Tonal coarticulation in

Northern and Southern

Vietnamese

Marc BrunelleUniversity of Ottawa

marc.brunelle@uottawa.ca

SEALS XVIIUniversity of Maryland

August 31, 2007

Time (msec)

29019090-10

Mea

n Fre

quen

cy (H

z)360

340

320

300

280

260

240

220

200

Tone

s¡c (B1)

ngang (A1)

ngã (C2)

n¥ng (B2)

huyŠn (A2)

hÕi (C1)

The Northern Vietnamese (NVN) tone system

Time (msec)

26017080-10

Mea

n Fre

quen

cy (H

z)170

150

130

110

90

Tone

s¡c (B1)

ngang (A1)

n¥ng (B2)

huyŠn (A2)

hÕi-ngã (C)

The Southern Vietnamese (SVN) tone system

Back to discussion

Tonal coarticulation The physical realization of a tone varies

depending on its environment Neighboring tones Intonation Vowels and consonants

Example: In Vietnamese, a mid-level tone starts higher after a rising tone than after a falling tone

amÜ

Mean F0 (H

z)

320

300

280

260

240

220

200

180

Tone on /Ü/

ngang

s¡c

huyŠn

hÕi-ngã

n¥ng

Progressive coarticulation in tone huyền Female SVN

Subject

Language-specific hypotheses Coarticulation should be bidirectional as in other

tone languages (Han and Kim 1974, Shen 1990, Gandour et al. 1994, Brunelle 2003)

There should be more progressive than regressive coarticulation in NVN (Han and Kim 1974, Brunelle 2003) Similar results in Thai (Gandour et al. 1994)

Contours should be relatively stable (Han and Kim 1974, Brunelle 2003)

If a phonetic dimension is crowded, it should vary less (evidence from V-V and nasal coarticulation)

Supporting evidence (Manuel and Krakow 1984, Magen 1984, Cohn 1990, Choi 1995, Manuel 1999)

Conflicting evidence (Clumeck 1976, Han 2007)

If this is true of tonal coarticulation as well?

Pitch targets are less important in NVN than in SVN, because voice quality plays a perceptual role role in NVN tones (Vũ 1981, 1982, Brunelle 2006)

Because of the lesser role of voice quality in SVN, contours should be less variable

Hypotheses based on models of coarticulation

Tone 1

Tone 2

Tone 1(modal voice)

Tone 2(creaky voice)

F0Dialect A Dialect B

The recordings 5 NVN speakers (3 women, 2 men) 6 SVN speakers (3 women, 3 men)

Read the syllable /ma/ with all tones after the vowel // bearing all tones.

Frame sentences are half-realistic as strange first names were coined for the experiment.

Meaningful: Để tôi nói chữ mạ xem ông đớ có hiểu không.Let me say the word ‘rice seedling’ to see if that man understands.

Borderline: Để tôi chào sư Ma xem ông ấy có nhớ tôi không.Let me greet monk Ma to see if he remembers me.

36 (NVN) or 25 (SVN) frame sentences read 10 times each.

Results: direction of coarticulation Impressionistically, there is more progressive

than anticipatory coarticulation in all speakers

Anticipatory, in ngang Progressive, in ngangFemale SVN speaker

Results: A tone in which voice quality is crucial When voice quality is a central phonetic cue,

pitch varies more (extreme example)

Anticipatory, in nặng Progressive, in nặngMale NVN speaker

Quantification of coarticulation The vowels /ư/ and /a/ and the intervening /m/ are

measured at 5 equidistant points

General linear model analysis for each dialect (modified from Gandour et al. 1994) Dependant variable

F0 of 5 measurement points of each tone before all tones (anticipatory coarticulation)

F0 of 5 measurement points of each tone after all tones (progressive coarticulation)

Factors Speaker F0 at edge of adjacent vowel

onset of V2 for anticipatory offset of V1 for progressive

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

1/5 2/5 3/5 4/5 5/5

ngang

sắc

huyền

hỏi-ngã

nặng

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

1/5 2/5 3/5 4/5 5/5

ngang

sắc

huyền

hỏi

ngã

nặng

Strength of coarticulation (in F values)

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

1/5 2/5 3/5 4/5 5/5

ngang

sắc

huyền

hỏi

ngã

nặng

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

1/5 2/5 3/5 4/5 5/5

ngang

sắc

huyền

hỏi-ngã

nặng

NVN

SVN

Anticipatory Progressive

Effect of coarticulation on slope

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

ngang sắc huyền hỏi ngã nặng

NVN

SVN

GLM analysis applied to small slope (4/5 – 2/5) Anticipatory coarticulation: almost none (slight effect on huyền

in SVN) Progressive coarticulation (in F values)

