The X bar approach to syntax has attempted to generalize natural languages with the minimal phrase structures rules, and its applicability to certain languages has been studied extensively. This paper examined three most important phrases in Vietnamese, namely the NP, the VP and the CP under a crosslinguistic comparison with English. Then the three phrases were patterned into the Xbar schema. Besides, the NP and the VP were also interpreted in term of the functional categories, the DP and the TP respectively. The result, which indicates that the Xbar schema is fit for revising the structure rules of Vietnamese Phrases, successfully supports the universality of this theory. Furthermore, it is obvious that this approach is flexible enough to incorporate instances of special variation of Vietnamese syntactic structure, namely the Topic Comment structure, by using TopP phrasalization. Moreover, the paper suggested the conversion of the CP into TopP, since this conversion makes the syntactic analysis minimal. The paper also focused on the structural ambiguity in Vietnamese due to the different segmentations of the strings and suggested the solution for disambiguation by using different Xbar branching presentations. The paper to some extent supported the Chomskian grammar. However, there are several open issues requiring deep analyses for the Vietnamese language such as the passive structure and the question form. The findings of this study may be incorporated in the future English monograph on Vientnamese syntax.
Högskolan Dalarna Engelska D-uppsats Supervisor: Jonathan White (jwh@du.se) The X-bar Theory and Vietnamese syntax Spring term 2009 Doan Thuc Luong 690520-T031 h07tldoa@du.se Table of contents Page Abstract 1- Introduction 1.1 Rationale 1.2 Aim 2 Theoretical Background 2.1 Universal grammar 2.2 X-bar syntax 2.3 Literature review 2.4 Vietnamese syntax profiles Methodology 3.1 Research method 3.2 Linguistic examples Data Analysis 4.1 The Noun Phrase Structure 10 4.1.1 The English Noun Phrase 10 4.1.2 The Vietnamese Noun Phrase 12 4.2 The Verb Phrase Structure 16 4.2.1 The English Verb Phrase 17 4.2.2 The Vietnamese Verb Phrase 19 4.3 The Complementizer Phrase Structure 21 4.3.1 The English Complementizer Phrase 21 4.3.2 The Vietnamese Complementizer Verb Phrase 22 4.4 Vietnamese Topic-comment Structure 23 4.4.1 Argument for the Topical Phrase 23 4.4.2 Complementizer or Topicalizer? 25 4.5 Vietnamese Structural Ambiguity 26 4.5.1 Ambiguity of the Topic-comment Structure 26 4.4.2 Ambiguity of the Noun Phrase 27 Summary 28 Conclusion 30 Reference 31 Abstract X-bar syntax, a model of phrase structure theory seeking to capture the similarities between different categories of phrases by assigning the same structure to them, has been widely applied in universal grammar to analyze the phrase structure rules of many languages This paper sketches the application of the theory to Vietnamese phrasal and clausal structures We have the following purposes: 1) to test the applicability of the theory in the two main lexical phrasal units and one functional clausal unit in Vietnamese: the Noun Phrase, the Verb Phrase and the Complementizer Phrase; 2) to take into consideration a special language phenomenon in Vietnamese: the Topic-Comment structure in the light of this theory; and 3) to paraphrase ambiguous sentences with two different X bar schemata to explain the differences in meaning A literature review of Universal Grammar (UG) and X-bar theory is briefly mentioned and a cross linguistic comparison between English and Vietnamese phrasal units is presented to serve the analysis Introduction: 1.1 Rationale: Vietnamese has been identified as part of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family Then, the Muong language was found to be more closely related to Vietnamese than other Mon-Khmer languages, and a Viet-Muong sub-group was established (MS Encarta ® Encyclopedia 2004).As the national and official language of Viet Nam, Vietnamese is spoken throughout the country by nearly 70 million Vietnamese (or Kinh) people as their mother tongue and by over 10 million people from ethnic minorities of Vietnam as their second and official language According to Gordon Raymond (2005), Vietnamese is also spoken by more than million people in overseas Vietnamese communities, most notably in the United States and in Australia With such a number of speakers, Vietnamese is the most-widely spoken language of the Austroasiatic language family However, the history of the study of Vietnamese syntax is not long and profound The first research on Vietnamese syntax made some cursory remarks on word classes and word orders in some bilingual dictionaries compiled by European scholars in the 17th,18th and the 19th centuries such