Vietnamese morphology

Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic (and isolating) language.

Vietnamese lacks morphological markings of case, gender, number, and tense (and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction) and distinguishes them via classifier words instead.

Overview

Vietnamese is often considered to be monosyllabic as its morphemes are considered to be monosyllabic e.g. "''tim"'' meaning "heart". However, some Vietnamese words may consist of one or more syllables, composed of monosyllabic morphemes that form together to create another word. An instance of a compound word "''mạnh mẽ''" is derived from morphemes ''mạnh'' meaning "strong", ''mẽ'' meaning "dramatic", fused together to create the word ''mạnh mẽ'' to mean "powerful"''.''

There is a general tendency for words to have one or two syllables. Words with two syllables are often of Sino-Vietnamese origin. A few words are three or four syllables. A few polysyllabic words are formed from reduplicative derivation.

Additionally, a Vietnamese word may consist of a single morpheme or more than one morpheme. Polymorphemic words are either compound words or words consisting of stems plus affixes or reduplicants.

Most Vietnamese morphemes consist of only one syllable. Polysyllabic morphemes tend to be borrowings from other languages. Examples follow:

:

Most words are created by either compounding or reduplicative derivation. Affixation is a relatively minor derivational process.

Older styles of Vietnamese writing wrote polysyllabic words with hyphens separating the syllables, as in ''cào-cào'' "grasshopper", ''sinh-vật-học'' "biology", or ''cà-phê'' "coffee". Spelling reform proposals have suggested writing these words without spaces (for example, the above would be ''càocào'', ''sinhvậthọc'', ''càphê''). However, the prevailing practice is to omit hyphens and write all words with a space between each syllable.

Word-formation

Reduplication

Reduplication, the process of creating a new word by repeating either a whole word or part of a word, is very productive in Vietnamese (as in other Austro-Asiatic languages), although not all reduplicative patterns remain fully productive.

Function and semantics

Its effect is to sometimes either increase or decrease the intensity of the adjective, and is often used as a literary device (like alliteration) in poetry and other compositions, as well as in everyday speech.

Examples of reduplication increasing intensity:
*''đau'' → ''đau điếng'': hurt → hurt horribly
*''mạnh'' → ''mạnh mẽ'': strong → very strong
*''rực'' → ''rực rỡ'': flaring → blazing

Examples of reduplication decreasing intensity:
*''nhẹ'' → ''nhè nhẹ'': soft → soft (less)
*''xinh'' → ''xinh xinh'': pretty → cute
*''đỏ'' → ''đo đỏ'': red → reddish
*''xanh'' → ''xanh xanh'': blue/green → bluish/greenish

Form

A type of assimilation known as tonal harmony is involved in Vietnamese reduplication. The six tones are categorized into two registers:

:

The tones of all reduplicated words are always within the same tonal register (either upper or lower). For example, ''nhỏ'' "small" with the ''hỏi'' tone when reduplicated appears as ''nho nhỏ'' "smallish" with a ''ngang''-toned reduplicant — both syllables are in the upper tonal register.

Vietnamese has several different types of reduplicative patterns including both total, partial, initial, final, rhyming, and alliterative patterns involving only reduplicated material or both reduplicated material and affixation.

''Reduplicant position''. The resulting reduplicants can be either initial (preceding the base) or final (following the base).

:Initial reduplication:

:* ''bự'' "big" > ''bừ bự'' "quite big" (less) (base: ''bự'', initial reduplicant: ''bừ-'')
:* ''khắm'' "fetid" > ''khăm khắm'' "smelly" (base: ''khắm'', initial reduplicant/affix: ''khăm-'')

:Final reduplication:

:* ''mập'' "be fat" > ''mập mạp'' "be chubby" (base: ''mập'', final reduplicant/affix: ''-mạp'')
:* ''khóc'' "to weep" > ''khóc lóc'' "to whimper" (base: ''khóc'', final reduplicant/affix: ''-lóc'')

Total reduplication involves copying the entire word base:

* ''vàng'' " yellow" > ''vàng vàng'' "yellowish"
* ''vui'' "be joyful" > ''vui vui'' "jovial, fun"
* ''nói'' "to talk" > ''nói nói'' "to keep talking and talking"
* ''nghiêng'' "inclined" > ''nghiêng nghiêng'' "slightly slanted"

Partial reduplication involves copying only certain segments of the word base. Partial reduplication typically involves the affixation of non-reduplicated segments.

Affixation

Vietnamese has very limited affixation. Only prefixation and suffixation are attested.One Vietnamese linguist has considered an inserted vowel element in certain "dramatic" reduplications of disyllabic words to be an infix. These have the following form, where ''xxx'' represents sounds in the first syllable, ''yyy'' represents sounds in the second syllable, and ''a'' (or ''à'' or ''ơ'') is the inserted vowel):
:: ''xxx.yyy'' > ''xxx-y-a-yy-xxx.yyy''.
Examples:
* ''lúng túng'' "at a loss" > ''lúng ta lúng túng'',
* ''hổn hển'' "panting" > ''hổn ha hổn hển'',
* ''lụng thụng'' "too roomy (clothes)" > ''lụng thà lụng thụng''. A few affixes are used along with reduplication. Many affixes are derived from Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary and learned part of the lexicon. Some examples (not an exhaustive list) follow.

:

:

Ablaut

Vietnamese has the following tonal alternations (or tonal ablaut) which are used grammatically:

:
:(Nguyễn 1997:42-44)

Vietnamese also has other instances of alternations, such as consonant mutations and vowel ablaut. Different regional varieties of Vietnamese may have different types of alternations.

See also

* Vietnamese syntax
* Vietnamese phonology
* Vietnamese language

Notes

Bibliography

* Beatty, Mark Stanton. (1990). ''Vietnamese phrase structure: An X-bar approach''. (Master's thesis, University of Texas at Arlington).
* Emeneau, M. B. (1951). ''Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar''. University of California publications in linguistics (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Nguyễn, Đình-Hoà. (1997). ''Vietnamese: Tiếng Việt không son phấn''. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
* Nguyễn, Phú Phong. (1992)
Vietnamese demonstratives revisited
''The Mon-Khmer Studies Journal'', ''20'', 127-136.
* Nguyễn, Tài Cẩn. (1975). ''Từ loại danh từ trong tiếng Việt hiện đại'' he word class of nouns in modern Vietnamese Hanoi: Khoa học Xã hội.
* Nhàn, Ngô Thanh. (1984). ''The syllabeme and patterns of word formation in Vietnamese''. (Doctoral dissertation, New York University).
* Noyer, Rolf. (1998). Vietnamese 'morphology' and the definition of word. ''University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics'', ''5'' (2), 65-89.


* Phong, Nguyễn Phu. (1976). ''Le syntagme verbal in vietnamien''. Mouton: Le Haye.
* Shum, Shu-ying. (1965). ''A transformational study of Vietnamese syntax''. (Doctoral dissertation, Indiana University).
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1963). The problem of the word in Vietnamese. ''Word'', ''19'' (1), 39-52.
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1965). Nuclear models in Vietnamese immediate-constituent analysis. ''Language'', ''41'' (4), 610-618.
* Thompson, Laurence E. (1991). ''A Vietnamese reference grammar''. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (Original work published 1965).
* Uỷ ban Khoa học Xã hội Việt Nam. (1983). ''Ngữ-pháp tiếng Việt'' ietnamese grammar Hanoi: Khoa học Xã hội.

External links

Vietnamese Online Grammar Project

Vietnamese/Cambodian references
(Linguist List)

Additional Vietnamese references
(Linguist List)

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vietnamese Morphology
Vietnamese grammar