Generative phonology as applied to vietnamese dialects (a study based en middle vietnamese comparing the three major dialects of modern vietnamese) thesis of doctorate of linguistics

V l11 f- t FACULTY OF LETTERS Q- 3Zb Un ivers it y of Saigon ~ :T2-62f GENERATIVE PHONOLOGY as applied to VIETNAMESE DIALECTS A Study based on Middle Vietnamese, Comparing · the Three Major Dialects Of Modern Vietnamese bv BARBARA FRIBERG Saigon 1972 GENERATIVE PHONOLOGY as Applied to VIETNAMESE DIALECTS: A Study Based on Middle Vietnamese, Comparing the Three Major Dialects of Modern Vietnamese Thesis submitted for Master's Degree in the field of linguistics Department of English Faculty of Letters Saigon University Saigon, Vietnam Barbara Friberg January 1972 - PREFACE This thesis is written in partin fulfillment of the requirements for a Master's degree in Linguistics with the Department of English of the Faculty of Letters, Saigon University I trust that it will also be of value to all linguists in this area Much information about the theory used has been included in order to make it more readable for those not familiar with generative phonology I want to express my deep appreciation to Professor D~ Kh~nh Hoan for his assistance in preparing and sub- mitting the necessary forms for application and also for arranging for the thesis committee For assistance in some of the areas of the Vietnamese "dialects, I am grateful to Dr David Thomas and Mr L~ Nggc Tr~ for their advice and correction Dr Thomas also served as the advisor for this thesis and as such gave valuable assistance Dr Kenneth Gregerson assisted in areas where problems arose in the application of the transformational theory to the Vietnamese phonological system I submit this thesis to the Faculty of Letters with my highest regards Barbara Friberg Saigon, January 1972 - i - - TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE I" Introduction • • • • • • • • •• • • • II Body A Introduction to Transformational ' Theory • • B Vietnamese Initial Consonants • 11 C Vietnamese Final Consonants • • • • 16 D Vietnamese Vowels • • • • • • • 46 E Vietnamese Tones • • • • • • • • • 70 III Summary and Application Notes 74 77 Bibliography • • • • • • • • • • • • • 81 - ii - - ABBREVIATIONS - The rollowing abbreviations will be round throughout this thesis in this rorm: cons consonantal vocl vocalic cor coronal ant anterior hi high 10 low disr distributed sono sonorant tns tense vd voiced stri strident bk back rnd round rise rising fall raIling g.s glottal stricture All terminology is fully explained in the body or the thesis - iii - I Introduction In the field of Vietnamese dialects, a variety of , discussions can be found, from Cadiere's articles on ~ high and low Vietnamese to the listings of Hoa and Thompson and the word compilations and dictionary being undertaken by the research center under Mr Tr~ I But to this point very little has been written about the phonological changes which are taking place across the dialects, and virtually nothing has been done in applying the generative/transformational model to the Vietnamese dialects This discussion of ~he dialects will make no attempts at being exhaustive - such a study would require a myriad more research and material the same time, At trying to take into consideration as many aspects of both the Vietnamese dialect studies and generat~ve phonology as possible, this paper will give an over-all picture of what is being done in the field and areas for further study Generative sound change and spelling rules and feature notations will be used as the terms for comparison These rules and features will primarily be those outlined by Chomsky and Halle in SOUND PATTERNS OF ENGLISH, reinforcing their notion of universal features with specific language data and noting situations wh ere this study indicates alter these proposed features Q need to Without manipulating features or data or producing 'ad hoc' rules, the sim- plicity measure of generality will be employed to discover which rules most accurately and simply describe the data That is, rules will be formed (and features used) which ,qould cover the most general information without redundancy or omission of actual sound patterns of the language A modified Middle Vietnamese