Tran Hong Lam – 8CHA Vietnamese, the official language of Vietnam, is spoken natively by approximately ninety million people in Vietnam as well as by some three million overseas Characteristically, Vietnamese is a tonal, analytic, monosyllabic language Because of this, it has been argued that the Vietnamese originated from the Sino-Tibetan dialect group and the tones also share characteristics with the ones of this language group Later studies came to the conclusion that the Vietnamese derived from the Austronesian languages In the course of cultural intercourse Vietic language borrowed words from Chinese language, leading to the use of tones to express the loanwords The tones of the Vietnamese language therefore not only share the mutual characteristics with the languages groups in the region, but also characterized by its own distinctive features, which has played an important role in the development of phonological theory This essay will reviews the definition, origin, characteristics, distribution rules as well as the functions of the Vietnamese tones The first issue of the essay considered to be examined is the term “Tone”, which is defined as the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning that is to distinguish or to inflect words (Yip, 2002) In other word, tone, in linguistics, is a variation in the pitch of the voice while speaking The word tone is usually applied to languages (called tonal languages) in which pitch serves to help distinguish words and grammatical categories i.e., in which pitch characteristics are used to differentiate one word from another word that is otherwise identical in its sequence of consonants and vowels For example, “co” in Vietnamese may mean either “palm” (cọ) or “grass” (cỏ) depending on its pitch In these languages, pitch is a property of words, however actually it is not absolute pitch but relative pitch Tonal languages usually make use of a limited number of pitch contrasts (R.L Trask, 2004) These contrasts are called the tones of the language The domain of the tones is usually the syllable There are two main types of tone languages: register-tone, or level-tone, languages and contour-tone languages Register-tone languages use tones that are level; i.e., they have relatively steady-state pitches, which differ with regard to being relatively higher or Tran Hong Lam – 8CHA lower This is characteristic of many tonal languages in West Africa In contour-tone languages at least some of the tones must be described in terms of pitch movements, such as rises and falls or more complex movements such as rise–falls This is characteristic of many tone languages of Southeast Asia (Yip, 2002) The second matter of the essay is that Vietnamese tones were originated through the periods of monosyllablization and language interference during the first six centuries of the Christian era Originally, Vietnamese was a toneless language (A Haudricourt, 1954); in its word, there were affixations, initial consonant clusters, ending consonants articulated at pharynx and glottis or made in the manner of fricative The development of Vietnamese tonal system was caused by the syllabic simplification at the beginning of Christian era To become monosyllabic language, the sounds like [-h], [-s], and [-Ɂ] disappeared, and three tonal types were made as a compensation for this Firstly, the disappearance of [-Ɂ] ending consonant produced the tonal type of “sắc” and “nặng” Secondly, the [-h] ending sound faded into the tonal type of “ngã” and “hỏi” Lastly, open phonemes has become the tonal type of “ngang” and “huyền” (Nguyễn Văn Phúc, 2006) At the end of the time that the ethnic of Kinh and Muong sharing the common in language and the beginning of the period that Vietnamese separated from Muong, due to the influence of Chinese domination (the Tang Dynasty), the early Vietnamese sounds changed At this time, most of the initial consonants in Vietnamese are voiceless, while the ones in Sino language are mainly voiced Many Chinese words, then were loaned to Vietnamese, must become voiceless In order to preserve their features in term of pitch, the initial voiceless consonants in Chinese words, transferred into Vietnamese ones, were in high pitch (ngang, sắc, hỏi), while the initial voiced consonants in Chinese, turned to initial consonants in Vietnamese words must belong to the group of low tones (huyền, ngã nặng) Accordingly, from the three tonal types, tones were derived (Nguyen Ngoc San, 2003; Nguyễn Tài Cẩn, 1995) Thus, the Vietnamese language originally was not a tonal language, but in the development of Vietnamese, tones were created that include tone Tran Hong Lam – 8CHA “ngang” or