Head-First: On the head-initiality of Vietnamese clauses

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This is the final draft version of an article on CP and Yes-No questions in Vietnamese that will appear in 2012 in a Mouton volume edited by Daniel Hole and Elisabeth Löbel on the Linguistics of Vietnamese. This paper will form the basis of section 1 of Chapter 3 of the monograph. This version should be cited as Duffield, Nigel (2011) Head-First: On the head-initiality of Vietnamese clauses, ms. University of Sheffield.

Preface (References)

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Chapter 7, Introduction/Overview

The chapter is concerned with one of the most interesting and theoretically challenging morpheme in Vietnamese, namely, the modal element được, usually translated as CAN. Depending on its syntactic position được is interpreted in one of three distinct ways: (i) preverbally, it corresponds to the English get-passive; (ii) immediately post-verbally, it is interpreted as an aspectual marker of accomplishment (cf. English managed to X); (iii) in clause-final position, the same element receives an alethic/abilitative interpretation, corresponding to one reading of English able. The first two of these distributions are considered in more detail elsewhere (Chapter 5 discusses passive được in the context of topicalization; in Chapter 6 I consider whether aspectual được can be assimilated to the syntax of other postverbal aspect markers). It is final được that presents the remaining challenge, since its surface position is an embarrassment not only to Cinque’s (1998) proposals for a universal hierarchy of adverb positions, but also to all of the analyses presented thus far, according to which Vietnamese is strictly head-initial. Here, I review previous solutions to this puzzle, including my own (Duffield 1998, 1999) and those of Simpson, based on similar effects in Thai (Simpson 1997, 1998). I argue that—remaining problems notwithstanding—the earliest of these solutions is to be preferred. I then consider how this analysis carries over to the treatment of very similar morphemes found in Chinese varieties (cf. Cheng & Sybesma 2006).

Chapter 6, Introduction/Overview

The final section of Duffield (2007) was concerned with the notion of ‘scope evasion’: the idea that XPs may move to escape a scope-taking element, rather than to check formal features: the key examples of this being quantificational temporal adverbs bao gio ‘what time’ and negative indefinites (under a universal interpretation). This chapter takes this idea further, investigating the (alternative Minimalist) conjecture that all phrasal movement in a morphologically bare language is driven by interpretive requirements (be it in terms of LF requirements or the requirements of ‘Information Structure’, more broadly construed), than by uninterpretable features. Aside from QR-type movements, three types of phrasal movement that require analysis: (i) ‘subject raising’ out of vP (including non-raising in existential constructions); (ii) Topicalization (which, it is argued, includes passivization in Vietnamese, as well as Relative, Cleft, Sentential Subject constructions, and instances of “verb-copying” in Chinese, cf. Huang 1994, Paul 2001): (iii) Heavy NP Shift (right-extraposition). It is proposed—on the basis of internal evidence as well as external comparisons with Celtic (for example, McCloskey 1991, 2001)—that (i) and (ii) are related to a common underlying structure, that Vietnamese matrix clauses are invariably TopPs, and that, like German subject-initial V2 clauses, SVO order reflects a derivation in which subj=topic. It is further claimed that in neither case need there be any resort to ‘uninterpretable features’, including EPP features, to explain phrasal movement. (Rightward movement—(iii)—is treated separately as a processing phenomenon).

Chapter 5, Overview/Introduction

In this chapter, which revises and extends ideas in Duffield (2010, forthcoming), also Duffield & Phan (2010), Phan (in prep.), I turn attention to the functional architecture within the VP,  developing a number of proposals about the lexicon-syntax interface made by Lisa Travis in recent work (Travis 2000, 2010), according to which verbal properties traditionally viewed as syntactically inert are associated with autonomous structural projections (see also Hale & Keyser 1993). Among other claims, Travis’ proposals distinguish the base position of Agents/Intentional Causers ([Spec, V1]) from those of arguments interpreted as non-volitional or ‘inadvertent’ Causes ([Spec, Asp]). Travis (2008) also syntactically represents the event structure of a clause through the projection of an independent Event Phrase, located immediately above VP1 (or vP, in other analyses). Empirical support for these two claims has come mainly from Malagasy (to a lesser extent from Tagalog).

