Language Universals and Language Typology

Hoang Khanh Linh

29.05.2017
Grammatical Relations in Vietnamese

1. Grammatical Relations

Vietnamese is categorized as an isolating language, whose words are monomorphemic

(Whaley 1997: 128)1. There are no case affixes and agreement making affixes in Vietnamese.
Therefore, in order to relate verb and its dependents, grammatical relations are expressed by a
rigid word order, which is SVO with the elements of subject (S), verb (V) and object (O).
Subject is placed in the initial position of a clause while object stands after verb. This rule is
also applied to sentences with intransitive verb.

(1) S V O
Anh y ung nc
He drink water
He drinks water.
(2) S V
C y chy
She run
She runs.

Although SVO is the typical order to denote grammar relations, OSV is also found in
Vietnamese. This word order is caused by the fact that object is promoted to the topic of the
sentence. It is called the topic-comment structure.

(3) O S V
Sch y ti mua ri
That book I buy already
I bought that book.

2. Alignment patterns

Since Vietnamese has no case marking and affixes, there is no morphological ergativity in
this language.

1
Whaley, Lindsay J.. Introduction to Typology: The Unity and Diversity of Language. SAGE Publications,
1997.
The alignment pattern in Vietnamese follows accusative system (Clark 1974: 1)2, in which
verbal arguments are positionally marked. The subject of intransitive clauses (S) and the
subject of transitive clauses (A) act together at the first position of a clause or before verb,
while object of transitive clauses is encoded after verb without case marking.

(4) A V P
Ti tin bn
I believe you
I believe you.
(5) S V
Ti chy
I run
I run.
There is no trace of split intransitivity in Vietnamese. Regardless of whether the intransitive
verb has an agent or a patient, S and A are still treated alike, while P is denoted differently in
terms of word order.

(6) Ti git con nhn

I kill the spider
I killed the spider.
(7) Con nhn cht
The spider die
The spider died.
(8) Con nhn chy
The spider run
The spider ran.
There is one ergative construction existing in Vietnamese. (9), (10), (11), and (12) are taken
into consideration and carefully examined.

(9) A V P PREP
H bn mn ny ngoi ch
They sell dish this out market
They sell this dish in the market.
(10) P A V PREP
Mn ny h bn ngoi ch
Dish this they sell out market
They sell this dish in the market.
(11) SP V PREP
Mn ny bn ngoi ch
Dish this sell out market
This dish is sold in the market.

2 Clark, M. "Passive and Ergative in Vietnamese". South-east Asian Linguistic Studies. Vol. 1. Pacific
Linguistics, the Australian National University, 1974.
(12) SP Passive V PREP
Mn ny c bn ngoi ch
Dish this PAS sell out market
This dish is sold in the market.
(9), (10), (11) and (12) have the same meaning. (9) is the active voice. (10) is a topic-
comment structure. (11) is an ergative pattern which is explained below. (12) is the passive
voice. Though (11) shares a comparable structure with (10), it omits A. Semantically, (11) is
the passive structure of (9) and analogous to (12), but it has no marker for passive voice.
There is also a patient standing at the place of the grammatical subject. Mn ny this dish
serves as P in (9) and SP in (11). The transitive verb bn sell in (9), (10), (12) becomes
intransitive in (11). Hence, this construction treats SP and P alike, which is the main
characteristic of ergative pattern.

Vietnamese is syntactically nominative. The agent of a transitive verb is also the agent of the
intransitive verb when there are two types of verbs in a sentence.

(13) Ti gp c y v i v
I meet her and return
I met her and (I) return.