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)

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• 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 :)