Linguistic Introduction to Vietnamese Language
Kamo Araz AhmadLebanese French University
Language Family Tree • Vietnamese language belongs to Austroasiatic Language family tree.Austroasiatic is a large language family of Southeast Asia, also scattered throughout India, Bangladesh, Nepal and the southern border of China.
Vietic Languages • The Vietic languages are a branch of the Austroasiatic language family. The
vietic family consists of Vietnamese , and a number minority languages in northern and central Vietnam, and in the Lao border regions.
• the term Vietic was proposed by Hayes (1992), who proposed to redefine Việt–Mường as referring to a sub-branch of Vietic containing only Vietnamese and Mường.
• Vietic can be thought of as having a northern Viet-Mương sub-branch, and a number of small southern languages that are spoken in the Lao-Vietnam borderlands and beyond:
• Viet-Mương• a) Vietnamese (various dialects)• b) Mương (various dialects)• Maleng (~ Malieng, Pakatan, Bo)• Arem• Ruc, Sach, May, Chu’t• Pong, Hung, Tum, Khong-Kheng• Cuôi or Thô• Ahloa, Ahoa (Thavung)
:
• Chamberlain classification:
Vietnamese Phonology
Tonal System in Vietnamese Langauge
Vietnamese Morphology :• Vietnamese, like many languages in Southeast Asia, is an analytic
language. Vietnamese lacks morphological marking of case, gender, number, and tense (and, as a result, has no finite/nonfinite distinction).
• Vietnamese words may consist of one or more syllable, most of the words are disyllabic but there are also polysyllabic which are made by reduplicative derivation.
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 and other Austro-Asiatic languages.
• Affixation:Vietnamese has very limited affixation. A few affixes are used along with reduplication. Many affixes are derived from Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.
• Ablaut:Vietnamese has tonal tonal ablaut which are used grammatically:
Syntax
• Basic sentence order in vitenamese is SVO:
tôi nòi tiếng việt I speak Vietnamese
Basic Grammar
• Pronouns: using vietnamese pronouns depend on relationship,kinship, and gender of the speaker, it is a complicated system of pronouns.
• Ấy: by adding it we can make third person :
Anh ấy = He
các: a particle added before nouns and prnouns to make plural:
các anh các bạn
• Tenses:Vietnamese language doesn’t have verb conjugations or endings, verbs in vietnamese won’t change, Vietnamese relies on context to express tense:
THANK YOU :)
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