Tuong Nguyen

The Structure of the Vietnamese Noun Phrase Tuong Nguyen

As a classifier language, Vietnamese is aninteresting case study of the internal structure ofnoun phrases. This book is a study of the VietnameseNoun Phrase from a generative perspective. TheVietnamese Noun Phrase is analyzed as a DP, whichcontains multiple functional projections, includingClassifier, Numeral, Demonstrative, and DeterminerPhrases. Controversial issues such as the existenceof lexical articles in Vietnamese, the extra C?I, andthe distinction between classifiers and measure wordsare also discussed. Crosslinguistic evidence supports the proposedanalysis for Vietnamese. The nominal word ordertypology across Austro-Asiatic, Austro-Tai, andSino-Tibetan language families is demonstrated toderive from the same underlying structure. It isparametric differences between languages that governmovement possibilities within DP, resulting in thediffering linear word order patterns. A unifiedanalysis of the typology of DPs involvingdemonstrative and demonstrative reinforcers acrosslanguages is also proposed. The results of this studyprovide insight into the understanding and analysisof noun phrase structure, both in Vietnamese andcrosslinguistically.