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Faculty of Arts and HumanitiesPhonetics (Department of Linguistics)

TIV

Tone and Intonation in Vietnamese

  • Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
  • 36 months (2013-2016)

Fundholder:

Researcher:

Student assistants:

  • Samuel Ebner
  • Simon Wehrle
  • Christian Weitz

Project summary:

The project aims to investigate the forms and functions of intonation in Vietnamese, a language with a complex lexical tone system involving pitch and voice quality features. It has been claimed, precisely because of this complexity at the lexical level, that Vietnamese predominantly makes use of global, phrase-length intonation patterns. Our preliminary results, however, indicate that Vietnamese speakers also make use of local intonational tones, especially at the edges of intonation phrases. The project will provide an in-depth analysis of both global and local tonal phenomena and characterise the interaction between intonation and lexical tone. The degree and nature of this interaction is largely dependent on two factors: the function the intonation is expected to fulfill, and the identity of the lexical tone itself. Intonation can fully obscure a lexical tone if, for example, it is used in backchannel utterances, whereas the lexical tone can prevail (albeit to a differing degree) in other utterance types. The pitch of lexical tones with additional distinctive voice quality undergoes greater intonation-related modification than those that rely more on pitch for their identification. Speech materials will range from strictly controlled laboratory speech through task oriented dialogues to spontaneous conversations recorded over the telephone, so as to exert the degree of control required to probe the different factors determining the surface pitch contour, whilst at the same time keeping sight of the functions being expressed.

Workshops hosted in Cologne

Part of our work on intonation involves the investigation of talk in interaction. Such an investigation needs to take into account the cultural context in which speech is produced. To this end, the TIV group has organised a conference on Vietnamese Language and Culture which attracted participants from different universities and institutions based in Germany, Vietnam, France and the United Kingdom. The workshop covers a broad range of disciplines including Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Cross-Cultural Communication, Bilingualism and Southeast Asian Studies

  • 29-30 November 2014: Vietnamese Language and Culture, workshop for junior researchers, University of Cologne (funded by the University of Cologne and the Cologne Center of Language Sciences).

In August 2015 we hosted a further conference on Vietnamese language, this time focusing on prosody including word prosodic structure, intonation and tone (webpage of the workshop is coming soon)

  • 16-18 August 2015: Vietnamese Prosody, University of Cologne (funded by the German Research Foundation-DFG and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada-SSHRCC).

Publications

  • Ha, K. P. (2013). Prosodic means in repair initiation as an activity in Northern Vietnamese conversation. In Hole, D. & Löbel, E. (Eds.). Linguistics of Vietnamese - an international survey. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter Mouton. 35-54.
  • Ha, K.P. & M. Grice (2013). The intonation of repair initiations in Northern Vietnamese: Evidence from multi-word utterances. Oral presentation at SEALS 23, May 29-31 May 2013, Bangkok.
  • Ha, K.P. (2013). Prosody in Northern Vietnamese conversations. At the International Research Institute MICA, Hanoi University of Science and Technology, 6 June 2013.
  • Ha, K. P. (2013). Prosodic means in repair initiation as an activity in Northern Vietnamese conversation. In Hole, D. & Löbel, E. (Eds.). Linguistics of Vietnamese - an international survey. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter Mouton. 35-54.
  • Ha, K.P. & M. Grice (2013). The intonation of repair initiations in Northern Vietnamese: Evidence from multi-word utterances. Oral presentation at SEALS 23, May 29-31 May 2013, Bangkok.
  • Ha, K.P. (2013). Prosody in Northern Vietnamese conversations. At the International Research Institute MICA, Hanoi University of Science and Technology, 6 June 2013.
  • Ha, K. P. & S. Dahmen (2016): Formen und Funktionen von Backchannels im Gespräch - Eine potentielle Quelle für interkulturelle Missverständnisse. In Hirschfeld, U., Lange, F. & Stock, E. (Hrsg.): Phonetische und rhetorische Aspekte der interkulturellen Kommunikation. Schriften zur Sprechwissenschaft und Phonetik, Band 7, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 85-96.
  • Ha, K. P. & S. Dahmen (2016): Formen und Funktionen von Backchannels im Gespräch - Eine potentielle Quelle für interkulturelle Missverständnisse. In Hirschfeld, U., Lange, F. & Stock, E. (Hrsg.): Phonetische und rhetorische Aspekte der interkulturellen Kommunikation. Schriften zur Sprechwissenschaft und Phonetik, Band 7, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 85-96.
  • Ha, Kieu-Phuong & Martine Grice (2016): Tone and intonation in discourse management - How do speakers of Standard Vietnamese initiate a repair. Journal of Pragmatics, vol. 107, 60-83. [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378216616306336https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1UDDQ1L-nh42QW]
  • Brunelle, Marc & Kieu-Phuong Ha & Martine Grice (2016): Inconspicuous coarticulation: a complex path to sound change in the tone system in Hanoi Vietnamese. Journal of Phonetics, vol. 59, 23-39.
  • Ha, K. P. & S. Dahmen (2016): Formen und Funktionen von Backchannels im Gespräch - Eine potentielle Quelle für interkulturelle Missverständnisse. In Hirschfeld, U., Lange, F. & Stock, E. (Hrsg.): Phonetische und rhetorische Aspekte der interkulturellen Kommunikation. Schriften zur Sprechwissenschaft und Phonetik, Band 7, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 85-96.
  • Ha, K. P. & S. Dahmen (2016): Formen und Funktionen von Backchannels im Gespräch - Eine potentielle Quelle für interkulturelle Missverständnisse. In Hirschfeld, U., Lange, F. & Stock, E. (Hrsg.): Phonetische und rhetorische Aspekte der interkulturellen Kommunikation. Schriften zur Sprechwissenschaft und Phonetik, Band 7, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 85-96.
  • Ha, K. P. & S. Dahmen (2016): Formen und Funktionen von Backchannels im Gespräch - Eine potentielle Quelle für interkulturelle Missverständnisse. In Hirschfeld, U., Lange, F. & Stock, E. (Hrsg.): Phonetische und rhetorische Aspekte der interkulturellen Kommunikation. Schriften zur Sprechwissenschaft und Phonetik, Band 7, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 85-96.
  • Ha, Kieu-Phuong & Silva Dahmen (2016): Formen und Funktionen von Backchannels im Gespräch - Eine potentielle Quelle für interkulturelle Missverständnisse. In Hirschfeld, U., Lange, F. & Stock, E. (Hrsg.): Phonetische und rhetorische Aspekte der interkulturellen Kommunikation. Schriften zur Sprechwissenschaft und Phonetik, Band 7, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle Wittenberg, 85-96.
  • Ha, Kieu-Phuong, Samuel Ebner & Martine Grice (2016): Speech prosody and possible misunderstandings in intercultural talk - A study of listener behaviour in Vietnamese and German dialogues. Proc. Speech Prosody 8, Boston, 801-805. 
  • Ha, Kieu-Phuong & Simon Wehrle (2015): Bericht über den Nachwuchsworkshop „Vietnamesische Sprache und Kultur“, November 2014, Universität zu Köln. In Jahrbuch 2014/15 der a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne, 138-141.
  • Ha, Kieu-Phuong, Martine Grice & Marc Brunelle (2014): Tonal allophony in Vietnamese: Evidence from task-oriented dialogues. In Campbell, N. & Gibbon, D. & Hirst D. (eds): Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Social and Linguistic Speech Prosody, Dublin.
  • Ha, Kieu-Phuong (2013): Prosodic means in repair initiations as an activity in Northern Vietnamese conversation. In Hole, D. & E. Löbel (eds.): Linguistics of Vietnamese - an international survey. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter Mouton, 35-54.
  • Ha, Kieu-Phuong (2012): Prosody in Vietnamese - Intonational Form and Function of Short Utterances in Conversation. Asia-Pacific Linguistics 002 (SEAMLESS 001). PhD thesis, Canberra: The Australian National University. ISBN 978-1-922185-01-3.
  • Brunelle, Marc, Ha Kieu-Phuong & Martine Grice (2012): Intonation in Northern Vietnamese. The Linguistic Review 29(1): 3-36.

