Vietnamese Tone: A New Analysis (Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics)

OUTSTANDING DlSSERTATIONS IN LINGUISTICS

Edited by Laurence HornYale UniversityA ROUTLEDGE SERIES

OUTSTANDING DlSSERTATIONS IN LINGUISTICS LAURENCE HORN, General Editor THE SYNCHRONIC AND DIACHRONIC PHONOLOGY OF EJECTIVES Paul D.Fallon GRAMMATICAL FEATURES AND THE ACQUISITION OF REFERENCE A Comparative Study of Dutch and Spanish Sergio Baauw AUDITORY REPRESENTATIONS IN PHONOLOGY Edward S.Flemming THE TYPOLOGY OF PARTS OF SPEECH SYSTEMS The Markedness of Adjectives David Beck THE EFFECTS OF PROSODY ON ARTICULATION IN ENGLISH Taehong Cho PARALLELISM AND PROSODY IN THE PROCESSING OF ELLIPSIS SENTENCES Katy Carlson PRODUCTION, PERCEPTION, AND EMERGENT PHONOTACTIC PATTERNS A Case of Contrastive Palatalization Alexei Kochetov RADDOPPIAMENTO SINTATTICO IN ITALIAN A Synchronic and Diachronic Cross-Dialectical Study Doris Borrelli PRESUPPOSITION AND DISCOURSE FUNCTIONS OF THE JAPANESE PARTICLE Mo Sachiko Shudo THE SYNTAX OF POSSESSION IN JAPANESE Takae Tsujioka COMPENSATORY LENGTHENING Phonetics, Phonology, Diachrony Darya Kavitskaya THE EFFECTS OF DURATION AND SONORITY ON CONTOUR TONE DlSTRIBUTION A Typological Survey and Formal Analysis Jie Zhang EXISTENTIAL FAITHFULNESS A Study of Reduplicative TETU, Feature Movement, and Dissimilation Caro Struijke PRONOUNS AND WORD ORDER IN OLD

iii

ENGLISH With Particular Reference to the Indefinite Pronoun Man Linda van Bergen ELLIPSIS AND WA-MARKING IN JAPANESE CONVERSATION John Fry WORKING MEMORY IN SENTENCE COMPREHENSION Processing Hindi Center Embeddings Shravan Vasishth INPUT-BASED PHONOLOGICAL ACQUISITION Tania S. Zamuner ORIGINS OF PREDICATES Evidence from Plains Cree Tomio Hirose CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF WORD STRUCTURE Jennifer Hay INTERACTIONS BETWEEN MARKEDNESS AND FAITHFULNESS CONSTRAINTS IN VOWEL SYSTEMS Viola Miglio THE PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY OF GUTTURALS A Case Study from Ju \ ’hoansi Amanda Miller-Ockhuizen MANIFESTATIONS OF GENERICITY Yael Greenberg TRUE TO FORM Rising and Falling Declaratives as Questions in English Christine Gunlogson

VIETNAMESE TONE A NEW ANALYSIS Andrea Hoa Pham

Routledge New York & London

Published in 2003 by Roudedge 29 West 35th Street New York, NY 10001 www.routledge-ny.com Published in Great Britain by Roudedge 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE www.routledge.co.uk Roudedge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Copyright © 2003 by Taylor & Francis Books, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pham, Andrea Hoa. Vietnamese tone: a new analysis / by Andrea Hoa Pham. p. cm. — (Outstanding dissertations in linguistics) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0 415 96762 7 (hb) 1.Vietnamese language—Intonation. 2.Vietnamese language—Phonetics. I. Title. II. Series. PL4373.P43 2003 495.2′216—dc21 2003046886 ISBN 0-203-50008-3 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-57881-3 (Adobe eReader Format)

In memory of my parents

Contents

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Foreword

ix

Acknowledgments

x

INTRODUCTION

2

Vietnamese

2

Features and Complexity

3

Overview

4

PHONOLOGICAL ISSUES

6

The Traditional Classification

6

The Mismatch Problem

7

A Structural Classification

11

Supporting Evidence

16

THE TONAL INVENTORY

23

Six Tones or Eight?

23

An Eight-tone System

27

The Additional Tones

29

THE ACOUSTICS OF TONE

34

Previous Studies

34

A New Acoustic Study

36

Summary

55

THE PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY OF TONE

59

Resolving the Mismatch Problem

59

Tonal Shape and Phonation Types

63

The Phonetics of Tone

75

Summary

55

THE DOMAIN OF TONE

84

The Vietnamese Syllable

84

The Significance of Rhyme

86

CONCLUSION

95

Appendix

96

Bibliography

116

viii

Index

119

Foreword

This book is a ‘reader friendly’ version of my 2001 doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Toronto (Hoa Pham, Vietnamese Tone: Tone is not Pitch). There are no substantive changes only those of an editorial nature. I have given the original dissertation a new title and also made some changes in the internal titles. There is some slight reordering of material and some pruning to eliminate various redundancies. There are also stylistic changes throughout. However, all the original data and claims remain as they were. This version was completed during the first part of a post-doctoral fellowship at York University, Toronto, and later during my first year at the University of Florida. I would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for that fellowship and the University of Florida for its financial support. Andrea Hoa Pham University of Florida Gainesville

Acknowledgments

I was very lucky to work under the supervision of Keren Rice. I appreciate her devotion of time, energy, and thoughtful insights to my work. What made me deeply grateful to her was that among my early incoherent ideas and broken data, she spotted a good seed, picked it out, and gave it great care until it blossomed. Nor could the thesis have been written in time without her incredibly fast feedback. I am also grateful to all other members of my thesis committee: Hank Rogers for his great support, both academic and technical; Ron Smyth for his help with the pilot study and useful comments later, and his arrangement for a lovely French restaurant lunch after the defense; Peter Avery for helping me from the very early stage of the thesis; and Parth Bhatt for spending time to discuss my experiment with special enthusiasm. Peter and Ron also helped me considerably with the writing. I am also grateful to my external examiner, Moira Yip, for her fruitful comments. I owe Bill Idsardi for his valuable suggestions, especially with the experiment. I would also like to thank all consultants who were very generous in giving me their time. My sincere thanks also go to Diane Massam for being always so comfortable to talk to; to Jack Chambers for the firm encouragement I could always rely on, and to Nick Hostettler for helping me with the formatting. Special thanks go to a friend who did a great job of editing and wants to remain anonymous. The book would not have been in this shape without that help. The financial support for my research came from various sources: Ontario Graduate Studies Scholarship, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (752–2000–1577), School of Graduate Travel Grant, David Chu Travel Fellowship, General Research Grant from the linguistics department, SSHRC Grant to Professors Rice and Dresher for the Phonology Project, and a University of Toronto Foundation Graduate Award. I would not have survived the program without my friends in Toronto and Vietnam. I cannot name them all, but am grateful for all the support I have received: an encouraging smile in the computer room, a Tango in a milonga, Vietnamese materials which I did not have access to, a pointer toward a possibly related article, a comforting shoulder, and a take-a-breaktrip when desperately needed. I thank my sisters, Vinh, Hi′ n, Hi′ n, Ph′ ′c and brother Bình, for sheltering me with their love and great food during my field work in Vietnam, and my son, Andrew Nguyen, for his love, trust and companionship. Finally, my deepest gratitude to my late parents—for giving me life—and nourishing my spirit. This book is dedicated to them.

VlETNAMESE TONE

CHAPTER 1 Introduction

A very common view in the literature on tone languages is that pitch height is the primary and sometimes only phonetic correlate of tone. This view creates a problem in Vietnamese, namely a mismatch between the phonetic realization of tone and its phonological patterning in reduplication. Is pitch height really the primary phonetic correlate of tone? If ‘tone’ refers to a contrastive phonological category, that category may not in fact be pitch height. It may be that pitch height is not a basic tonal feature and that pitch register is not an adequate phonological feature for representing Vietnamese tones. The research to be reported here shows that the laryngeal features of creakiness and breathiness are primary in signaling tone and that pitch height is derived from these features and from features describing tonal shape. The complexities of Vietnamese tones offer fertile ground to study the nature of tone. First, tones are lexical in Vietnamese and every syllable must bear a tone. Second, tone is not affected by neighboring tones in any environment since there is no tone sandhi. Finally, the tonal inventory of Vietnamese is rich with either six or eight contrastive tones depending on which analysis the researcher adopts. In order to examine the various issues outlined above it is necessary to find answers to a number of questions. What are the features of tones in Vietnamese? In a language with such a rich tonal inventory are tones organized structurally? If they are, what is the internal structure of tonal features? What are the phonetic features of tones? How closely do these phonetic features resemble the phonological features? In the linguistic literature on Vietnamese the question of why a tone patterns in a particular way is seldom posed. For example, in one dialect tone A neutralizes to tone B; however, no consideration is given as to why A does not neutralize to C. Tonal features are never clearly defined according to phonological patterning; rather, they are determined by their phonetic properties. Moreover, when tonal features are discussed, the relationships among such features are never addressed. Rather, tones are represented as bundles of unorganized features such as [high], [tense], [flat], and [glottalic], e.g., Cu et al. 1977, Thompson 1965, Doan 1977, Vo 1997, and Alves 1997. Finally, so far as the phonetics of tones is concerned, the assumption in previous research is that the primary phonetic correlate of tone is pitch height. However, tones in Vietnamese also have laryngeal realizations of breathiness and creakiness. There is no detailed study of the phonetic constants associated with tones. This research proposes and justifies a hierarchical representation of the structure of Vietnamese tones that captures their markedness relations. The model accounts for the patterning of tones in reduplication and for several types of tonal neutralization found in the language. The research also provides phonetic evidence that the phonation properties of creakiness and breathiness are important phonological features of Vietnamese tones and demonstrates how tonal features are realized phonetically. This is the first occasion in the literature on Vietnamese in which both the phonetics and the phonology of tones are unified within a single model. Vietnamese Vietnamese is a Viet-Muong language in the Mon-Khmer group within the Austroasiatic family. Viet-Muong is one of nine subgroups in the Mon-Khmer group. Among the approximately 80 million speakers of Austroasiatic languages, 65 million people spoke Vietnamese in 1988 (Tran 1999:131). It is now spoken by about 78 million people in Vietnam and by about two million speakers living all over the world, with half of this number in North America. The dialects of Vietnamese can be classified into several different major groups depending on the method of classification. For example, a classification based on final consonants divides Vietnamese into two major groups: North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese (Gordina and Bystrov 1970 cited from Hoang Thi Chau 1989 and Pham 1998). Using tones, Vu 1982, Hoang Cao Cuong 1989, and Hoang Thi Chau 1989 agree that there are three major dialect groups: North Vietnamese, Central Vietnamese, and South Vietnamese. Northern dialects have the largest tonal inventory and are the major focus of this research because Hanoi, one of Northern dialects, is considered to be the standard dialect. (1) gives the overall syllable pattern of all Vietnamese dialects.

