Shake Can Well (Link)

Last month, I gave a talk at CamCos3, the text of which is now posted on LingBuzz. It was the first time I have ever given a theoretical talk in Cambridge, let alone an invited one. And by happy coincidence, this year marks the 30th anniversary of my graduation from Trinity Hall. All in all, a very pleasant and interesting homecoming.







http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/002119

Linguistics of Vietnamese

After some delay, I am pleased to have this in my hands at last. Thanks to Daniel Hole and Elisabeth Löbel, and the staff at Mouton for doing such an excellent job. If you are interested in Vietnamese grammar, please have your library order this!


A preprint version of the article is available here:

Minimalism and Semantic Syntax: Interpreting Multifunctionality in Vietnamese

Full Paper Here

Talk presented in Hanoi, May 11-12, 2013

Original Abstract
This talk is concerned with a deceptively simple question: where does sentence meaning come from? Within generative grammar, at least since the demise of Generative Semantics, the received view has been that the meaning of a sentence is exhaustively a function of the lexical elements of which it is comprised (setting aside the effects of constituency and scope). This is made explicit in the Projection Principle (Chomsky 1981), which understands syntax as a "projection of lexical properties". In subsequent Minimalist approaches (Chomsky 1993, 1995, 2000), this restriction is tightened up even further by the requirement that syntactic computations operate exclusively with the lexical items introduced in the initial array (numeration): no node labels or extraneous symbols (e.g., theta-roles, indices, movement traces, levels of representation) which might contribute to sentence meaning. This does not, of course, exclude reference to abstract formal features—indeed, these are crucial to most Minimalist analyses—but it requires that such features (e.g., EPP features) are ultimately drawn from the lexicon: they are themselves lexical entries, alongside contentful, arbitrary lexical items. Whatever the theoretical advantages of this approach for delivering an extremely spare Minimalist syntax, it should be clear that it massively increases lexical complexity, leading to a multiplicity of different abstract features attaching to what are, intuitively speaking, the same lexical items. Grammatical theory is a ‘zero-sum game’: if the syntax does little or no semantic work, the burden necessarily falls on lexical specification.

In the case of languages with rich inflectional paradigms and/or an extensive inventory of phonetically-differentiated functional categories, this 'poor syntax—rich lexicon' approach makes some sense, since subtle differences in feature specification are reflected in different pronunciations that must in any case be lexically listed; e.g., English present perfect has been vs. preterite was; wh-interrogative who vs. indefinite anyone; locative vs. expletive there; nominative she vs. accusative her. However, for Vietnamese and other isolating languages, the desirability of a strict lexicalist approach is much less evident. In contrast to inflectional languages, Vietnamese does not appear to differentiate subtle meaning contrasts in the lexicon: instead, it disposes of a set of radically-underspecified 'multifunctional' items, whose semantics are determined in part—and in some instances exhaustively—by their position in phrase-structure. A clear example of this multifunctionality is offered by the modal auxiliary được (also phải), which is variously interpreted as a deontic, epistemic or abilitative modal—even as a non-modal, aspectual, particle—in different structural positions, This is illustrated in (0); see Duffield (1999), Phan & Duffield (in prep.)

0. a. Ông Quang được mua cái nhà.
        prn Q. can buy cl house
        ‘Quang was allowed to buy a house.’

    b. Ông Quang mua được cái nhà.
        prn Q. buy can cl house
        ‘Quang has bought (was able to buy) a house.’

    c. Ông Quang mua cái nhà được.
         prn Q. buy cls house can
         ‘Quang is able to buy a house/Quang may possibly buy a house.’

Other examples will be discussed directly. This multifunctionality suggests a radically different, though equally austere, conception of Minimalism: Minimalist Lexicalism (see also Marantz 2005, Borer 2007). The corollary of this, of course, is Semantic Syntax: meaning inheres in, and is read off of, syntactic representations. In this talk, then, I elaborate an alternative Minimalist thesis: I argue that it is elucidating to introduce a limited amount of meaning into syntax, maintaining that this can be done without resurrecting Generative Semantics.

Monograph Forthcoming? Yes!

Though progress at times may seem almost glacially slow, I continue to work on the chapters of a monograph on Vietnamese grammar that may one day be completed. Over the last months, I have continued work on Chapter 1—A Descriptive Sketch. Click on the link below for the latest version of Part 1 of this chapter (alternatively go to the Monograph page link at top)

Click to download pdf

Comments and suggestions welcome!

Unpeeling an onion: what Vietnamese tells us about the lexicon-syntax interface

Last week, I had the great fortune to attend the International Conference on Linguistics Training and Research in Vietnam, held at USSH, VNU, Hanoi. My first visit to Vietnam, I hope the first of many. During my stay, I was able to give two presentations. I'm posting the slides from the first colloquium talk, which will be written up more fully shortly (and essentially a synopsis of Chapter 1 of the elusive, but not quite mythical, monograph). In the meantime, there should be enough on the slides to make for useful reading. If you have comments or questions—about Vietnamese syntax, though not about onions—please get in touch.

Click to view presentation

(I've replaced the html version with a pdf file, which should be easier to read)

Polarity Emphasis and ‘Low Modality’ in Vietnamese and English

This is a pre-final draft of a paper presented at GIST4 (Workshop on Polarity Emphasis) in Ghent. The paper is a revised and refocussed version of my Linguistics article (Duffield 2007), incorporating findings from some more recent work (Duffield & Phan 2010, Duffield, in press). Comments welcome.

Link to pdf file

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

Link to PDF file


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 [title forthcoming]. This paper will form the basis of section 1 of Chapter 3 of my forthcoming monograph. This version should be cited as Duffield, Nigel (2011) Head-First: On the head-initiality of Vietnamese clauses, ms. University of Sheffield.

How flabbergasting is Extragrammaticality?

Recently, I have been forced to think a bit harder about the concept of Extra-grammaticality, which is basically the idea that some elements of a linguistic utterance are not analyzed as part of the abstract, underlying sentential representation (even if they are legitimate lexical items that may, on another occasion, be so analyzed). The context for this concern is a paper that I recently submitted to a leading journal, which—the paper, that is—was tossed back at me after being savagely rejected by one of the reviewers. One of the many things the reviewer objected to was a section in which, in passing, I entertained the proposal that utterance final Q-morphemes in East Asian languages such as Vietnamese and Mandarin might be extra-grammatical in the sense defined above; in the particular case at hand,  which concerns the analysis of interrogative không, I was in fact rejecting such a proposal for không. But no matter: the mere suggestion of extra-grammaticality was enough to horrify, indeed flabbergast, the reviewer of the afore-unnamed journạl. Verbatim, if not literally (whatever the literal meaning of flabbergast might be, I think he was exaggerating). Quoth he: (“[The] statement ...that “many languages have lexical elements that are extra-metrical in this sense—present in utterances but not in sentences..."... left me flabbergasted.”

For this, and doubtless other, sounder, reasons, the reviewer was minded to urge rejection of the paper, and the editor duly complied.

Getting the GIST4 (September 29th-30th)

It will be very good to come back to Belgium, and to linguistics, after too long away. If you are interested why don't you join us...

On 9 Jun 2011, at 00:13, Reiko Vermeulen wrote: