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Traditionally, grammars of specific languages have beenconcerned with questions of word-formation and only moreoccasionally with questions of sentence structure. For example,in older grammars of classical and Modern Indo-Europeanlanguages, such as Classical Latin or Russian, one finds extensivediscussion of noun declensions and verb conjugations, nowadaysoften referred to under the label inflectional morphology, evenmore traditionally as accidence. Generally however, there is verylittle mention in these more traditional grammars of the syntacticor phonological properties that generalize across the lexicon. Byimplication, and in popular understanding, grammar is equatedwith morphosyntactic variation. Because Vietnamese has virtuallyno inflectional morphology and a fairly rigid word-order, it issometimes claimed—often by Vietnamese speakersthemselves—that Vietnamese has ‘no grammar.’ This is amisconception. As is the case for any natural language,Vietnamese has a rich and complex grammatical structure:indeed, for reasons discussed in Duffield (2011, in prep.),Vietnamese grammar is one of quite special scientific interest. Itsapparent simplicity in inflectional morphology contrasts withrelative complexity in other areas of grammar, for example, in itssystem of lexical compounding, in less obvious areas of syntax,and in its sound system (phonology). The aim of the present workis to provide an accessible English description of the mainaspects of this grammatical structure, presented in such a waythat it will be useful both to theoretical linguists as well as to aless theoretically-minded audience, including language learners,applied linguists and educationalists.

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The strangeness of grammar: universalvs. language-particular featuresOver the last fifty years, there have been two main theoreticalapproaches to language description: a monadist, or RELATIVIST,approach on the one hand, a UNIVERSALIST approach, on the other;see Steiner (1972) for useful discussion. As with many scientificoppositions, the terms Relativist and Universalist defineend-points on a continuum, rather than a binary opposition:most theoretical linguists are more-or-less universalist,more-or-less relativist. The relativist approach to language,which developed in the context of behaviorist work in philosophyand psychology, informed much linguistic work up to thenineteen sixties, particularly in North America. Broadly speaking,relativists are impressed by the apparent differences and diversityin lexis and language use. The most extreme expression of therelativist position is summed up in the (now infamous) quotationof the American structuralist linguist Martin Joos: the view thatlanguages ‘… differ from each other without limit and inunpredictable ways Joos (1957).’; see also Gumperz & Levinson(1996). Although this view of language became less fashionablein linguistic circles for several decades following the rise ofgenerative grammar—especially after Chomsky (1959,1965)—and what has been termed the ‘cognitive revolution’—ithas always remained popular; recently, there have been attemptsto rehabilitate it in more scientific work, as shown by thefollowing quotation from Evans & Levinson (2009):

‘A widespread assumption, growing out of the generativetradition in linguistics, is that all languages areEnglish-like but with different sound systems andvocabularies. The true picture is very different: languagesdiffer so fundamentally from one another at every level ofdescription (sound, grammar, lexicon, meaning) that it isvery hard to find any single structural property they share(Evans & Levinson 2009).’

Universalists by contrast, whilst recognizing the undeniablesurface differences that exist, are more struck by the formalcommonalities to be found across the world's languages. Moreprecisely, most universalists are impressed by the commonalitiesin the grammars—the implicit rule-systems—of the world’s


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languages, rather than of the languages themselves. This is animportant distinction, negligence of which has often led toheated, but ultimately futile, debate.

These structural commonalities across unrelated grammars areall the more striking when there is no obvious functional orecological reason for them. Thus, while it is not surprising thatall grammars include devices for signalling the force of anutterance (as a question or statement, command or request), orthat spoken utterances are always temporally sequenced (wedon’t produce all of the words in an utterance simultaneously,leaving it to the listener to decode the result), it is surprising—togive just four examples—(i), that many historically unrelatedlanguages exhibit a constraint to the effect that a finite verb (orauxiliary) must appear as the second syntactic constituent,whereas no language shows a ‘verb-third’ or ‘verb-fourth’constraint; (ii), that discontinuous dependencies in manylanguages appear to be governed by the narrowly definedabstract structural condition known as C-COMMAND; (iii), thatmany languages—including possibly Vietnamese, see Nguyen(2011)—require the use of semantically empty subjects in certaingrammatical contexts (e.g., English: ‘*is raining’); (iv) that manyunrelated languages—including Bagirmi, Russian and Mandarin—prohibit the co-occurence of negation with certain types ofaspectual morpheme, as illustrated in (1)*