INTRODUCTION

3

(1)

(3)

Since the focus of this research is on the final segments, the initial consonant is simplified as C. C stands for any consonant element. V can be a short or long vowel or a diphthong with an on-glide. G represents an off-glide, N a nasal consonant, and T a voiceless stop. Each syllable must bear a tone. Only tone and V are obligatory in the syllable. Whereas any consonant can occur in initial position, only a limited number of consonants can occur in final position. Since the manner of final consonants is important in the work reported here (2) gives the full inventory of finals. (2)

Obstruents Nasals Glides

labial

alveolar

palatal

labio-velar

velar

p m w

t n j

c

kp ′m

k ′

The inventory in (2) consists of nasals, obstruents, and two glides. All final obstruents are voiceless stops. Stops are unaspirated or inaudibly released. Palatal, labio-velar, and velar are allophones, determined by the quality of the preceding vowel. Features and Complexity This study follows Clements 1985, McCarthy 1988, and others in assuming that features are organized in a hierarchical configuration. The hierarchical structure allows a set of features to undergo certain phonological processes without affecting features of another group. Elements that pattern together as a natural class are dominated by the same organizing node. (3) illustrates the working model. R is a root node, X and Y are organizing nodes, and z and p are content nodes. The sisterhood relationship between the two organizing nodes X and Y in (3) allows a process to affect X without affecting Y. Markedness itself is a measure of the way in which the relative complexity of the system is encoded (Archangeli 1988). The theory of Contrastive Specification (Steriade 1987, Mester and Itô 1989, and Avery and Rice 1989) in the particular version adopted here (after Avery and Rice 1989) holds that all features are monovalent. A feature must be present underlyingly if it is contrastive. Non-contrastive or unmarked features, which play no role in the phonology of a language, are absent from underlying representations. Moreover, while the unmarked features are generally absent underlyingly, organizing nodes are present in an underlying representation if they define a property inherent in the segment (following Rice 1993). A feature must be present underlyingly if it produces contrasts in the system. Markedness can be overridden by contrast within an inventory on the assumption (Rice and Avery 1993) that structure is elaborated under pressure from the phonology to contrast two sounds. As contrasts are introduced, more complex structures are added to the existing less complex ones already in the inventory. The more marked a segment the more structure it has, e.g., Avery and Rice 1989, Rice and Avery 1991, Kaye et al 1985. The complexity of structural representations, therefore, increases as the number of contrasts in the inventory increases. There are two types of complexity (see Dresher and van der Hulst 1998): local and non-local. A node C has local complexity if it branches when others do not, as in (a) in (4), or if C has an immediate dependent when others do not, as in (b). The second type of complexity is non-local and addresses issues concerning the internal structure of the daughters of a node. For example, in (5), node C has non-local complexity if C dominates D and D dominates E and F, as in (a). It is simple if C dominates D and D dominates E but does not branch, as in (b). Within non-local complexity, a structure with more specified features in a hierarchical system, either vertically or horizontally, counts as more complex than a structure with fewer specified features; consequently, (a) in (6) is vertically more complex than (b). The difference between the two is that (a) has an extra dependent feature G under F. In (7), (a) is horizontally more complex than (b). The only difference between the two is that in (a), both D and E have dependents while in (b) only D has a dependent.

4

VIETNAMESE TONE: A NEW ANALYSIS

(4)

(5)

(6) Vertical complexity

Default rules act as a phonetic implementation component for an underspecified feature (Rice and Avery 1989). A delinking rule serves to delink the content nodes in a neutralization environment. In Vietnamese, delinking of either the laryngeal or the contour features of tone occurs to yield unmarked features or structures. For example, a more complex, i.e., more marked, tone is reduced to a less complex, i.e., less marked, one. Overview This research study is organized as follows. Chapter Two presents a proposal for the structure of Vietnamese tones based on markedness and provides phonological evidence for that structure. Markedness of tones is based on their complexity, which is evaluated according to tonal patterning. Evidence for the markedness of tones is drawn mainly from tonal neutralization. The chapter analyzes the six tones that occur in the same environment, namely sonorant-final syllables. It also introduces the classification of tones in the traditional literature and the mismatch problem that this classification creates. Chapter Three discusses the size of the tonal inventory, either six tones or eight. Evidence is advanced to support the eight-tone hypothesis and arguments are given for the representation and markedness of the two tones that occur in obstruent-final syllables.

INTRODUCTION

5

(7)

Chapter Four deals with the phonetics of tones. It reviews the acoustic experiments in the literature and presents an experimental study of tones produced by speakers of the Northern dialect. It examines various aspects of tones: fundamental frequency, shape, length, linear portion, and phonation types such as creakiness and breathiness. One of the most important findings is the instability of the fundamental frequency, i.e., F0. The F0 of pitch varies from speaker to speaker, from token to token, and from form to form. However, phonation types are the most stable feature across speakers and tokens. Another finding is that the end point of a tone is the most crucial portion of a tone for differentiating that tone from others, except in curved tones where the middle part is crucial. Chapter Five presents the implications of the phonetic results for the phonology of tones. Phonation type is the primary phonetic correlate of tone in Vietnamese. Pitch height is not constant but is predictable on the basis of phonation type. Use of the phonation features of creakiness and breathiness as laryngeal features eliminates the mismatch between the phonetics and phonology of tone in reduplication. The chapter also includes a discussion of the phonetics of tone and shows how the phonology maps onto the phonetics. Chapter Six discusses the domain of tones and shows that in Vietnamese the domain of tone is not the syllable, nucleus, or mora. It is smaller than a syllable and larger than a nucleus; it is the rhyme. Chapter Seven provides a very brief summary of the major findings.

CHAPTER 2 Phonological Issues

This chapter is concerned with the phonology of Vietnamese tones and focuses on their structural representations and their markedness with respect to one another. The evidence for the markedness of different tones is drawn mainly from tonal neutralization in various phonological domains. The chapter provides background information on the distribution of tones and their phonetic descriptions, proposes a hierarchical structure for tones and gives evidence for the structure, reviews tonal representations in the traditional literature, and identifies some of the problems in those accounts. The Traditional Classification Vietnamese has eight tones (see also Chapter Three) ngang, huyen, sac1, nang1, hoi, nga, sac2, and nang2 and (8) shows their distribution. Ngang, huyen, sac1, nang 1, hoi, and nga occur in open or sonorant-final syllables. Only sac2 and nang2 occur in stop-closed syllables. Chapter Three discusses the phonological status of these tones and Chapter Four provides phonetic details. (8) Syllable types

e.g.

ngang

huyen

sac1

nang1

hoi

nga

CV CVG CVN CVT

la la:w l′ n la:t

+ + +

+ + +

+ + +

+ + +

+ 4 +

+ + +

sac2

nang2

+

+

(9) provides a set of minimal pairs for these tones. The Vietnamese orthography is in the third column. The orthography uses only six diacritics: sac1 and sac2 share the same diacritic. Likewise, nang1 and nang2 share the same diacritic. (9) Tone

Phonetics

Orthography

Gloss

(ngang) (huyen) (sac1) (nang1) (hoi) (nga) (sac2) (nang2)

l′ n l′ n l′ n l′ n l′ n l′ n 1′ t l′ t

lân l′ n l′ n lân l′ n l′ n l′ t lât

unicorn/neighbor/near turn/time/layer/to totter away to surpass/ to jostle to tuck/to defraud to slip away, to escape crack-brained/to confuse unstable, unreliable (l′ t l′) to overturn/to capsize/chestnut

This chapter is concerned with only the first six tones, i.e., ngang, huyen, sac1, nang1, hoi, and nga, since they occur in the same environments. Figure 1 shows the pitch tracks of the six tones in the open syllable [ta] from Nguyen and Edmondson 1997. (In this figure the transcribed vowel carries a diacritic for tone.) Tones are generally presented in pairs for both phonetic and phonological reasons. The pair in 1(a) are the level tones ngang and huyen. Ngang is high in pitch and huyen is low. The pair in 1(b) are sac1 and nang1. Sac1 is a high rising tone and nang1 is a low falling tone ending with a glottal stop. The pair in 1(c) are nga and hoi. Nga is a high falling-rising tone broken by a glottal stop in the middle of the tone. Hoi is a low falling-rising tone.

VIETNAMESE TONE: A NEW ANALYSIS

7

Figure 1. Six tones in the open syllable [ta] (from Nguyen and Edmondson 19 1997:6)

These phonetic descriptions yield two parameters that are generally used to describe Vietnamese tones, e.g., Doan 1977 and Hoang Cao Cuong 1989. The first refers to tonal shape: level (ngang, huyen); contour (sac1, nang1); or curve (hoi, nga). The second involves tonal height: high (ngang, sac, and nga) and low (huyen, nang, and hoi). These tones are thus generally classified as in (10). (10)

high low

level

contour

curve

ngang huyen

sac1 nang1

nga hoi

The Mismatch Problem The usual representation of tones in the literature on Vietnamese is one based on tonal shape and tonal height. The assumption that register is equivalent to pitch is also common. The term ‘contour’ in the traditional literature clearly refers to tonal shape. Tones are thus classified according to their pitch and shape. (11) summarizes the classification of Vietnamese tones found in Doan 1977, Vuong and Hoang 1994, and Hoang Thi Chau 1989. The first parameter is the tonal shape or contour. According

8

VIETNAMESE TONE: A NEW ANALYSIS

to this parameter, ‘level’ indicates that the tone is basically flat. The level tones are ngang and huyen. The non-level tones are sac1, nang1, hoi, and nga. Among these tones, nga and hoi are broken, i.e., the tone goes down then rises to make a curved shape, and sac1 and nang1 are nonbroken, i.e., the tone either goes down or rises (see Chapter Four for details). This view of contour is consistent with the one adopted in this study. The second parameter is tonal height, which divides tones into two registers defined by pitch: high register consists of the high tones ngang, sac1, and nga, and low register consists of the low tones huyen, nang1, and hoi. The justification for [high] and [low] in (11) is discussed in Chapter Four. (11) Traditional classification of tones according to tonal shape and height level

High Low

non-level

ngang huyen

non-broken

broken

sac1 nang1

nga hoi

Evidence for the two registers high and low is drawn from phonetics, e.g., Doan 1977 and Vuong and Hoang 1994. Evidence for tonal contour comes from tonal patterning in poetry, i.e., level tones form one group and non-level tones form the other group. These sources are briefly mentioned as evidence for such a classification but no systematic accounts are given. However, as we will see, the situation is different in reduplication. The classification in (11) is standard with the proviso that the terms there are used primarily to classify tones and not to specify the features of tones. (12) provides an alternative classification. (12) Unmarked register: Marked register:

ngang huyen

sac1 nang1

hoi nga

The major difference between the traditional classification in (11) and the classification in (12) is that the latter is based on a phonological patterning in which hoi forms a class with ngang and sac1 in terms of register and nga forms a class with huyen and nang1. In the traditional proposal, the registers of hoi and nga are reversed. (Evidence for (12) is presented later in this chapter.) Tonal features are also proposed in the literature, features such as glottalization, length, tense, and lax, but no evidence is provided. For example, (13) shows tone features from Thompson 1965 and Alves 1997. (13) also assumes that there are only six tones in Vietnamese. (13) Tone

high

tense

glottalic

short

ngang huyen sac nang hoi nga

+ − + − − +

− − + + + +

− − − + − +

+/− +/− + + − −

(13) uses tonal height to classify tonal registers. One problem with (13) is that these features do not group tones into natural classes. For example, ngang, sac, and nga are grouped under the feature [high] but they do not pattern together as a group. In addition, although nang and nga have the feature [glottalic], they do not pattern as a pair. Hoang 1986 argues that two parameters alone, pitch height and contour, cannot account for tone languages such as Vietnamese, whose tones developed from final consonants (see Chapter Three for details) and still show some relic of those segments through glottal stop or breathiness. In an attempt to incorporate phonation types as tone features, he proposes the tonal features in (14). This proposal classifies tones based on the diachronic hypothesis that a tone which developed from a final consonant may still retain some properties of that segment. For example, the glottal stop in the tone nang1 is treated as a relic of the historical final glottal stop. In (14), the phonation column indicates the presence or absence of glottalization or pharyngealization in a tone. The second column indicates whether the tone falls within its register, i.e., the pitch contour does

VIETNAMESE TONE: A NEW ANALYSIS

9

(15)

not cross two registers. The last column indicates the pitch height for register features. While Hoang classifies eight tones according to their phonetic properties, the phonological status of the sac and nang tones is left unclear. (14) Tone ngang huyen nga hoi sac1 nang1 sac2 nang2

1 2 3 4 5 6 5’ 6’

phonation

falls in one register

low

− + + − − + + +

+ + − − − − + +

− + − + − + − +

The features in (14) are classified phonetically. Although Hoang argues that this classification of tones agrees with the traditional treatment in music and in the frequency of occurrence of tones in reduplicative forms, he provides no evidence. He emphasizes that (14) is based primarily on phonation, and reflects the historical development of tones. However, like the classification in (13), these features do not account for the major patterning of tones in the language, since nga, nang1, sac2, and nang2 do not pattern as a group although, according to the classification in (14), they share the same feature for phonation. Hoang recognizes that it is problematic to use pitch height to classify Vietnamese tones because while some tones fall completely within one register (high or low), other tones fall across the two registers. Chapter Five takes up this issue again. All the featural accounts discussed in this section fail in one major way: the proposals do not capture classes that the phonology requires to be natural. Other recent works use feature geometry to represent tones as constituents but do not provide evidence for the organization of tones. For example, using the features in (14), Hoang 1986 suggests the feature geometry in (15) for Vietnamese tones. The numbers refer to the tones as follows: 1 is ngang, 2 is huyen, 3 is nga, 4 is hoi, 5 is sac1, 5’ is sac2, 6 is nang1, and 6’ is nang2. In the abbreviations ‘ng’ stands for ngang, ‘hu’ for huyen, ‘sa1’ and ‘sa2’ for sac1 and sac2, respectively, and ‘na’ and ‘na2’ for nang1 and nang2, respectively. However, these features do not group tones in the way that they pattern in the language. For example, there is no evidence that 3, 6, 5’, and 6’ (nga, nang1, sac2, and nang2) in the top row pattern as a group or that 5 and 4 (sac1 and hoi) in the last row pattern together as a pair, and so on. It is problematic to use only phonetic features such as length, glottalic, tenseness, and so on to classify tones. For example, the feature [glottalic] groups nga and nang1 into a class that does not reflect their phonological patterning. In an attempt to avoid the difficulty with the feature [glottalic], Ngo 1984 suggests another feature, one that makes use of the tonal shape, namely [concave], to group hoi with nga. In this system, tonal representation is simply a reflection of the pitch shape of tones or their contour (1984:75). (16) shows features of tones in this account. (16)

