Full Description
The Syntax of Vietnamese Tense, Aspect, and Negation investigates familiar grammatical phenomena including Tense, Aspect, and Negation in a theoretically understudied language, Vietnamese.
The purpose of this book is to thoroughly examine how these categories are realised and how they interact with one another in Vietnamese in the spirit of Generative Grammar, in particular, the Cartographic approach to syntax and its most recently developed lexicalisation technique, Nanosyntax. It is concluded that despite lacking inflectional tense, Vietnamese does have syntactic tense, i.e., Vietnamese has those structural positions which are dedicated to Tense and Aspect. In fact, Tense and Aspect in Vietnamese are realised via a rigid fine-grained functional sequence which syntacticises subtle semantic distinctions both preverbally and post-verbally. There is a two-way complicated relationship between Negation and Aspect in Vietnamese, which can be explained in a principled way by taking into consideration how the internal syntax of the temporal, aspectual, and negative markers derives their clausal syntax. This book also discusses how Vietnamese Tense, Aspect, and Negation pattern with, and differ from, their counterparts in Western Indo-European languages, and how this study contributes to a better understanding of East and mainland Southeast Asian languages more generally, as well as of language universally.
This book will be of interest to both undergraduate and postgraduate students of contemporary linguistics, and for scholars interested in contemporary approaches to Vietnamese linguistics, and Southeast Asian languages more generally.
Contents
PREFACE
ABBREVIATIONS
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1. Objectives
2. Why Vietnamese Tense, Aspect, and Negation?
3. Research questions
4. Theoretical assumptions
5. Outline of the book
CHAPTER 2: SYNTACTICISING TENSEDNESS
1. Introduction
2. Theoretical background
3. Non-peripherality
4. Non-optionality
5. The hierarchy of tense and aspect
6. Other properties associated with tensedness
6.1. Bare predicates
6.2. Finiteness
6.3. Expletive subjects
7. Conclusion
CHAPTER 3: DECOMPOSING THE PERFECT
1. Introduction
2. Theoretical background
3. The semantic compositionality of đã
3.1. Achievements and đã
3.2. States and đã
3.3. Activities and đã
3.4. Accomplishments and đã
3.5. Discussion
4. The interaction between đã and negative/interrogative markers không/chýa
4.1. Đã in the absence of negative không/chưa
4.2. Đã in the presence of negative không/chưa
4.3. Đã in the presence of interrogative không/chưa
4.4. Discussion
5. The Interaction between đã and other preverbal elements
6. Conclusion
CHAPTER 4: CALCULATING TELICITY
1. On the compositionality of telicity in Vietnamese
1.1. Inherently telic verbs
1.2. Telic particles
1.3. Numeral direct object
1.4. Other factors
2. The syntactic projection of telicity in Vietnamese
3. Immediate consequence: Thematic hierarchy in causatives
4. Extension
5. Conclusion
CHAPTER 5: DECOMPOSING THE NEGATORS
1. Introduction
2. Negation and Lexical Aspect
3. Negation and Grammatical Aspect: the differences between không and chưa
4. Negation and Interrogativity
4.1. A cross-linguistic perspective
4.2. The similarities between negative không/chưa and interrogative không/chưa
4.3. Differences between negative không/chưa and interrogative không/chưa
4.4. A proposal for the featural make-up of không and chưa
5. Conclusion
CHAPTER 6: EXPLAINING THE NEGATION CONSTRAINT ON ASPECT
1. Introduction
2. Previous accounts
3. Explaining the negation constraint: The Nanosyntactic approach
4. Conclusion
CHAPTER 7: FINAL REMARKS
1. Does Vietnamese have Tense?
2. What is the functional sequence of Aspect markers in Vietnamese?
3. How does Negation interact with Tense Aspect in Vietnamese?
4. What does this study of Vietnamese TAN contribute to a better understanding of East and mainland Southeast Asian languages as well as of language more universally?
