Vietnamese grammar

Vietnamese is an analytic language, meaning it conveys grammatical information primarily through combinations of words as opposed to affixes. The basic word order is subject-verb-object (SVO), but utterances may be restructured so as to be topic-prominent. Vietnamese also has verb serialization. In sentences, the head of the phrase usually precedes its complements (i.e. head-initial), nouns are classified according to series of lexical parameters (noun classifier system), and pronouns may be absent from utterances (pro-drop, sometimes without copula verbs). Question words in the language do not exhibit wh-movement.

Word classes

Vietnamese lexical categories (or "parts of speech") consist of:

nouns demonstrative noun modifiers articles classifiers numerals quantifiers the focus marker particles verbs adjectives adverbial particles prepositions

The syntax of each lexical category and its associated phrase (i.e., the syntactic constituents below the sentence level) is detailed below. Attention is paid to both form and function.

Morphosyntax

Nouns and noun phrases

Nouns can be distinguished from verbs syntactically in that the copula là "to be" may precede nouns in predications, whereas the copula fails to occur before verbs or adjectives.

Mai là sinh viên. "Mai is (a) student."

For the meaning of the sentence to be understandable, in the sentence above the copula là precedes sinh viên "student". Omitting the copula, as in *Mai sinh viên results in an ungrammatical sentence.As is typical in linguistic writings, the asterisk * is used in this article to indicate ungrammatical sentences. In contrast, verbs/adjectives do not co-occur with the copula.

Mai cao. "Mai is tall."

The adjective cao (as in the sentence above) does not require a preceding copula, and thus the sentence *Mai là cao is ill-formed.

The noun category can be further subdivided into different noun classes according to semantic and syntactic criteria. Some of the subclasses identified in Nguyễn (1997) include:

proper noun common noun item noun collective noun unit (or measure) noun mass noun time noun abstract noun classifier locative

Nouns can be modified with other words, resulting in complex noun phrases. These modifiers include demonstratives, quantifiers, classifiers, prepositional phrases, and other attributive lexical words, such as other nouns and verbs. These modifiers co-occur with the modified noun (known as the head noun or noun phrase head), but there are restrictions on what kinds of modifiers are allowed depending upon the subclass of noun. The noun phrase has the following structure:

TOTALITY + ARTICLE + QUANTIFIER + CLASSIFIER + HEAD NOUN + ATTRIBUTIVE MODIFIER(S) + DEMONSTRATIVE + PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE(possessive)

Example:

Article position

Following Nguyễn Hùng Tưởng (2004) and Nguyễn T. C. (1975), Vietnamese has an article lexical category slot that occurs before a quantifier.

Quantifiers

Quantifiers (also known as numerators) modify the adjacent noun by expressing their quantity. In Vietnamese, they occur within a noun phrase before a head noun (with or without a classifier). Quantifiers include cardinal numerals and other words which indicate some quantity. (Cardinal numerals are described in the numeral section.) Examples of quantifiers:

Quantifier English gloss một, hai, ba, bốn, etc. cardinal numerals vài, vài ba few dăm, dăm bảy several, few mọi every mỗi each từng each in turn mấy few, how much/how many bao nhiêu how much/how many bây nhiêu/bấy nhiêu "this much/this many

Quantifiers directly precede the head noun that they modify when the head occurs without a classifier:

how many = bao nhiêu

When a classifier co-occurs with a following head noun, the quantifier precedes the classifier:

As in English, mass nouns such as thịt "meat", đất "soil", and collective nouns such as trâu bò "cattle", ruộng nương "(rice) fields" usually occur without quantifiers in Vietnamese. However, these nouns can be specified by words denoting measurement units such as cân "kilogram", lạng "tael", nắm "handful", chén "cupful":

Focus marker position

The optional particle cái is identified as a focus marker by Nguyễn Hùng Tưởng (2004). It has been called by several other names, including general classifier, general categorical, 'extra" cái, "extra" general classifier, definite article, superarticle, definite word, demonstrative word, and chỉ xuất "indexical". Focus cái occurs directly before classifiers or unit nouns and may be preceded by other pre-noun modifiers such as quantifiers, numerals, and articles. It always co-occurs with a classifier.The only apparent exception to this is a sequence of focus cái and inanimate classifier cái (e.g., *hai cái cái bàn này "these very two tables"), which is ungrammatical. Nguyễn H. T. (2004) attributes this restriction to haplology. In these situations, the sentence must be reformulated. Nguyễn H. T. (2004) offers the following possible rephrasing with use of an adverbial particle chính "precisely": tôi muốn mua chính [ hai cái bàn này ] "it is precisely these two tables that I want to buy".

