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PUBLISHER’S PREFACE

W ith the aim of celebrating the 55th anniversary of its foundation

(1957 – 2012) and realizing its strategy to diversify publications and
develop new ones, in recent years, apart from publishing textbooks and
other publications, supplying teaching school equipment to serve our cause
of education, the Vietnam Education Publishing House (VEPH) has been
paying special attention to publishing voluminous reference books of high
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This area of publication plays an active role in raising people’s
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These high quality reference books are written by leading scientists,
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It is hoped that these high quality reference books will contribute to
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Vietnam.
It is our honour to introduce these high quality publications.
VIETNAM EDUCATION PUBLISHING HOUSE

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

CONTENTS

Publisher’s Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

PART I: FOUNDATION
Chapter 1. General Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.1. Vietnam: the Language and its People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.2. Aims and Scope of this Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.3. Data and Descriptive Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.4. Glosses and Symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Chapter 2. A Review of the Extant Grammar of Vietnamese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

2.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.2. A Brief History of the Writing Systems of Vietnamese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.3. The Studies of Vietnamese Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.3.1. Proto-grammatics of Vietnamese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.3.2. The Transitional Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.3.2.1. Introductory Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.3.2.2. Pre-structuralist Descriptions of Vietnamese. . . . . . . . . 29
2.3.2.3. Structuralist Descriptions of Vietnamese:
American Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.3.2.4. Structuralist Descriptions of Vietnamese:
European Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.3.2.5. Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
2.3.3. Functionalist Descriptions of Vietnamese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
2.3.3.1. Background to Functionalist Descriptions
of Vietnamese. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
2.3.3.2. Cao Xuân Hạo and Tiếng Việt: sơ thảo
Ngữ pháp Chức năng . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
2.4. Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

Chapter 3. Systemic Functional Linguistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

3.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
3.2. Systemic Functional Linguistics – a Model of Language in Context . . . 72

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3.2.1. Strata of the Systemic Functional Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

3.2.2. Relations between Strata: Realisation & Instantiation . . . . . . . 74
3.2.3. Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
3.2.4. Language Internal Strata. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
3.2.4.1. Characteristics of Language Internal Strata . . . . . . . . . . . 77
3.2.4.2. Rank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
3.2.4.3. System & Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
3.2.4.4. Delicacy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
3.3. Context, Semantics & Lexicogrammar: Metafunctional Resonance. . . . . . 85
3.4. Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

Chapter 4. The Notion of Clause in Vietnamese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

4.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
4.2. The Centrality of the Clause in General Description. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
4.3. The Vietnamese Clause as Seen from the Systemic
Functional Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
4.3.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
4.3.2. Semantic Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
4.3.3. Lexicogrammatical Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
4.3.4. Major v. Minor Clause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
4.4. Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

PART II: THE SYSTEM OF TRANSITIVITY IN VIETNAMESE

Chapter 5. The System of TRANSITIVITY: Basic Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
5.1. Preliminaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
5.2. Process, Participant and Circumstance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
5.3. Inherent & Non-inherent Roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
5.4. The Notion of Process Type: a Preliminary Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
5.5. Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

Chapter 6. Doing Processes in Vietnamese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

6.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
6.2. The Material Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
6.2.1. Identifying the Material Process: Definition Criteria . . . . . . . . . 126
6.2.2. Identifying the Material Process: Recognition Criteria . . . . . . 129
6.2.2.1. Number and Nature of Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
6.2.2.2. Collocation of Material Process with
Co-verbs of Direction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
6.2.2.3. The Probe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
6.2.3. Probing Types of Material Process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
6.3. Two Perspectives on Voice: Transitivity and Ergativity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

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6.4. Voice in Vietnamese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