Recurring formal peculiarities such as these attract attention notmerely because they recur, but also because of their implicationsfor language acquisition. Barring pathology, children acquirecorrect knowledge and use of such abstract rules remarkablyearly in the course of language development: this in spite of thefact that they are rarely—if ever—given explicit instruction aboutthese implicit properties. [1] More importantly, the surfaceinformation that is available to children is consistent with a muchwider range of logically possible grammatical rules than childrenever seem to hypothesize. Expressed slightly more technically,the input to children vastly underdetermines their final-stategrammatical knowledge.

Crain (1991) articulates clearly the logic of formalist argumentsabout grammar acquisition in terms of a distinction between,respectively, unavailable structures, and unavailableinterpretations. Since this distinction will be appealed to in the


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present work, it is worth briefly recapitulating his presentationhere: see also (Crain and Pietroski 2001).

Crain points out that two types of linguistic context present alogical learnability problem for children: those contexts in whicha sentence, a form-meaning pair, is excluded for purely formalreasons, even though its interpretation is perfectly accessible;and those in which one or more or the logically availableinterpretations for a given sentence form is excluded. Thesecontexts are illustrated schematically in (1) below:

(1) a. {form1, meaning1}, {*form2, meaning1}

b. {form1, meaning1}, {form1,*meaning 2}

An example of the first restriction in English is provided by thecontrast between subject extraction from complement clauseswith and without the complementizer element that: in (2a),movement of the wh-element who from the embedded positionin which it is interpreted to the front of the clause is acceptable;in (2b), however, it is not, at least in most English varieties.(Notice that no similar restriction is observed with extractionfrom the object position: Who did you say (that) Mary loved?)

(2) a. Who did you say had stolen the car?

b. *Who did you say that had stolen the car?

A similar ‘intervention effect’ can be observed in Vietnamesecausative constructions. As discussed in various places on thissite—see also Duffield (2011, in press)—there are two kinds ofanalytic causative construction in Vietnamese: the more direct,‘simple’ causative involving làm, illustrated in (3a), and the moreindirect causative, involving làm plus cho (an element thatnormally translates as ‘give’ but which in this context functionsvery much like the English complementizer that); this isillustrated in (3b). Though normally these show very similarbehaviours, the two types of causative behave syntacticallydifferently with respect to reciprocal binding (that is to say, incases where there is referential co-indexation between the higherand lower subject): as the minimal contrast between (4a) and (4b)shows, reciprocal binding is blocked by the presence of cho(resulting in grammatical unacceptability, while remaining fullyinterpretable).


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(3) a. Tôi làm thang-be ngã.

I make boy fall

‘I made the boy fall (I tripped the boy.)’

b. Tôi làm cho thang-be ngã.

I make give boy fall

‘I made the boy fall (I caused the boy to fall).’

(4) a. Họ làm nhau khóc.

they make each other cry

‘They made each other cry.’

b. *Họ làm cho nhau khóc.

they make give e.o. cry

‘They made each other cry.’

An example of the second, interpretive, constraint schematizedin (1b) is provided by the co-reference constraints on theinterpretation of pronouns. In the English sentences in (5a) and(5b), the pronoun she may be interpreted as co-referential withthe noun-phrase Sarah (though, of course, she can also be takento refer to some other unnamed person). In example (5c) she andSarah cannot normally be understood as coreferential (thesentence remains grammatical with a non-coreferential meaning.The examples in (6) show that a parallel constraint is observed inVietnamese:

(5) a. Sarah said she had left her notebook on the train.

b. When she thought about it, Sarah realised hernotebook was left on the train.c. She thought that Sarah had left her notebook on thetrain. (*, if coreference is intended).

(6) a. Cô Thuy nói là cô ấy rất bận.

PRN DEM say that PRN DEM very busy

‘*Thuy says that she is very busy.’


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b. *Cô ấy nói là cô Thuy rất bận.

PRN DEM say that PRN Thuy very busy

‘*She says that Thuy is very busy.’