as An Nam Portuguese and Latin Dictionary by Alexandre Rhodes in 1651 or Latin-Annamese Dictionary by Jean-Louis Taberd in 1838 (Hiep 2002) It had not been until the beginning of the 1930s that there were some general works on Vietnamese grammar Since then, some research on syntax has been carried out from different linguistic viewpoints Surprisingly, very few studies have been conducted in the light of universal grammar (UG) to analyze Vietnamese syntax 1.2 Aim Taking into consideration the above-mentioned situation in the study of Vietnamese syntax, this paper aims to apply UG in analyzing Vietnamese syntax with a focus on applying the X bar theory of syntax to Vietnamese phrases Aside from the analysis of common phrases, the topicprominent features of Vietnamese are also presented in the X-bar schema Theoretical Background The term syntax, from Ancient Greek syn-, "together" and táxis, "arrangement", is the study of rules for constructing sentences in natural languages Besides, the term is also used to refer directly to the rules that govern the sentence structure of any individual language, as in "the syntax of English." Modern research in syntax attempts to describe languages in terms of such rules Syntacticians also attempt to find general rules that apply to all natural languages 2.1 Universal grammar Universal Grammar (UG) is ‘the system of principles, conditions and rules that are elements or properties of all human languages’ (Chomsky 1976: 29) As implied in the term “Universal”, this kind of grammar attempts to explain language in general, not describe specific languages In other words, UG is a collection of aspects of grammar that all languages share The basic idea of UG had been around for a long time but not until the 1950s did it become a prominent theory of linguistics marked by the linguist Noam Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures In this work, though, the term “Universal grammar” was not mentioned The author presented a mathematical theory of language, namely phrase structure rules, which gave rise to the complete theory of UG in the coming years The rules are simple and easy to understand For example, a sentence can be represented as S → NP + VP Thus, the arrow can be read as an instruction to rewrite the left- hand symbol as the string of symbols on the right-hand side The rewrite rules reveal that the initial symbol S can be replaced by NP + VP Other rules will similarly unpack NP and VP into their constituents In his later work (1965), Chomsky developed the idea that each sentence in a language had two levels of representation — a deep structure and a surface structure The deep structure represented the core semantic relations of a sentence, and was mapped on to the surface structure Chomsky believed that there would be considerable similarities between languages' deep structures, and that these structures would reveal properties common to all languages, which were concealed beneath their surface structures The modern theory of UG, inspired by Chomsky's notion that all languages have a common structural basis, is a complex theory involving several sub-theories and models such as “Principle and Parameters theory”, “X-bar theory”, “Government/Binding Model” and “Minimalist Programme Model” (Robert 2009) Each of them suggests basic principles to combine words to phrases and sentences with flexible options that may be adopted by a particular language 2.2 X-bar theory X-bar syntax, initiated by Noam Chomsky then developed by his student Ray Jackendoff in the 1970s and incorporated into Government and Binding Theory in the 1980s, is a model of phrase structure rules of languages’ grammar According to the theory, in every phrase, there is always the head of the phrase The head of a Noun Phrase is the Noun, the head of a Verb Phrase is the Verb and so on Thus, any phrase can be formularized as an XP with an X as the head It is easy to identify the syntactic categories of XP and X as the phrasal level and lexical (word) level respectively Then it is demonstrated in the theory that there is an intermediate level, which is larger than head level yet smaller than the maximal expansion of a phrase That intermediate category is named X-bar (X′) The following represents the basic phrase structure in X-bar syntax Phrasal Categories (XP) X-Bar Categories (X′) Word Categories (X) XP ei …… X’ ei … X NP, VP, AdjP, AdvP, PP, DP, DegP N′, V′, Adj′, Adv′, P′, D′, Deg′ N, V, Adj, Adv, P, D, Deg The theory allows us to define different structural relationships, which will be described in the data analysis section The schema is also applied to identify the head of a sentence and the head of the Complementizer Phrase The sentence is reclassified as the sentential phrase with its head the