Concave Contour

ngang

huyen

sac

nang

hoi

nga

− −

− −

− +

− +

+ +

+ +

10

VIETNAMESE TONE: A NEW ANALYSIS

(17)

High

ngang

huyen

sac

nang

hoi

nga

+

−

+

−

+

−

Using the tonal features in (16), Ngo represents tones hierarchically in a binary branching model, as in (17). This model uses [concave] at the highest level to dominate tonal contour. The feature [±high] is a dependent of [contour]. The high tone hoi is [+concave, +contour, +high]. The low tone nga is [+concave, +contour, −high]. According to Ngo, this is a morphological representation, since hoi is phonetically low but morphologically high and nga is phonetically high but morphologically low. There is an unexplained gap in the model: the absence of two tones under [+concave, −contour]. This gap is also seen in Doan 1977:107, who explains that in reality there are no tones which are ‘even’ but ‘broken’ (i.e., [−contour] and [+concave] in Ngo 1984). Using binary branching with three different levels, the model seems to be appropriate for an eight-tone system because the combinations give eight possible terminal nodes, but it is not completely filled. The two tones ngang and huyen should occupy the two unspecified nodes. Authors such as Burton 1992, Avery 1983, and Ngo 1984 agree about their unmarkedness because of their frequency, their patterning in reduplication, and borrowings. However, ngang and huyen do not occupy these nodes. Furthermore, this model does not capture the distributional fact that the four tones ngang, huyen, hoi, and nga occur only in sonorant-final syllables. Although the above proposals classify tones into pairs, there are no relationships between these pairs; therefore, the tonal pairs appear to exist as autonomous components within the tonal system. Accordingly, there are no adequate representations that can account for the various patterns of tones in Vietnamese. The division of tonal registers in (11) and the assumption that register is tonal height also cause a serious mismatch between the phonetics and phonology of tones. It creates a problem in reduplication with respect to hoi and nga, one which the research reported here will resolve through proposing the alternative classification given in (12) above. In the traditional view tones pattern in two registers: ngang and sac1 pattern together and huyen and nang1 pattern together. Ngang and sac1 are high tones and huyen and nang1 are low tones. The phonetics of these tones predicts their patterning, i.e., their phonetic classification underlies their phonological classification. Given this patterning, nga, a phonetically a high tone, should pattern phonologically with ngang and sac1, and hoi, a phonetically low tone, should pattern with huyen and nang1. However, hoi and nga do not follow the predicted pattern. The patterning is as in (12). Many efforts have been made to explain the unusual behavior of hoi and nga in reduplication. Some researchers, e.g., Doan 1977:123, Hoang Thi Chau 1989:207, Vuong and Hoang 1994:100, and Nguyen and Edmondson 1997, look at historical developments for an explanation of this phenomenon. They adopt Haudricourt’ s suggestion (1954) that hoi was historically a low tone and nga a high tone, and they suggest that hoi and nga switched their registers during the evolution of tones. However, they do not clarify how this happened. Ngo 1984 and Burton 1992 propose abstract representations of tones to solve the problem with hoi and nga in reduplication. For example, in order to account for the phonetics-phonology mismatch with hoi and nga, Ngo 1984:78 posits a Concave Tone Reversal rule (18) that changes the phonological high tone hoi to a phonetic low tone and the phonological low tone nga to a phonetic high tone. This rule has no theoretical motivation: there are apparently no languages in which a phonetically back vowel patterns phonologically as if it were a front vowel or vice versa. Such a system would necessitate such a flip-flop rule; (18) is highly suspicious at the very least. Burton 1982 also examines the behavior of hoi and nga in reduplication and proposes (19) as a representation of Vietnamese tones. Adopting Yip’s 1980 model, Burton uses upper case +HIGH/ -HIGH for Register and lower case h, 1, 1h for contour features. In this model, each tonal pair shares the same feature for contour, i. e., both ngang and huyen are ‘1.’ They differ only in the register feature, i.e., +/− HIGH. (19) CONTOUR REGISTER − HIGH

+ HIGH D=1 (huyen)

A=1 (ngang) E=h (nang)

B=h (sac) F=1h (nga)

C=lh (hoi)

VIETNAMESE TONE: A NEW ANALYSIS

11

(18)

(20) Flip-Flop rule

Burton adopts the view that sac2 and nang2 are variations of sac1 and nang1 in stop-final syllables (see Chapter Three). Burton’s classification is abstract in that it groups hoi, a phonetic low tone, with phonetic high tones, and nga, a phonetic high tone, with phonetic low tones. However, at the same time, he also claims that ‘Upper vs Lower pitch-range is exactly what characterizes Register.’ Burton also classifies ‘contour features’ using both phonological and phonetic properties. (This issue is further discussed in Chapter Five.) As for tonal contour and following the theoretical approach of Yip 1980, Bao 1999b, and Duanmu 1990, Burton says that hoi and nga are rising ‘lh.’ (Burton’s theory does not allow a dipping tone, i.e., ‘hlh.’) Burton treats the initial dip in these tones as a phonetic effect. However, with respect to register, while arguing that ngang and sac are [+High] register and huyen and nang are [−High] register because all are articulated in the upper and lower parts of their respective pitch-ranges, Burton offers no evidence as to why hoi is [+High] and nga is [−High]. How does Burton account for the mismatch between hoi and nga? He proposes that hoi and nga must switch their register to achieve the appropriate phonetic representations. He argues that the surface representations of hoi and nga result from an interaction of two rules: Register Flip-Flop and Creakiness Acquisition, as in (20). Other authors have captured the fact that hoi patterns phonologically with high register tones and nga with low register tones by suggesting that, diachronically, hoi was a low tone that changed to a high tone. They must then assume that the phonology of reduplication makes no reference to natural classes. Unlike these authors, Burton argues that hoi is synchronically [+High]. He explains the phonetic surfacing of hoi as a high tone by a Flip-Flop rule that switches its register. Likewise, nga is underlyingly [−High] but surfaces as [+High] by a Creakiness Acquisition rule to acquire the phonetic feature [creaky] and then by a Flip-Flop rule to switch its register. Register Flip-Flop changes hoi from an underlying [+High] to surface [−High]. Consequently, Burton’s Flip-Flop rule is equivalent to Ngo’s Concave Tone Reversal in (18); the major difference between these analyses is simply whether the tonal switch is considered to be diachronic or synchronic. It is quite clear that tonal features have been largely based on phonetics in the traditional literature on Vietnamese. These features do not group tones into natural classes. However, the patterning in reduplication and neutralization shows that a classification of tones that relies only on a phonetic interpretation of register as high and low is quite unsatisfactory since it leads to the mismatch problem between the phonetics and phonology of the tones hoi and nga. The analyses based on this type of classification must then account for the mismatch with an unnatural rule that switches the registers of these two tones. A different approach to these issues is clearly warranted. A Structural Classification In the literature on tone, including standard works on phonetics, the terms ‘contour’ and ‘register’ are not at all well-defined. Generally, ‘contour’ refers to tonal shape and ‘register’ to tonal height. For example, Pike 1948 divides tone languages into two categories, register tone languages and contour tone languages, depending on which feature of pitch behavior is significant in the language. Laver 1994:465 proposes three types of tone languages. The first type is the register tone system. This is a system in which the relevant feature of word-identifying pitch behavior is the relative height of the syllabic pitches within the speaker’s pitch-span. The second type is the contour tone system. This is a system in which the relevant feature is less the relative height of the tone and more its shape or trajectory, together with its general placement in the speaker’s pitchspan. The third type is a mixed register/contour tone system. This is a system in which the end point cannot be identified directly with any of the level tones. Representations of tones and tonal features almost invariably reflect the assumption that register is pitch. For example, Yip 1980 proposes two features for tone, as in (21): a feature [Upper] for register, and a feature [High] for tone. The feature [Upper] is a binary feature, which, according to Snider 1999:152, is either high or low and indicates whether the tone is in the higher or lower register.

12

VIETNAMESE TONE: A NEW ANALYSIS

(23) (21)

Register: Pitch: (Yip 1980)

Upper High

Raised H

H

Mid

Low

+ +

+ −

− +

− −

Bao 1999b: 3 claims that register is the pitch level of a tone and contour is how the pitch behaves over the duration of the tone-bearing unit so that register is static and contour is dynamic. Assuming that register is tonal pitch, Bao 1999a: 487 describes a phenomenon called ‘register harmony’ in tone sandhi in Chaozhou (Chinese) as follows: ‘the pitch height of the sandhi tone—its register—is determined by the register of the following tone.’ The assumption that register is tonal pitch is also shared in work on African tone languages, e.g., Snider 1999. Clements 1981 proposes the representation of tones in (22). The register feature in the first row indicates that the tone is in the upper or lower register and the pitch feature in the second row indicates the higher or lower tone within that register. (22)

Register: Pitch:

Raised

High

High

Mid Low

h h

h 1

1 h

1 1

The concepts ‘register feature’ and ‘tone feature’ seem to include tonal height. The register feature indicates a pitch range, usually divided into two registers, high and low. The tone feature refers to the pitch of that tone within its register, e.g., a high tone in a low register is a low tone that is articulated at the highest point within the low register. It is reasonable to assume that contour indicates tonal shape. However, register does not necessarily involve pitch height: it can also be used to represent different phonation types, as in Chapter Five. Chapters Four and Five will also show that the particular register feature that is needed to describe Vietnamese tone is a laryngeal feature. Tonal features belong to a level of structure that is independent of segmental features, e.g., Leben 1973, Goldsmith 1976, and Odden 1995, and there are two major features in tonal representation, namely Register and Contour. Register is not tonal pitch but phonation type. Specifically, it refers to modal voice, creaky voice, and breathy voice. Chapters Four and Five provide the phonetic evidence for this claim. In the work reported here the term ‘contour’ refers to tonal shape: whether a tone is flat (level in tone) or whether there is some movement during the course of the tone. Movement can be of two types. It can involve a single change of direction, e.g., going up or down to make a rising or falling tone, or more than one change of direction, e.g., going down and then up to make a falling-rising tone. Tonal contour, therefore, does not refer to tonal height, so a ‘level’ contour might be a ‘high’ or ‘low’ tone, or a ‘falling’ tone might be ‘high’ in the pitch range. Tonal contour refers to the shape of the tone. In Vietnamese the structural relationship between Register and Contour is one of sisterhood not dominance. The model (similar to that in Bao 1999b) is shown in (23). In it Contour and Register are two organizing nodes dominated by a tone node. This model predicts that some phonological processes can affect the whole tone (T) while others may affect only Register but not Contour, or vice versa. The following pages provide evidence from neutralization for the independence of Contour and Register features, for constituency in the feature geometry of tones, and for a hierarchic arrangement of tones. (24) provides a structure for Vietnamese tones with the terms used here only partially defined (but see also Chapter Five where these terms are further discussed and justified). Some terms in (24) are used only for descriptive and classificatory purposes, e.g., [nonlevel] and [curve]. However, the formal representation of each tone follows in (28). The tonal root node in (23) is represented by the tone’s name in (24); later, in (28), that name is used for referential convenience. In (24), the two major components of tones are Contour (C) and Register (R), as in (23). The term [laryngeal] is used as a marked feature for register and appears in huyen, nang1, and nga. The feature [laryngeal] has [spread] as its dependent in huyen and [constricted] as its dependent in nang1 and nga. The evidence for the register features and their phonetic realization is presented in Chapter Five. With respect to the contour feature, the tones ngang and huyen are essentially flat and are not specified as [even]. The feature [non-even] (changing direction) appears for the rising and falling tones sac1 and nang1. The feature [curve] appears for the two curved tones (down and then up) hoi and nga.