system is used as the basis for the sound system, and the rules will provide the information for the changes which have taken place to produ~e the respective sound systems of the major, present-day dialects of Viet Nam There will be only brief discussions of the many smaller dialects an area of study which could well serve as the basis for some challe~ging and interesting research M~dng (and thus Proto~VietM~dng) will not be considered in this discussion The task of deciding which dialects are indeed the major ones and the most generally used in problematic Thomp~on , gives listings from specific towns and hoa gives an oversimplified listing for South, Central and - - North This discussion will involve the dialects that are commonly considered as Northern, Central and Southern with comments on the variant dialects in a few cases The Central dialect covers a large and ~aried region, so the basic discussion will include the speech of the Da Nang dwellers, and notes given for the rural areas and other provinces in the area In a given region dialect differences may be as much dependent on family background and education or a formal versus informal situation as on geography One area may also contain speakers of all or many of the country's dialects This is particularly true in Saigon, where people have recently come from all areas of the country For the following discussion, these dialect areas are defined: (1) Northern - considered that which is commonly accepted in South Viet Nam as Northern and usually spoken in Hanoi (noting here that there are several variant dialects in the North today.) Many of the speakers of Northern have come from North Viet Nam before or during 1954 " Dinh hoa's works Nguyen are based on this dialect and serve as an accurate description (2) Central - As noted above, this is the most diverse area, with a different dialect for - 'J - many of the provinces and population centers of the Central region from IDla Trang to Quang Tr~ description of Low Vietnamese from the Binh , Cadiere's ~inh area will be mentioned, as this seems descriptive of many of the unusual sound changes of that region Generally, however, only the most commonly found sound changes will be considered for the Central dialect (1) Southern - This dialect is spoken by most of the Vietnamese inha"bi tants in the delta, including Saigon, where this dialect will be found to be spoken by the majority of the people in other than formal, learned situations These three dialect divisions should not be considered as set boundaries, nor as a continuum of sound change The Southern dialect seems to have developed from Middle Vietnamese separately; developing sound patterns which are not seen in Northern or Central Similarly, Northern and Central developed dialects from Middle Vietnamese Similarities can be seen due to lack of isolation of any of these areas The entire field of dialect development is yet another area of research which might well be undertaken by someone - - The body of this thesis will be divided into five sections, each being considered separately, yet all as an integrated picture of the application of the genarative theory to the Vietnamese sound system as manifested in the various dialects this order: The parts will be presented in A An introduction and background material of the generative theory Vietnamese B The initial consonants of This section will include definitions and clarifications of the various rule and feature n~ta­ tions which will be used in the entire paper C Consonants F~nal These are placed before the vowels, be- cause of their fewer variances and thus the ease of handling the changes in the three dialects Also, it is proposed that diachronically the consonant changes were affected first by the vowels which preceded them; the vowel changes coming at a later period, some of them resulting from the changes in the final consonants D Vowels Although the vowel system must be presented in Section C in order to understand the final consonant changes, this discussion will be following that for final consonants Since this is the area of greatest divergence and inconsistency, it will also include comme~ts on the diverse Central dia1edB and remarks on the - '5 - Chart G , Ha N~i GJ hi +rise [-h~ -10 Vinh J ~hi J ~hi J r +hi] hi +rise G Hug -10 +rise Da NRng +rise South - J ~rise +hi N~i Vinh hi [-h~ -10 Hu5 j t ] r~ -10 +rise +g.s c: Da" Nang South [-hi ~ Chi J [-hi J -10 +rise +g.s [-h~ -10 -10 +riso [.hi ] +fall) -10 +rise • G hi ~10 +rise +g.s -10 J [-hi J [+10 +rise +fall Ha ? ( -) -10 J ~hi +ris,:-10 J ~hi +rise J - J [+10 +fal1 L~g s , rIO ~ r +10] [+10 +fall~ -+1 [+10 +fal1~ f+l0 _+g.s +foll J [+10 +fal.! - 71 - +10 J I_+g~ e , J [+10 +rise~ Much more could be discussed in relation to the tones - their correlation with the diachronic sound system and register in which Dr Gregerson is doing research their acoustic details rules will show the changes etc - but a few simple The rules will deal with one tone at a time showing how it changes in the various dialects Rule Xllln: , , snch tone - J -hi] [ -10 f+hi L+rise Rula Xlllb: ngong tone - (no marki~g) ~hiJ -10 Vinh ) r +hi] South G( +h" +f~lll~ ) Rule Xlllc: ? h oi t one - Vinh 1+10 [:riseJ Hu~ ~ 5~ut~ Da Nang - 72 - ? J 10 hi +fall [ (-rise) -"':h i ] -10 [ +g s ~ I hi ] l:-lo - Rule XlIIc.!: ngn tone - -hi -10 Vinh [ -rise -g.s ) ~ J hi +rise -rg.s J- -h i [ -10 Hu~ ) J -hi -10 [ -g s._ Rule XlIIe: r+10 J L+g·s nQng tone - ~ Vinh [-g.s.] ~ South - g s J [ +rise ) No change is seen in any of the dialects for the )0, huy~n It should be possible to make some tone - _ • generalizations for the tone changes over the various dialects, but only one can be clearly seen at this point In Hu~ all high tone designations become mid Rule Xlllf: Huii1 torre a r +hi] ~ - 71 [-hi] -10 - III St.lmmary The preceding pages have given all the rules and discussion for the general sound changes £Qund in the three major dialects In order to make the application of these more manageable, they need to be given in some orderly manner for the dialects Therefore, lists of the rules will be given for each dialect, their order of application (although order is not essentinl in every case) , and the area of sounds which each covers A Northern (1) Rule I (d-, gi -, r-) (2) Rule IV (x «, (1 ) Rule VII ( -8ng , -ung, (4 ) Rule VIla ( -8ng, -ong) B tr-) -ong) Central (1) Rule II (a-, gi-) (2) Rule V (x-, (1 ) Rule VIa (h before w-glide) (4) Rule VI (g-, ng-, q-, h- s-) w-glide ) - 74 - before the (5) Rule VIc (kh- before w-glide) (6 ) Rule VII ( -ong, (7) Rule VIII (most vowels before alveolars) (8) Rule IX ( -nh , (9) Rule IXa (vowels before (10) Rule IXb ( /-yng/, (11) Rule VIla ( -ong, (12) Rule X (high, nontense vowels and -ung, -Qng) -ch) -nh, -ch) /-ykf) -ong) a before glides.) (1' ) Rule XI ( -uS- ) (14) Rule Xlllc ( h6i tone) (l'l ) Rule Xllld ( nga tone) c Southern (1) Rule II (d-, gi- ) (2) Rule III (v- ) (' ) Rule V (x-, (4) Rule VI (g-, ng-, q-, h- before the s- ) w-glide ) ( ') ) Rule VIc (kh- before the w-glide) (6 ) Rule VII ( -eng, -ong, (7) Rule Vllb ( -eng, -ong) (8) Rule VIII (most vowels before alveolars) - 7": - -ung) (9) Rule VIlla ( -on, -un) (10) Rule IX ( -nh, -ch) (11) Rule (vowels before -nh, (12) Rule IXb ( (11 ) Rule X (high, nontense vowels and before glides.) (14) Rule XIa ( nhS-, (l'l) Rule XII ( (16 ) Rule XIIIb ( ngang tone) (17) Rule XIIIc ( h?oJ tone) (I8) Rule XIlld ( n ge tone) (19) Rule XII Ie ( n~ng tone) lXc !-yng I, -ch) !-yk/) chS-, a -u5- ) /-wV-/) - By taking any example of a Vietnamese word and applying the rule which relates to it, the pronunciation can be given in terms of phonetic sounds Or, by considering any given ' ru l e , the pronunciation of all words to which it applies can be phonetically written Variances will be noted, because there remain numerous smaller dialects within the regions described as the major dialects, but generally the changes and rules which describe them nrc those which are seen today in the Republic of Viet ,Na m - 76 - - NOTES - 1- Thompson's Grammar (196~) devotes a large section to the sound systems of Hanoi and Saigon and gives excellent listings and information on some of the major Vietnamese dialects (pp l8-~o, 78-97) , Hoa's Vietnamese-English Student's Dictionary gives introductory remarks on the sound system and also a listing of North, Central, and Southern sound combinations , Cadiere's 1911 publication of low-Vietnamese from the Binh ~inh, Nha Trang and Qui Nh6n provinces is quite thorough with numerous