F0 and phonation types in Nghe Tinh Vietnamese tones

This paper describes tonal F0 and phonation types in the unstopped tones of the hitherto little studied North Central Vietnamese dialect of Nghe Tinh. Field recordings of six female native speakers are analysed. It is shown that speakers differ in number of tones (5 vs. 4); tonal contour; and in amount of tonal laryngealisation, some of which correlate with sociological factors. Normalisation of F0 and duration reveals consistent characteristics of the contrastive tonemes. Phonation type is assumed to be used as a secondary cue. 1