6.4.1. Voice in Vietnamese: Conflicting Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
6.4.2. Voice in Vietnamese: a Systemic Functional Interpretation . . 141
6.4.3. bị and được: Passive Particles? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
6.5. Types of Material Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
6.5.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
6.5.2. The Material Middle Process: Systemic Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
6.5.2.1. Range . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
6.5.2.2. Types of Range . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
6.5.3. The Material Effective Process: Creative v. Dispositive . . . . . . 156
6.5.4. The Material Effective Dispositive Process: Systemic Options . . 158
6.5.4.1. Benefactive v. Non-benefactive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
6.5.5.2. Recipient v. Client . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
6.6. Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
6.7. The Behavioural Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
6.7.1. Criteria for Identifying the Behavioural Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
6.7.2. Types of Behavioural Process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
6.8. Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

Chapter 7. Projecting Processes in Vietnamese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

7.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
7.2. The Mental Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
7.2.1. Identifying the Mental Process: Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
7.2.2. Identifying the Mental Process: Recognition Criteria . . . . . . . . 176
7.2.2.1. The Number of Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
7.2.2.2. Appropriate Probe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
7.2.2.3. Strong Collocation of Mental Process with
Circumstance: manner: degree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
7.2.2.4. The Nature of Senser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
7.2.2.5. The Nature of Phenomenon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
7.2.3. Mental Process and Projection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
7.2.3.1. The Notion of Projection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
7.2.3.2. Taxis: Forms of Projection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
7.2.3.3. Quoting and Reporting: Meaning in Projection . . . 192
7.2.3.4. Proposition and Proposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
7.3. Types of Mental Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
7.3.1. Mental Processes of Perception. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
7.3.2. Mental Processes of Cognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
7.3.3. Mental Processes of Desideration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
7.3.4. Mental Processes of Emotion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
7.3.5. Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

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7.4. The Verbal Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

7.4.1. Identifying the Verbal Process: Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
7.4.2. Identifying the Verbal Process: Recognition Criteria . . . . . . . . . 207
7.4.2.1. The Number and Nature of Participants
in the Verbal Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
7.4.2.2. The Sayer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
7.4.2.3. The Receiver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
7.4.2.4. The Target . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
7.4.2.5. The Verbiage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
7.4.2.6. Strong Collocation of Verbal Process with
Circumstance of Matter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
7.4.3. Verbal Projection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
7.4.4. Types of Verbal Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
7.4.5. Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
7.5. Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

Chapter 8. Being Processes in Vietnamese. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

8.1. Introductory Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
8.2. The Relational Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
8.2.1. Identifying the Relational Process: Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
8.2.2. Identifying the Relational Process: Recognition Criteria . . . 225
8.3. Types of Relational Process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
8.3.1. Types of Relational Process: Non-systemic Functional Views . . 229
8.3.2. Types of Relational Process: Systemic Functional Views . . . 234
8.3.2.1. The Fawcett Model of Relational Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
8.3.2.2. The Halliday Model and the System of
Relational Process in Vietnamesse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
8.3.3. Ascriptive v. Identifying Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
8.3.3.1. Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
8.3.3.2. Recognition Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
8.3.4. Intensive Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
8.3.5. Intensive Process: System of Causation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
8.3.6. Intensive Ascriptive Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
8.3.6.1. Internal State Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
8.3.6.2. Alterative Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
8.3.6.3. Domain-specified Process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
8.3.7. Intensive Identifying Process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
8.3.8. Token and Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
8.3.9. Circumstantial Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
8.3.9.1. Circumstantial Ascriptive Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
8.3.9.2. Circumstantial Identifying Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

8.3.10. Possessive Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265

8.3.10.1. Possessive Ascriptive Process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
8.3.10.2. Possessive Identifying Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
8.3.11. Cases of Ambiguity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
8.3.12. Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
8.4. The Existential Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
8.4.1. Identifying the Existential Process: Definition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
8.4.2. Identifying the Existential Process: Recognition Criteria . . . 275
8.4.3. Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
8.5. Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283

Chapter 9. Circumstantial TRANSITIVITY in Vietnamese. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284

