| I have ample evidence that even Venda children think 'harmonically' when they sing. I set a series of tests in which I sang Venda children's songs and asked children to sing them after me: whenever I deliberately sang them below or above the pitch-range of the children, they generally altered the pitch to suit their voices by either a fourth or a fifth, but very rarely by a third or a second. Furthermore, their tendency was to pitch it down, or up a fourth. This agrees with the tshikona pattern and with the preference for ascending fourths and descending fifths.
Tshikona Pattern
|