VIETNAMESE TONE: A NEW ANALYSIS

13

(24)

(c) (25)

Tones can be captured through the use of points, notated by •. These points indicate whether there is movement during the tone. A single point indicates a level tone. Because contour shows the F0 value of a tone during the time of production, at least one point needs to be specified for each tone in order to generate the tone contour. If the tone is level, i.e., there is no movement during its production, one point is the beginning point (onset), marked with •, and it generates the end point (offset), as in (25). (The register feature is omitted for convenience.) The underlying contour feature is specified for one point in (a). While a level tone has only a single point phonologically, it nevertheless extends phonetically over a tone period. On the surface in (b), this point generates the second point to end the tone. If there is movement during the tone, two points are required at the phonological level to indicate the contour, i.e., movement, of the tone, e.g., whether it is rising or falling. These two points at the phonological level must be interpreted as having different values. The movement from the onset to the offset of a rising or falling tone is illustrated in (26). (Note that the height of the points makes no reference to anything that occurs in the surface forms; it is simply an illustrative device.) In (a), a contour tone (a tone with movement) has two points phonologically. If it is a rising tone, the second point is higher phonetically than the first point to indicate the rise, as in the first example in (b). If it is a falling tone, the second point is lower phonetically than the first point on the surface to indicate the fall, as in the second example in (b). If the tone is a curved tone, e.g., the tone goes down and then rises, three points are needed to indicate the complex movement phonologically, as in (27). A concave tone is phonetically indicated with the mid point lower than the first and last points to show that the tone goes down and then up, as in the first example in (b). A convex tone is indicated phonetically with the mid point higher than the

14

VIETNAMESE TONE: A NEW ANALYSIS

(26)

(27) Specification of the contour of a tone that changes direction more than once

(28)

first and last points to show that the tone goes up then down, as in the second example in (b). The phonetic interpretation of contour and register features is further discussed in Chapter Five, where pitch will be shown to be derived from the register and contour features. (28) provides a phonological representation for each tone.

VIETNAMESE TONE: A NEW ANALYSIS

15

(30)

The theory of Contrastive Underspecification, e.g., Avery and Rice 1989, Rice 1992, and Wu 1994, holds that an unmarked feature is absent underlyingly unless there is a contrast which forces it to be present, and allows for the omission of unmarked features in (28). The register feature [laryngeal] is marked; therefore, it is present underlyingly in huyen but absent in ngang in (a) in (28). The level tone ngang has no specified features. Its counterpart huyen has the register feature [laryngeal] with [spread] (breathy, see Chapter Five) as its dependent. In each level tone, one point is specified for the contour feature, marked with •, as shown in (27). This point does not need to be specified as ‘h’ or ‘I,’ because this value is predictable from the laryngeal feature. (See the discussion of the phonetic realization of tone in Chapter Five.) In (b) in (28), sac 1 does not have a register feature but does have a contour. As there is movement in this tone, two points are required to represent the contour, marked with •. Sac1’s counterpart, the falling tone nang1, has the register feature [laryngeal] with the feature [constricted] (creaky, see Chapter Five) as its dependent. On the contour side nang1 is specified for two points to show the movement. (c) in (28) shows the representation of the curved tones hoi and nga. Hoi does not have the register feature. It has a contour specified for three points to generate a curved tone. Its counterpart nga has features on both sides. On the register side nga has a laryngeal feature with [constricted] as its dependent. On the contour side, as in hoi, nga has three points specified to represent the curve. The representations in (28) show that each pair of tones shares the same contour: ngang and huyen have only one point specified phonologically; sac1 and nang1 have two points specified phonologically to show that these tones change direction; and hoi and nga have three points specified phonologically to show that these tones change direction more than once, i.e., they go down and then rise (there are no rising-falling (lhl) contours in Vietnamese). On the register side the representation in (28) shows that tones on the left (ngang, sac1, and hoi) do not have the register feature. The tones on the right share the same register feature [laryngeal] with a dependent. The markedness relations of tones are based on structural complexity. Four kinds of markedness apply to tones: markedness within register; markedness within contour; markedness between pairs; and markedness within pairs. The representations in the left column of (28) show that the unmarked register consists of tones that are unspecified for register, i.e., ngang, sac1, and hoi. In the right column the marked register consists of tones that are specified for register with the features [spread] or [constricted], i.e., huyen, nang1, and nga. Tones in the right column, therefore, are more complex than those in the left column with respect to register, and thus are more marked (see (7) in Chapter One). For example, ngang and huyen have an equal degree of complexity on the contour side, with only one specified point for each; however, on the register side huyen has the feature [laryngeal] with [spread] as its dependent. In this case huyen is horizontally more complex than ngang. In terms of contour, ngang and huyen are simpler than sac1 and nang1, and these in turn are simpler than hoi and nga. A comparison of ngang and sac1 shows that neither of these tones has features under the register node. However, on the contour side sac1 has two points specified for the contour feature while ngang has only one. Therefore, sac1 is horizontally more complex than ngang (with two points of contour). Likewise, a comparison of huyen and nang1 shows that nang1 is vertically more complex than huyen (with two points specified for the contour). Although both huyen and nang1 have the [laryngeal] feature on the register side, [constricted] is more marked than [spread]. A comparison of the pair sac1 and nang1 with the pair hoi and nga shows that on the register side sac1 and hoi are equally complex in that they lack the register feature. Nang1 and nga are equally complex: both have the feature [laryngeal] with [constricted] as its dependent. However, on the contour side sac1 and nang1 are horizontally less complex than hoi and nga. Hoi and nga have three points specified for the contour feature whereas sac1 and nang1 have two. Overall, the simplest structure is that of ngang with only one contour point specified. The most complex tone is nga with the laryngeal feature [constricted] and three points specified for the contour. (29) summarizes the markedness relationship of tones between registers. (29) Unmarked register Marked register

ngang huyen

sac1 nang1

hoi nga

Within each pair in (29), the tone on the upper row is less complex than its lower counterpart according to the complexity measure of (7). For example, in (a) in (28) ngang does not have the register feature while huyen has the feature [spread] under Register. (30) summarizes the markedness relations of tones in opposite registers. Here ‘ >

tan ta (huyen—nang1) lanh leo (nang1—nga) mo mang (nga—huyen)

‘worn out’ ‘very cold’ ‘very greasy’

Register preservation in tone harmony is strictly preserved even when there is no distinction between certain tones in some dialects. For example, in Southern dialects nga is neutralized to hoi. Because the distinction between hoi and nga is still expressed

VIETNAMESE TONE: A NEW ANALYSIS

17

in the orthography and in productive reduplication, Southerners must memorize the rule of ‘ngang-sac-hoi’ and ‘huyen-nangnga’ in order to decide whether a morpheme has the tone hoi or nga (Hoang Thi Chau 1989: 201). For example, in ‘nong nay’ (temper), if ‘nong’ has sac1, ‘nay’ must be hoi, which is in the same register as sac1. In reduplication register must be retained in tone harmony; however, contour can vary. Tones in the unmarked register pattern together in one group (ngang, sac1, and hoi), and tones in the marked register comprise another group (huyen, nang1, and nga). This patterning provides evidence for two registers in Vietnamese. These registers are independent of contour features since tonal patterning in reduplication affects only Contour but not Register, e.g., an unmarked register tone can pattern with another unmarked tone that has a different contour feature. Researchers such as Bao 1999a, b, Duanmu 1990, and Snider 1999 also argue for Register and Contour being sisters. Yip 1989, 1995 proposes a model of tonal representation in which a register feature dominates a pitch feature and argues that tones spread as a whole. (34) shows a high rising tone in Yip’s model with ‘H’ standing for register and ‘I, h’ standing for pitch. The fact that Register is preserved in Vietnamese reduplication is a challenge for such a system, regardless of the formal details of how tones are determined in reduplication, by either spreading or copying of register. If Register dominates Pitch as in (34), the reduplicant tone would have the same pitch feature, i.e.,‘Contour’ in this study, as its base, but such is not the case in Vietnamese, where reduplicant tones do not share contour features with their base tones. Yip 1995:487 also notes that spreading in African tone languages usually shows that voicing and Register do not interact: high and low tones spread freely across syllables and across any kind of consonant, as Hyman et al, 1987 show for Luganda. This type of spreading shows that only Pitch is involved not Register. Yip suggests that there are different types of dependency relations between Pitch and Register in Chinese and African languages. The model in (23), in which Contour and Register are independent, suggests a straightforward account for both types of spreading: in African languages only Contour spreads; in Vietnamese reduplication only Register spreads. Reduplication, therefore, provides evidence for the independence of contour and register features. In addition, it provides evidence that the tonal pair ngang-huyen is unmarked compared to the other tones. It is widely recognized that in certain positions only a limited number of segments or features is allowed, e.g., Rice 1996 and Paradis and Prunet 1989. For example, almost all segments in the inventory of a language are allowed in syllable-initial position but fewer occur in syllable-final position. In Korean, regardless of their particular coronal place and manner features, all coronal obstruents are neutralized to [t] in coda position (Cho 1991:171). In the Saigon dialect of Vietnamese, while all consonants (except /p/ (Pham 1998)) occur initially only coronals or velars can surface syllable-finally. With respect to laryngeal features, German allows only voiceless obstruents in final position and voiced obstruents must devoice in this position (Brockhaus 1995 and Jessen 1998). Features that are required in certain environments are said to be unmarked. Therefore, in the examples involving coronal consonants in which [coronal] is the only place of articulation allowed in the coda, [coronal] is unmarked. (See Greenberg 1966 for a discussion of neutralization as a characteristic of lack of markedness.) If unmarked features occur in neutralization environments, the structure in (28) predicts that if there are tones occurring in such an environment, they should be ngang or huyen, the least marked ones. This is indeed the case: ngang and huyen are found in neutralizing environments, as in productive reduplication. This process neutralizes a base tone to ngang or huyen. The particular form depends on the register of the base tone. If the base tone is an unmarked register tone, either sac1 or hoi, the reduplicant tone must be ngang, another unmarked register tone, as in (a) in (35). If the base tone is a marked register tone, either nang1 or nga, the reduplicant tone must be huyen, another marked register tone, as in (b) in (35).

18

VIETNAMESE TONE: A NEW ANALYSIS

(36)

(38) 1 E E

2 E E

3 N N

4 N N

5 E E

6 E E

7

8

N

E

The model used here accounts for this process, as shown in (36). The reduplicant tone is pre-specified as a level tone, i.e., its contour is specified. Its register is predictable, being the same as the register of the base. (Note that there is no register feature in (a), but there is one in (b)). Further details of this process are discussed in Chapter Five; the important issue here is that less complex contours occur in neutralization environments. A level contour is a less complex contour than a rising and falling one. This process shows that ngang and huyen are two unmarked tones, here occurring in a neutralizing environment. Frequency of occurrence can be a further diagnostic for the markedness of tones. A less marked feature occurs more frequently than a more marked one, e.g., Greenberg 1966, Maddieson 1984, and Hamilton 1996. The ranking of markedness of tones in (29), (30), and (31) predicts that among tones the least marked tone ngang should have the highest frequency and the most marked tone nga should have the lowest frequency. Among pairs the least marked pair ngang-huyen should occur the most frequently and the most marked pair hoi-nga the least frequently. Vo 1997:20 examined 4243 monosyllabic words in a Vietnamese dictionary. Omitting syllables ending in the stops p, t, and k, he provides the raw numbers of occurrence for each tone in sonorant-final syllables, as in (37). (37) Total 4243

ngang 1029

huyen 840

sac1 845

nang1 606

hoi 570

nga 353

(37) shows a striking match between frequency and markedness. The unmarked tone ngang occurs more than its more marked counterpart huyen (1029 and 840 instances respectively). Likewise, sac1 occurs more than its more marked counterpart nang1 (845 and 606 instances respectively) and hoi occurs more than its more marked counterpart nga (570 and 353 instances respectively). Finally, among pairs, the least marked pair ngang-huyen occurs the most often and the most marked pair hoi-nga occurs the least often. Poetry provides additional evidence that is compatible with the claim that ngang and huyen form a tonal pair. In a traditional verse called six-eight verse, there is a pattern of alternation between even tones, i.e., Vietnamese ‘bằ ng’ (ngang and huyen) and Vietnamese ‘trằ c,’ the so-called sharp tones, (all the other tones). This verse has a six-syllable line followed by an eight-syllable line. The two lines form a pair. A poem can have any number of pairs of lines. (38) shows the patterns of tones in the six-eight verse. ‘E’ stands for even tones underlined. Tones in the first, third, and fifth positions are flexible with respect to whether they are even or sharp tones. Tones in the second, fourth, sixth, and (ngang and huyen), and ‘N’ stands for non-even tones. The rhymed position is eighth positions must strictly follow the pattern. For example, a tone in the first position can be either E or N, but a tone in the second position must be E (ngang or huyen). Thus only even tones can occur in the rhymed position, underlined in (38).

