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Malone Dunlavy

Syllable Final Palatal Stops and Nasals in Vietnamese

In Vietnamese there are 2 main dialects, northern and southern. Between the many

differences of these dialects, one interesting difference is the status of syllable final -ch and -nh.

In onset position, these are a palatal stop and palatal nasal respectively. In coda position,

however, there is some debate about the phonemic status of these two. Thompson (1971) argues

that in the north these are phonemic and in the south they have been merged with the apical stop

and nasal after /i/ and /e/ and merged with velar /k/ and /ŋ/ after other vowels.

In this study, I have created a contrastive wordlist of Vietnamese words with apical,

palatal, and velar stops and nasals in coda position. This wordlist incorporates only front vowels

since these seem to be the only ones that provide a contrastive environment. The apical stop and

nasal appear after every vowel in the language. Velars on the other hand appear after every

vowel except /i/ and /e/, while palatals have the smallest distribution, only appearing after /i/, /e/,

and /a/.

This wordlist was read by 3 native Vietnamese speakers, one northern, one central, and

one southern. I recorded these speakers repeating the Vietnamese word twice after I stated the

English translation using Audacity. After recording, I analyzed and transcribed the data using

Praat. I had considerable difficulty transcribing the tones. I tried to be as consistent as possible

but I found that my speaker said the 1st six words differently from the rest (potentially due to

over-use). I used a broad transcription system because I believe I will be relying mostly on

spectrograms and minimal pair analysis. The tones were transcribed as I originally thought they

were, though the first 6 words differ. I don't believe the tones have any impact on the

pronunciation of the sounds. I don't see any evidence the vowel does either (except for the fact

that some coda sounds don't appear after some vowels.

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Here is a 3 way contrast from my Northern Speaker: bǎɲ bǎn bǎŋ

I believe this contrast to be quite conclusive. If you focus on formant 2, you can see in

the first picture that F2 goes up, I believe this to be evidence that the speaker is preparing to

make a palatal sound. You can also see in that picture that F1 drops significantly. This is caused
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by the jaw moving up to facilitate the use of the body of the tongue. This change in F1 and F2 is

significantly different from picture 2 and 3. Picture 2 shows no change in either while picture 3

shows only a slight change in F1 (the jaw moving up for the same reason). This contrast is

evidenced throughout my speaker's data. I think this is the main line of argument for the analysis

that Thompson puts forth, that in the Northern Dialect, / ɲ/ and /c/ are phonemic.

I have not yet transcribed my central or southern speaker, but plan on doing so

tomorrow, Thursday, and Friday. This way I can begin pumping out my 1st draft this weekend.

Here is all the data I have transcribed:

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Malone Dunlavy