Two strategies for distinguishing ngã and sắc tones in Northern Vietnamese

• DOI: 10.1121/1.4934143
• Publication Date: 2015-10-14T17:01:38Z
• Authors: Taylor L. Miller; Angeliki Athanaso...; Nadya Pincus; Irene Vogel
• Keywords: Vietnamese

The six tones of Northern Vietnamese involve F0 and phonation properties. We examine the acoustic manifestation two rising usually characterized as having distinct (ngã = creaky sắc modal) in 1584 vowels produced by 9 Hanoi speakers (88 real three word compounds, 8 target /a/, /i/, /u/ with ngã first syllables). Based on measurements F0, energy, duration, properties (spectral tilt, CPP, HNR), we observed strategies for producing tones: (a) both differences, where voice appeared >78% (N 7); (b) only difference, <6% 2). Classification data into Binary Logistic Regression Analyses confirmed behaviors. In strategy, main property distinguishing from is HNR (84%), but was also very successful (75%). second significant (90%). Given that there were no age, gender, or educational suggest patterns may be due to (i) a regional dialectal difference (ii) change progress Vietnamese.