VIETNAMESE TONE: A NEW ANALYSIS

19

(39)

(40)

The fact that tones in six-eight verse pattern in two groups, one group consisting of ngang and huyen and the other group consisting of the remaining tones, shows that ngang and huyen form a pair. This pair shares the same contour feature; both are level tones. Furthermore, in poetry, rhyme is found in positions in which only even tones can occur: the last syllable of the six-syllable line rhymes with the sixth syllable of the eight-syllable line; the eighth syllable of this line then rhymes with the last syllable of the next six-syllable line; and so on. With the dominant occurrence of even tones, which do not have complex contours, sixeight verse is regarded as the smoothest verse in Vietnamese poetry in terms of sound harmony. Since only even tones can occur in rhyme position, this position is heavy enough, i.e., it is sufficiently metrically prominent, that an unmarked tone is the best candidate to maintain the general smoothness of the poem in order to compensate for the heavy position. This neutralization is not active since it does not change a lexical tone (an active neutralization changes a lexical tone in some processes of reduplication) but rather requires a choice of words with tones ngang and huyen. The fact that only ngang and huyen can occur in such a pattern supports the claim that they are unmarked and form a contour pair. The model in (28) also predicts that if neutralization takes place, the more marked member of a pair will be neutralized to the less marked member. Moreover, because Contour and Register are separate from each other, the model also predicts the specific types of neutralization: in one type Contour contrasts will be retained with Register neutralized; in the other type Contour contrasts will be lost but Register distinctions will remain. Such patterns of neutralization are found in Southern and many Central dialects of Vietnamese (see Doan 1977 and Ngo 1984). In terms of contour the markedness relation between the pairs in (29) predicts that neutralization should occur with the most marked pair hoi and nga. In terms of register the markedness relation between the tones of each pair in (30) predicts that, because hoi is less marked than nga, hoi should be retained in neutralization and nga lost, and merge with the unmarked hoi. In these dialects hoi and nga neutralize and the result is hoi (Doan 1977, and Ngo 1984). The hierarchical analysis of tones previously proposed offers a straightforward and simple account of such a neutralization of hoi and nga to hoi: the contour contrast remains but the register contrast is lost (delinking of the register feature [laryngeal]). (39) shows the process. There are also markedness relations between tones in the same register. As (29) showed, the markedness between the pairs of tones increases from left to right. In the unmarked register ngang is the least marked tone and hoi the most marked. In the marked register huyen is the least marked tone and nga the most marked. (29) predicts that in neutralization within register the lost tone in the unmarked register will be hoi and that in the marked register it will be nga. These are the two most marked tones in their registers. These predictions prove to be correct, although here the evidence is mainly diachronic. In all Nghe Tinh dialects spoken in North Central Vietnam, neutralization occurred in the marked register: nga neutralized to nang1 (Hoang Thi Chau 1989 and Vuong and Hoang 1994). The model offers a simple account of this fact. In this process Register remained intact. Nang1 resulted from delinking of one point of the contour feature in nga. A complex contour (curve in nga) was neutralized to a less complex one (nang1). Athough (40) shows delinking of the last point, the deleted point could be any of the points because the result would be the same since, according to (28), a tone with two points specified and a register feature is nang1. The register feature was preserved in this process. The fact that neutralization results in nang1 shows that nga is more marked than nang1. There is also a neutralization process in the unmarked register. In Mai Ban, another dialect of Nghe Tinh, nga merged with nang1 in the marked register. Moreover, in the unmarked register hoi and sac1 also neutralized, resulting in sac1 (Hoang Thi Chau 1989 and Vuong and Hoang 1994), as shown in (41).

20

VIETNAMESE TONE: A NEW ANALYSIS

(42)

(43)

(41) ngang huyen

sac1 nang1

[àN]

aC (sac 1) => [áN] aC(nang1) =>[aN]

′ C (h o i) =>[′ N] ãC (nga) =>[ãN]

−aC (sac2) => [áT] −aC (nang2) => [′ T]

The eight-tone system allows the manner of the final coronal to be predicted from tone. The difference between [áN] (sac1) and [áT] (sac2) lies with tones. Sac1 and nang1 predict a final sonorant. Sac2 and nang2 predict a final stop. The different tones are thus represented as /aT, sac1/ and /aT, sac2/ rather than as /aT, sac1 and /aN, sac1, as in the six-tone view. Cao 1998 captures this distribution by assuming that [±nasal] is a tonal feature that is realized on the final consonant. Sac2 and nang2, are [-nasal] so the final consonant surfaces as a stop. Sac1, nang1, and the other remaining tones are [+nasal] so the final consonant surfaces as a sonorant. In (48), C is a consonant that has no manner specification. Cao notes that because the writing system uses the same diacritics for these two tones in all syllable types, it misleads phonologists to propose a six-tone inventory. If the founders of the current writing system had used distinct diacritics for sac and nang in stop-final syllables, this confusion of tones would not be a problem. For example, in (47) all consonants would share manner but use different diacritics for sac and nang in non-stop-final and stop-final syllables. An Eight-Tone System While the eight-tone analysis is little discussed in the current literature on Vietnamese, it was assumed in traditional poetry before the current Vietnamese writing system was created (Cao 1998). Adding two tonemes also reduces the phonemic final consonant inventory from six to three, i.e., from /p, t, k, m, n, ′/ to /M, N, ′/, where /M, N, ′/ represent places of articulation without specification for manner. It also provides a simpler account of tone harmony in reduplication (Cao 1998). For example, the reduplication process discussed in Chapter Two shows that the reduplicant tone must be either ngang or huyen depending on the register of the base tone. It is ngang if the base tone is an unmarked register tone and huyen if the base tone is a marked register tone. Since the reduplicant carries either ngang or huyen, it must therefore end in a sonorant consonant. If the base tone is other than sac2 and nang2, as in (49), tone harmony is the same in both systems. (The base tone is once again underlined.) (49) /toj/ (sac1)

‘dark’

>

toj (ngang)+toj (sac1)

‘rather dark’

28

VIETNAMESE TONE: A NEW ANALYSIS

However, if the base ends in a stop, the reduplicant must still have either huyen or ngang as its tone. Since these tones are incompatible with final stops, a final nasal surfaces instead. (50) shows this: the base tone sac2 in (a) has the reduplicant tone ngang, which surfaces with a final velar nasal, and the base tone nang2 (b) has the reduplicant tone huyen, which surfaces with a final labial nasal. (50) (a) (b)

sac (sac2) dep (nang2)

‘sharp’ ‘beautiful’

> >

sang sac (ngang—sac2) dem dep (huyen—nang2)

‘rather sharp’ ‘rather beautiful’

In this case tone harmony is represented differently in the two systems, as (50) shows. The six-tone analysis requires a rule to change a stop to a homorganic nasal, i.e., a final stop consonant must change to a homorgarnic nasal if it occurs with tones other than sac2 and nang2, as in (a). On the other hand, the eight-tone system in (b) does not need such a rule because the manner of the consonant is predictable from the tone, i.e., ngang predicts a final sonorant. Here the final consonant in the eighttone system, unmarked for manner, is represented by a nasal. (51)

The eight-tone system provides a more elegant account of reduplication in Vietnamese in that the manner becomes simply a consequence of default. Hoang Thi Chau 1989:202 supports the eight-tone system using not only arguments from traditional poetry, i.e., (46), but also because it accords with the hypothesis that tones developed from segments. According to Haudricourt 1954, Vietnamese tones developed from voicing of initial and final segments, as (52) shows. Haudricourt uses p and b to represent initials since only the voicing is important here. s and x represent the voiceless fricatives, alveolar and velar, respectively. There are no final stops in (52) except ?. (52)

In this view early Vietnamese was non-tonal. By the 6th century three tones were established: ngang in open syllables; huyen from the final fricatives [s] and [h]; and sac from the final [x] and glottal stop. By the 12th century the voicing contrast was lost in the initial consonants and six tones resulted in two registers. The original voiced initial gave rise to low tones (huyen, nga, and nang). However, it is not clear how hoi and nga developed from huyen. Finally, in modern Vietnamese, a voicing contrast is reestablished to give six tones. Hoang Thi Chau 1989 and Vu 1988 claim that when final consonants disappeared they created tones with their traces: the final stops disappeared and left glottalization in sac and nang; and the final fricatives disappeared and left creakiness in hoi and nga. Therefore, an understanding of how tones developed helps in understanding the origin of phonation types in the current tonal system. However, what the final *-x from *pax and *bax actually leaves in a tone remains undisclosed. This historical hypothesis is very influential in the literature on Vietnamese since it supports the eight-tone view and offers an account of the intimate relationship that exists between the final stops and tones.

VIETNAMESE TONE: A NEW ANALYSIS

29

(53)

There are still further problems with Haudricourt’s hypothesis. For example, Chapter Four will show that it is reasonable to claim that the historical final glottal stop left a trace in nang1 where the tone has either glottal stop or creakiness. However, that claim cannot be made for sac1, where glottal stop is not found in the tone (see Alves 1997). Hoi and nga also developed from final *-s and *-h and it is claimed that the breathy voice found in these tones has its origin in these fricatives. However, Chapter Four will show that hoi has breathiness while nga is characterized by creakiness or glottal stop, a characteristic which comes from the historical final glottal stop. The eight-tone view gains support even from authors who use the six-tone one in their work. For example, in a standard book on Vietnamese phonology, Doan 1977 presents the six-tone system as the formal, official one. However, in his discussion he says that he makes this choice because it is very popular and familiar in the Vietnamese literature, and is reflected in the orthography. After showing several different tonal inventories including the six-tone and eight-tone systems, he comments that the eight-tone system is probably best, because it reflects the traditional classification in poetry before the orthography was created. The Additional Tones Only the two tones sac2 and nang2 can occur in stop-final syllables. The manner of articulation of the final consonants is also predictable from the tones. Ngang, huyen, hoi, nga, sac1, and nang1 predict that a final consonant will be a sonorant, and sac2 and nang2 predict that a final consonant will be an obstruent. The structures of sac2 and nang2 contain the feature [obstruent] and tones with this feature are more marked than those without it. It is not unusual to find that obstruents are neutralized in the coda position in various languages. For example, in Spanish and Italian, except for s, only sonorants can occur in final position (Clements 1990a: 312). Such evidence supports the claim that obstruents are more marked than sonorants in this position. Support for this claim is also found in the final inventory of Vietnamese and in clitics. The phonetic final inventory was given in (2). Under the eight-tone hypothesis, final stops and nasals are in complementary distribution and are thus allophones. According to the feature organization of segments, as developed in Clements 1990b and Clements and Hume 1995, a consonant has a C-place node in (a) in (53) under the root node, and a vowel has a V-place node and an aperture node as its sister in (b) in (53) under the vocalic node. An aperture node specifies vowel height. The difference between a vowel and a glide is that the former has an aperture node, which the latter lacks, as in (c). X is a place feature. If nasal and stop in final position are allophones, there are two types of underlying segments in final position, one for consonants and the other for glides. The representation of a final consonant is illustrated in (54) below with only relevant features given. In (a) the surface final voiceless stops and nasals share the same underlying representation, a Root node with C-place as a dependent. On the surface there are two types of consonants: one with the [obstruent] feature and the other without. In the type with the [obstruent] feature the consonant is realized as a voiceless stop. It acquires the feature [obstruent] from the tone. The eight-tone hypothesis assumes that this feature is a tone feature so [obstruent] is shown in the representations of sac2 and nang2 only. In the second type the feature [nasal] is inserted by a default rule (Rice 1993) and yields a surface nasal.