9.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
9.2. The Notion of Circumstance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
9.3. Circumstances v. Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
9.4. Cases of Ambiguity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
9.5. Types of Circumstance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
9.5.1. General Remarks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
9.5.2. Extent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
9.5.3. Location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
9.5.4. Manner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
9.5.5. Cause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
9.5.6. Accompaniment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
9.5.7. Matter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
9.5.8. Role . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
9.5.9. Stance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
9.6. Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319

PART III: CODA

Chapter 10. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
10.1. Synopsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
10.2. Future Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
Appendix 1. Sources of Data for Illustration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
Appendix 2. Key to Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
Appendix 3. Table of Symbols and Notational Conventions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
Index of Proper Names. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
Index of Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is based on the results of my PhD dissertation entitled An

Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause: a Functional Description
which I conducted during the period of 1994 – 1997 at the Department of
Linguistics, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. The dissertation was
written in English. To serve the Vietnamese reader, it was translated into
Vietnamese and was published twice by the Social Science Publisher (Nhà
Xuất Bản Khoa học Xã hội) under the title Ngữ pháp kinh nghiệm của cú
tiếng Việt: mô tả theo quan điểm chức năng hệ thống; the first edition was
in 2002 and the second one, in 2005. Since its first publication, the book has
been used as one of the main textbooks to teach master and PhD students of
English linguistics and applied linguistics in Vietnam. Over the years, there
has been an increasing need (both inside and outside Vietnam) to read the
book in its English original. So I have decided to revise and update some
parts of the book to make it a monograph to serve this need.

In the completion of this monograph, I have received a great deal of

support. Of primary importance has been the role of my PhD supervisors at
Macquarie University: Professor Emerita Ruqaiya Hasan and Professor Colin
Yallop. It was my privilege to work under their supervision during the period
of 1993 - 1997. I am especially grateful to them for their acuity, energy and
interests as experts in the field of linguistics.

To Professor Emerita Ruqaiya Hasan, my chief supervisor, I express my

deep gratitude for her patience, her detailed guidance and advice, and for
her critical and illuminating comments. Her questioning of me at various
stages of writing this thesis, although very challenging, has been an
important catalyst in the development of my thinking. She has always been
very generous with her time and her personal library resources. Without her
supervision, this monograph would not have materialised. She is my
navigator, my teacher and my friend.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

To Professor Colin Yallop, former Head of the Department of Linguistics

and former Director of the Macquarie Dictionary Research Centre, Macquarie
University, I am particularly grateful for his deep concern about me, his
willingness to help me whenever I had difficulty, his constant
encouragement, and his strategic suggestions at various stages of writing
my dissertation. I should also thank him for helping me to get through to
the doctoral programme in early 1994.
Beyond Professor Ruqaiya Hasan and Professor Colin Yallop, my debt
goes to Professor Emeritus M. A. K. Halliday. The penetrating insights of the
systemic functional theory of which he is the founder, the impressive
lectures he delivered to the academic staffs and research students at the
Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University in May, 1994 and in the
following academic years, his friendly talks with me on various occasions,
his invaluable suggestions on how to handle some grammatical issues of
Vietnamese, and his willingness to provide me with linguistic literature and
the theses of the students who had worked under his supervision, all have
constituted the source of inspiration in shaping this study. I take this
opportunity to extend my sincere thanks to him, and with the publication of
this monograph I hope I have paid part of my academic debt to him.
My thanks also go to Professor C. N. Candlin, former Head of the
Linguistics Department, Macquarie University. Thanks to his help and
guidance, I was admitted to the doctoral programme in linguistics at the
university. I am also very grateful for his being very supportive of my work
throughout.
Over the past 15 years, I have benefited from the advice and
constructive criticisms of many teachers, colleagues and friends, both
Australian and Vietnamese. Many of them have helped me in varying
degrees by sending me books and linguistic literature, showing me how to
use the computer more effectively, acting as native speaker informants,
analysing some of the data, reading sections of this thesis in its draft and
commenting upon them, receiving the comments of my supervisor on my
final draft while she was teaching abroad, and discussing with me and
helping me to clarify some of the problems related to the contents of my
project: Professor Trần Văn Nhung (former Deputy Minister of MOET),
Professor Christian Matthiessen (Department of Linguistics, Macquarie
University), Assoc. Prof. Dr. David G. Butt (Department of Linguistics,
Macquarie University), Dr. Carmel Cloran (National University of Singapore),

