁴ who did not speak a tonal language. So it would seem that perfect pitch is more nurture⁵ than nature.

By the way, the notes are D, E and G. Assuming that your MP3 player is in tune⁶.

—Steve Mirsky

 

1 Mandarin   

n.中国官话，国语，满清官吏；adj.华丽辞藻的

参考例句：

• Just over one billion people speak Mandarin as their native tongue.大约有十亿以上的人口以华语为母语。
• Mandarin will be the new official language of the European Union.普通话会变成欧盟新的官方语言。

2 acoustical   

adj. 听觉的，声学的，音响学的

参考例句：

• This system can set up acoustical resonances. 这种系统能产生共鸣。
• The relevance of acoustical principles is by no means limited to sound and hearing. 声学原理并不仅仅适用于声音和听觉。

3 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

4 ancestry   

n.祖先，家世

参考例句：

• Their ancestry settled the land in 1856.他们的祖辈1856年在这块土地上定居下来。
• He is an American of French ancestry.他是法国血统的美国人。

5 nurture   

n.养育，照顾，教育；滋养，营养品；vt.养育，给与营养物，教养，扶持

参考例句：

• The tree grows well in his nurture.在他的培育下这棵树长得很好。
• The two sisters had received very different nurture.这俩个姊妹接受过极不同的教育。

6 tune   

n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整

参考例句：

• He'd written a tune,and played it to us on the piano.他写了一段曲子，并在钢琴上弹给我们听。
• The boy beat out a tune on a tin can.那男孩在易拉罐上敲出一首曲子。