5. Head-First: On the head-initiality of Vietnamese clauses

On polarity emphasis, assertion and mood in Vietnamese and English

By comparison with other areally- and typologically-related languages, the Vietnamese language disposes of a large and diverse set of (non-affixal) grammatical particles: these display interesting parallels with functional heads in familiar Western European languages. Most of these grammatical morphemes are ‘multifunctional’ in the sense that their meaning is largely—in some cases, exclusively—determined by their clausal distribution; alternatively, by their configurational relationship to other grammatical morphemes. In this paper, I document the distribution of these particles, working down the clausal spine. I also present a set of analyses of those cases where particles interact with one another, with each group considered in its own terms. Following this presentation, some broader implications of these analyses are briefly considered: it is suggested that a more satisfactory explanation of Vietnamese grammar can be found if it is assumed that grammatical meaning inheres in syntax, rather than in lexical representations.

On what projects in Vietnamese

The article proposes a distributed syntax for Vietnamese and Chinese focus particle sentences. It disentangles syntactically the inclusion and exclusion of alternatives typical of focus particle uses from scalar components of meaning that many focus particle sentences convey. Vietnamese and Chinese are shown to have highly elaborate lexical paradigms that map plausibly onto the postulated syntactic and semantic functions. The article then turns to very similar phenomena from German and Dutch. It concludes with the hunch that the system as it unfolds in Vietnamese and Chinese is, in fact, simply an explicit instantiation of a pattern underlying focus particle sentences at a much more general level.

background

A crosslinguistic syntax of scalar and non-scalar focus particle sentences: the view from Vietnamese and Chinese

The aim of this thesis is two-fold: to develop an articulated Vietnamese clause structure in two syntactic domains: VP-external and VP-internal in the spirit of generative grammar, and to see how this functional architecture is supported empirically from the perspective of second language acquisition. 
To address theoretical issues, on the one hand, it brings together interesting semantic and syntactic contrasts of aspectual morphemes in Vietnamese, i.e., the distributional and interpretative independence of Vietnamese tense and aspect as well as the way they interact with other syntactic phenomenon such as negation, quantification and definiteness. On the other hand, it reveals to what extent the mechanisms that Vietnamese recruits to encode aspect are different from those employed in Indo- European languages and other areally-related languages, especially including Chinese. 
Based on a detailed semantic-syntactic investigation of Vietnamese aspect, the thesis sets out the properties that need to be acquired by Chinese learners. It distinguishes between those properties which are acquirable without difficulties and those that are ‘problematic’ in order to verify the proposed Vietnamese functional clause. It also sets out to validate some recent hypotheses in the realm of second language acquisition. 
The thesis is organized as follows. Chapter 1 sets out the theoretical approach of the thesis. Chapter 2 systematically reviews a set of semantic and syntactic studies on aspect that are relevant to the discussion. Chapter 3 lays out previous research on Vietnamese tense and aspect as points of departure for my proposals. Chapters 4 and 5 are devoted to an analysis of how tense and aspect are realized in Vietnamese both pre- and post-verbally. Chapter 6 provides a brief comparison between Vietnamese and Chinese aspectual systems, focusing on the particular properties investigated in the following chapter. Chapter 7 presents a set of experiments examining Chinese learners’ acquisition of Vietnamese aspect-related constructions, these shed light on current generativist hypotheses about second language acquisition. Chapter 8 concludes the thesis.

/pdf/syntax-of-vietnamese-aspect-baem65qn08.pdf

Syntax of Vietnamese Aspect

This paper investigates the place of Vietnamese in the binary NP/DP typology as formulated by Boskovic (2005, 2008, 2009, 2010). Vietnamese patterns with NP languages when it comes to its lack of a genuine definite determiner, the presence of radical pro-drop, and its lack of number morphology, but it patterns with DP languages when it comes to the presence of TP, subject expletives, and subjectobject extraction asymmetries. The mixed status of Vietnamese suggests that the difference between article and article-less languages might not be as straightforward or clearcut as Boskovic claims. In fact, the way these properties pattern in Vietnamese reveals that there are at least three smaller parameters (nominal, clausal, and quantificational) at stake, not just the presence or absence of DP, and that these three are independently fixed as [–DP], [+TP], and [–movement], respectively. Also important is the fact that Vietnamese is a topic-prominent language. Resume: Cet article explore le vietnamien dans le cadre de la typologie SN/SD telle que formulee par Boskovic (2005, 2008, 2009, 2010). Le vietnamien partage avec les langues SN l’absence d’un veritable determinant defini, la presence du pro-drop radical et l’absence de la morphologie de nombre mais il partage avec les langues SD la presence du ST, des expletifs sujets et des asymetries sujet-objet. Ce statut hybride du vietnamien nous porte a proposer que la difference entre les langues SN et les langues SD n’est pas aussi categorique que declare Boskovic. En fait, ces proprietes hybrides du vietnamien suggerent qu’il est question d’au moins trois parametres (nominal, phrastique et quantificationnel) au lieu de la simple presence du SD et que ces parametres en vietnamien ont les valeurs [-SD], [+ST] et [-deplacement], respectivement. Il est egalement important que le vietnamien est une langue dans laquelle le topique est proeminent.

/pdf/vietnamese-and-the-np-dp-parameter-31p2vqoebl.pdf

5. Head-First: On the head-initiality of Vietnamese clauses

Citations

On polarity emphasis, assertion and mood in Vietnamese and English

On what projects in Vietnamese

A crosslinguistic syntax of scalar and non-scalar focus particle sentences: the view from Vietnamese and Chinese

Syntax of Vietnamese Aspect

Vietnamese and the NP/DP parameter

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