发表机构
University of Vienna; Austrian Academy of Science（维也纳大学; 奥地利科学院）
机构由 AI 辅助整理，请以论文原文为准。AI 中文总结
研究探讨音阶定义缺乏共识的问题，采用相对于主音的音高组织统计规律这一经验性定义，结合原型理论将音阶分组到命名类别，为跨文化重新审视音阶提供了新视角和基础。
AI 中文摘要
音阶在人类音乐中几乎普遍存在，大多数读者可能觉得自己已经知道音阶是什么。然而仔细审视会发现，文献中缺乏一个共识定义：跨学科和传统的必要充分条件是什么，这个术语实际上涵盖了几个不同的对象。本文认为这并非缺乏严谨性，而是表明“音阶”指代了几个相关对象：规定性抽象、乐器调音、演奏音高的统计规律、感知类别、社会惯例。作者采用一个经验性定义——相对于主音的音高组织中的统计规律作为音阶，它可跨传统应用且能从录音中计算得出，并将其与该术语的其他含义并列。即便这个经验核心也并非纯粹观察性的，因为惯例在决定哪些音属于音阶时会介入。进一步将音阶分组到命名类别是另一种惯例，作者通过原型理论来探讨并以爱尔兰音乐为例进行说明。区分这些层次为从经验和跨文化角度重新审视音阶提供了基础。
英文摘要
Musical scales are near-universal in human music, and most readers will feel they already know what a scale is. On closer inspection, however, the literature lacks a consensus definition: which conditions are necessary and sufficient shifts across disciplines and traditions, and the term turns out to cover several distinct objects. I argue this is less a failure of rigour than a sign that ``scale'' names several related objects: prescriptive abstractions, instrument tunings, statistical regularities in performed pitch, perceptual categories, social conventions. I adopt an empirical definition -- a scale as a statistical regularity in pitch organisation relative to a tonic -- that is portable across traditions and computable from recordings, and situate it alongside the other senses of the term. Even this empirical core is not purely observational, as convention enters in deciding which pitches belong to a scale. And a further step of grouping scales into named categories is a separate convention, which I approach through prototype theory and illustrate with examples from Irish music. Separating these layers provides a basis from which scales can be re-examined empirically and cross-culturally.
Comments13 pages, 3 figures, includes a 3-page statistical reporting checklist
