In article authors put forward a hypothesis about existence special semiotics system in music, which is close on the structure and mechanisms to a natural language. To check the hypothesis we have selected the ancient Russian chants of XI-XVII centuries, written by Znamenny notation. Using "lingvomusical" analogies and allocation of the corresponding semiotics designs allowed applying linguistic methods to processing and analyzing chants, identification of their musical "lexicon", syntax and semantics.
For the complete decryption we need to find internal laws in Znamenny notation due to which compositions contain specific signs.
While solving this task in the context of “Automated system of scientific research in the area of computer semiography” project we hypothesized that there should be some semiotic structure which is closely related by its structure and mechanisms to a natural language. This assumption allows us to apply linguistic methods to process and analyze the chants and to reveal its musical “lexicon”, syntax, semantic and pragmatic.
In a case of such a hypothesis full confirmation, not merely would we possess valuable results for preserving the rich heritage of national singing culture, but also new fundamental principles of musical infocognitive technologies may be discovered. 2
Toolset development and conducting the research
To solve the problem of automated manuscript processing for selected sources, a work of several years has been carried out that included the following main stages: • Translation of chants into a digital form; • Carrying out basic statistical explorations; • Informational and mathematical models development; • Models verification, correction and application
During the first stage special computer fonts (such as “Andrew Semio”) have been
developed and optimized. As well, we’ve entered manually some semiographic chants
and made necessary corrections [
During the second stage we’ve conducted statistical exploration based on an idea
firstly proposed in the ancient Russian music study domain by M.V. Brazhnikov [
First, an Andrew Tools linguistic editor was used for chants automated processing;
later, a special software complex named “SemioStatistik” was developed [
Having done some preliminary processing, SemioStatistik allows one to create various lexicographic structures such as frequency and direct concordances, vocabularies, alphabets et al. as well as to export them into different formats.
Research of dependence of frequency of a semiographic signs from its rank was
conducted. It was revealed that this distribution is described by function:
,
a=[500;600] – depending on the manuscript
b=0,07.
At the third stage we offered informational and mathematical models to describe
components of Znamenny chants [
The rules of semiographic signs usage could be represented in the form of Znamenny thesaurus, the structure of which includes syntax, semantic and other relationships. We present the results of building the thesaurus as dictionary entries. Every entry includes the following information: Znamya (semiographic sign), a header of dictionary entry; Basic znamya (α – relationship); Absolute frequency of znamya, numerical characteristic of znamya frequency in manuscript; Znamyas directly related to the key znamya, znamyas which go next to the key znamya (β –relationship); Znamyas context related to the key concept, znamyas which appear with the key znamya in the same context(γ – relationship).
At the fourth stage we have developed algorithms and specialized software and also have conducted a research that revealed 14 main (basic) znamyas. We could obtain other znamyas by applying the first rule (α – relationship).
To reveal syntactic relations of the second type (β-relationship) we built adjacency matrices, which contain the frequencies of znamya sequences. Further normalization concerning the overall number of znamyas allowed us to construct a stochastic table (matrix) of the transitions in Markov chain.
Example →
→ → (0,56) → →
More detailed description of the model is represented in [
Conclusion
During the research we analyzed the chants from «The Ring of Ancient Znamenny Chants» book containing 24911 uses of different 722 semiographic signs (znamyas). The results of the studies support the hypothesis about the existence of complex semiotic system in Znamenny chants.
• In the general case, znamya corresponds to multiple (sequence) contemporary notes; in some cases one znamya could be replace with the group of other znamyas (“tainozamknennost”). Znamyas could be divided by typeface into main (basic) and secondary (derivative) formed by adding characteristics;
• The occurrence frequency of znamyas corresponds to the exponential law. This indicates that there is a strong spike in the probability of their usage.
• We revealed that there is a huge amount of znamya combinations that are never used; but at the same time there is a small number of combinations that are more common than others. This allows us to identify (confirm) the presence of «function» znamyas.
The application of methods of computational linguistics for the analysis of Znamenny chants, designed mathematical models and algorithms, and the results of the experiments are original and present scientific novelty in the sphere of infocognitive technologies.
The practical value of the conducted research consists of the development of software units for input, presentation and analysis of the chants, and also obtaining new statistical data about collocations of znamyas that could be used to improve data processing and to study Znamenny notation.
The obtained results provide a basis for the further studies of Znamenny chants and other musical compositions, revealing semantic and pragmatic relations, construction of new classes of personal automated systems based on infocognitive technologies.
Additional information about the project and conducted research could be found in the Internet on the website (http://it-claim.ru/semio). Аннотация. Авторы статьи развивают гипотезу о существовании специальной семиотической системы в музыке, близкой по своей структуре и механизмам как естественному языку. Для проверки гипотезы взяты древнерусские песнопения XI-XVII веков, написанные в знаменной нотации. Применение «лингвомузыкальных» аналогий и размещения соответствующих семиотик позволило применить лингвистические методы для обработки и анализа песнопений, идентифицировать их музыкальный «лексикон», синтаксис и семантику. Ключевые слова: музыкальная семиотика, знаменная нотация, компьютерная лингвистика, тезаурус, синтаксический анализ, распределённый статистический анализ.