tone 1, tone “huyền” or tone 2, tone “ngã” or tone 3, tone “hỏi” or tone 4, tone “sắc” or tone 5, and tone “nặng” or tone Thirdly, Vietnamese tones are characterized by four major criteria that consist of tune (âm điệu), vocal range or register (âm vực), strength (cường độ), and length (trường độ) Firstly, Tune is characterized by the variance of fundamental acoustic frequency in the process of pronouncing a syllable This variance is called the tune line Based on this feature, Vietnamese tones can be divided into major groups: leveling (bằng), and non-leveling (trắc) Tones having flat tune or low falling are put into leveling group that consists of tone and tone 2, while tones like [3, 4, 5, and 6] are non-leveling tones Their graphs are complicated and vary in a wide range Generally, tone is described as high (or mid) rising, tone is constricted falling, while there is a variance in the tune of tone and Thus tone and are linear, whereas tone and tone are not (Đoàn Thiện Thuật, 1977) Secondly, Vocal range can be understood as the average height or pitch of tone in pronouncing syllables Vietnamese tones can belong to either high vocal range (bổng/cao), or the low one (trầm, thấp) The tones [1 - - 5] are in the group of high vocal range; while the tones [2-4-6] belong to low vocal range (Nguyễn Đình Hòa, 1997) Within the same vocal range, there is the difference in pitch between tones That means, taking the high vocal range into an account, tone differentiates from tone and tone in term of pitch property; tone is leveling while tone3 and tone are varied Similarly, in low vocal range of tone [2 - - 6], tone differentiates from tone and tone in the same criteria In other words, tones in the same vocal range differentiate from each other in tune Thirdly, Strength is a secondary characteristic On the experimental data, Hoàng Cao Cương (1986) considered that there is a decrease in strength of tones 3, 4, 5, 6, but the strength of tones 1, and are the same when pronouncing Other researcher of linguistics (Mai Ngọc Chừ, Vũ Đức Nghiệu, Hoàng Trọng Phiến, 1999) noted that the strength of tones and remains weak and flat, while Thompson (1967) divided tonal criteria according to the tenseness (căng) and laxness (chùng) Tenseness and laxness are correlative to high and low Tran Hong Lam – 8CHA strength respectively Lax tones are tones and 2, and tense tones are the remains Lastly, length of tones is also an auxiliary criterion, and a quantitative one There are two duration types of Vietnamese tonal length: the long duration in open syllable (ending without /p, t, k, ch/) and the short one in closed syllable (ending with /p, t k, ch/) The tone and tone are able to appear in short duration of the tonal length that syllables end with voiceless, plosive consonants The tones [1, 2, 3, and 4] need the long shape of the tonal length in order to express completely their tune Fourthly, the distribution rules of Vietnamese tones are revealed in monosyllables, reduplicative words, and poetry Firstly in monosyllables, the tones are expressed simultaneously with other phonemes in the syllable Their expressions are therefore affected syllable phonemes The distribution of the tones must be considered in relation with the syllable components Tone and tone are flat tones This feature requires a certain degree of the tonal length in order to expose their characteristic Thus these tones never appear in the syllables ending with voiceless consonant While tone and tone are not flat but their pitch only changes in one way, either raising (tone 5) or falling (tone 6), and they are not as complicated as tone and tone in term of pitch That means one-way feature in changing pitch of tone and tone make them be able to appear in syllable ending with voiceless, plosive consonants like /p, t, k, ch/ Secondly, the distribution of the double reduplicative words obeys the rules that the first syllable must be in the same vocal range with the second syllable There are two vocal ranges for these tones The high vocal range is for the tones 1, 4, 5, and the low one is for the tones 2, 3, and That means: if the first syllable have tone inside, the second syllable can only be characterized by tones 1, or 4, or Similarly, if one syllable has tone 2, the other only have tone 2, or This is in accordance with the syllable division by the pitch of the sound (phù-high, trầm-low) in rules traditional poetry Last but not least, the distribution rule in poetry depends on tune rule and rhyme rule In the traditional poetry, tones are distributed following the tune rules in which the tonic of the previous line of Tran Hong Lam – 8CHA a poem and the tonic of