Surface Accent Pattern of Vietnamese --Approach from an Analysis of Chants--

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24520421
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: Kanazawa University
• Principal Investigator: SAIKI MARIKO 金沢大学, 国際機構, 教授 (00195968)
• Research Collaborator: Cho Young-mee Yu ラトガース大学, 東洋言語学科, 准教授
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: ベトナム語 / 伝統音楽 / アウフタクト / 声調言語

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We first hypothesize that occurrences of Auftakt (=Upbeat) in traditional music is correlated with the stress pattern in the surface phonology of languages. In English, for instance, distinctiveness of stresses is at work on the surface level, with a weak stress frequently occurring at the beginning of an utterance, and this in turn explains the predominance of Auftakt in music. However, in non-stress systems such as Japanese and Mandarin, Auftakt is rarely observed in folk melodies, because of the lack of stress phonology. We then note that Vietnamese folk melodies exhibit an anomalous pattern. That is, given the hypothesis above, since Vietnamese has a tone system just as Mandarin, Auftakt should be rarely observedin music. However, Vietnamese children's folk songs collected for our pourpose frequently contain Auftakt in their initial positions. This result lends support to the idea that there might be stress present within the surface organization of Vietnamese phonology.

Free Research Field

理論言語学