Cover not available
Part of
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Vietnamese Linguistics
Edited by Nigel Duffield, Trang Phan and Tue Trinh
[Studies in Language Companion Series 211] 2019
► pp. 9–30

Chapter 2
Intonation in southern Vietnamese interrogative sentences

| Ho Chi Minh city University of Education, Vietnam
| University of Ottawa, Canada
This study looks at the acoustic cues that characterize the intonation of questions in southern Vietnamese. We find a raised f0 height and a rising contour in a third of interrogatives, but – with the exception of alternative (and some open) questions – we argue that these properties cannot distinguish interrogatives from other sentence types. The only cue systematically associated with questions is that they tend to have a faster speech rate. Our findings replicate recent studies conducted on northern Vietnamese showing that there are idiosyncratic differences in the realization of intonation and that intonation may not be as grammaticalized as in Western languages. Vietnamese interrogatives are marked with particles or inferred from context and their intonation plays an ancillary role.
Keywords: southern Vietnamese, spontaneous speech, interrogatives, intonation, acoustic study
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1The tonal system of southern Vietnamese
    • 1.2Cao Xuân Hạo’s classification of Vietnamese interrogatives
    • 1.3Intonation in Vietnamese interrogatives
    • 1.4Research questions
  • 2.Method
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Research question 1: Do interrogatives have a higher f0 than declaratives? Do they have a different contour?
      • 3.1.1Overall f0 level
      • 3.1.2Global f0 slope
      • 3.1.3Local f0 slope
    • 3.2Research question 2: Are interrogatives spoken at a faster speech rate than declaratives?
    • 3.3Research question 3: Are there any differences in pitch (height and contour) between different types of interrogatives?
      • 3.3.1Overall f0 level
      • 3.3.2Global f0 slope
      • 3.3.3Local f0 slope
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 9 October 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.211.02ha
References (34)
References
Boersma, Paul & Weenink, David. Praat: Doing Phonetics by Computer [Computer Software]. <[URL]>
Brunelle, Marc. 2009a. Northern and Southern Vietnamese tone coarticulation: A comparative case study. Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics 1: 49–62.Google Scholar
. 2009b. Tone perception in Northern and Southern Vietnamese. Journal of Phonetics 37: 79–96. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2016. Intonational phrase marking in Southern Vietnamese. Tonal aspects of languages. Ms, University of Buffalo.Google Scholar
. 2017. Stress and phrasal prominence in tone languages: The case of Southern Vietnamese. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 47(3): 283–320. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brunelle, Marc, Chow, Daryl, & Nguyễn, Thuỵ Nhã Uyên. 2015. Effects of lexical frequency and lexical category on the duration of Vietnamese syllables. In The Scottish Consortium for ICPhS, 1–5. Glasgow: University of Glasgow.Google Scholar
Brunelle, Marc, Hạ, Kiều-Phương, & Grice, Martine. 2012. Intonation in Northern Vietnamese. The Linguistic Review 29(1): 3–36. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cangemi, Francesco, Weitz, Christian, Brunelle, Marc, Hạ, Kiều Phương & Grice, Martine. 2016. Individual specificity, redundancy and the evolution of phonological systems: Intonation in a tone language. Oral talk at the 5th Conference on Laboratory Phonology, Speech Dynamics and Phonological Representation, July 13–16, 2016, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
Cao, Xuân Hạo. 2004. Tiếng Việt sơ thảo ngữ pháp chức năng (Vietnamese: A Sketch of Functional Grammar). Hà Nội: Nhà xuất bản Giáo dục.Google Scholar
. 2007. Trọng âm và các quan hệ ngữ pháp trong tiếng Việt (Stress and syntactic relations in Vietnamese). In Tiếng Việt: Mấy vấn đề ngữ âm, ngữ pháp, ngữ nghĩa (Vietnamese Language: Some Issues in Phonetics, Syntax, Semantics), 137–156. Hà Nội: Nhà xuất bản Giáo dục.Google Scholar
Đào, Mục Đích & Nguyễn, Thị Anh Thư. Submitted. Acoustic correlates of statement and question intonation in Southern Vietnamese. Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics.