inflectional marker Thus the rule can be written as: S → IP → (YP) I' In term of this rule, the VP is a complement of the I node, i.e., it is a sister of the I node, and the Subject is assigned the function of the Specifier As for the head of the Complementizer Phrase, it is obviously the Complementizer Hence, C is the head of CP, and the rule is CP → (YP) C'; thus, the IP is the complement of the C node A Complementizer Phrase functioning as the subordinate nominal complement clause may take the verb of the main clause as its specifier Inflectional Phrase IP(S) NP I' I VP Complementizer Phrase CP … C' C IP An important notion associated with the X-bar theory is the “head parameter”, which specifies “the order of head and complement” (Chomsky 1988:70) There are two values of the head parameter, “head initial” where the complements follow the head and “head final” where the complements precede the head A given language can be expressed in terms of whether heads occur first or last in the phrases of that language, e.g English and Vietnamese are head initial languages A detailed model of X-bar theory will be presented in the data analysis section 2.3 Literature review As mentioned in the introduction, there has been some research on Vietnamese syntax and grammar carried out based on different linguistic viewpoints However, specific research on applying UG to analyze Vietnamese syntax has not been numerous or comprehensive Most research on Vietnamese syntax in term of this modern theory only mentions the phrasal parameters Among these studies, Tuong (2004) is a helpful reference for this paper In his study, the author has provided a deep analysis of the Vietnamese Noun Phrase from a generative perspective He has also mentioned the Determiner Phrase as the replacement for the NP in the light of X bar syntax with various functional sub categories, including Classifiers (Cl), Numerals (Num), Demonstratives (Dem), as well as Determiners (Det) Another useful paper is Duffield (1998) with the minimalist orientation in observing Vietnamese syntax Duffield has clearly identified two important functional categories in Vietnamese: the Topical Phrase (TopP) and the Tense Phrase (TP), and this work proves to be a good guideline for the analysis of this paper Last but not least, Hao (1992) offers an insight into the assumption that Vietnamese is a topicprominent language and the basic structure of Vietnamese also manifests a topic-comment relation which is referred to as the Theme- Rheme structure in his paper This supports the idea of the functional category TopP suggested by Duffield (1998) 2.4 Vietnamese grammar profile In order to help the reader with the coming analysis, a brief profile of Vietnamese grammar is presented The data for the profile are taken from various grammar books and internet resources such as http://vietnamese-grammar.group.shef.ac.uk/, http://www.seasite.niu.edu, etc (1) Morphological considerations Vietnamese is an isolating language There are no inflectional affixes, thus all the words are invariable Words in Vietnamese are classified into main groups: simple words, compound words and reduplicate words (2) Syntactic considerations Vietnamese basically has an SVO word order Syntactically, Vietnamese is an analytic language Thus, grammatical relationships rely mostly on word order and functional markers As a result, word order is critical to convey the meaning of phrases and sentences (3) Word class The word categories in Vietnamese have traditionally been classified into nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, numerals, classifiers, prepositions, conjunctions, particles and interjections As there are no word endings to show the class of the word, it is only possible to identify the class of many words when they appear in phrases or sentences (4) Functional markers Vietnamese possesses several functional markers Among them are the noun markers, tense markers, aspect markers and modality markers (5) Phrasal Units Traditionally, there are five phrases in Vietnamese: The Noun Phrase, the Verb Phrase, the Adjective Phrase, the Adverb Phrase and the Preposition Phrase All the phrases are head initial (6) Syntactic structures There are five basic syntactic structures in Vietnamese: (a) structures of modification, (b) structures of complementation, (c) structures of co-ordination, (d) structures of predication, and (e) structures of commentation Methodology 3.1 Research method This paper is a data-based project In order to analyze Vietnamese syntax and propose phrase structure rules in the light of the general assumptions of X-bar Theory, a cross-linguistic method is used First of all, a detailed schema of X- bar structures is presented Secondly, the phrasal categories are studied