30

VIETNAMESE TONE: A NEW ANALYSIS

(54)

(b) (56)

(b) assumes that the glides [w] and [j] have the underlying V-place node under the vocalic node. The Nasal Default rule does not apply to glides and the result is a plain sonorant, the consequence of a constraint that prohibits a node from being specified for nasal if the vocalic node is present in the segment (there are no nasalized vowels in Vietnamese). The conclusion is that there is no underlying manner feature for syllablefinal obstruents or sonorants; the surface feature for sonorants is a default feature inserted at the phonetics. Sac2 and nang2 force the insertion of obstruent. Clitics provide further evidence that in Vietnamese sonorants are unmarked in the syllable-final environment. Clitics in the coda position are unspecified for manner and [nasal] is a default feature. (55) gives examples of clitics and cliticization. Only the forms involved in cliticization are shown, and the clitics are underlined. (55)

As Chapter Two showed and from (55) it is apparent that after cliticizing onto the host all segments of the clitic disappear and only the tone remains. In (a) the clitic surfaces as a nasal if the host ends in an obstruent. It so happens that this clitic [la:m] ends in a nasal. In this case the nasal has the place of articulation of the final obstruent, i.e., it is [n] in (a) because [ha:t] ends in [t]. The tone of the clitic is realized on the nasal. If the host ends in a vowel, as in (b), or a glide, as in (c), the vowel or glide is lengthened and the tone is realized on the lengthened part. (The clitic [mot] in (b) occurs with huyen not the original nang2 tone.) No matter what tone the base has the clitic must have an unmarked register tone that predicts a sonorant. The fact that only sonorants (nasal, vowel, and glide) can surface in the clitics supports the claim that in that environment sonorants are less marked than obstruents. In order to represent sac2 and nang2 structurally it is necessary to assume that the feature [obstruent] is part of these tones and that the predictability of a final stop with these tones follows from its presence. Since this feature is a marked feature in this position, it must be present underlyingly in the representation of sac2 and nang2, as in (56). Sac2 and nang2 have the feature [obstruent] under the contour node in (56) because these are the only tones that occur with stop-final syllables. These structures can be compared with those of sac1 and nang1 in (57).

VIETNAMESE TONE: A NEW ANALYSIS

31

(57)

The only difference under the contour node is the presence of [obstruent] in sac2 and nang2. As with sac1 and nang1, sac2 and nang2 have two points specified under the feature [obstruent] to show the movement. Neither sac1 nor sac2 has a register feature because it is unmarked for register. On the register side nang2 is marked with the register feature [laryngeal] just as is nang1. However, unlike nang1, [laryngeal] in nang2 has [spread] as its dependent. Chapter Five provides justification for the register feature. While sac2 and nang2 are equally complex in (57) on the contour side, sac2 is less complex than nang2 on the register side with the feature [spread]. The restricted distribution of sac2 and nang2 is an indicator of the markedness of these tones. A comparison of the structures of sac2 and nang2 in (57) with the structures of the other six tones in (28) from Chapter Two shows that sac2 and nang2 are the most complex tones vertically with the feature [obstruent] under the contour node. In the process of reduplication discussed in Chapter Two tones in the unmarked register (ngang, sac1, and hoi) pattern together in one group and tones in the marked register (huyen, nang1, nga) form a second group. The register of the base is always replicated in the reduplicant. The data in (58) show this process with sac2 and nang2. (The base tone is underlined.) (58)

(The fact that a final stop in the base changes to a homorganic nasal in the reduplicant was dealt with earlier and is not relevant to the argument here.) In (a), when the base is sac2, the reduplicant is always ngang, an unmarked register tone. In (b), when the base is nang2, the reduplicant is always huyen, a marked register tone. Sac2 patterns as if it were in the same group as sac1 and hoi, i.e., all have ngang in the reduplicant. Nang2 patterns as if it were in the same group as nang1 and nga, i.e., all have huyen in the reduplicant. This pattern shows that sac2 and nang2 share the same register feature with other unmarked and marked register tones. Sac2 does not have the register feature and nang2 has the marked feature [laryngeal] with [spread] as its dependent, e.g., in huyen. The use of the feature [spread] will be justified in Chapter Five. The behavior of sac2 and nang2 in reduplication shows that sac2 is an unmarked register tone and nang2 is a marked register tone. (59) summarizes the markedness of tonal registers in the eight-tone system. (59) Unmarked register Marked register

ngang huyen

sac1 nang1

hoi nga

sac2 nang2

Borrowings provide evidence that sac2 is less complex and, therefore, less marked than nang2. Borrowed forms that end in non-sonorant segments can occur only with final stops. Consequently, the two possible tones in this position are sac2 and nang2. (60) gives some examples of borrowings (from Nguyen 1975 and Nguyen 1998). The tone sac2 is represented by the diacritic ‘′’ above the vowel, and nang2 is represented by the diacritic ‘.’ underneath the vowel. Some of the borrowed forms in (60) can occur with either sac2 or nang2, e.g., (h), (i), and (j). The data in (60) show that sac2 is more common than nang2 in borrowings.

32

VIETNAMESE TONE: A NEW ANALYSIS

(60) Borrowings with sac2 or nang2 (a) x′ p (b) dip (c) xà lách (d) cà r′ t (e) gác (f) séc (g) mù t′ c (h) gác do bu or g′ c do bu (i) xi′ c (sac2) (j) soó (sac2) (k) các vi dít or các vi dít or các vi dít

(Fr. chef) (Fr. jupe) (Fr. salade) (Fr. carotte) (Fr. garde) (Fr. cheque) (Fr. moutarde) (Fr. garde-boue)

‘chief’ ‘short skirt’ ‘salad’ ‘carrot’ ‘guard’ ‘cheque’ ‘mustard’ ‘mudguard’

(sac2) (sac2) (huyen-sac2) (h huyen-sac2) (sac2) (sac2) (huyen-nang2) (sac2-huyen-ngang) (nang2-huyen-ngang) (nang2) (nang2) (sac2-ngang-sac2) (nang2-ngang-sac2)

(Fr. cirque)or xi′ c (Eng.) or so′ c (Fr. carte de visit)

‘circus’ ‘short’ ‘business card’

(k) in the above does not have nang2 in both syllables of the word, i.e., *cac vi d′t (nang2-ngang-nang2) is impossible. Moreover, (except for (g), which is rare), if only a single form is available, it occurs with sac2 not nang2. Examples are lúp/* l′ p (Fr. loupe), típ/*t′p (Fr. type), xúp/*x′ p (Fr. soupe), ráp/*r′ p (Eng. rap music), x′ p/*x′p (Fr. chef), r′ c/*r′c (Eng. rock music), a-xít/ *a-xit (Fr. acid), tu′ c-no-vít / *tu′ c-n′-v′t (Fr. tournevis), xà lách/*xà l′ ch (Fr. salade), and phát phút/ *phat ph′ t (Eng. fast food). The dominance of sac2 over nang2 in this type of borrowing has led researchers, e.g., Burton 1992, to claim that only sac2 occurs in this syllable type. However, nang2 also occurs. The more frequent distribution of sac2 over nang2 in this type is explained if sac2 is less marked than nang2. Frequency effects also lend some support to the claim that sac2 is less marked than nang2 and to the eight-tone hypothesis. (37) in Chapter Two showed that the pair ngang and huyen occur more frequently than the pair sac1 and nang1. However, if sac and nang in both syllable types are regarded as the same, within a six-tone system the frequencies are quite different. (61) from Vo 1997 shows the actual numbers of tones when sac and nang include both types of syllables: stop and non-stop final. (61) Total 4243

sac 1426

nang 1045

ngang 1029

huyen 840

hoi 570

nga 353

In (61), ngang and huyen, the two unmarked tones, have a lower frequency than sac and nang. If the less marked the tone the more frequently it occurs, the markedness relationship between the pairs is strange. If ngang and huyen are unmarked because of their patterns in reduplication and in borrowings, they should occur more frequently than sac and nang. However, they occur less frequently. The six-tone hypothesis is unable to explain this fact. (37) and (61) provide the information needed to calculate the frequency of sac2 and nang2 in stop-final syllables. (62) shows that frequency. (62) 581

sac2:

439

nang2:

Nang2 occurs less frequently than sac2, a confirmation of the claim that nang2 is more complex than sac2. Moreover, sac2 and nang2 occur less frequently than ngang and huyen, the two unmarked tones in all analyses. (63) summarizes the frequency of occurrence of the eight tones. The bold border separates the two tones in stop-final syllables from the rest. (63) huyen 840

sac 1 845

nang 1 606

ngang 1029

hoi 570

nga 353

sac2 581

nang2 439

(63) shows that among tones in sonorant-final syllables the unmarked tones ngang and huyen occur most frequently (1029 and 840 times respectively) with the ranking of markedness among tones shown in (64). The ranking in (64) summarizes the

VIETNAMESE TONE: A NEW ANALYSIS

33

ranking of six tones in sonorant-final syllables in (30) and (31) in Chapter Two with the addition of the two tones in stop-final syllables. ‘ > > >

> (b) (c) (d) (e)

(a) luong (nang 1) to (ngang) luong (ngang) to (nangl) to (nang1) luong (ngang) to (ngang) luong (nang1)

tuong (nang 1) lo (ngang) ‘great merit’

‘a worried statue’

‘great merit’

In the original syllables ‘lo tuong’ (‘a bottle of sauce’) in (78) the first syllable bears the tone nang1 and the second syllable bears the tone ngang. This phrase can occur in five new and different ways. (78) shows all possible combinations although (c) is nonsensical. In (a) the two original syllables ‘lo’ (nang1) and ‘tuong’ (ngang) exchange their initials and rhymes but retain their tones: ‘lo’ with the original nang1 becomes ‘tuong’ and keeps nang1; ‘tuong’ with the original ngang becomes ‘lo’ and keep ngang. In (b) the two syllables exchange non-tonal rhymes only, e.g., ‘lo’ keeps the initial ‘l’ and nang1 but has the rhyme ‘uong.’ In (c) the syllables exchange both tones and rhymes, i.e., ‘lo’ keeps the initial ‘1’ but has ngang and the rhyme ‘uong.’ The vowel can switch independently of tone, as in (a) and (b), and vice versa, as in (a), (b), and (e). The fact that the initial, rhyme, and tone can be detached freely from the original syllable provides an argument for the independence of these elements in the Vietnamese syllable and for tone being independent of segments (Doan 1977). The independence of tone is also recognized in autosegmental theory, which places tone on an independent tier, e.g., Leben 1973, Williams 1976, and Goldsmith 1976. Some researchers, e.g., Le 1948 and Hoang et al. 1962, do not consider tone to be a constituent of syllable structure because tone is not a segment and cannot therefore be treated as a phoneme. Other researchers, e.g., Mkhitarian 1959, cited in Doan 1977, emphasize the function of each component in the syllable. However, all researchers treat tone on a different level from the level of segments. For example, Doan 1977:88 proposes that the Vietnamese syllable has the structure in (79) in which tone is on a separate level. Others adopt a similar structure. The fact that tone can be separated from segments in several patterns in the language shows its independence from segments.

THE DOMAIN OF TONE

85

(79) Tone Initial

Rhyme

/w/

Vowel

Final

The initial also forms one constituent and the rhyme forms another. In the language game just described, the initials of the two syllables can be switched as in (c) and (d) so the onset is independent of the rhyme. In reduplication, there are several patterns in which either the initial or the rhyme is reduplicated. (80) provides the data with the bases underlined. (80)

In (a) the initial is reduplicated and in (b) the rhyme is reduplicated in a process which is no longer productive. The rhyme is unpredictable. There are other processes of reduplication in which only the initial remains. For example, (81) shows a sitution in which the reduplicant is a combination of the initial of the base and the rhyme [i*****k]. The meaning is derogatory (Doan 1977 and Ngo 1984). (81) (82)

(81) is a very productive process. These examples show that the initial can be separated very easily from the rhyme. There is also a reduplicative process in which the initial, final, and tone reduplicate but not the vowel, e.g., [lak] sac2 ‘to shake’ > [luk] [lak] sac2 - sac2 ‘to wag.’ Although this process is not productive, it demonstrates the independence of the nucleus. The previously cited rhymal position in poetry also supports the claim that the relationship between the vowel and the final consonant is much closer than that between the initial consonant and the rhyme. The traditional literature reveals two views concerning the internal structure of the syllable. In the first (Le 1948 and Hoang et al. 1962) the initial, the vowel, and the final have an equal and independent status in the syllable, represented by the plus signs: C1+ V+C2. In the second, a syllable is represented as a unit with constituents. Gordina’s experimental work in phonetics led her to postulate a close relationship between the vowel and the final consonant. Phonetically, the rhyme in a Vietnamese syllable occupies a constant amount of time regardless of segmental content. By recognizing the relative independence of the initial consonant from the rhyme and the close relationship between the vowel and final consonant, other researchers, e.g., Doan 1977, Vuong and Hoang 1994, and Cu et al. 1977, divide a Vietnamese syllable into two major components: the initial and the rhyme. Vuong and Hoang 1994: 78 propose the structure shown in (82). (82) Syllable Initial Tone

Rhyme /w/

vowel

final

In (82) the syllable has three major components: tone, initial, and rhyme. The vowel and final consonant are dependents of the rhyme. There are also phonological processes that take place in the nucleus but not in the whole rhyme, further evidence that the rhyme and nucleus are two different domains in Vietnamese. If the nucleus and final consonant form a constituent, then the nucleus is a constituent of the rhyme. Components of the nucleus have a special relationship to each other: in all dialects of Vietnamese the realization of final velar consonants depends on the quantity and quality of the vowel. Furthermore, only a limited number of consonants can occur in final position. (83) shows the final consonant inventory of the Hanoi dialect. The glides /j/ and /w/ are omitted since they behave differently from the final consonants (see Pham 1997). (a) shows the phonological inventory (see Pham 1998) and (b) the phonetic inventory.