(* = ungrammatical with intended coreference)

The fact that all languages appear to obey abstract, sometimesquirky, constraints of this type, taken in conjunction with theinductive gap between the surface data available to children andfinal-state grammar they acquire, has encouraged many linguiststo attribute knowledge of the core properties of UniversalGrammar (UG) to genetic inheritance. For such nativists,knowledge of UG is part of our genetic endowment. At a stroke,this solves the learnability problem, since nothing about thesequirky constraints needs to be learned in the normal sense (thatis to say, through attentional mechanisms reliant onenvironmental exposure). Nowadays, it seems fair to claim that amajority of theoretical linguists accept some form (and degree) ofnativism. This does not mean, however, that most linguists wouldagree with the Chomskyan perspective (even assuming there issuch a homogeneous position among generative researchers).For the crucial empirical question is not whether some kind ofability is innate but rather what kinds of innate ability shapelanguage development, and how far do these abilities determinethe shape of end-state grammars? For example, a key questionin linguistics and language acquisition is whether grammaracquisition is facilitated by DOMAIN-SPECIFIC knowledge—that is,grammatical knowledge in the narrowest sense—or by moreGENERAL COGNITIVE CONSTRAINTS (for example, constraints on thesequencing of incoming information, attentional preferences forwhole objects, etc. For a general discussion of these issues, seePinker (1984), Jackendoff (1995, 1997), Elman et al. (1996),Dresher (1997); Pullum (2011)

To balance the discussion, which has tended towards theUniversalist view thus far, four points should be madeimmediately. The first objection to this kind of universalism thatmany of the strange formal principles mentioned above are notuniversal in the most obvious sense; namely, they do not appearto obtain in ALL languages. Consider again the obligatory use ofexpletive (non-referential) subjects in English (e.g., the it in ‘Johnbelieves it to be a fact that pigs have wings’). It is generally


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assumed that null argument languages such as Vietnamese donot have such expletives—though see section 6.4.3 below, also(Nguyễn and Hoàng 2011). And even in languages more similarto English, such as German and French, expletives are required insome subject positions and but are excluded in others, withsubtly different constraints holding for each language; see, forexample Bobaljik (1999). Universalists have two responses to thisobjection: either to propose that the universal in question is‘parameterized’ such that grammars/language learners will selectamong one of two privative values, giving the presence orabsence of the property in the end-state grammar. In this case,the rule is universal in the sense that all grammars can bedescribed by reference to it. The alternative is to accept thatdemonstrated non-occurrence of a rule in a given grammarexcludes it as a candidate for universality; the constraint inquestion may then be relegated to language-particular status, ormay even be treated as falling outside of grammar (narrowsyntax) entirely. Both of these strategies have been applied atdifferent times to the Verb-Second (V2) constraint, brieflymentioned above, which applies in many Germanic languages;see Gibson & Wexler 1994; Rizzi (1995).

A second relativist objection is that formal rules that seem to bearbitrary may simply be misunderstood as such. It is at leastlogically possible that constraints that appear to be dysfunctionalunder a particular description serve an important communicativeor processing function when one considers a wider set ofgrammatical and extra-grammatical factors. [2] This objectionreflects a more general concern among relativists that the searchfor universals too narrowly restricts the range of phenomena thatsome linguists consider in their descriptions. Related to this,relativists observe correctly that even if one could reliably identifyabstract universal properties of the grammar of a given language,all of the non-universal rules of particular grammars wouldremain to be described and decoded. Particular grammars, as faras we know, cannot be exclusively genetically determined; that isto say, they are not entirely describable through the applicationof innate principles with a learned lexicon; rather, grammarsseem to emerge through the interaction of innate specificationsapplied to bare lexical items (the CORE GRAMMAR), combined with asubstantial periphery of pre-compiled, often idiosyncratic,syntactic information (the PERIPHERY), all of which interacts withlanguage-processing constraints and explicitly taught


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information. [3] Thus, direct analogies to genetics may bemisleading, even if there is a genetic basis for certain aspects ofgrammar acquisition: in the case of language the role of extrinsicfactors—including general historical developments, contactphenomena, and individual differences in languageexperience—is much too large and complex to be ignored. SeeNewmeyer (2004), for discussion. If this is the case, then anadequate grammatical description must attend to language-particular properties at least as much as to universal ones.

