THE STRUCTURE OF THE VIETNAMESE NOUN PHRASE

Tuong Hung Nguyen, (Ph.D., Boston University) Assistant Professor, State University of New York at Broome Community College

Abstract As a classifier language, Vietnamese is an interesting case study of the internal structure of noun phrases. This presentation provides an analysis of the Vietnamese Noun Phrase from a generative perspective (Chomsky 1981, 1986), incorporating further developments in the analysis of functional categories (Abney 1987; Pollock 1989; Grimshaw 1991), Antisymmetry approach (Kayne 1994) and Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1993, 1995). Given the empirical evidence that Vietnamese has a class of lexical articles, the Vietnamese Noun Phrase is analyzed as a DP (Determiner Phrase), which contains multiple functional projections, including Classifier (CL), Numeral (Num), Demonstrative (Dem), and Determiner Phrases. The surface structure is derived by an obligatory movement of the extended nominal phrase (NumP) to Spec,DemP, as shown in (1). (1) [DP [D cc [DemP [NumPi [CLP cun [NP sch]]]
Pl.Art. CL book
Dem ny [NumPti]

]]]

this

these books This analysis straightforwardly accounts not only for the DP-final position of demonstratives in Vietnamese but also for the co-occurrence of articles and demonstratives in Vietnamese. Crosslinguistic evidence supports the proposed analysis for Vietnamese. The nominal word order typology of 29 different languages across Austro-Asiatic, Austro-Tai, and Sino-Tibetan language families exhibit four word order patterns shown in (2): (2) Type 1: Yao-type languages: Type 2: Burmese-type languages:
(including Burmese, Lolo, Maru, Rawang)

Dem Dem Num NP

Num NP CL Num

CL Num NP CL

NP CL Dem Dem

Type 3: Vietnamese-type languages:

(including Vietnamese, Malay, Indonesian)

Type 4: Thai-type languages:

(including Thai, Khmer, Lao, Javanese)

It is proposed that the four different linear word order patterns attested in these three language families of Southeast Asia are derived by applications of syntactic movement from a single underlying nominal structure shown in (3): (3) [DemP [NumP [CLP [NP]]]] Derivations of the four surface word orders in (2) will be presented. This proposal can unify the analysis of the distribution of demonstratives relative to the noun phrase in other Southeast Asian languages. In short, it provides insight into the understanding and analysis of noun phrase structure, both in Vietnamese and crosslinguistically. References
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