86

VIETNAMESE TONE: A NEW ANALYSIS

(83)

(84)

In Vietnamese the quantity and quality of the vowel determine the surface form of a final velar consonant. For example, in the Northern dialects if the vowel is short, the final velar consonant is realized as a labio-velar consonant after a round vowel and as a palatal consonant after a front vowel. It is realized as a plain velar consonant after a central vowel, long vowel, and diphthong (Pham 1998). (84) shows the surface distribution of the final velar consonants. Here a nasal is used but the consonant can also be an obstruent. In (84) V stands for a short vowel and V: stands for a long vowel. Only occurs after a short front vowel. Only [′ m] occurs after a short back vowel. Only [′ ] occurs a after central vowel, a long vowel, or a diphthong. The realization of a final velar consonant depends on vowel length and which feature it receives from the vowel. The consonant shares the feature of the preceding front or back vowel if the vowel is short. The central vowel has no feature to share (see Pham 1998). If the vowel is long, there is no feature sharing between the vowel and final consonant. If a short vowel contributes one mora and a long vowel or a diphthong contributes two moras and if the nucleus is minimally and maximally bimoraic, the consonant is affected by the vowel only if it is moraic or is within the nucleus domain, i.e., when the vowel is short. The consonant is not affected by the vowel if it is non-moraic or is outside the nucleus domain, i.e., when the vowel is long or is a diphthong. Only nuclear consonants are subject to feature sharing with the vowel. (85) is an example with F being some feature. In (a) the vowel is short and the final consonant is inside the nucleus so it receives a place feature from the vowel. In (b) the vowel is long and the final consonant is outside the nucleus domain. It cannot therefore receive a place feature from the vowel (see Pham 1998). If the vowel in the rhyme is short, it is centralized. For example, in the Saigon dialect a short front vowel surface as a central vowel of the same height before [n] or [t], i.e., /i/ surfaces as /e/ surfaces as [ ]; and /′ / surfaces as [a] (see Pham 1998). The relationship between a short vowel and a following consonant is very close. If VC forms a nucleus in the Vietnamese rhyme, then the fact that feature sharing and centralization of vowels do not occur if the vowel is long shows that the nucleus and the rhyme are not the same domain for certain phonological processes. The nucleus obligatorily contains two moras with the second of these filled by either a vowel or a consonant. Additional material is found in the rhyme. The processes illustrated here have the nucleus as their domain. The Significance of Rhyme The literature on tone contains a variety of views on what the tone-bearing unit is. Goldsmith 1976 suggests it is the vowel but Clements and Ford 1979 argue for the syllable as the unit. Odden 1995 discusses various views. Bao 1999b, using Chinese dialects, argues that the rhyme is the tone-bearing unit. There are two views concerning the tone-bearing unit in Vietnamese. The first (Cu et al. 1972, 1977) makes tone a component that associates with the rhyme, as in (86). This view is based primarily on the acoustic work of Andreev and Gordina 1957, which shows that tone is realized only on the rhyme and

THE DOMAIN OF TONE

87

(85)

that the initial does not contribute to the value of tones. The second view (Doan 1977) places tone over the whole syllable, as seen in (79). Huu and Vuong 1980 share this view but note that the typical contour of each tone lies on the rhyme (1980:66). (86) Syllable Tone Rhyme

Final

Initial

Vowel

Since tones do not start until late in the vowel, it appears that tone has no effect on the onset. For example, tones should affect the laryngeal features of onsets but they do not: any onset can occur with any tone. Bao 1999b: 10 shows that tones do not affect onsets in some Chinese dialects, and Vietnamese behaves likewise. The domain of tone is not the whole syllable. Evidence from vowel quantity and tonal distribution shows that the domain cannot be the mora either. All tones can occur with both short and long vowels, as (87) shows. (87)

sa:w da:′

fa:j ha:j

long vowel (ngang) (ngang) (sac1) (sac2) (nang2) (hoi) (nga)

‘star’ ‘paint’ ‘deserve’ ‘drop’ ‘light (color)’ ‘correct, right’ ‘be scared’

saw da′

faj haj

short vowel (ngang) (ngang) (sac1) (sac2) (nang2) (hoi) (nga)

‘behind’ ‘backyard, frontyard’ ‘bitter’ ‘very’ ‘turn upside down’ ‘comma’ ‘imperative’

Syllables in the first column have long vowels and form minimal pairs with those in the same row in the second column. These forms differ from their long vowel counterparts only in that their vowels are short. A moraic analysis for the placement of tone in which the tone occupies only a single mora cannot account for the fact that tones take either the long or the short vowel as their domain.

88

VIETNAMESE TONE: A NEW ANALYSIS

Acoustic evidence also shows that the nucleus is not the domain of tone. This study shows that tone is not always located at a particular point within the vowel, e.g., onset, middle, or end point, but rather that it is distributed over the entire rhyme. Moreover, in sonorant-final syllables the location of the distinctive feature of a tone within the rhyme depends on vowel length. Some researchers, e.g., Doan 1977 and Vuong and Hoang 1994, describe tone as distributed over the rhyme with the distribution of tonal features varying according to rhyme type. For example, Doan 1977:111 describes the distribution of nga in non-obstruent-final syllables as follows: the tone goes down suddenly and rises up or it is broken in the middle. In an open syllable the lowest or broken portion usually falls at the beginning of the second part of the rhyme. In a syllable with a final nasal, this portion can fall on the final nasal, especially if the vowel is short. Chapter Four showed that creakiness or glottal stop in the middle of the curved tone nga is a distinctive feature of this tone and that it can be located anywhere in the tone except for the beginning and ending so long as the tone is curved. Doan notes that in a sonorant-final syllable the broken part falls on the final consonant and claims that tone is spread over the whole rhyme, which contains at least a sonorant-final syllable, and not just over the vowel. Doan also emphasizes that when the vowel is short, the broken portion falls on a final nasal. Tone is therefore sensitive to syllable length and adjusts the location of its features as it is realized over the rhyme. Doan also gives a similar distribution for hoi over the rhyme, i.e., the lowest part of this tone falls on the middle of the rhyme and on the final sonorant if it is a closed syllable. The evidence in Chapter Four supports this view. It shows that nga is a curved tone with either a glottal stop or creakiness in the lowest part of the tone. The part with glottal stop or creakiness is usually in the middle of the vowel; however, it can be distributed anywhere from right after the beginning of the vowel to just before the end of a final sonorant. Figure 61 shows the tone nga in an open syllable. Because the syllable ends with a vowel, the broken portion (a wide gap in the spectrogram) is in the middle of the vowel, from approximately 100 to 120ms. Figure 62 shows nga in a nasal-final syllable with both a long vowel [ta:m] and a short vowel [tam]. The arrows show the approximate beginning and end points. When the syllable ends with a sonorant consonant, the nasal part shows very little voicing in the spectrogram. The broken part is not in the middle portion of the vowel since it is in an open syllable; it is in the middle of the rhyme, which is the last part of the vowel and the beginning part of the final nasal consonant. The broken part (or creakiness) is from approximately 100 to 150ms into the syllable with a long vowel (the first and third rows). In the

THE DOMAIN OF TONE

89

Figure 61. Nga in an open syllable from Son

Figure 62. Nga in nasal-final syllables with a long and short vowel from Son

syllable with a short vowel (the second and fourth rows), this part, as the gap in the spectrogram shows, is much longer and comes much earlier, i.e., from where the vowel ends at about 50ms to the beginning of the nasal at 150ms. In the open syllable (Figure 61) the laryngeal feature in nga ends before the end of the vowel. In nasal-final syllables (Figure 62) the laryngeal feature in nga continues to the end of the vowel. The spectrogram in Figure 62 does not clearly show whether the creakiness in nga continues into the final nasal; however, this is not crucial because a glottal stop or creakiness occurs in the middle of the tone. The important point is that when the vowel is long in nasal-final syllables, the laryngeal feature does not occur in the middle of the vowel. The fact that this tonal feature is not always in the middle of the vowel but moves toward the final consonant supports the claim that tone is not a feature of the vowel alone but is realized over the entire rhyme. What happens if the distinctive feature of the tone is at the end of a vowel? In this case, a similar pattern emerges: regardless of rhyme type, a tone always distributes its features over the whole rhyme. With sac1, a rising tone, the rising part is distinctive and this makes it different from nang1, a falling tone that goes down because of the creakiness. The rising part of sac1 is usually in the second half of the rhyme. In some speakers, however, it comes very late, just before the rhyme ends. According to Doan, the rising part in nasal-final syllables occupies the second half of the rhyme, i.e., the final sonorant. Figure 63 shows the pitch graph of the tone sac1 from An, with and without the final nasal consonant. In both the open syllable [ta] and the closed syllable [ta:′ ] the tone has the same fundamental frequency through the whole rhyme: the flat portions lie on top of each other, and, strikingly, in both syllables the tone starts to rise at approximately 150 ms. The corresponding spectrograms in Figure 64 show that the final nasal starts at about after 150ms. In [ta] the rising part is in the second part of the vowel, but in [ta: ′ ] it does not occur until the beginning of the nasal. Tone sac1 in the two syllables [ta: ′ ] and [ta′ ] in Figure 65 has the rising part located in the same place in both syllables, i.e., on the final consonant (‘tang’ stands for [ta:′ ] and ‘ta(ngg’ for [ta′ ]). In this pitch graph the rising part in both syllables starts after 150ms. Figure 66 shows the corresponding waveforms of the tone sac1 in these syllables. In the syllable with the long vowel, i.e., the third row of the waveform, the rising part starts just before the end of the vowel at about 150ms. In the syllable with the short vowel (the last row) the vowel ends at approximately 90ms. The rising part does not start from the end of the vowel but from the second half of the final consonant at about 150ms. It is therefore not important which component in the rhyme the tone links to because the tonal features are distributed flexibly over the whole rhyme. Consequently, it is possible to predict that if the final consonant were omitted in sonorant-final syllables, the distinctive feature would not be clearly

90

VIETNAMESE TONE: A NEW ANALYSIS

Figure 63. Sac1 in [ta] and [ta:′ ] from An

Figure 64. [ta] and [ta:′ ] from An

present and the tone would be unrecognizable. Long vowels show that the tone is on the final consonant, further evidence that the domain of tone goes beyond the nucleus. Obstruent-final syllables show still another distribution of tonal features over the rhyme. Only sac2 and nang2 can occur in this type of syllable. Sac2 also has modal voice, the distinctive feature in sac2 being the rising contour, which is identified though the rate of vibration only. Nang2 has some breathiness, which is not very clear in the spectrogram because of the shortness of the tone. Figure 67 shows the pitch graphs of sac2 with [ta:k] and [tak]. The syllable with the short vowel is very short and the tone rises immediately and finishes at approximately 70ms. The syllable with the long vowel is longer and rises after the first 60ms. Because the tone is so short and there is no voicing after the oral closure for place of articulation, i.e., -p, t, -c, -k, -kp, the distinctive feature must be realized before that point. Figure 68 shows the corresponding spectrogram. Although the rising part is not seen in the spectrogram, it is still apparent that the tone has modal voice (regular cycles) and that the short vowel makes the rhyme shorter. The same situation is found with nang2. Figure 69 shows nang2 in [ta:k] and [tak] from An. The tone is shorter in the syllable with the short vowel. Tonal features are realized over the whole rhyme not just on the vowel alone. This finding is especially clear for non-stopfinal syllables ending in V:C, the test case required to differentiate between nucleus and rhyme. In stop-final syllables the tone is too short for its features to adjust according to vowel length. However, it still shares a tonal feature with the final consonant, namely the feature [obstruent]. Rhyme is said to have a relatively constant length in Vietnamese regardless of its composition. However, Figures 68 and 69 show that such equal length is not found with stop-final consonants. Short vowels occur only in closed syllables. An acoustic study carried out by Gordina and Bystrov 1970 (cited in Hoang Thi Chau 1989:153), claims that Vietnamese rhyme