– 10 –
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Dr. Eddy Ronowicz and Dr. Iliya Casule (School of Modern Languages,
Macquarie University), Mr. Lê Đức Nhuận (former Dean of the English
Department, VNU University of Language and International Studies), Edward
McDonald (Department of Linguistics, University of Sydney), Alice Caffarel
(Department of Linguistics, University of Sydney), Judy King (National Centre
for English Language Teaching and Research – NCELTR), Barbara Woolf and
Ineke Stacey (secretaries of the Department of Linguistics, Macquarie
University), Nguyễn Đức Cường (Transfield Technology Ltd.), Lê Hùng Tiến,
Đào Trần Phong, Trần Hữu Hiển, Đỗ Minh Hoàng, Lục Đình Quang, Trần Bách
Thảo, Nguyễn Thu Lệ Hằng (Department of English, VNU Hanoi University of
Languages and International Studies), Dr. Lê Đình (University of Huế),
Lê Dũng (University of Đà Nẵng), Đoàn Thị Phương Dung (Institute of
International Affairs), Đỗ Thị Dung (University of Western Sydney), Nguyễn
Tiến Long (Voice of Vietnam), Ninh Nguyen (former PhD scholar, Macquarie
University), Thomas Nguyen (University of NSW), Hứa Mĩ Na (Central Sydney
Area Health Service – CSAHS), Nguyễn Trung Kiên, David Warren, Katheryn
Warren, and Marilyn Wise (AMES Sydney). At the same time, I am indebted to
many of my colleagues and friends for their constant encouragement, and I
hope they will forgive me for not mentioning their names here.
This monograph would not have been possible without the support
from the Vietnamese Government and the Australian Government. I am
grateful to MOET’s Department for Graduate Education, VNU University of
Languages and International Studies, and AusAID for sending me to study at
Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia and sponsoring me during the time I
studied there.
My special thanks go to Vietnam Education Publishing House for
publishing my monograph in English.
Finally, I must record my deep gratitude to my dear wife Vũ Thị Tường
Vân. It is her enduring love and hope, her irredeemable sacrifice in looking
after my dear children – Hoàng Vân Trang and Hoàng Hồng Quân – and the
family during my absence from home (from 1993 – 1997), and her constant
concern about me and my study that supported me in my work on this
monograph.

In spite of all the encouragement and assistance which I have received,

there still remain many faults in the monograph. For these I am, of course,
solely responsible.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

ABSTRACT

This book is a functional description of an aspect of Vietnamese

grammar. The framework adopted for the description is systemic functional
theory as developed by Halliday and other systemicists. The focus is on the
description of the experiential grammar of the clause or the system of
TRANSITIVITY. In Halliday’s view formal units in natural language display a
variety of simultaneous grammatical structures, which are fused together in
the process of realisation. These structures are the syntagmatic expressions
of paradigmatic choices which are themselves realisationally related to the
metafunctions of language. In this book, an attempt has been made to
explore both the paradigmatic and syntagmatic aspects of the experiential
grammar of the Vietnamese clause. However, given the scope of this work,
the interpersonal, textual and logical structures of the clause have
themselves not been explored; rather, the principle of their existence has
been assumed in the discussion.
The book is organised around three parts.
PART I – THE FOUNDATION – consists of four chapters. These provide
general information on the data for illustration, the Vietnamese language
and the traditions of its description, the basic theoretical notions of the
systemic functional framework employed for the description of the
Vietnamese clause, and the notion of clause in Vietnamese.
PART II – THE SYSTEM OF TRANSITIVITY IN VIETNAMESE – consists of
five chapters which focus on examining the basic concepts of the transitivity
system and on looking at the meaning making resources of the Vietnamese
clause by describing its experiential grammar up to a certain degree of
delicacy. An effort has been made to identify the systemic potential as well
as the syntagmatic structures derived from this.
PART III – CODA – summarises what has been studied and makes
draws some conclusions and some suggestions for future research.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