Finally, the relativist might object that, as a matter of practice, itis harder to detect real formal differences among grammars ifyou don’t expect to find them, and, as a consequence of this, failto develop the tools to look for them. Adopting relativistassumptions is arguably a useful working practice, even for thosewho would support universalist claims.

Abstractness in description andexplanationThe approach adopted here attempts to strike a balance betweentwo goals that theoretical linguists set for themselves. On the onehand, it aims to provide an accurate description of the rules ofVietnamese grammar, one that treats Vietnamese in its ownterms, and does not seek to impose categories taken fromdescriptions of very different languages; in particular, I aim toavoid the charge of Eurocentrism, which is so often levelledagainst English or French treatments of Vietnamese grammar,sometimes with justification; see Nguyễn (2010), for discussion.On the other hand, our aim is to understand exactly whereVietnamese fits within the range of possible human languages:which properties of Vietnamese grammar hold in virtue of itsbeing a natural language (UNIVERSAL rules), which properties arecommon to a subset of human languages including Vietnamese(PARAMETRIC rules); and which features or properties appear to beexclusive to Vietnamese itself (LANGUAGE-PARTICULAR rules). Thesedifferent rule-types do not of course come labelled as such: tothe native-speaker of Vietnamese or of any other language,putatively universal aspects of their grammars have no specialstatus vis-à-vis language-particular or parametric properties. Toinvestigate Vietnamese from this perspective then, necessarilyinvolves both implicit and explicit comparisons with other better-


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studied languages. Therefore, in each section of the grammar, aneffort is made to provide relevant points of comparison withother languages and language families.

Chomsky (1965, and subsequent works) refers to the goals ofgrammatical theory in terms of DESCRIPTIVE ADEQUACY andEXPLANATORY ADEQUACY, respectively. Chomsky’s concern untilrecently was primarily with explanatory adequacy, that is to say,with fixing the abstract properties of Universal Grammar. Indeed,Chomsky frequently has frequently dismissed the study ofparticular languages (E-language) or even particular grammars ashaving little theoretical significance. Although I adopt many ofChomsky's general assumptions about the purpose of linguisticinquiry—I believe that there is something like a UniversalGrammar, and that one of the goals of linguistics should be todetermine these essential properties—the approach that I willtake here differs from that of many generative grammarians inseveral respects.

In the first place, this work is considerably less abstract thanmost theoretical research (including my own more theoreticalwork): I will present much of the discussion of syntax andsemantics in terms of sets of sentences (constructions) pairedwith interpretations. There are two reasons for this. The first isthat current syntactic analyses with their attendant formalismstend to be astonishingly ephemeral and theoretically parochial:the data may not change much over a decade, or even a century,but the analyses change with the seasons. Moreover, even if thecurrent version of generative grammar were approximately onthe right track as a theory for describing our implicit grammaticalknowledge, it is vanishingly improbable that we have hit uponjust the right theory in such a short time. For this work to haveany kind of shelf-life requires a more superficial type ofdescription. Furthermore, if this work is to be of value toresearchers working in other frameworks, it needs to beaccessible to them: to elaborate the descriptions presented hereby adding notation such as ‘interpretable formal features,’ whichare only current in one particular theoretical framework, would beto blur rather than clarify generalizations for other researchers.

An additional reason to adopt a more superficial, data-orientedapproach is due to my own conceptualization of what UniversalGrammar means. Within generative grammar, there have beentwo ideas about formal universals, broadly speaking. On the one


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hand, there are those who view formal universals as propertiesthat hold of every natural language grammar: on this view, if aformal property is universal, then by definition, it exists in thegrammar of every language, and in the mind of every speaker ofthe language that grammar generates. This view might be termedSTRONG UNIVERSALISM. Linguists who subscribe to this viewgenerally are less concerned with cross-linguistic work; theyoften also tend to subscribe to a strong view of the InnatenessHypothesis. (Of course, if these linguists are correct and haveproperly determined the formal universals in one language, thenthere is really no need consider cross-linguistic differences forthe purposes of theory development, since, moduloparameterization, close inspection of any single language willsuffice). [4]