the following line of the poem, which are rhymed together, must be in the same tune Additionally, if in a line of a poem having two syllables, which are rhymed, one syllable is rhymed with the tonic of the previous line, the other have to be in accordance with the tonic of the following line The two syllables are not necessary in the same tune However, they are must be in different vocal range if they in are same tune The poem with the title “Thương vợ” by Tế Xương, which is a kind of “Tang” poetry (thơ Đường luật), can be taken as an example In this poem, the syllables 2, 4, 6, and of each line have to follow the tune rule, while the ending syllables of line 1, 2, 4, and are rhymed The tune rule for this poem is leveling rule (luật bằng) because the tonic syllable, which are the ending syllables of line 1, 2, 4, 6, and 8, are leveling, in other word they use either tone or tone Quanh năm buôn bán mom sông Nuôi đủ năm với chồng Lặn lội thân cò quãng vắng Eo sèo mặt nước buổi đò đơng Một dun hai nợ âu đành phận Năm nắng mười mưa dám quản cơng Cha mẹ thói đời ăn bạc! Có chồng hờ hững không! Another example of using the tune rule and rhyme rule in Vietnamese poetry is the extract of “Truyện Kiều” by Nguyễn Du, which was written in the sin-eight-word distich metre ( thể thơ lục bát) Trăm năm cõi người ta, Chữ tài chữ mệnh khéo ghét Trải qua bể dâu, Những điều trơng thấy mà đau đớn lòng Lạ bỉ sắc tư phong, Tran Hong Lam – 8CHA Trời xanh quen thói má hồng đánh ghen Cảo thơm lần giở trước đèn, Phong tình có lục truyền sử xanh Rằng năm Gia Tĩnh triều Minh, Bốn phương phẳng lặng, hai kinh vững vàng The sin-eight-word distich metre is a Vietnamese kind of poetry, in which the tones of nd word, 6th word, (and 8th word of the eight-word line) are leveling, while the th word is nonleveling This kind is rhymed in the way that the th word of a six-word line is rhymed with the 6th word of the following eight-word line, and the 8th word of this line is rhymed with the ending word of the following line Additionally, they belong to leveling tune Although the th word and the 8th word of an eight-word line are leveling, they are deferent in term of vocal range However, the composition of modern poems is no longer strictly regulated as the composition of traditional poems was, but it still based on the similarity of tune when syllables are rhymed in lines of poems Lastly, Vietnamese tones have two main functions including the distinguishing function and expressive function In terms of the former one, there have been many studies of linguistic types, and the linguistic divisions in these works are also somewhat different But in general, world languages are divided into two basic types, analytic languages and synthetic languages in morphological typology Vietnamese language is an analytic language with full of features of the type of the languages It is obvious that Vietnamese tones have the function of meaning differentiation Everyone knows "CA có quai" (camug) is not "CA có đi” (cá-fish), or "CA có cuống" (cà-a kind of fruit related to tomato), or "CA có đơi" (cạ-couple) Probably because of the obviousness scholars usually only provide a few pairs of minimalist words like ca / cá / cà / cạ mentioned above in the research and textbooks of Vietnamese phonetics It seems that the distinct function of the tones is so Tran Hong Lam – 8CHA clear that nothing needs to discuss more But there are two aspects that need to emphasize Firstly, if the stress in other languages is only worth to distinguish the meaning of the polysyllabic words, the Vietnamese tones even participates in the distinction of the monosyllabic vocabulary in Vietnamese As we all know, Vietnamese is an analytic, monosyllabic language Vietnamese syllables play important roles in phonology as well as morphology This is clearly expressed in the way of speaking and writing by single syllable of the Vietnamese Unlike in the European inflectional/fusional languages (ngơn ngữ biến hình) where the stress is always attached to the word in order to distinguish the word units in polysyllabic words, the tones in Vietnamese are always attached to monosyllabic words Thanks to these characteristics, the Vietnamese easily recognize and distinguish the basic differences between the simple language units such as the example mention above Secondly, if the word stress in other languages only contributes to the meaning differentiation at a few words, the Vietnamese tones are largely involved in the Vietnamese word units (accounting for 86.51%) (Vo Xuan Hao, 2009) The tone is not the same as the stress in inflectional languages In these languages, word stress can be fixed or free, and