Cover not available
Part of
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Vietnamese Linguistics
Edited by Nigel Duffield, Trang Phan and Tue Trinh
[Studies in Language Companion Series 211] 2019
► pp. 115–140

Chapter 6
Temporal reference in Vietnamese

| University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA

The paper seeks to address gaps in current knowledge regarding cross-linguistic variation on the semantics of tense and aspect by examining how temporal reference is determined in Vietnamese. It is argued that, like St’át’imcets (Matthewson 2006), Vietnamese is a ‘superficially tenseless’ language in the sense that even though the grammar lacks overt tense morphology, every finite clause contains a phonologically empty non-future tense morpheme. I then argue that future tense in Vietnamese realised as a combination both the obligatory null tense morpheme and an overt spell-out of sẽ, which is the Vietnamese counterpart of the English WOLL operator (Abusch 1985). This means that sẽ itself is neither a purely a tense or solely an epistemic modal. Consequently, this study concludes that future time reference is systematically different from present and past time interpretations, which is similar to previous claims made by Abusch (1997), Kratzer (1998), and others.

Keywords: (future) tense, aspect, viewpoint aspect, tenselessness, cross-linguistic comparisons
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Vietnamese temporal data
    • 2.1Temporally unmarked predicates
    • 2.2Preverbal particles
  • 3.Previous literature
    • 3.1Duffield (2007)
    • 3.2Phan (2013)
  • 4.Problems with the previous accounts
    • 4.1Non-future interpretations
    • 4.2‘Future in the Past’ interpretations
    • 4.3Perfect interpretations
    • 4.4Progressive interpretations
  • 5.Analysis
    • 5.1The framework
    • 5.2Tense and viewpoint aspects
    • 5.3Futurity
    • 5.4The perfect aspect
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 9 October 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.211.06bui
References
Abusch, Dorit
1985 On Verbs and Time. PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.Google Scholar
1997 Sequence of tense and temporal de re. Linguistics and Philosophy 20: 1–50. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bittner, Maria
2005 Future discourse in a tenseless language. Journal of Semantics 22: 339–387. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Duffield, Nigel
1999 Final modals, adverbs and antisymmetry in Vietnamese. Revue Québécoise de Linguistique 27(2): 92–129. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2007 Aspects of Vietnamese clause structure: Separating tense from assertion. Linguistics 45(4): 765–814. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 On polarity emphasis, assertion and mood in English and Vietnamese. Lingua 137: 248–270. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017 On what projects in Vietnamese. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 26(4): 351–387. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heim, Irene
1994 Comments on Abusch’s Theory of Tense. Ms.Google Scholar
Klein, Wolfgang
1994 Time in Language. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
1998 Assertion and finiteness. In Issues in the Theory of Language Acquisition. Essays in Honor of Jürgen Weissenborn, Norbert Dittmar & Zvi Penner (eds), 222–245. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Kratzer, Angelika
1998 More structural analogies between pronouns and tense. In Proceedings of SALT 8, 92–110. Ithaca NY: CLC.Google Scholar
Lin, Jo-Wang
2005 Time in a language without tense: The case of Chinese. Journal of Semantics 23: 1–53. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2012 Tenselessness. In The Oxford Handbook of Tense and Aspect, Robert I. Binnick (ed.), 669–695. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Matthewson, Lisa
2006 Temporal semantics in a supposedly tenseless language. Linguistics and Philosophy 29: 673–713. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mucha, Anne
2013 Temporal interpretation in Hausa. Linguistics & Philosophy 36: 371–415. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pancheva, Roumyana
2004 Another perfect puzzle. In Proceedings of WCCFL 23, Vineeta Chand, Ann Kelleher, Angelo J. Rodríguez & Benjamin Schmeiser (eds), 621–634. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Pancheva, Roumyana & von Stechow, Arnim
2004 On the ‘present perfect puzzle’. In Proceedings of NELS 34, Keir Moulton & Matthew Wolf (eds), 469–84. Amherst MA: GLSA.Google Scholar
Phan, Trang
2013 Syntax of Vietnamese Aspect. PhD dissertation, University of Sheffield.Google Scholar
Phan, Trang & Duffield, Nigel
2019 The Vietnamese perfect: A compositional analysis. In Cross-linguistic Perspectives on the Semantics of Grammatical Aspect (Cahiers Chronos), Adeline Patard, Rea Peltola & Emmanuelle Roussel (eds). Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Reichenbach, Hans
1947 Elements of Symbolic Logic. New York NY: MacMillan.Google Scholar
Rothstein, Björn
2008 The Perfect Time Span: On the Present Perfect in German, Swedish and English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tonhauser, Judith
2011 Temporal reference in Paraguayan Guarani. Linguistics and Philosophy 34: 257–303. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Trinh, Tue
2005 Aspects of Clause Structure in Vietnamese. MA thesis, Humboldt University.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Earl, Catherine
2021.  Flow and flood: mobilities, life in roads and abiotic actors of the (m)ôtô ‐cene . Social Anthropology 29:4 ► pp. 1018 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 23 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.