An alternative view of formal universals, which until the advent ofOptimality Theory was the more common one among generativephonologists, is that Universal Grammar provides a fixedinventory of phonological and syntactic rules, from whichlanguages choose different options. Let us call thissmorgasbord-type approach the Weak Universalist view. WeakUniversalism, which I adopt here, provides for at least two kindsof parametrization: grammars may differ from one anotherbecause they have different parametric values for the same rule(this is the only type of parameterization available in moderateversions of current Minimalism); or, because one grammarcontains a rule that the other lacks. An example of the first mightbe different bounding nodes for subjacency; an example of thesecond might be whether or not the EPP—the requirement that allclauses contain subjects—applies in a given language; seeMcCloskey (1999a). For those who subscribe to the weakuniversalist position, cross-linguistic work is absolutely crucial. Idiscuss some aspects of this position in the next section.

Even if one were to adopt a strong universalist approach, therewould still be good reason to do careful cross-linguistic work.One way to appreciate this is by considering the followingthought experiment—which may be tragically close to beingrealized; see McCloskey (1999b). Suppose that at some futuretime, only one human language remains: English, and MandarinChinese are perhaps the most plausible candidates as ‘solesurvivors.’ For the sake of argument, let us say that theremaining language is English. Now suppose that future linguists


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are interested in determining the universal properties ofgrammar. Since every aspect of English grammar, includingseveral thousand basic lexical items, will be present in the mindof every adult language user, it would be possible to claim thatUG was exactly the grammar of English; furthermore, one couldclaim an innate basis for all of these properties, up to thespecification of lexical entries. Such a claim would not be true,but in the absence of language users with different grammars, itwould be empirically unfalsifiable. Given the speed of languageextinction over the last two centuries, it is an increasingly urgenttask to document the remaining diversity before all counter-evidence is lost. [5]

A final reason to adopt a weak universalist stance and with it aless abstract approach, is quite simply that it is more interesting;by which, of course, I mean more interesting to me. The focus ofmuch recent work within the Minimalist framework has becomeincredibly narrow, even by generative standards: to the extentthat any universal principles that remain are presented at a levelof abstractness so far removed from language data that theirdescriptive value is virtually negligible. As an example of this,consider the (universal) derivational constraint in (7) below (from(Chomsky 1993)):

(7) Minimal Link Condition

F can raise to target K only if there is no legitimateoperation Move F' targeting K, where F' is closer to K.

In earlier versions of Minimalism, this formal constraint served torestrict possible word-orders by strictly delimiting the extent towhich constituents may be displaced from the position in whichthey are (thematically) interpreted. One of many consequences ofthis derivational constraint is to prevent ‘topicalized’ constituentsfrom appearing between the canonical subject position and thetense-bearing element in both English and Vietnamese, as shownin (8) and (9) below:

(8) a. That book, he put on the table.

b. Quyển sách này, anh ấy đễ trên bàn.

(9) a. *He that book put on the table.

b. *Anh ấy quyển sách này đễ trên bàn.


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But this constraint does not by itself account for the fact thattopicalization is much more frequent in Vietnamese than inEnglish (Vietnamese is a so-called ‘topic-prominent language)nor, as importantly, does it account for the fact that topicarguments in Vietnamese — as is also the case in Japanese, forexample — need only satisfy an ‘aboutness relation’ to theposition topicalized on, whereas English topic arguments mustreplace the entire constituent; compare (9a) and (9b), see alsoRosén (1998) for discussion of this phenomenon.

(10) a. *This office, the door is usually closed.

b. Cái phòng này thì cửa thường dóng.

CL room DEM TOP door usually close

‘*This office, the door is usually closed.’

Nor does a condition like the MLC explain or predict theobligatoriness of SOIV order in Vietnamese in sentences wherethe object is to be interpreted as a universal quantifier: comparethe examples in (11); see section nn, also Duffield (2007, inprep.). A less abstract description of argument fronting should atleast mention these facts; a description aiming at descriptiveadequacy will seek to relate these facts to other formal propertiesof the language(s) under investigation. (Such a description can ofcourse make reference to abstract principles such as the MLC,but that cannot be the whole story.)

(11) a. Anh ấy tự nào cũng nhớ.

PRN DEM word which also remember

‘She remembers every word.’

b. Cô ấy ai cũng quen.

