La musicalité de la comptine vietnamienne

Abstract

Nursery rhymes involve a play on the musicality of the language, such that, for this kind of oral heritage, sound and rhythm are more important than the meaning of words. Vietnamese is a tonal language where each of the six tones is characterized by a complex interplay of sound frequencies. This musicality, intrinsic to the words, combined with prosodic constructions (caesura, rhythm…) and structural characteristics (rhyme, echo…) gives a rich musical structure that nourishes the child’s poetic sensibility while participating in its language learning and its awakening to the outside world. In the case of riddles and formulettes, the tones are creating a melodic line and their construction is reminiscent of the rules of harmony and counterpoint. In children songs and lullabies, the score and musical ornaments are often modeled on the music of the words.