Singing Cantonese Children's Songs: significance of the pitch relationship between text and melody

In contrast with most Western languages, Cantonese is a tonal language. This study examines how young children sing Cantonese songs with different pitch relationships between text and melody; and whether Cantonese texts can be matched to Western diatonic melodies. A diatonic song with three different texts was sung by 194 Hong Kong children aged three to five: two groups of Cantonese‐speaking children sang with tone‐mismatched and tone‐matched Cantonese texts, respectively; one group of English‐speaking children sang with an English text. The results showed no significant differences in overall pitch accuracy between singing the two Cantonese texts. However, Cantonese subjects sang more accurately than their English counterparts. Group, age and sex differences were also found in the accuracy of individual intervals. Furthermore, linguistic tonal articulations were exhibited in singing Cantonese texts; the English children sang in a more legato manner than the Cantonese children did; the English text was recalled most efficiently and the Cantonese tone‐mismatched text was the least.