Could it be that cellist Yo-Yo Ma owes his perfect musical pitch to his Chinese parents? While we may never know the definitive answer, new research from the University of California, San Diego has ...

Lexical tones, which involve specific pitch contours that differentiate word meanings, are fundamental to tonal languages such as Mandarin and Cantonese. In both languages, subtle variations in pitch, ...

Your native language could impact your musical ability. A global study that compared the melodic and rhythmic abilities of almost half a million people speaking 54 different languages found that tonal ...

More of the brain is busy processing pitch from language and other sounds than previously thought, according to a researcher in neurophonetics at Purdue University. "By studying brain activity at ...

Non-musicians who speak tonal languages may have a better ear for learning musical notes, according to researchers. Non-musicians who speak tonal languages may have a better ear for learning musical ...