One of the central purposes of this chapter is to show how these proposals offer a natural account of a number of systematic alternations in the Vietnamese verb-phrase (especially with respect to causative and resultative constructions involving the causative verb làm in conjunction with unaccusative vs. unergative predicates). These particular effects in Vietnamese are of interest not only because they provide evidence of the generalizability of Travis’ proposals to an isolating language, but also precisely because of the significant syntactic differences among SE Asian languages with respect to causativization (Vietnamese, for instance, disallows the NP1 V1 V2 NP2 order observed in Chinese, often analyzed as “verb incorporation”). This chapter, therefore, has two goals: to articulate the syntax of Vietnamese verb-phrases with reference to a universal template (involving Inner Aspect, and Event Phrase projections) while still accounting for cross-linguistic variation in VP-structure within the South East Asian linguistic area (Capell 1979).

Chapter 4, Introduction/Overview

This chapter offers an elaborated revision of Duffield (2007, 2009) and Duffield & Phan (2010), focusing on the distribution and interpretation of Tense and Assertion morphemes in Vietnamese, and their interaction with negation, as well as on the syntactic and semantic differences between pre-verbal and post-verbal ‘Aspect’ markers in this language. It re-presents the claim that modality in general, including markers of illocutionary force and polarity emphasis are projected low in Vietnamese, and suggests that this may be true more generally, confirming earlier work by Aoun & Li (1993). As well as contributing new data with respect to Tense and Modality, and correcting some errors in Duffield (2007), the analysis takes into account more recent Minimalist work on Vietnamese clause-structure, most notably work by Trinh ((Trinh 2005), 2006). Central to this new discussion will be a detailed treatment of pre-verbal TAM morphemes in Vietnamese, especially of distributional and interpretive constraints distinguishing the “future” and “past tense” morphemes (sẽ vs. đã).

Chapter 3, Introduction/Overview

3.    Head-First: Some Consequences of Head-Initiality in Vietnamese

This chapter considers what Vietnamese can tell us about proposed macro-parameters of language variation (“Asian languages” vs. others) with respect to four syntactic phenomena:

1. The position of complementizers. Cheng’s (1997) Clause-Typing Hypothesis, which assumes that sentence-final particles in Mandarin Chinese Y-N questions are (final) complementizers. Vietnamese has such particles but it also has initial complementizers, raising questions about the validity of the CTH both for Vietnamese, and for Chinese (see also (Huang 2008)). Evidence from Irish will also be brought to bear on this question (cf. (Oda 2005)). This discussion also speaks to carthographic theories of the left periphery (Rizzi 1997): Vietnamese provides evidence for a fractionated CP comprising several distinct functional heads).
2. Wh-questions (reply to Bruening and Tran 2006)
3. The structure of relative clauses. Fukui & Takano (1999)’s explanation of the contrast between English and Japanese/Chinese relative clauses. Contra (Kayne 1995), F&T propose that languages are underlyingly head-final, and that head-initial structures in TP and DP are the consequence of N->D raising in English-type languages. F&T attempt to derive many of the other contrasts between English and Japanese, e.g., that head-final languages tend to have internally-headed RCs, have classifiers rather than determiners, and fail to show island effects, from this alleged difference in head-movement. Vietnamese proves problematic because it clearly shows mixed properties: interpretively and morphologically—as a classifier language—it behaves like Japanese, yet structurally it patterns with English, in having relative pronouns and being head-initial, in the demonstrable absence of N->D raising.
4. The structure of verb-phrases. Huang’s (1994) parametric explanation of the Post-verbal Structure Constraint in Chinese, first detailed in Huang (1982), proposes an articulated VP-structure inspired by (Larson 1988), and much subsequent work. According to Huang (1994), differences between English and Chinese are explained in terms of the extent of verb-movement in the two languages. Vietnamese again presents an empirical challenge for this parametric account: with respect to verb-movement, it behaves (largely) like Chinese, yet shows none of the presumed effects of the parameter-setting (i.e, no PSC effects, no verb copying, no correlate of the Chinese BA-construction). Here, I investigate the idea that differences between Vietnamese and Chinese are attributable instead to the Head Parameter: in contrast to Vietnamese, Chinese VPs are really head-final (as Huang originally claimed).