Presentations at workshops and conferences

  • Speech Prosody and Misunderstandings in Intercultural Communication: A Study of Listener Behavior in Vietnamese and German Task-Oriented Dialogues. Oral presentation at the Workshop for junior researchers on Vietnamese Language and Culture, 29-30 November, University of Cologne.
  • Cangemi, Francesco, Christian Weitz, Kieu-Phuong Ha, Marc Brunelle & Martine Grice (2016): Individual specificity, redundancy and the evolution of phonological systems: Intonation in a tone language. Oral talk at the 15th Biennial Conference of Laboratory Phonology: Speech Dynamics and Phonological Representation, July 13-16, 2016, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY USA.
  • Ha, K. P., S. Ebner & M. Grice (accepted). Speech prosody and possible misunderstandings in intercultural talk – A study of listener behaviour in Standard Vietnamese and German dialogues. Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Speech Prosody 8, Boston. 
  • Ha, K. P., S. Ebner & M. Grice (accepted). Speech prosody and possible misunderstandings in intercultural talk – A study of listener behaviour in Standard Vietnamese and German dialogues. Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Speech Prosody 8, Boston. 
  • Cangemi, Francesco, Kieu-Phuong Ha, Christian Weitz & Martine Grice (2015): Speaker-specific use of intonational cues for sentence modality and affect contrasts in Standard Vietnamese. Talk at the international workshop on Vietnamese Prosody, 16-18 August, University of Cologne. 
  • Ha, Kieu-Phuong (2014): Speech prosody and misunderstandings in intercultural communication: a study of listener behaviour in Vietnamese and German task-oriented dialogues. Oral presentation at the workshop for junior researchers on Vietnamese Language and Culture, 29-30 November, Cologne.
  • Brunelle, Marc, Kieu-Phuong Ha & Martine Grice (2014): Peak delay, misperception and the development of tone sandhi in Hanoi Vietnamese. Oral presentation at the 6th Tone and Intonation in Europe (TIE), 10-12 September, Utrecht.
  • Brunelle, Marc (2014): An incipient tone sandhi in Hanoi Vietnamese? Colloquium, McGill, 03/2014.
  • Ha, Kieu-Phuong, Martine Grice & Marc Brunelle (2014): Tonal allophony in Vietnamese: Evidence from task-oriented dialogues. Poster presentation at the 7th International Conference on Speech Prosody, 20-23 May, Dublin.
  • Ha, Kieu-Phuong (2013): Prosody in Northern Vietnamese conversations. Oral presentation at the International Research Insitute MICA, Hanoi University of Science and Technology, 6 June, Hanoi.
  • Ha, Kieu-Phuong & Martine Grice (2013): The intonation of repair initiations in Northern Vietnamese: Evidence from multi-word utterances. Oral presentation at SEALS 23, 29-31 May, Bangkok.