comparatively: a brief presentation of the basic English phrase structures is presented, then Vietnamese phrasal rules are mapped to compare with English, and finally the X bar schema is applied to Vietnamese phrases Due to the limited scope of the present research, only four categories, namely the Noun Phrase (NP), the Verb Phrase (VP), the Complementizer Phrase (CP) and the Topical Phrase (TopP), are considered in detail The lexical Noun Phrase and Verb Phrase are also projected into the functional phrases, the Determiner Phrase and the Tense Phrase respectively Beside this, the issue of Vietnamese structural ambiguity due to the different segments of the sentence and the lack of functional markers are also addressed A summary of all the phrasal units in the X bar schema is presented at the end of the paper 3.2 Linguistic examples The Vietnamese examples composed for analysis in this paper were based on the writer’s own native speaker intuition and were checked with other native speakers Examples from Hao (2004) and Thompson (1965) have been used to initialize the writer’s own examples and analyses Data Analysis Syntax has traditionally considered phrases to be the basic units of the sentence Chomsky (1957) proposed that a sentence was composed of two phrase structures: The Noun Phrase (NP) and the Verb Phrase (VP) and the sentence rule is S→NP+VP Other phrasal constituents mentioned in syntax in the 1950s were the Preposition Phrase (PP), the Adjective Phrase (AdjP) and the Adverb Phrase (AdvP) In Chomskyan syntax, these phrasal categories (except the PP), are named as lexical categories because their heads are open-class words (words expressing lexical meanings and in opposition to closed-class functional words, i.e words manifesting grammatical functions), and these lexical categories could be conveniently incorporated into the X-bar system Then, in order to fit the sentential and clausal categories into the X-bar schema, some functional projections were converted First, the sentence was converted into the Inflectional Phrase (IP) or Tense Phrase (TP) Then the subordinate clause was changed into a Complementizer Phrase (CP) Functional categories such as the Determiner could also be incorporated in the same way Thus, the NP was reinterpreted as being part of a Determiner Phrase (DP) No matter what kind the phrase is, it could be generalized under the two following phrase structure rules for X- bar schema: XP ei WP X' X' ei X YP (I) XP → WP X' (II) X' → X YP The X (or the zero bar level-X0) is the head of the phrase which is a word level Its properties are projected to the phrasal level XP (or the double bar level X'') via the intermediate level named X' Thus, the X is the daughter of the X', and the X' is the daughter of the XP The YP under the X' is named complement of the head and it is the sister to the head It should be noted that the head and the complement are syntactically very close (for example, the V and the object in a VP), and in English, the complement is preceded by the head The WP under the XP is named as the specifier; it is the sister to the X', and it precedes the X' in English (for example the degree adverb in an AdjP) Furthermore, an X' can be expanded into another X' with a ZP as sister to it The ZP in this projection is called an adjunct (in English any adverbial structure can be identified as an adjunct) Hence, we have the third phrase structure rule: (III) X' → ZP, X' X' ei ZP X' X' ei X' ZP The comma indicates that the adjunct can either precede the X' (pre-head adjunct) or follow the X' (post-head adjunct) The three rules can be combined as the following (I) Specifier rule XP → WP X' (II) Adjunct rule X' → ZP, X' (III) Complement rule X' → X YP XP ei WP X' ei ZP X' ei X YP While the head is the obligatory element in the phrase, other elements such as complements, adjuncts and specifiers may or may not be present in the phrasal structures Thus, it is possible to have a wide range of structures: as sub elements of the V0 level To solve the problem, linguists have suggested a new node labeled as Inflection Phrase (IP) (Black 1998:11; Poole 2002:61) The term “Inflection” here is just conventional It not only means the inflectional verbal suffixes but also the modals/auxiliaries The rule phrasalizes the sentence: S→ IP Consequently, the Verb Phrase is projected in the following branching diagram (example [04]): IP (=S) ei NP g I' q N' g I VP qp N V' ei V' V NP g (I) have studied linguistics PP PP for two years wo at Högskolan Dalarna With this new projection, the subject of the sentence now acts as the specifier of the IP The inflectional marker functions as the head of the projection and VP turns to be the complement for the I node The evidence to approve this argument is that there must