Abstract
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.
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Acknowledgements
This paper summarizes the results of research carried out over nearly twenty years and presented in two invited talks given at CamCos3 (University of Cambridge), and TEAL9 (Nantes). This work would have been impossible without the invaluable help, advice, and support of Vietnamese native speakers in Montreal and elsewhere. My gratitude extends to my professional colleagues, most especially to my co-author on several papers, Trang Phan, and to Tue Trinh, both of whose suggestions and criticisms have significantly improved my understanding of this language. As noted in the text, this paper has been extensively revised in response to audience reaction and to reviewers’ comments: I am very grateful to them for their time and expertise and to the editors for their forbearance.
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Duffield, N. On what projects in Vietnamese. J East Asian Linguist 26, 351–387 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-017-9161-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-017-9161-1