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Part of
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Vietnamese Linguistics
Edited by Nigel Duffield, Trang Phan and Tue Trinh
[Studies in Language Companion Series 211] 2019
► pp. 81–112

Chapter 5
Illusory islands

On ‘wh-questions in Vietnamese’

| Konan University, Japan

This paper offers an extended critique of an article by Bruening & Tran (2006) concerning wh-questions in Vietnamese. Drawing on both language-internal and cross-linguistic evidence, attention is brought to bear on several empirical shortcomings in Bruening & Tran’s analysis, as a result of which the constituency of wh-question constructions in this language is misrepresented. An alternative treatment is proposed which attempts to remedy these difficulties, and, in so doing, may also explain some additional distributional and interpretive anomalies.

Keywords: Vietnamese syntax, wh-questions, island constraints, covert movement vs. unselective binding
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Original arguments
    • 2.1Is thế a sentential element at all?
    • 2.2Non-equivalence of pre-verbal TAM markers
    • 2.3Establishing a base-line: dissociating movement and interpretation
  • 3.Re-analyzing islands
    • 3.1‘Complex NP-islands’ as consecutive main clauses
    • 3.2Alternative analyses of ‘Sentential Subjects’
    • 3.3‘Adjunct islands’ are main clauses, too
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 9 October 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.211.05duf
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