Introduction

The goal of the present project is to provide a theoretically-informed comparative description of the Vietnamese language, focussing on issues of syntax and interpretation. The description is theoretically-informed in the sense that we investigate issues of interest to theoretical linguists, especially questions of structural well-formedness (syntax) and interpretation. Our description is intended to be explicitly comparative; in particular, we are interested in commonalities between Vietnamese and historically unrelated languages (such as English) on the one hand, as well as more subtle differences between Vietnamese and areally and typologically related languages (such as Mandarin, Cantonese, Thai, and Khmer) on the other.

The overarching aim in this grammar is to provide a description, rather than a specific analysis. That said, as a syntactician, it is also my intention to use this description in support of a theoretical (Minimalist) analysis of Vietnamese phrase-structure. To that end, I have listed links to my own attempts (previously published, and in progress) to understand Vietnamese in Minimalist terms, and to better understand Minimalism through Vietnamese. I welcome all comments on any aspect of this work.

Discussion Blog

There is also a blog to accompany this online grammar: here, you can find news of recently updated pages, discussion of specific data points, and queries about some of the topics mentioned in the grammar.

Acknowledgement

Nigel Duffield's work on this project, from February to June 2009, is partially supported by a Research Leave Extension award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK).


I should also like to acknowledge the invaluable support of graduate students working on Vietnamese at different institutions in the UK, US and Vietnam, especially James Kirby (University of Chicago), Trang Phan (University of Sheffield), and Tue Trinh (MIT); also, many others who have contributed to the project in the past. See main acknowledgments page.

Sections and Notes

It should be noted that the Table of Contents is highly provisional. Many of the section headings are based on a recent grammar of Cantonese (Matthews & Yip 1994, Routledge): as we proceed with this project, many language-specific revisions and amendments are anticipated.

The grammar itself is divided into several sections, focussing on different levels of linguistic structure (including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and discourse). The long-term goal is that each of these sections will be comprehensive and coherent enough to stand alone as a contribution towards our understanding of Vietnamese grammar. In the medium term, however, the goal is to provide some basic content for each section heading. To that end, many section heading link to Notes, rather than a full section text. These notes range from a few lines to a few pages in length. They are not intended to substitute for more detailed discussion; nevertheless, it is hoped that they will prove useful.

The distinction between notes and sections is indicated by an (N) beside the section heading where a note substitutes for a section.

 
 
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