PRN DEM who also know

‘She knows everybody.’

c. Anh ấy bao giờ cũng đến muộn.

PRN DEM what time also arrive late

‘He is always late.’


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Typological Considerations

This work also has typological goals. Language typology is thestudy of (non-genetic) language classification; an authoritativework here is Comrie (1981, 1989); see also Whaley (1997). Thisstudy will pay special attention to one particular kind oftypological classification, namely, that relating to formalparametric variation in syntax and semantics. The goal here is todetermine how best to situate Vietnamese grammar relative toother superficially similar languages. [6] As mentioned above, Iassume that there are two distinct ways in whichparameterization can work, and through which languages may bemeaningfully classified. First, languages may be classifiedaccording the categorical presence or absence of a given set ofrules or properties: let us call this ABSOLUTE PARAMETERIZATION (AP).Alternatively, a language may be classified by considering its‘parameter-settings’—the choices it makes among differentfeature-values for the same universal parameteric rule: call thisRELATIVE PARAMETERIZATION (RP).

Whether absolute or relative parametrization is moreenlightening to the description is dictated in advance. Rather, thisdepends crucially on the degree of abstractness of the typologicaldescription, as well as on what may be termed the ‘explanatorydepth’ of the parameter; cf. Comrie (1981), Atkinson (1990). Bothof these notions can be appreciated by considering someexamples. Consider the following assertions that could be (havebeen) made about Vietnamese, and which are examined in muchgreater detail below:

· Vietnamese is a Tone Language

· Vietnamese is an SVO Language

· Vietnamese is a “null-subject” language

· Vietnamese is a “serializing” language (see Collins1994).

· Vietnamese is a [-Pred+Arg] language with respect toChierchia's Nominal Mapping Parameter ((Chierchia1998)).

Each of these statements serves to classify Vietnamese in oneway or another, systematically grouping it with some languages,


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distinguishing it from others. The first two statements may seemto be instances of absolute parameters: either a language makesuse of pitch distinctions to differentiate lexical meanings (asVietnamese does), or it doesn't (as is the case for English);likewise, the basic word-order of a language is either Subject-Verb-Object (English, Vietnamese), or something else (Japanese,for example, is an SOV language). In fact, neither statement iswithout problems: with respect to the first property, there arelanguages that exploit tone in a very limited way (so-called ‘pitchaccent’ systems, such as Swedish and Japanese); with respect toword-order there are languages with more mixed word-orderpatterns, for which it is much harder to determine what ‘basicword-order’ might mean. Furthermore, many of the theoreticallyinteresting questions one might ask about word-order concern'micro-parametric' variation among varieties that are basicallyrather similar: for example, differences between Chinese andVietnamese (both superficially SVO) in terms ofverb-incorporation in complex predicate constructions: seeDuffield (2011, in prep.), Duffield & Phan (2011).

But suppose for a moment that these classifications are clear-cut.What do these typological descriptions tell us beyond the factthat Vietnamese is like English in one respect (having SVO order),but different in another (having tones)? In such cases, the answerseems to be: very little. What we want to know instead is whetherthere are systematic differences among various tone languages,or languages with SVO word-order; whether, for example,systems that exploit a six-way tonal distinction (for example,Northern Vietnamese) are subject to different phonologicalconstraints than those which have only four-way tonal contrasts(Southern Varieties); or whether all SVO languages behavesimilarly with respect to some logically independent property,such as adjective or adverb placement. In other words, mostabsolute parameters only make for interesting typological workwhen we can ‘look inside’ the parameter, or when the statementis implicationally linked to some other set of grammaticalproperties. This is part of what is meant by explanatory depth:knowing that a grammar has some property p, named in theparameter, allows the linguist—and, perhaps more importantly,the language learner—to predict the existence of some otherproperty q. As Comrie (1981, 1989) points out, this implicationalprediction may only be probabilistic rather than logical—it mightbe that having p simply increases the likelihood of property


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q—but, as long as these properties are in principle independentof one another, it is still explanatory.

The notion of explanatory depth become clearer when relativeparameterization is considered. Consider again the thirdstatement above: Vietnamese is a null-subject language. Withingenerative theory, a null-subject language is one in whichomission of the subject pronoun in a finite clause still yields agrammatical sentence. As the examples below illustrate, Italian isa typical example of a null-subject language, whereas Englishdoes not generally allow subject omission in finite clauses:

(12) a. (io) ho veduto Gianni.