be one and only one of the inflectional elements in a sentence: the past tense marker, a present tense marker or a modal Besides, this element is obligatory whereas the VP can be left out as shown in the short answers and structure of co-ordinations: (4b) Have you studied linguistics at Högskolan Dalarna? Yes I have (4c) I have studied linguistics at Högskolan Dalarna and Mr Huy has, too Thus, it can be seen that the obligatory inflection is the head of the sentence if the sentence is converted in to the IP Furthermore, it is clearly seen that the VP must match with the I node, which evidences the head-complement relationship between the I and the VP 18 The I node The matching VP Examples Modal Auxiliary have Auxiliary be - Infinitive phrase - past participle phrase - present participle phrase will go have seen is living 4.2.2 The Vietnamese Verb Phrase A maximal Vietnamese Verb Phrase may consist of the pre-verbal auxiliary/modal, the Head, the Complements, the Adverbials and the post-verbal, or more exactly, the clause final auxiliary Table The flat structure of a maximal Vietnamese Verb Phrase The Vietnamese Verb Phrase Post verbal Pre verbal Modal/Aux Head Verb Complement Prep Phrase (Adverbial) Modal/Aux (clause final) [05]đã hồn thành chương trình học Hưgskolan Dalarna Time marker finish program study at Högskolan Dalarna have (already) finish the study program at Högskolan Dalarna (already) Aspect Marker It is clearly observed from Tables and that the structures of English and Vietnamese Verb phrases are nearly identical since both language have the same SVO/C(A) pattern The only difference is the clause final auxiliary/modal in Vietnamese, which results in the more initial headed feature of the Vietnamese Verb Phrase The X bar schema presentation of the example [05] of the Vietnamese Verb Phrase may roughly be the following: VP p NP g V' qp N' g V' N V NP g g ei PP ? g aux qp g Tơi(I) hồn thành chương trình học Hưgskolan Dalarna The problem with this attempt is that there is no suitable slot for the clause final “rồi”, which indicates the perfect aspect The only treatment for it is the position for the adjunct However, the clause final markers in Vietnamese really function as the Markers of time, aspect or modality, i.e 19 like the modals or auxiliaries in English The other problematic issue is, like in English, there is a need to separate the preverbal auxiliary/modal from the V0 and to isolate the NP subject from the VP Therefore, the proposal of the functional projections should be considered now Vietnamese, classified as an analytic and isolating language, has no verbal inflections but only markers to express tenses (TM) and aspects (AM) As the result, the term Tense Phrase (TP) is used as the replacement for the English term Inflection Phrase (IP) in this paper (following Duffield 1998) To simplify the analysis, the T here symbolizes both the TM and AM TP ei NP T' ei T VP TP ei NP T' ei VP T TP ei NP T' ei T' T ei T VP TP with pre verbal aux/modal TP with clause final aux/modal TP with both pre verbal aux/modal and clause final aux/modal The example [05] presented in the TP projection now should be: TP qp NP g T' q N' T' q T T VP qp V' V g PP NP ei qp Tơi(I) hồn thành chương trình học Högskolan Dalarna 20 The following example evidences the head function of the T node in Vietnamese: [05b] A: or B: Bác ăn tối hay chưa? You eat dinner Aspect.M or Aspect.M? Rồi B: Chưa (Have you had dinner yet?) (already) (not yet) The shortest possible way for answering a Yes-No question in Vietnamese is using the time marker or aspect marker only The coordination test also shows that the marker is mandatory while the specifier and the verb can be deleted: [05c] Xe car TopM tơi mua nhà chưa I TM bought but house TopM AspectM As for a car I have bought but as for a house I haven’t These tests give further evidence that the TP analysis is logical It is obvious that the functional TP proposal offers some advantages to logically locate the subject of the sentence and plausibly clarify the function of the time and modality markers, especially the clause final marker in Vietnamese 4.3 The Complementizer Phrase Structure In a complex sentence, the main verb in the superordinate clause is followed by a subordinator which introduces a subordinate clause In the X-bar theory of syntax, the subordinator is renamed the complementizer and the sub-clause is its clausal complement Then the whole unit becomes the Complementizer Phrase (CP) with the complementizer as the head and the CP in turn as the complement for the V node in the superordinate clause (Black 1988:9) 4.3.1 The English Complementizer Phrase English has a wide range of complementizers collocating with the verbs preceding them: the V the Complementizer ask/ wonder/ want to know… if, whether who, whom, whose, what, which where, when, why, how know/ believe/ think/ hope… that 21 [06] I am wondering whether the economic situation will improve [07] My mother asked where I would go on my holiday [08] They believed that the Earth was square Example [08] is represented as: IP NP I' g N' I VP g g g N [+ past] V' ei V CP g C' C IP g wo They believed that the Earth was square The term complementizer is used because of its effect to turn an IP into a complement In some occasions, the complementizer “that” can be omitted as in example [09b] In this case, the symbol ‘Ø” will be inserted to the slot of the complementizer Other complementizers are obligatory Example [10b] is ungrammatical: [09a] We know that you are right [09b] We know you are right [10a] We want to know if he is coming [10b] *We want to know he is coming 4.3.2 The Vietnamese Complementizer Phrase Like in English, the Vietnamese CP is head initial (CP→ C'→ C IP) However, Vietnamese has only one word- the conjunction rằng- as the complementizer In spoken language, the conjunction là, which is also considered as the topicalizer (see the next section), can be used to replace 22 [09] Tôi nghĩ I think rằng/là anh nên đến that you should come Following is the diagram of example [09] with “rằng anh nên đến” identified as the CP: TP NP T' g N' T VP g g g V' N Ø V CP g C' C TP g Tôi nghĩ anh nên đến It can be seen from [8] and [9] that the structures of the CPs of both languages are identical Like the conjunction “that” in English, “rằng” or “là” is generally optional This paper will also ague about the possibility of treating a sentence with a CP as a topic comment sentence in the next section 4.4 Vietnamese Topic-comment Structure 4.4.1 Argument for the Topical Phrase Languages can be classified as Subject prominent languages, the languages “in which the grammatical units of SUBJECT and PREDICATIVE are basic to the structure of sentences and in which sentence have subject-predicate structure” (Richards et al 1992:362) or as Topic prominent languages, the languages “in which the grammatical units of TOPIC and COMMENT are basic to the structures of sentences” (Richards et al 1992:363) Vietnamese is basically an SVO patterned language (Duffield 1998, Fukuda 2006) and thus belongs to the group of Subject prominent languages However, especially in spoken communication, Vietnamese is also identified as a Topic prominent language Thomson (1965:290) first mentioned this structure as “sentence initial position occupied by focal complements” Duffield (1998:97) identified it as 23 “topicalised constituents appear sentence initially, preceding the subject.” And he suggested a functional projection for the structure, the Top(ical)P Specially, Hao (1992, 2004) recognized the pattern as the Theme-Rheme structure in which the Theme is the thing being talked about and the Rheme is what is said about the Theme and argued that all Vietnamese sentences obey that pattern, even the Subject Predicate pattern, which is considered as the Theme- Rheme pattern with the Theme identical to the subject Following are two possible utterances in Vietnamese: Subject-predicate utterance [10] Topic-comment utterance [11] Tôi đọc sách Cuốn sách tơi đọc (nó) I TM read Cl book this AM Cl this I TM read it (I have already read this book.) book AM As for this book, I have already read (it) To separate the Topic and the Comment, Vietnamese speakers usually insert the optional conjunction or which are identified as “topicalizers” The example [11] can be read Cuốn sách (thì) tơi đọc The Topic (WP) of the sentence can be of different grammatical categories: [12] Xe (thì ) Car this [13] Đi I Go [14] Anh bảo You tell me go tơi I tơi I bán TM sell TM NP as the Topic VP as the Topic go Minor sentence as the Topic TM go As the result, a whole sentence in the Topic Comment pattern can be phrasalized to the functional category TopP Thus or can be treated as the head of a TopP: Vietnamese Top(ical)P TopP→ WP Top' Top' → Top TP TopP ei (WP) Top ' ei Top TP Following is the suggested X bar schema representation of the example [11]: 24 TopP DetP Top' g Det' Top TP ei ClP Det NP T' g g Cl' N' T' T g Cl NP N T VP g g N' V' g N V DetP g g Cuốn sách (thì) tơi đọc The TopP node suggested surely helps properly project the topic-comment pattern of Vietnamese The open issue for this section is whether the normal Vietnamese pattern, i.e the Subject Predicate (or the Theme Rheme structure with the Theme identical to the Subject) should be treated in this proposal or in the traditional way 4.4.2 Complementizer or Topicalizer In a complex sentence, the subordinating complement clause, which is converted into the CP, may be considered as the comment in a topic- comment sentence and