tailieunhanh - VIETNAMESE PERSONAL PRONOUNS

Study of the Vietnamese language has seldom paid attention to the characteristics and origin of Vietnamese Personal Pronouns. This possibly stemmed from continuing debate as to the origin of the Vietnamese language itself, and the apparent lack of a reliable theoretical framework for the etymology of Vietnamese lexicon, apart from conventional distinction between Sino-Vietnamese words and pure Nôm vocabulary. | VIETNAMESE PERSONAL PRONOUNS V. U. Nguyen Study of the Vietnamese language has seldom paid attention to the characteristics and origin of Vietnamese Personal Pronouns. This possibly stemmed from continuing debate as to the origin of the Vietnamese language itself, and the apparent lack of a reliable theoretical framework for the etymology of Vietnamese lexicon, apart from conventional distinction between Sino-Vietnamese words and pure Nôm vocabulary. Recently, Nguyen [1] proposed a new approach, based on the Tree-and-Soil model, for explaining the evolutionary formation of Vietnamese, closely in rapport with a theory on the origin of the Vietnamese. Under the Tree-and-Soil model, the Vietnamese language is a historical and evolutionary merger of many languages and dialects. It has a Mon-Khmer substratum mixed with Thai and Polynesian, superimposed and interwoven with strata of the ancient Bai Yue (Bách Việt) groups in Southern China, being most notably ancient tongues spoken in Yunnan, GuangXi, Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, Hainan, and later by those of the Hakka and Miao-Yao (Hmong-Mien) groups. And in this paper, Vietnamese personal pronouns will be examined in some detail, using the theory above, and at the same time, relevant results will be used to provide feedback, and to lend further proof, to the theory. Of all the features of Vietnamese personal pronouns, two stand out as most characteristic, being, one, the pronouns are related to kinship terms or social deference address system, and two, the first personal pronouns in the plural (We / Us) involve both inclusive and exclusive forms, formatted by the use of a plural marker (chúng / tụi / bọn). These two features, as shown in the following, in fact share some commonality with many languages or dialects in the region, postulated by Nguyen [2] as constitutive components of the Vietnamese language in its evolutionary formation. Some salient characteristics of Vietnamese personal pronouns, with reference to .