THE DOMAIN OF TONE

91

Figure 65. Sac1 in [ta:′ ] and [ta′] from An

Figure 66. [ta:′ ] and [ta′] from An

has inherent length. As (88) shows, if the vowel is long, the final consonant is short, and if the vowel is short, the final consonant is long. (88) Length a: a

m m

In the traditional literature such inherent length is used as an argument for postulating an intimate relationship between a vowel and a final consonant. This study also shows that syllables with short and long vowels and the same final consonant are usually equally long. Figures 70 and 71 show ngang and huyen in syllables with long [ta:′ ] and short [ta′] vowels from Phuong. The waveforms of the two syllables with ngang and huyen are shown in the first two rows. The corresponding spectrograms of the two syllables are in the last two rows. In Figure 70 the final nasal part has very little voicing and weak energy in the spectrograms. The long vowel ends at about 190ms; the short vowel ends much earlier, at approximately 70ms. .However, the syllable with a long vowel ends at approximately 270ms, only about 20ms longer than the syllable with a short vowel, which ends at about 250ms. In Figure 71, the long vowel ends at approximately 160ms while the short vowel ends at about 90ms. However, both syllables end at almost the same time, at approximately 260ms. Thus, the final nasal part in these figures, shown to have very little voicing, is short if the vowel is long and very long if the vowel is short. The final sonorant consonant lengthens to

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VIETNAMESE TONE: A NEW ANALYSIS

Figure 67. Sac2 in [ta:k] and [tak] from An

Figure 68. Sac2 in [ta:k] and [tak] from An

compensate for the shortness of the short vowel. This phenomenon was also observed for Son and An in Figures 62 and 66. In those figures the syllable with a short vowel had a very long final nasal and its length was almost equal to that of the rhyme with a long vowel. A final nasal is long if the vowel is short. Sometimes syllables with short vowels are shorter than syllables with long vowels but such cases are rare. With stop-final syllables, a short vowel makes the rhyme shorter than does a long vowel (Figures 68 and 69). The final voiceless stop is just silence without any voicing; therefore, the syllable length relies on the vowel. Sonorant-final syllables also tend to be equal in length. The preference for a long final sonorant in the syllable if the vowel is short shows that members of the rhyme do ‘observe’ each other and adjust themselves to preserve a certain fixed length in different syllable types. Tonal features are realized over the whole rhyme not just on the vowel, particularly in syllables with a sonorant-final consonant. Moreover, Vietnamese syllables tend to be of a constant length regardless of vowel length. Such facts support the claim that the nucleus is not the domain of tone. They suggest instead that rhyme is the domain because of the way tonal features are distributed in the rhyme. However, there is also evidence from phonological processes such as feature sharing and neutralization that these occur in the nucleus only and not in the rhyme as a whole.

THE DOMAIN OF TONE

Figure 69. Nang2 in [ta:k] and [tak] from An

Figure 70. Length in [ta:′ ] and [ta′] with ngang from Phuong

93

94

VIETNAMESE TONE: A NEW ANALYSIS

Figure 71. Length in [ta:′ ] and [ta′] with huyen from Phuong

CHAPTER 7 Conclusion

The research on Vietnamese tones reported here proposes a particular phonological model of tonal representation which assumes that markedness is reflected structurally. This model was able to account for the phonological patterning of Vietnamese tones and predicts the neutralizations that occur. Phonetic evidence also shows that the well-established view of Vietnamese as a pitch register language must be abandoned; what has been called pitch is really the laryngeal features of breathiness and creakiness. An analysis of the phonetic patterning of the tones allows a simplification of the tonal phonology found in reduplication in Vietnamese; the ad hoc and unnatural flip flop rule that was required in previous models is no longer necessary. The phonological claims made in the model also prove to be well-grounded in the phonetics of Vietnamese. Vietnamese tones are organized in a hierarchical structure, the laryngeal features of phonation are distinctive, pitch height is not distinctive, and the features are grounded phonetically. Particularly to be noted is that replacing pitch height with phonation types and tonal shape provides a natural and elegant account of reduplication, the most widely discussed evidence for the patterning of tones in the traditional literature. When the assumption that tone is solely pitch height is abandoned, there also emerges a new way to examine tonal languages. It may even be the case that if ‘tone’ equates to ‘pitch,’ Vietnamese — perhaps along with many other ‘tone languages’—is not a ‘tone language’ after all!

Appendix

I. Pitch graphs of other speakers

1. Eight tones in [ka] and [ka:k] from Phuong (female)

2. Eight tones in [ka] and [ka:k] from Khanh (female)

97

II. Spectrographs in [ka] and [ka:k] from other speakers

3. Eight tones in [ka] and [ka:k] from Dung (female)

4. Eight tones in [ka] and [ka:k] from Van (female)

98

5. Eight tones in [ka] and [ka:k] from An (female)

6. Eight tones in [ka] and [ka:k] from Hung (male)

99

7. Eight tones in [ka] and [ka:k] from Hoang (male)

8. Eight tones in [ka] and [ka:k] from Son (male)

100

101

1. Eight tones from Phuong

102

103

2. Eight tones from Van Khanh

104

105

3. Eight tones from Dung

106

107

4. Eight tones from Van

108

109

5. Eight tones from An

110

111

6. Eight tones from Hung

112

113

7. Eight tones from Hoang

114

115

8. Eight tones from Binh

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Index

Andreev, N.D., 115, 140 African tone languages, 19, 27 Archangeli, D., 5, 133 Asian languages, 127 Avery, P. 5–6, 16, 34, 36, 107

eight-tone system, 15, 37, 42–54 English, 34–6, 52 Excel, 61 female/male speech, 62–8, 126 French, 34–6, 52 frequency of occurrence, 14, 16, 25–6, 29–30, 34 52–3, 132 fundamental (F0), 8, 55, 60–2, 67–8, 73–4, 80–1, 87, 120, 127, 143

Bao, Z., 17, 19–20, 27, 140 Be-Tai, 40 borrowings, 26, 34–6, 51–2 breathiness, 3–4, 8, 60, 68, 74, 79–81, 91–3 107–8, 117, 120, 126– 8, 131–4 Bru, 128 Burton, S., 16–8, 36, 40, 42, 52 Butterworth filter, 61

game, language, 135–6 German, 28 Gestural Theory of Markedness, 132 glottalization, 12–3, 47, 107, 115, 132 glottalic, 4, 13, 15 glottograms, 80–1 Goldsmith, J., 19, 136, 140 Grodina, M.V., 115, 137, 140, 146 Greenberg, J., 25, 28–9, 132–3

Cao, X.H., 37, 44–5 Central Vietnamese, 4, 31–3, 38–9, 133 Centralization, vowel, 139 Chinese, 19, 28, 40, 140 Chaozhou, 19 Cantonese, 40 Chong, 128 Clements, G.N., 5, 19, 48, 129, 140 clitics, 26, 33–4, 48–50 complexity, 5–7, 24–5, 29, 38, 40, 42 concave tone, 22, 115, 131 Concave Tone Reversal, 16, 18 consonants, final, 5, 13, 37, 40, 44–5, 47- 9,60, 138, 146 contour, 7, 10, 12, 13, 15, 17–9, 34, 36, 40 44, 50–1, 55–6, 60, 62, 67, 81, 84, Contrastive Underspecification, 23 87, 93, 101, 120, 126–7, 130–4 contour tone, 18, 22, 38, 40, 42 contour tone system, 18 Contrastive Specification, theory of, 5–6, 107 convex tone, 22, 115 creakiness, 3, 4, 8, 47, 61, 68, 79–81, 84, 87, 91, 101, 107–8, 112, 115, 117, 120, 126–32, 141, 143 Creakiness Acquisition, 17–8 Cu, T., Hoang, Nguyen 4, 94, 137, 140 curved tone, 21–3, 40, 56, 67–8, 74, 91- 2, 101, 115, 120, 126–7, 131, 141

Hanoi, 4, 38, 40, 42–3, 56, 131–3, 138 Haudricourt, A.G., 16, 46–7, 115 Hoang, C.C., 4, 10, 38–41, 127 Hoang, T.C., 4, 12, 27, 32, 37–8, 46–7 Hue, 38–40 Italian, 48 Jalapa Mazatec, 71, 73 Karen, 40 Keller, E., 155 Kui, 128 Ladefoged, p., 71, 73, 101, 128 Laver, J., 18, 73 Luganda Mai Ban, 32, 133 Marasek, K., 733, 101, 120 markedness, 4–9, 24–36, 51–4, 67–8, 94, 132 register, 10–36, 37–8, 42, 44–5, 47, 50–1, 60, 81, 93–4, 107, 117, 120, 126–34 Mester, R., Itô, 5 Mon-Khmer, 4, 128 Muong, 4 mora, 8, 139–41

diachronic issues, 13–4, 16, 18, 31, 46- 7 dialects, 4, 27, 31, 33, 38, 56, 61, 126, 133–4, 138 Digital Inverse Filtering, 80 digital sound spectrography, 73–4 Doan, T.T., 4, 10, 12, 15–6, 31, 37–8, 42, 47, 84, 135–7, 140–1

119

120

INDEX

Nam Dinh, 56 Nasal Default, 49 natural class, 5, 13, 18, 107, 134 neutralization, 4, 7, 9, 18, 20, 25–6, 28- 36, 126, 132–3, 150–1 Nghe Tinh, 31–3, 36 Ngo, T.N., 15–6, 26, 31, 137 Nguyen, V.L., Edmondson, 10–1, 16, 55–7, 60, 68, 80–1, 84, 94, 101, 112, 120 North Vietnamese, 4, 38–9, 55–61, 126, 132–4, 138–9 nucleus, 8, 135–9, 141–3, 146, 150 Nyah, 128 Odden, D., 19, 140 Ohala, J., 40 orthography, 10, 27, 35, 37, 44, 47 Phalok, 128 Pham, H., 4, 28, 33–4, 138–9 phonation types, 8, 13–4, 19, 47, 55–6, 60, 68–70, 73, 80–1, 92–3, 107 128, 130, 134 poetry, 12, 26, 30, 33, 36, 42, 45–6, 47, 135, 137 Pwo, 40 Quang Binh, 133 reduplication, 3–4, 8, 12, 16–8, 31, 33, 36, 45–6, 51, 53, 94, 107, 135–7 Register Flip-Flop, 17–8 register tone system, 18 rhyme, 8, 30, 38, 40, 84, 87, 135–50 Rice, K., 5–7, 23, 25, 28, 34, 49, 107, 133 Saigon, 28, 38, 40–1, 139 Sgaw, 40 SignalyzeTM, 61–2, Sino-Tibetan, 40 six-eight verse, 30 six-tone system, 37–8, 46–7, 52, 84 Snider, K., 18–9, 27 So, 128 South Vietnamese, 4, 27–8, 31, 33, 36, 38 133–4, 139 Spanish, 48 Spectrograms, 61–2, 73–4, 79–81, 87, 91, 107–8 Steriade, D., 5 syllable, 3, 4–5, 8–9, 60–1, 135–50 final, 28, 49 initial, 28 Tai-Kadai, 40 Thanh Hoa, 56 Thompson, L., 4, 13, 26 Thongkum, T., 128 tone sandhi, 3, 19, 26 tone linear portion, 8, 55, 81, 87, 92 tone-bearing unit, 19, 140 Vo, X.H., 4, 29, 52 vowel length, 87, 139–46, 150 Vu, B.H., 37, 47, 55, 68, 84, 120 Vu, T.P, 4, 38, 42–3, 58, 68, 94, 115

Yip, M., 177–9, 27–8, 40