then the superordinating clause would be the topic If this argument is valid, the complementizer can be changed into the topicalizer One piece of evidence for this suggestion is the word “là” which is used both as the head of the CP and the TopP Following are the two representations of example [09], one as a TP with an internal CP and one as a TopP with two internal TPs: 25 TP NP T' g N' T VP g g g V' N Ø V CP g C' C TP g Tôi nghĩ anh nên đến [9a] TopP TP Top' Top TP g Tôi nghĩ anh nên đến [9b] It seems that the above suggested conversion is not problematic at all However, there should be comprehensive investigation into the case to have the suggestion accepted 4.5 Vietnamese structural ambiguity As mentioned in the previous section, morphosyntactically speaking, Vietnamese is a non inflectional analytic language Thus there are only two morphosyntactic devices to constitute sentential and phrasal elements: the word order and the use of functional words In other words, the language relies mostly on syntax As the result, if some sentences are differently segmented and if the functional markers in the sentences are omitted, the sentences will be ambiguous 4.5.1 Ambiguity of the topic comment structure The topicalizers or are usually omitted in Vietnamese In spoken language, the topic is separated from the comment with a short pause However, in written language, the lack of the markers usually causes ambiguities Following is an example of this: [15] Ông già nhanh man (n) old (adj) walk (v) very fast You (pro) aged (predicative) get (v) very fast The sentence [15] can be segmented as: [15a] Ông già nhanh [15b] Ông già nhanh Subject Verb Adverbial Subject Verb Adverbial The old man walks very fast You get aged very fast 26 The ambiguity arises from the word Ông, which is both nouns and pronouns If it is considered as a pronoun, there must be no modifying adjective attached to it and it is used to address a man in friendly way As a noun, it means a male adult, and it can be post-modified by adjectives To define the exact meaning, the topicalizer should be inserted after the subject/topic as diagramed below: TopP NP Top' Top TP g T' T VP ei [15a] Ông già (thì) the old man TopP NP Top' Top TP g T' T VP wo [15b] nhanh walks very fast Ơng (thì) you già nhanh get aged very fast 4.4.2 Ambiguity of the Noun Phrase Like in English, a NP in Vietnamese can be post modified by a relative clause If the relative pronoun mà (that) is left out, people can have different interpretations Examine this NP: [16] Người gíao viên đến Cl teacher new come từ Hà Nội from HaNoi [16] can be interpreted in two ways as: [16a] Người gíao viên đến từ Hà Nội Cl [16b] Head Adj Relative clause Người gíao viên đến từ Hà Nội Cl Head Relative clause The new teacher coming (who comes)from Hanoi The teacher newly coming (who has just come) from Hanoi In oral language, there is a pause either after viên or after mới, which helps identify the exact meaning of the utterance In written language, the phrase can be disambiguated by adding the relative word mà, which mean the same as that in English: 27 ClP g Cl' qp Cl NP ei N' RC N' Adj' g g N Adj g g wo [16a] Người gíao viên (mà) đến từ Hà Nội ClP g Cl' wo Cl NP wo N' RC g N g qp [16b] Người gíao viên (mà) đến từ Hà Nội It is clearly seen that the above graphical presentations in X bar schema contribute to the clarity of syntactic analysis Summary Based on the above analyses, this section aims to sketch the schemata of the Vietnamese phrases in term of the X- bar theory Due to the scope of the paper, the AdjP, the AdvP and the PP were not analyzed Nevertheless, the three phrases, which are nearly identical to those of English, will be also outlined in this part in order to make the diagram list complete The list comprises of ten phrasal units Among them there are five lexical categories namely the NP, the VP, the PP, the AdjP, the AdvP and five functional categories listed as the DetP, the TP, the DegP, the CP and the TopP: 28 (A) The Noun Phrase - The adjuncts are determiner, prepositional phrase, adjective modifier, relative clause - the complement is noun modifier or reduced relative clause (B) From NP to functional phrases - depending on the presence or absence of the elements, the NP can be converted in to ClP, QuanP and DetP (C) The Verb Phrase - The adjuncts can be the PP Adverb - The complements are objects or predicative adjective (D) From VP to TP - T(1) is clause final marker - T(2) is pre verbal marker (E) The Adjective Phrase - The adjunct is the PP - The complement may be a PP or NP in Vietnamese (F) From AdjP to Degree Phrase - The AdjP becomes the complement in the Degree Phrase (DegP) NP Cl N' N' adjunct adjunct N' N complement DetP Det' QuanP Det Quan' Quan ClP Cl' Cl NP VP NP V' Adjunct