Nói Lái and the structure of the syllable

• Main Authors: Macken, Marlys A., Nguyễn, Hanh T.
• Other Authors: University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2024
• Subjects: Arts and Humanities; Vietanamese; Phonology
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/177931
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Representational units like the segment and syllable remain controversial and are claimed by some to be artifacts of literacy. Drawing on three centuries of Vietnamese nói lái—a linguistic form in which parts of words are switched—in oral folk tales, poetry, discourse, and popular culture, this paper documents the structure of eight nói lái types. The data provide compelling evidence for (i) the psychologically reality of the ‘segment’, ‘feature’, ‘tone’, ‘syllable’, ‘onset’, and ‘rhyme’ as constituents of phonological representations; (ii) the autonomy of phonology, and (iii) the independence of phonological constituents from literacy and the constraints of both the nôm and quốc ngữ writing systems for Vietnamese.