Syntactic and Semantic Aspects of Discontinuous Noun Phrases in Vietnamese

Abstract

In this paper, I analyse two aspects of the syntax and semantics of discontinuous noun phrases in Vietnamese. The first aspect deals with the syntax of discontinuous noun phrases. It is discussed whether split constructions in Vietnamese involve movement as proposed by Trinh (2011) or base gereration as put forward by Fanselow & Féry (2006). It turns out that both analyses have their weaknesses and that most likely a mixture of them (as adopted by Fanselow 1988 and Ott 2012 and is necessary in order to account for the facts. The second aspect deals with classifiers and discontinuous noun phrases. It is helpful to distinguish between three types of nouns: 1) nouns that need a classifier to be countable, 2) nouns that take an optional classifier, and 3) nouns that do not take any classifier at all. Discontinuous noun phrases are not so well accepted by native speakers when involving nouns that take no classifier. Nouns with optional classifier in sentences containing discontinuous noun phrases are better when they occur with a classifier.