"Perfect" or "absolute" pitch is quite rare in the U.S. and Europe. But musicians who speak an East Asian tone language fluently are much more likely to have the ability. Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Sinatra ...

A research group led by Professor Patrick Chun Man Wong, Stanley Ho Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience of the Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages, recruited more than 400 native speakers ...

A new study of how tone languages are sung has implications for the way humans manipulate and adapt the sounds of their language to artistic expression. A new study of how tone languages are sung has ...

Our brains start soaking in details from the languages around us from the moment we can hear them. One of the first things infants learn of their native languages is the system of consonants and ...

Speakers of human languages regularly imitate each others speech in very subtle, unconscious ways. Research has shown that the goal of this imitation is often to accommodate other speakers - if you ...

Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Sinatra and Hendrix – these and many other of the world's most famous musicians have had "perfect" or "absolute" pitch. The ability, defined as recognizing the pitch of a musical ...

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 ...