V' V' Adjunct V Complement(s) TP NP T' T' T(1) T(2) VP AdjP Deg Adj' Adj' Adjunct Adj Complement DegP Deg' Deg AdjP 29 (G) The Adverb Phrase - The adjunct is the PP in Vietnamese (H) From AdvP to Degree Phrase - The AdvP becomes the complement in the DegP (I) The Prepositional Phrase - The PP takes an NP as its complement in Vietnamese (J) The Complementizer Phrase - The complementizer takes a TP as its complement (K) The Topicalizer Phrase - The Specifier may a an NP, a VP or a TP AdvP Deg Adv' Adv' Adjunct A Adv DegP Deg' Deg AdvP PP P' P NP CP C' C TP TopP Spec Top' Top TP Conclusion The X bar approach to syntax has attempted to generalize natural languages with the minimal phrase structures rules, and its applicability to certain languages has been studied extensively This paper examined three most important phrases in Vietnamese, namely the NP, the VP and the CP under a cross-linguistic comparison with English Then the three phrases were patterned into the X-bar schema Besides, the NP and the VP were also interpreted in term of the functional categories, the DP and the TP respectively The result, which indicates that the X-bar schema is fit for revising the structure rules of Vietnamese Phrases, successfully supports the universality of this theory Furthermore, it is obvious that this approach is flexible enough to incorporate instances of special variation of Vietnamese syntactic structure, namely the Topic Comment structure, by using TopP phrasalization Moreover, the paper suggested the 30 conversion of the CP into TopP, since this conversion makes the syntactic analysis minimal The paper also focused on the structural ambiguity in Vietnamese due to the different segmentations of the strings and suggested the solution for disambiguation by using different Xbar branching presentations The paper to some extent supported the Chomskian grammar However, there are several open issues requiring deep analyses for the Vietnamese language such as the passive structure and the question form The findings of this study may be incorporated in the future English monograph on Vientnamese syntax Reference: Baltin, M and Collins, C (eds.) 2001 The Handbook of Contemporary Syntactic Theory Blackwell Oxford Black, Cheryl A 1998 A step-by-step introduction to the Government and Binding theory of syntax Summer Institute of Linguistics in Mexico 12 February 2009 Chomsky, N 1976 Reflections on Language Temple Smith London Chomsky, N 1957 Syntactic Structures Mouton & Co Fifth printing 1965 Chomsky, N 1965 Aspects of the Theory of Syntax Cambridge MA: MIT Press Chomsky, N 1988 Language and Problems of Knowledge Cambridge MA: MIT Press Chomsky, N 1995 The Minimalist Program Cambridge MA: MIT Press Crystal, D 2003 The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language Cambridge University Press Duffield, N 1998 Auxiliary Placement and Interpretation in Vietnamese Paper presented at Proceedings of the 34th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society Chicago Fukuda, Shin 2006 Control in Vietnamese A survey paper for Control Project 02 March 2009 Gordon, Raymond G (ed.) 2005 Ethnologue: Languages of the World Fifteenth edition Dallas Tex.: SIL International Online version Hao, CX 1992 Some preliminaries to the syntactic analysis of the Vietnamese sentence.Mon-Khmer Studies Journal 27January 2009 31 Hao, CX 2004 Sơ thảo ngữ pháp chức Nxb Giáo dục Hà Nội Hiep, NV 2002 Vài nét lịch sử nghiên cứu cú pháp tiếng Việt Tạp chí Ngơn ngữ số 10 năm 2002 Hoa, ND 1996 Vietnamese verbs Mon-Khmer Studies Journal 27January 2009 MS Encarta ® Encyclopedia 2004 Poole, G 2002 Syntactic theory Palgrave New York Richards, JC and Platt,J and Platt, H 1992 Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics Longman Robert, N From Traditional Grammar to Government Binding Theory EpistemicForms 29 February2009 Santorini, B and Kroch, A 2007 The syntax of natural language: An online introduction using the Trees program University of Pennsylvania 16 March 2009 Thompson, LC.1965 A Vietnamese grammar University of Washington Press Seattle Tuong, HN 2004 The structure of the Vietnamese noun phrase Vietnamese Grammar Project 07 January 2009 32 ... g X' X' ZP g X XP WP X' g X XP WP X' X YP XP WP X' X' ZP g X XP g X' X' ZP X YP XP WP X' X' ZP X YP The adjunct rule is recursive (Black 1998:7) there can be several adjuncts in a phrase and they... daughter of the X' , and the X' is the daughter of the XP The YP under the X' is named complement of the head and it is the sister to the head It should be noted that the head and the complement... example, the V and the object in a VP), and in English, the complement is preceded by the head The WP under the XP is named as the specifier; it is the sister to the X' , and it precedes the X'