Vietnamese Reference Grammar

Vietnamese Reference Grammar:A Systemic Funtional PerspectiveThe aim of this study is to make a comprehensive, thorough and systematic research on the Vietnamese language, a member of the Viet-Muong branch of the Mon-Khmer subfamily of the Austro-Asiatic family. We explored the phonological, lexical and syntactic systems of Vietnamese from the point of view of Reference Grammar and within the framework of Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG). This study consists of eleven chapters.Chapter One:Preface. Serving as an introduction, this chapter presents the subject of the dissertation, the aim of the study, its theoretical framework and methodology. A short description of the Vietnamese (also called Kinh) people is given, as well as a presentation of the use of the Vietnamese language among them.Chapter Two:Previous researches and Overview of Systemic Functional Grammar. This chapter gives a review of previous researches on the Vietnamese language, especially on Vietnamese topic-comment structure and theme-rheme structure, and then attempts to explore some of the most important concepts of the Systemic Functional model that are related to this studv.Chapter Three:Phonological system. This part gives a description of consonants, vowels, tonic types and syllable canon of Vietnamese. We also used the method of Experimental Phonetics to analyse acoustic features such as Voice Onset Time, Formant distribution diagram, FO contour, tone range, etc.Chapter Four:Morphology. This part gives a presentation of word-formation processes in Vietnamese, namely compounding and affixation.Chapter Five:Parts of Speech. This part focuses on the word-classes of the language, including nouns, verbs, adjectives, measurers, classifiers, numerals, pronouns, articles, adverbs, conjunctions, particles and interjections. Special attention is paid to their grammatical features.Chapter Six:Groups and Phrases. This chapter explores the four main Vietnamese word group and phrase structures (Verbal group, Nominal group, Adjective group and Prepositional (Coverb) phrase), putting a special emphasis on the relation between head and modifiers.Chapter Seven:Description of Clauses from the point of view of Experiential metafunction. Processes are divided into four classes:Material, Relational, Verbal and Mental processes. Each process has its own participants, such as Actor, Goal and Beneficiary in Material processes; Existent, Carrier, Attribute, Identified, Identifier, Possessor and Possessed in Relational Processes; Sayer, Receiver, Verbiage, Quoting or Locution in Verbal processes; Senser and Phenomenon in Mental Processes. Circumstances can include Time, Space, Manner, Angle, Cause, Accompaniement, Role, Matter. We then introduce the Temporal profile and the Locative profile. Voice system is also mentioned.Chapter Eight:Clause complex. This chapter offers a description of Vietnamese clause complex from the point of view of Logical metafunction. There are two ways of combining clauses into clause complex:one is from Logico-Semantic resources; the other is from Interrelationship resources. In the first type, there are two main options:projection and expansion. Expansion includes Elaborative, Extensive and Enhancing options. Elaboration includes Clarifying, Exemplifying and Summarizing options. Extension includes Additive, Varying and Alternative options. Enhancement includes Spatial, Temporal, Manner, Cause-Condition and Concession. In the second type, there are also two options:Hypotaxis and Parataxis.Chapter Nine:Description of Clauses from the point of view of Interpersonal metafunction. This chapter distinguishes Declarative, Interrogative and Imperative mood. Exclamative mood is regarded as one type of Declarative mood. We also point out the elements of Mood structure, such as Subject, Predicator, Complement and Adjunct. The system of Mood is related to the systems of Modality and Assessment.Chapter Ten:Description of Clauses from the point of view of Textual metafunction. This chapter explores the Theme-Rheme structure. Firstly, we give a definition of the Theme and divide it into 4 types (Topical theme, Interpersonal Theme, Textual Theme and Clausal Theme). Then we observe the complexity of the Rheme and describe Theme markers. We also discuss the difference between Theme structure and Information structure.Chapter Eleven:Conclusion. This chapter offers a recapitulation of the main points of the dissertation. It points out the innovations and limitations of the study and gives directions for further research.Based on a large corpus, the descriptive method used in this study enabled us to make the following conclusions on the grammatical features of the Vietnamese language:Some stop consonants are gradually changing into Affricate consonants, the distribution of vowels is very dense, tone pitch onset are always around middle level. The word order of the Noun Phrase is:the head comes before modifiers such as adjective, embedded clause, deictic pronoun. Articles, numerals, measurers and classifiers come before the head. Many prepositions and articles are from verbal origin. Word formation process is mainly based on affixation, derivation does not appear. There are many kinds of reduplicative compounds in the vocabulary. The basic word order in the language is SVO. The basic word orders are: adverb preceding verb; adverb of degree preceding noun; adverb of negation preceding verb and adjective. From the experiential point of view, there are 4 types of experiential processes: Material, Relational, Verbal and Mental processes. Behavioural process is regarded as one type of Material process. Existential process is regarded as one type of Relational process. In clause complex, subordinate clause may come after or before the main clause. From the textual point of view, Theme-Rheme structure is more widespread than Subject-Predicate structure. It may become one of the main methods for analyzing Vietnamese clauses. There are various types of Topical Theme, which means that Vietnamese is a topic-prominent language.According to the above-mentioned grammatical features, Vietnamese can be regarded as a topic-prominent isolating language. Similar research on this field shall contribute to the study of Linguistic Universals.