. 2018. Acoustic correlates of statement and question intonation in southern Vietnamese. Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society 11.2: 19–41.Google Scholar
Diệp, Quang Ban. 1998. Ngữ pháp tiếng Việt (Vietnamese Grammar). Hà Nội: Nhà xuất bản Giáo dục.Google Scholar
Đỗ, Thế Dũng, Trần, Thiên Hương, & Boulakia, Georges. 1998. Intonation in Vietnamese. In Intonation Systems: A Survey of Twenty Languages, Daniel Hirst & Albert di Cristo (eds), 395–416. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Đỗ, Tiến Thắng. 2009. Ngữ điệu tiếng Việt sơ khảo (Vietnamese Intonation: An Introduction). Hà Nội: Nhà xuất bản Đại học Quốc gia Hà Nội.Google Scholar
Đoàn, Thiện Thuật. 1977. Ngữ âm tiếng Việt (Vietnamese Phonetics). Hà Nội: Nhà xuất bản Đại học và Trung học chuyên nghiệp.Google Scholar
. 2000. Ngữ âm (Phonetics). In Dẫn luận ngôn ngữ học (Introduction to Linguistics), Thiện Giáp Nguyễn, Thiện Thuật Đoàn & Minh Thuyết Nguyễn (eds), 147–213. Hà Nội: Nhà xuất bản Giáo dục.Google Scholar
Gsell, René. 1980. Remarques sur la structure de l’espace tonal en Vietnamien du Sud (parler de Saigon) (Remarks on the structure of tonal space in southern Vietnamese (Saigonese)). Cahiers d’Etudes Vietnamiennes 4: 1–26.Google Scholar
Hạ, Kiều Phương & Grice, Martine. 2010. Modelling the interaction of intonation and lexical tone in Vietnamese. Presented at Speech Prosody 2010, 5th International Conference, Chicago IL.
. 2017. Tone and intonation in discourse management: How do speakers of Standard Vietnamese initiate a repair? Journal of Pragmatics 107: 60–83. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hạ, Kiều-Phương. 2012. Prosody in Vietnamese: Intonational Form and Function of Short Utterances in Conversation. Canberra: The Australian National University.Google Scholar
Hoàng, Cao Cương. 1985. Bước đầu nhận xét về đặc điểm ngữ điệu tiếng Việt trên cứ liệu thực nghiệm [Preliminary notes on Vietnamese intonation]. Ngôn ngữ [Language] 3: 40–49.Google Scholar
Hoàng, Trọng Phiến. 1980. Ngữ pháp tiếng Việt: câu (Vietnamese Grammar: Sentence). Hà Nội: Nhà xuất bản Đại học và Trung học chuyên nghiệp.Google Scholar
Tổ Ngôn ngữ – Đại học Tổng hợp [Linguistics Group – University of Hanoi]. 1961. Khái luận ngôn ngữ học (Outline of Linguistics). Hà Nội: Nhà xuất bản Giáo dục.Google Scholar
Kirby, James. 2010. Dialect experience in Vietnamese tone perception. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 127(4): 3749–3757. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mai, Ngọc Chừ, Nguyễn, Thị Ngân Hoa, Đỗ, Việt Hùng, & Bùi, Minh Toán. 2007. Nhập môn Ngôn ngữ học (Introduction to Linguistics). Hà Nội: Nhà xuất bản Giáo dục.Google Scholar
Nguyễn, Thị Thanh Hương & Boulakia, Georges. 1999. Another look at Vietnamese intonation. Proceedings of the XIVth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. 2399–402. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nguyễn, Thị Anh Thư & Ingram, John. 2007. Acoustic and perceptual cues for compound-phrasal contrasts in Vietnamese. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 122(3): 1746–1757.Google Scholar
Phạm, Andrea Hoa. 2003. Vietnamese Tone: A New Analysis. New York NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Thompson, Lawrence C. 1965. A Vietnamese Reference Grammar. Previously published as Mon-Khmer Studies XIII-XIV [1965] edn. Honolulu HI: University of Hawai’i Press.Google Scholar
Trần, Aurelie Huong Mai. 1969. Stress, Tones and Intonation in South Vietnamese. Canberra: Australian National University.Google Scholar
Vũ, Minh Quang, Trần, Đỗ Đạt, & Castelli, Eric. 2006. Intonation des phrases interrogatives et affirmatives en langue vietnamienne (Intonation of interrogative and affirmative sentences in Vietnamese language). In Actes des XXVIes journées d’études sur la parole, 187–190. Dinard, France.Google Scholar
Vũ, Thanh Phương. 1981. The Acoustic and Perceptual Nature of Tone in Vietnamese. Canberra: Australian National University.Google Scholar
. 1982. Phonetic properties of Vietnamese tones across dialects. Pacific Linguistics Series A, 55–75.Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Michaud, Alexis, Minh Châu Nguyên & Vera Scholvin
2022. L’intonation dans les langues tonales : des réflexions générales et deux études de cas. Éla. Études de linguistique appliquée N° 204:4 ► pp. 399 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 june 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.