I have.1sg.pres seen G.

‘*(I) saw Gianni.’

b. *I said that had seen John.

In (12a), the Italian subject pronoun may be freely omitted,whereas in the translation and in the English sentence in (12b),omission of the subject is impossible in regular finite contexts.Considering only this narrow fact, Vietnamese could be classifiedas a null-subject language, patterning with Italian, rather thanEnglish, since subjects can generally be omitted if the referent isclear from the preceding discourse, especially in subordinateclauses. Yet, as discussed below, subject omission in Vietnameseis subject to different constraints from those operative in Italian,or even Chinese; see Cao (1998), Rosén (1998).

In earlier generative work, however, the null-subject parameterwas understood as having somewhat greater explanatory depth.Chomsky (1981), developing previous observations by Perlmutter(1971), amongst others, proposed that the null-subjectparameter involved a clustering of formal properties comprising:

subject omissionfree subject inversion in simple sentenceslong wh-movement of subjectempty resumptive pronouns in embedded clausesapparent violation of the ‘*that-t filter.’lack of expletive (non-referential) pronouns.

So construed, the explanatory depth and predictive power of thenull-subject parameter was considerable. Unfortunately, this


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particular construal turned out to be empirically untenable:subsequent research revealed languages—even varieties of Italian—where the implicational relations among these properties didnot hold as predicted: see for discussion, Jaeggli & Safir (1982),Huang (1984), (Gilligan 1987), (Rohrbacher 1993), amongstothers. Notice, however, that the apparent empirical failure ofthis formulation of the parameter does necessarily invalidate itsexplanatory potential. On the contrary, the hypothesis thatcertain properties may be universally linked helps drive aprogram of empirical research on particular grammars, so thatwe can arrive at a better understanding of which grammaticalproperties are inherently linked and which are only contingentlyrelated in a particular language; see also Trinh (2010), Duffield(2010).

Furthermore, even if every relationship between properties of aproposed parameter turned out to be accidental, the proposalwould still have heuristic value, in that it would alert us topossible formal connections which otherwise might beoverlooked. Hence, in this work, examination of possiblerelationships among ‘null-subject’ properties in Vietnamese willcontribute to typological research in two ways: on the one hand,it will help to determine more precisely the range of possiblenull-subject grammars; on the other, it should yield greaterknowledge of formal implicational relations within Vietnamesegrammar itself. This is true whether or not the null-subjectparameter has any real grammatical status as a universal. Thesame is true of the other parameters to be considered here.

Implications for Language AcquisitionThe more we understand about the intricate similarities anddifferences among different grammars, the better we are able todetermine the constraints on cross-linguistic variation; in turn,the better equipped we are to understand one of the centralproblems of Language & Mind: the question of how language isacquired. There are two main theoretical problems in LanguageAcquisition (both in First and Second language acquisition): thelogical problem, and the developmental problem; see Atkinson1990, for discussion. The logical problem is concerned with howlanguage learners, acquiring a particular grammar, converge onvery similar knowledge of that target grammar, in spite of wildly


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differing experience, and highly indirect evidence. Thedevelopmental problem is concerned with explaining thedevelopmental stages encountered on the path to a mature targetgrammar, and with describing the interaction between developinglinguistic competence and development in other areas ofcognition. In first language acquisition, which is almost invariablysuccessful (barring pathology), researchers have tended to focuson the logical problem; in second language acquisition (SLA),where, at least superficially, successful convergence does notseem to be guaranteed (though see White 1989, 1996, 2003 foran opposing view), developmental questions—and the relatedissues of Interlanguage grammars—are more often to the fore.Any full explanationof acquisition should address both aspects ofthe problem.

Although this work is not about acquisition per se, I will try toincorporate acquisitional issues into the general discussion.Whenever a parametric difference is uncovered in any area of thegrammar, I will consider what the triggering evidence might bethat would allow a language learner to acquire that difference, aswell as the problems of learnability which might arise, especiallyfor second language learners. I shall also discuss relevant workexamining L2 learners’ knowledge of Vietnamese parameter-settings; for example, Phan (in prep.); (Duffield and Phan 2011).In this way, the grammar may be of some use indirectly tolanguage learners, as well as to language teachers.

