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"m" is a consonant. What does it mean to assign it a pitch?
by gohrt 11y ago
"m" is a consonant. What does it mean to assign it a pitch?
- gliese1337 11y ago"m" is a nasal sonorant. It's assigned a pitch the same way nasal and oral vowels are- based on the positions of its major formants. Or, less technically, when someone successfully hums a non-monotone tune- you have just heard what it means for them to assign a series of differing pitches to "m".
- gavinpc 11y ago"m" is a voiced, nasal consonant. It can be pitched as much as any vowel.
- gavinpc 11y ago"m" is a voiced, nasal consonant. It can be pitched as much as any vowel.
- pierrec 11y agoIn this context, it means nothing. As you point out, GP is conflating pitch with pitchless phonemes, for example, the phrase "we say "Mmmmm" not something higher pitched" doesn't make any sense. However, I suppose GP meant to write "we tend to say "Mmmm" with a specific, relatively low pitch", a statement with which I don't particularly agree. I would rather say it's done at an average conversational pitch, or even at a higher pitch since it often has a pitch accent conveying surprise. Which I believe is the main purpose of saying "mmm": communication, not vibrational tongue massage. Consider that when you say "mmm", you voluntarily choose a pitch intonation according to what you're trying to convey, ie. how pleasantly surprised you are.
- golergka 11y agoYou can do Fourie transform to any sound, and if you see that certain frequency and it's modulations have a prevalence over all others, then you can talk about this sound's pitch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_detection_algorithm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_detection_algorithm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_frequency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_frequency