As can be seen by descriptions of focus cái as "general classifier", etc., this particle has often been analyzed as a classifier. However, it can be distinguished by its different behavior. Focus cái always precedes a following classifier and may not directly precede the head noun. The noun phrase

is grammatical, but the phrase

is not grammatical. More than one classifier is not allowed within the same noun phrase, whereas focus cái does occur along with a following classifier (as can be seen above). Examples of other modifiers preceding the focus marker are below:

Again, cái must follow the other pre-noun modifiers, so phrases where cái precedes a numeral or article (such as *cái hai chó đen này or *cái các con mèo này) are ungrammatical.

The focus marker cái is distinct from the classifier cái that classifies inanimate nouns (although it is historically related to the classifier cái).Classifiers must agree semantically with the animacy of the head noun. (See the classifier section.) Thus, classifier cái cannot modify the noun chó "dog" (in cái chó) since chó is animate (the non-human animate classifier con must be used: con chó), whereas focus cái can modify nouns of any animacy (with their appropriate classifier):

Functionally, cái indicates grammatically that an element within a noun phrase is in contrastive focus. It has been noted by Nguyễn Đ. H. (1997) (and others) that cái adds a pejorative connotation, as in:

However, Nguyễn Hùng Tưởng (2004) claims that the connotation is not always negative and gives the following positive example:Note that this example has an omitted head noun.

Phonologically, the focus cái receives an intonational stress, and, in addition, the element receiving the focus also receives an intonational stress. In the following examples, the stressed words are indicated with capital letters (also underlined):

In the above sentence, the item in focus is đen "black", which receives the stress (as does cái). Here, it is the feature of the horse's blackness that is being focused on (or singled out) in contrast to other horses that do not have the feature of blackness. In the sentence below, ngựa "horse" receives the focus and stress.

The focus marker is always stressed and must co-occur with another stressed item; thus, cái cannot occur without another stressed element within the noun phrase.Note that this contrastive focus can also be achieved without focus cái and with only stress (for example, Tôi thích con ngựa ĐEN.). The focus marker is a way to indicate contrastive focus grammatically. The Vietnamese constructions can be compared with English sentences that use only intonational stress to indicate contrastive focus and other structures that use both intonational stress and grammatical constructions to indicate contrastive focus. For example, the English sentence I like the black HORSE has a stress on horse, indicating that it is in focus — here, the stress is the only indicator of focus. In contrast, the cleft sentence it is the black HORSE that I like and the pseudo-cleft sentence what I like is the black HORSE (or the black HORSE is what I like) use grammar and intonational stress to indicate focus. Focus cái may focus a variety of noun phrase elements including prepositional phrases, relative clauses, constituents inside of relative clause modifiers, the head noun (by itself), the head noun plus preceding classifier, and adjectival verbs.

Classifier position

Vietnamese uses a rich set of classifiers and measure words (often considered a subset of the classifiers) to introduce or stand in for count and mass nouns, respectively. This feature of Vietnamese is similar to the system of classifiers in Chinese.

The most common classifiers typically do not translate to English: introduces most inanimate objects, while generally introduces animate objects, especially animals. In the following dialogue, the classifier initially introduces "chicken":

Nouns may require the animate classifier even if they do not refer to living organisms. For instance, (knife), (road), (eye), (river), and (screw) all take the classifier to convey motion.

More specific classifiers typically indicate the shape of objects, such as for round objects like balls or pieces of fruit, or for flat, rectangular objects like signage or panes of glass. These classifiers may be superficially likened to English partitive constructions like one head of cattle ("head", always singular regardless of number, indicates large livestock), two sticks of dynamite ("stick" indicates something relatively rigid, long and comparatively thin), three strands of hair ("strand" indicates something flexible, long and quite thin), or four bars of gold (a "bar" being similar to a "stick", but comparatively less "thin"). Some nominalizing classifiers introduce verbs or adjectives instead of nouns.

Some linguists count as many as 200 classifiers in Vietnamese, though only a few are used in conversation or informal writing. Thompson (1987) notes that usage of for inanimate objects has increased at the expense of some of the rarer classifiers.

Vietnamese grammar

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