examples for varient word-pronunciations His High Vietnamese Publication in 19 12 gives descriptions of the vowels, consonants and tones There is nothing said about the- Southern dialect, but mueh of what he considers low-Vietnamese is also applicable to that which is seen in the Delta region speech Mr L~ Ng9c Tr~, affiliated with both the Faculty of Letters of the Saigon University and the Teacher Training College, is a noted expert in the area of Vietnamese dialects His work consists more of the the sound-spelling changes which have evolved over the years in the various areas as well as semantic differences in the different regions of Vietnam is presently doing research for a dictionary which will include definitions and word variants for the three major dialects - 77 - He - notes - 2Gregerson's work, pu~lished in 1969, gives clear in- formation of , the seventeenth century Vietnamese speech based on works of Alexander de Rh' es in 16~1, Andre Haudricourt in the 19~0's and Henri Maspero in 1912 Slight modifications will be noted in this system, especially where the sounds found in Middle Vietnamese have been dropped in the Vietnamese dialects and no longer have a bearing on the system under discussion Such a modification could be found in the classes of the labial obstruents (PP 18-24) he mentions and the consonant clusters occurring with and -r -1 (PP 27-10) 1- Smalley (1967) gives these classes as corrt Lnuarrt versus noncontinuant, as does Pike (1947) • Others have differing terminology, but generally the same class distinctions are evident 4- Ly (1960:pp 48-49) and Thompson (196~:pp 46,88) group it with the lenis continuants - apicnl for Hanoi speech and laminal for Saigon ;Although this presentation is divided into the four sections of sounds, a complete analysis would combine all of these and show the feature specifications in their totality So a parameter such as high - non- high would be as meaningful as voicing for the con- 78 - - notes sonants or any other pararmeters given for the various class es of sounds 6- Ly (1968:p 20) and Thompson (196~:p 46) give these as voiceless stops 7Chomsky and Hall e (1968:pp 124+) give details on the specific differences in sound producti on Gre- gerson (1969: pp 16-17) giv es details of the sounds in Vietnamese, using fortis - lenis distinctions 8No attempt is made to use the concept of markedness (Chomsky and Halle 1968:pp 404+) since it is not fully formulated estin~ Further res oarch would be inter- and valuable employing universally 'marked' or 'unmarked' features 9- The terminology for 'word' in Vietnamese has been discussed by Thomas (1962) and Thompson (1961) In this discussion 'morphemes' conveying meaning are those items which will be set off by boundaries The term 'deriva tives' is not considered (Thomppon 1965: pp.l40+) An exampl e of the use of 'word' boundaries (#) is : #~i# - 'to go' or #thi#van# - 'literature' The work o f this pap er could readily be incorporated into a fuller discussion of g enerative grammar and - 79 - - notes and Vietnamese 'phonology' where the full inplications of 'word' and 'derivatives' could be worked out 10Filler rules will be indicated throughout this paper by small letters in parenthesis - (a), (b) •••• 11Harms (1968:pp 61+) shows many possible situations in which the use of variables results in simplified rules by allowing two or more rules to be combined into one 12Ho~ (1967), Gregerson (1969) and Thompson (1965) all give this pronunciation for the Northern dialect 11- Chomsky and Halle (1968:p 129) discuss stridency It is said to be manifested by a greater noisiness than nonstrident counterparts Thus in Vietnamese the grooved fricatives are considered r.