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).