ConclusionSummarizing this introductory section, the goal of this work tooffer a theoretically-informed, comparative, and relativelyconcrete description of Vietnamese grammar, focussing on thesyntax and semantics of the language.

The description is THEORETICALLY INFORMED in the sense thatit investigates, for Vietnamese, the types of questionsabout structure and interpretations that are centralconcerns of generative theory. It is nevertheless intendedprimarily as a description rather than an analysis (eventhough every adequate description presupposes an implicitanalysis, and an accompanying theoretical framework.The work is COMPARATIVE: it is assumed that some—perhapsmost—formal aspects of Vietnamese grammar are


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non-arbitrary, and derive instead from universalproperties. One of the tasks of the investigation is to teaseapart the universal from the language-particular inVietnamese, and this necessitates comparison with formalproperties in other languages.Finally, it is intended that description should be relativelyCONCRETE: that is, it should be no more abstract than isrequired to allow for cross-linguistic generalizations. Tothe extent that this description is successful, it will shedlight on two further issues, namely: the typologicalquestion of the place of Vietnamese in a formal taxonomyof languages, as well as the acquisitional question of howVietnamese can be successfully acquired.[7]

Notes

[1] This is due in part to the fact that most native-speakers—other than theoretical linguistics—are completely unaware ofthe true rules of their grammar; those rules they are aware of e.g.to never split infinitives, to not end sentences with prepositions—those they are aware of—are often incorrect normativeproscriptions, rather than accurate characterizations ofgrammatical constraints. See below; also Pinker (1994).

[2] See O'Grady (1997), for example, for a discussion of subject-object extraction asymmetries along these lines.

[3] For one elaboration of this view, see Culicover (1999); alsoJackendoff & Culicover 2000).

[4] Radical Minimalists in fact deny that there is anyparametrization of universal principles whatsoever: the strongestinterpretation of the Minimalist thesis (SMT) is that all grammarsare formally identical (not merely very similar). See Boeckx(2006); for an opposing view, see Roberts & Holmberg (2005),Holmberg (2010). For further discussion of these issues, seeDuffield (in prep.a), Chapter 2.

[5] Of course, Vietnamese is hardly the most threatened oflanguages: with an estimated 80 million native-speakers and arelatively young population, its medium-term future is secure.


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Nevertheless, even here, a general tendency towards increasingstandardization means that dialect differences are being eroded,with consequent impoverishment of intra-language diversity.

[6] The very mention of similarity, of course, begs the questionaddressed here, since it implies some apriori classification;however I hope that such notional classification is harmless, aslong as it is recognized as such.

[7] There is almost no language acquisition research available onVietnamese in English. Only a handful of (unpublished)dissertations have been produced to date: these deal primarilywith Second Language Acquisition or bi-lingual learners ofEnglish see, for example, Guerra (1989), Pham (1989). Inaddition, some applied EFL/ESL research has appeared, whichdiscusses L1 transfer effects; these articles deal only tangentiallywith the structure of adult Vietnamese, and usually focus onphonological and morphological difficulties in the L2 (e.g., Riney1988). With respect to first language acquisition, there simply nogood data available on how Vietnamese is acquired by eithermonolingual or bilingual children, barring the briefest ofmentions; for example, in Truong’s (1993) mention ofVietnamese-Dutch interlanguage Truong, V. B. (1993).Vietnamese. Community Languages in the Netherlands. G. Extraand L. Verhoeven. Amsterdam:, Swets & Zeitlinger:301-318.

This lack of data might not be such a problem if Vietnamesegrammar were essentially identical to that of other better-studiedAsian languages, such as Cantonese or Mandarin. This is not thecase, however: as this grammar demonstrates, Vietnamesegrammar differs in significant formal respects from othersuperficially similar languages: see also Bisang (1992), Duffield(1999, 2007, in prep.), Rosén (1999), Simpson & Wu (2000)amongst others. It is therefore essential for both theoretical anddescriptive reasons to gain a better understanding of how thelanguage is acquired.

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General Approach - Vietnamese Grammar Project

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