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. 141–154

Chapter 7
Semantics of Vietnamese đã

| University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University – Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam

The analysis of đã has always been a highly controversial topic among Vietnamese linguists. Several accounts of the semantics of đã centre around the questions of whether it is used to locate a situation in the past (Bùi Đức Tịnh 1967, Lo-Cicero 2001) or to express an aspectual distinction (Nguyen 2006) – or both: see Trinh (2005), Phan (2013), and Phan & Duffield (this volume). In this article, it is claimed that đã does not function as tense marker, but that it is used instead to express a modal meaning which the speaker intends to provide for the situation she is communicating. Furthermore, contra those who assume that this marker is aspectual, it is claimed that the aspectual meaning is only derived from the interaction between đã and the semantics of the following predicate.

Keywords: tense, aspect, modality, data judgments
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2. Đã is not a past tense marker
  • 3. Đã is not a purely aspectual marker
  • 4. Đã as modal operator
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 9 October 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.211.07tru
References
Bùi, Đức Tịnh
1967 Văn phạm Việt Nam. Sài Gòn: Nhà sách Khai Trí.Google Scholar
Bui, Thuy
2017 The Vietnamese Perfect. In SuB 21: Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 21, Robert Truswell, Chris Cummins, Caroline Heycock, Brian Rabern & Hannah Rohde (eds), 249–266. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Cao, Xuân Hạo
2003 Tiếng Việt. Mấy Vấn đề Ngữ Âm, Ngữ Pháp, Ngữ Nghĩa (Vietnamese: Some Issues in Phonetics, Grammar, Semantics). Đà Nẵng: Nhà xuất bản Giáo dục.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard
1985 Tense. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Duffield, Nigel
2014 Minimalism and semantic syntax: Interpreting multifunctionality in Vietnamese. In International Conference on the Linguistics of Vietnam in the Context of Renovation and Integration, 1090–1113. Hà Nội: Nhà xuất bản Khoa học Xã hội. [LingBuzz/001919].Google Scholar
2017 On what projects in Vietnamese. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 26(4): 351–387. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Givón, Talmy
1984,1990[2001] Syntax: A Functional-Typological Introduction, 2 Vols. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Klein, Wolfgang
1992 The present perfect puzzle. Language 68(3): 525–552. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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
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
Lo-Cicero, Minh Ha
2001 L’expression du temps et de l’aspect du verbe vietnamien. The Review of Vietnamese Studies 1(1): 1–12.Google Scholar
Michaelis, Laura A.
1998 Aspectual Grammar and Past-Time Reference. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Nguyễn, Hoàng Trung
2006 Thể trong tiếng Việt (Có so sánh với tiếng Pháp và tiếng Anh) (Aspect in Vietnamese, in comparison to French and English). Ho Chi Minh City: University of Ho Chi Minh City.Google Scholar
Nguyễn, Kim Thản
1997 Nghiên cứu tiếng Việt. Hà Nội: Nhà Xuất bản Giáo dục.Google Scholar
Nguyễn, Minh Thuyết
1995 Các tiền phó từ chỉ thời thể trong tiếng Việt (The preverbal markers of tense and aspect in Vietnamese). Ngôn ngữ (Language) 2: 1–10.Google Scholar
Nguyễn, Văn Thành
2003 Tiếng Việt Hiện Đại. Hà Nội: Nhà xuất bản Khoa học Xã hội.Google Scholar
Panfilov, Vladimir Zinovʹevich
2002 Một lần nữa về phạm trù thì trong tiếng Việt (One more time on the category of tense in Vietnamese). Ngôn ngữ (Language) 7: 1–7.Google Scholar
Phan, Trang
2013 Syntax of Vietnamese Aspect. PhD dissertation, University of Sheffield.Google Scholar
Smith, Carlotta
1997 The Parameter of Aspect. Dordrecht: Kluwer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Lawrence C.
1965 A Vietnamese Reference Grammar. Previously published as Mon-Khmer Studies XIII-XIV [1965] edn. Honolulu HI: University of Hawai’i Press.Google Scholar
Trinh, Tue
2005 Aspects of Clause Structure in Vietnamese. MA thesis, Humboldt University.Google Scholar
Vendler, Zeno
1957 Verbs and times. The Philosophical Review 66(2): 143–160. DOI logoGoogle Scholar