Categorical Perception of Tones in Vietnamese

Few studies have investigated the perception of tone contrasts and it is currently unclear whether tones are perceived categorically or continuously by listeners of tone language. In the present study, native speakers of French and Vietnamese received an identification test with several acoustic continua contrasting three among the six tones of the vietnamese language. Results showed clear differences across groups, with native listeners of Vietnamese demonstrating categorical performance in the identification task. Further research is required to determine whether the difference generalizes to discrimination.