+strident] in relation to their counterparts found in Middle Vietnamese A turbulence caused by rougher sur£acc, faster rate of flow and an angle of incidence close to 90 will all contribute to greater stridency This feature is restricted to obstruent continuants and affricates 14- Chomsky and Halle (1968:p 107) show palatalized labials as haVing the added feature of - 80 - [+high] to - notes distinguish them from the sounds which would be normally considered" as labinl 1")- A subrule could be written to show the loss of retroflexion of the x [~] as well, but it cannot be combined with Rule IV 16 Spirant is the term commonly applied to the class of grooved fricatives and affricates - the s, z series 17- Many Northerners still claim a distinction for x [ ~] and s ra], but linguists have found them to be the same sound r s] • , 18- Cadiere (1911:pp 70-80) 19Ibid., p 71 20- Gregerson (1969:PP~ 18-21) 21- Actually this should not be considered a sound change, but rather a varient realization of the sounc /~/ The double closure was very much a part of the Middle Vietnamese system, but not at the phonemic level - 81 - - notes 22- In this paper ordering will be used where it is appli-cable ary, For many of the rules, no ordering is necess- so will only be noted in the listing of rules for the dialects contained in the Summary Harms (l968:pp 48-56) gives specific information regarding the use of ordered rules 21- The environment need not be specified here, because this rule can only apply to -those words which have already had Rule IX applied is strictly limited Thus the environ~ent Several earlier examples in- clude such environments for clarity, but they could be omitted when using rules restricted by ordering 24V is the commonly accepted symbol for any vowel 2'i _ Wang (1967) gives contour symbols and comparative tone discussions 26- VInh and Hu~ are included in this section, because it is the tone dietinctions which set these dialects apart in large measure from the three major dialects discussed throughout this thesis - 82 - - BIBLIOGRAPHY Bach, Emmon 1964 INTRODUCTION TO TRANSFO~fATIONAL GRAMMAR New York , Cadierc, Leopa1d 1911 'Le Dia1ecte du Bas-Annam' BULLETIN DE L'ECOLE FRANCAISE D'EXTREME-ORIENT 11:67-110 - 1902 · 'LA PHONETIqUE ANNAMITE (dia1ecte du HautAnnam)' Publication de l'Ecole Francaisc d'Extr6meOrient No.1 Paris 19~8 - SYNTAXE DE LA LANGUE VIETNAMIENNE Publi- cation de l'Ecole Francaise d'Extreme-Orient Chafe, Wallace L 1970 (Review of Postal's ASPECTS OF PHONOLOGICAL THEORY.) LANGUAGE 46:116-124 Chomsky, Noam 1957 SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES: Mouton, The Hague - 196~ ASPECTS OF THE THEORY OF SYNTAX Cambridge, MS MIT Press - and Halle, Morris 1968 THE SOUND PATTERN OF ENGLISH: Harper & Row, Publishers New York Gregerson, Kenneth J 1969 'A Study of Middle Vietnamese Phonology' Extrait du BULLETIN DE LASOCIETE DES ETUDES INDOCHINOISES XLIV: Halle, Morris · 19~ SOUND PATTERN OF RUSSIAN Mouton The Hague _ 1962 'Phonology in Generative Grammar' WORD 18:~4-72 _ 81 - - bibliography Han, Mieko S 1968 'Complex Syllable Nuclei in Vietnamese'.STUDIES IN THE PHONOLOGY OF ASIAN LANGUAGES VI Acoustic Phonetics ·Research Lab University of Southern California - 1966 'Vietnamese Vowels' STUDIES IN THE PHONOLOGY OF ASlAN LANGUAGES IV Harms, Robert T 1968 INTRODUCTION TO PHONOLOGICAL THEORY Prentice-Hall, Inc · Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey Jakobson , Roman, Fant, C.G.M., and Halle, Morris 19;1 PRELIMINARIES TO SPEECH ANALYSIS Cambridge, MS - and Halle, Morris 1956 FUNDAMENTALS OF LANGUAGE Mouton, the Hague L~ Ng9c Tr~ -',t'? 196 'Chd Quoc-ngd td The-ky XVII -,l t't~n Cu~i Th~-kY XIX' Transactions 'of the Historical 2:111-141 • Research Institute , L~ Van Ly 196 (second printing)~ LE PARLER VIETNAMIEN B~ Qu5c Gia Gi~o D~c Saigon ~ -, - 1968 sd THAO NGU PHAP VI~T N~ Saigon Nguy~n B~t T~y H9c Vi~t - , Giao D~c ) 19;8 CHd"VA V~N VI~T KHOA H9C: Ng8n Ngd Nam Saigon Nguy~n ~inh Hoa 1967 VIETNAMESE-ENGLISH STUDENT DICTIONARY (Revised and enlarged edition) VietnameseAmerican Association Saigon - 84 - - bibliography Perkell, Joseph S 1969 'Physiology of Speech Produc- tion - Results and Implications of a Quantitative Cineradiographic Study' RESEARCH MONOGRAPH No ~1 MIT Press Cambridge, ~ Pike, Kenneth L 1947 ~ PHONEMICS University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor Postal, Paul M 1968 ASPECTS OF PHONOLOGICAL THEORY Harper & Row New York Thomas, David 1962 'On Defining the Word in Vietnamese' VAN HOA NGUYET SAN Thompson, Lawrence "C ll:~ 'The Problem of the Word in Viet- namese' WORP 19 Wang, William S-Y 1968 'The Basis of Speech' Proje~t on Linguistic Analysis Reports - Series II No.4 - University of California Berkeley 1967 'Phonological Features of Tone' INTERNA"TIONAL JOURNAL OF AMERICAN LINGUISTICS 11:91-105 - 8; -