Himalayan Linguistics

Speech and singing both make use of the same vocal apparatus, but studies analyzing the formant frequencies of spoken and sung vowels produced by the same subject generally show a difference in vowel quality as a result of articulatory modifications. Though such modifications may be codified and systematized in traditional musical styles, which place special emphasis on pedagogy, they appear more arbitrary in contemporary genres, which are usually passed down from mentors to students as aural traditions. While multiple studies have been conducted on the effects of singing on vowel space in various languages, this study is the first of its kind to take a look at such effects with reference to Nepalese pop rock. Since this study deals with bilingual speakers, the spoken vowels here have been compared with their sung counterparts only after establishing some deviations from those produced by monolingual speakers as referenced in previous phonetic studies of the language. This study elucidates the variation in Nepali vowels while speaking versus singing and attempts to derive an orderly, albeit preliminary, pattern of articulatory modifications that must have led to such variations.