Modal tones that have relatively flat contours in isolation

Summary of results (language-specific hypotheses) Stronger coarticulation in NVN

Bi-directional coarticulation, assimilatory in both directions Different from Thai (Gandour et al. 1994)

Stronger progressive than anticipatory coarticulation in both dialects, but: Much more short-distance progressive than anticipatory

coarticulation Slightly more long-distance anticipatory than progressive

coarticulation Would the effect be stronger in real speech? (wordlist effect)

Discussion: the role of voice quality Voice quality in NVN tones allows more

variation in pitch without risk of confusion

Hence more coarticulation

The strength of coarticulation seems predictable from patterns of contrast (Manuel and Krakow 1984)

Discussion: Anticipatory vs. Progressive Two types of coarticulation (Perkell and

Chiang 1996)

Long-distance anticipatory coarticulation is due to planning on the part of the speaker

Start early but don’t blur tonal contrasts!

Short-distance progressive coarticulation is due to immediate physical constraints

You can’t jump from 100 to 200 Hz in 5 milliseconds! Other types of phonetic dimensions and other

languages favor anticipatory coarticulation.

X ?

Discussion: Why is there more progressive coarticulation?

Rises and drops in pitch are often delayed (Ohala 1978) Universal constraints… A foresighted speaker could plan ahead and

anticipate…

Tone onsets are less distinct than tone offsets, so blurring is less costly from a communicative point of view A language with more variation at tone onsets

than tone offsets should exhibit stronger anticipatory coarticulation

Tone charts

Conclusion Two types of assimilatory co-articulation in NVN

and SVN Long-distance anticipatory co-articulation

The speaker is anticipating the following tone Short-distance progressive co-articulation

Physical constraints on pitch production; transitions cannot be too abrupt

The functional load of pitch determines the extent of coarticulation NVN has pitch and voice quality: more co-articulation SVN has pitch only: less co-articulation

The direction of coarticulation is determined by the tonal targets

References 1Brunelle, M. 2003. Tone Coarticulation in Northern Vietnamese.

Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences.: 2673-2676.

Brunelle, M. 2006. Tone perception in Vietnamese dialects, presentation at TIE2, Berlin, September 2006

Clumeck, H. 1976. Patterns of soft palate movement in six languages, Journal of Phonetics, 4, 337-351.

Choi, J. 1995. An acoustic-phonetic underspecification account of Marshallese vowel allophony, Journal of Phonetics, 23, 323-347.

Cohn, A. C. 1990. Phonetic and phonological rules of nasalization. Ph.D., UCLA.

Gandour, J. 1994. Tonal Coarticulation in Thai. Journal of Phonetics 22, 4: 477-492.

Han, JI. 2007. The role of vowel contrast in language-specific patterns of vowel-to-vowel coarticulation: evidence from Korean and Japanese. Proceedings of the 16th Congress of Phonetic Science, Saarbrucken, Germany.

Han, M. and K.-O. Kim 1974. Phonetic variation of Vietnamese tones in disyllabic utterances. Journal of Phonetics 2: 223-232.

References 2Magen, H. 1984. Vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in English and

Japanese. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 45, 1217-1233.

Manuel, S. and R. Krakow 1984. Universal and language particular aspects of vowel-to-vowel coarticulation. Haskins Laboratories Status reports on Speech Research, SR-77/78, 69-78.

Manuel, S. 1999. Cross-language studies: relating language-particular coarticulation patterns to other language-particular facts. In Hardcastle and Hewlett, Coarticulation: Theory, Data and Techniques, Cambridge University Press, 179-198.

Ohala, J. J. 1978. The production of Tone, In Fromkin, Tone: a linguistic survey. New York: Academic Press. 5 - 39.

Shen, X. S. 1990. Tonal Coarticulation in Mandarin. Journal of Phonetics 18, 2: 281-295.

Vũ, T. P. 1981 The Acoustic and Perceptual Nature of Tone in Vietnamese. Australian National University.

Vũ, T. P. 1982. Phonetic Properties of Vietnamese Tones across dialects. In Papers in Southeast Asian Linguistics. D. Bradley (ed). 55-75. Sydney: Australian National University.