its role is limited and blurry in terms of meaning distinction We sometimes encounter a few pairs of words, where the stress actually implements its distinct function It is not enough if only the distinguishing meaning function of Vietnamese tones is considered to study Another function of Vietnamese tones is expressive one In many cases it seems that Vietnamese people have similar feelings between pairs of words such as: “bấp bênh” and “bập bềnh” (unstable), “đôm đốp” and “đồm độp” (like the sound of falling rain), or “cót két” and “cọt kẹt” It is Tran Hong Lam – 8CHA difficult to express the feeling that deepens in the senses of native speakers in a straight way According to the survey by Vo Xuan Hao (2009) of the tones in the reduplicative words based on the Vietnamese dictionary of reduplicative words (Từ điển từ láy tiếng Việt) there are 5488 reduplicative words; accounting for 29.14% of these words there are 1598 “homonym” reduplicative words, in which a syllable is only distinguished by the tone from the other According to the statistics presented above, the ability to express the acoustic characteristics of the high / low pitch and the continuity of producing (fracture / non-fractal) characteristics in reduplicative words is commented by the author that in the kind of reduplicative words, tones belong to the high vocal range (1, 3, and 5) often depicts short, weak, steady, resounding, deafening and continuous sounds If the bass feature of sound is not well presented by the tones in high vocal range, this feature is clearly expressed by the tones in low vocal range (2, 4, and 6) Tones are in low vocal range often describing short, weak, steady, non-resounding, bass, and continuous sounds Ability to describe the characteristics of the sound is also quite clear according to the leveling/ non-leveling criteria Vietnamese tones not only have the distinguishing function of word meaning, but also are able to express the feeling sense of words The expressive function of Vietnamese tones is mainly expressed in terms of pitch and continuity in tonal producing In short, the differences between tones with other tones in these criteria have caused the ability to express the sense of word In summary, in the research, author has based on previous theoretical as well as experimental studies of Vietnamese linguists on Vietnamese tones in order to clarify the definition, origin, characteristics, distribution rules and functions of Vietnamese tones Vietnamese tones are supra-fractal syllables, and they play important roles in the phonology Vietnamese language, a type of monosyllabic language Vietnamese tones not only share similar features with the tones of other languages in the region but also have their own characteristics Tran Hong Lam – 8CHA References In Vietnamese Đoàn Thiện Thuật (1977), Ngữ âm tiếng Việt, Hà Nội: Nhà Xuất Bản Đại Học Trung Học Chuyên Nghiệp, Hồng Cao Cương (1986), “Điệu tính phi điệu tính điệu tiếng Việt”, Những vấn đề ngơn ngữ học ngôn ngữ phương Đông tr 64 - 70 Mai Ngọc Chừ, Vũ Đức Nghiệu, Hoàng Trọng Phiến (1999), Cơ sở ngôn ngữ học tiếng Việt, Hà Nội, Nhà xuất Giáo dục Nguyễn Đình Hòa (1997), Vietnamese-Tiếng Việt không son phấn, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Pub Nguyễn Ngọc San (2003), Tìm hiểu lịch sử qua tiếng Việt, Hồ Chí Minh: NXB Đại học sư phạm Nguyễn Tài Cẩn (1995), Giáo trình lịch sử ngữ âm tiếng Việt, Hà Nội: Nhà xuất Giáo dục Nguyễn Văn Phúc (2006), Ngữ âm tiếng Việt thực hành, Hà Nội: NXB ĐHNN Võ Xuân Hào (2009), Giáo trình ngữ âm tiếng Việt đại, Quy Nhơn: Trường Đại học Quy Nhơn, In English Tran Hong Lam – 8CHA Haudricourt, André-Georges (1954) “De l’origine des tons en vietnamien.” Journal Asiatique 242: 69–82 English translation by Marc Brunelle: “The origin of tones in Vietnamese” Thompson, Laurence (1967), The history of Vietnamese final palatals, Language 43, No1 Trask, Robert (2004), A Dictionary of Phonetics and Phonology, New York, Routledge Yip,Moira (2002), Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics, Cambridge: CUP 10 ... become the tonal type of “ngang” and “huyền” (Nguyễn Văn Phúc, 2006) At the end of the time that the ethnic of Kinh and Muong sharing the common in language and the beginning of the period that Vietnamese. .. poetry, tones are distributed following the tune rules in which the tonic of the previous line of Tran Hong Lam – 8CHA a poem and the tonic of the following line of the poem, which are rhymed together,... that the first syllable must be in the same vocal range with the second syllable There are two vocal ranges for these tones The high vocal range is for the tones 1, 4, 5, and the low one is for the