Study On The Kernel Words Of Vietnamese Language

Vietnam has a time-honoured history and diversified culture. In ancient times, Vietnam was a crossroads for many migration flows of people, including speakers of Mon-Khmer, Austronesian and Kam-Tai languages. Vietnamese civilization was also deeply influenced by ancient Chinese and Indian cultures. Vietnamese language provides some clues to the cultural mixture of Vietnamese people. Though a separate and distinct language, Vietnamese borrows much of its basic vocabulary from Mon-Khmer and tonality from Tai. Vietnamese also exhibits some influence from Austronesian as well as large infusion of Chinese language of a later period. Therefore, the study of "Vietnamese Kernel Words" significantly contributes to the understanding of the etymology of Vietnamese words, so that we can see the overall picture of the evolution of Vietnamese language.Based upon the Swadesh 100-word list, the thesis consists of nine chapters and discusses 122 kernel words involving 159 words of semantic field and 122 Sino-Vietnamese words.Chapter one is Introduction. This chapter includes literature review, significance and contributions of the thesis, research questions, methodology, sources of reference and organization of the thesis.Chapter two describes the sources of Vietnamese vocabulary, including native Vietnamese words, Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary and words in Indo-European languages.Chapter three to chapter eight constitute the main parts of the thesis. Chapter three focuses on words of Natural things; Chapter four on words of Parts of the human body; Chapter five on Fauna and Flora words; Chapter six on words of Actions and Feelings (kernel verbs); Chapter seven on Describing, Identifying, and Quantifying words (kernel adjectives); Chapter eight on other kernel words, including Person and Personal pronouns, Demonstratives, Interrogative pronouns, Adverbs and Numerals. In fact, since the "Swadesh 100-word list" means 100 concepts, there are thousands of ways to express the words of these concepts. The thesis only selects the most representative words, most of which are synonyms, in order to search for highly corresponding expressions of these words in relative languages and proto languages.The conclusion chapter sums up the overall characteristics and current state of the kernel words in Vietnamese language, and puts forward a new argument on the historical origins of Vietnamese language. The chapter also points out added values and inadequacies of the thesis as well as directions for further research.The main contributions of the thesis include:(1) "Research on the Kernel words of Vietnamese language" is the first-ever comprehensive and systematic study of the theme. The thesis studies ways of organizing a comprehensive system of kernel words starting from the semantic field with the method of lexical meaning comparison and analyses of word order and semantic changes.(2) The thesis provides a new approach to the understanding of the historical origins of Vietnamese language through adopting the Swadish 100-word list to discuss the evolution of Vietnamese language. The choice of this subject is inheritance and innovation, and offers not only a certain reference value, but also scientific significance and application value.