CHAPTER 1
GENERAL INTRODUCTION

1.1. Vietnam: the Language and its People

Vietnam is a narrow S-shaped strip of land stretching along the eastern
coast of the Indochina peninsula. It is bordered with China to the North,
Cambodia and Laos to the West, the East Sea to the East and South, and the
Gulf of Siam to the Southwest.
Vietnamese is a language spoken by over 91 million speakers living in
Vietnam. It is also spoken in countries to which the Vietnamese have
emigrated, most important of which are the United States, France, Canada,
Australia, and Russia. There are 54 ethnic minorities in Vietnam, accounting
for about 15 percent of the population (cf. Nguyễn Hữu Quỳnh, 1994). These
ethnic minorities have their own languages, but Vietnamese has been
accepted as their national language.
Vietnamese is a tonal monosyllabic language of the South-Asian
1
(Austro-Asiatic) family (cf. Ủy ban Khoa học Xã hội [UBKHXH]( ), 1983; Nguyễn
Hữu Quỳnh, 1994). It comprises three main dialects: northern or Hanoi
dialect, central, and southern. All these dialects are mutually intelligible.
A map showing the location of Vietnam and the main dialects of Vietnamese
is given on Page 15 below.
This study is based on standardised written Vietnamese and on the
Vietnamese that is spoken in northern Vietnam, particularly in Hanoi area.
The reason for the choice is that it is the Vietnamese I am most familiar with
and that although there is considerable fluidity and a good deal of
conflicting opinion, in general Hanoi dialect has been the most widely
accepted as a sort of standard (cf. Thompson, 1985; Dương Thanh Bình,
1971; Nguyễn Kim Thản, 1977; Hoàng Văn Vân, 2005).

(1) Ủy ban Khoa học Xã hội (UBKHXH) = the (Vietnamese) State Commission for Social
Sciences — the institution which published Ngữ pháp tiếng Việt (A Vietnamese
Grammar), 1983.

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 Chapter 1 • GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Vietnam and Vietnamese dialect groupings

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

1.2. Aims and Scope of this Study

This study is intended as an inquiry into one of the major regions of
the `meaning-making’ space of Vietnamese grammar: the experiential
meaning construed at the rank of clause by the system of TRANSITIVITY in
Vietnamese. The theoretical framework on which the study is based is that
of systemic functional linguistics.
Grammar as a branch of the linguistic science today is not something
that was invented the other day. Like any other parts of human knowledge
and learning, and like all aspects of human cultures, it is the product of its
past and the matrix of its future (cf. Robins, 1997). When investigating the
origin and the development of a subject, scholars of the field do not start
from scratch whether consciously or unconsciously. Rather, they work within
and on the basis of the situation in which the knowledge about the subject
has been inherited from their culture. However, what seems to be
problematic in any sphere of human knowledge is that there are often a
number of possible answers to one and the same question. Therefore, when
attempting to address a particular question, it appears advisable to take a
theoretical stance; and in order to understand one’s theoretical stance one
must examine the stance(s) of others, ideally both of one’s predecessors and
one’s contemporaries: what they have achieved with regard to the
problem(s) in hand, what gaps there are, as yet unmet, as seen from the
point of view of one’s theoretical stance, and so on. All these call for a
detailed review of the previous as well as of the current knowledge about
the grammar of Vietnamese — a vast challenge indeed, to which full justice
cannot be done within the scope of such study. However, in Chapter 2, I have
attempted to provide a brief account sufficient for the needs of this study.
If the principle that the writing of grammar demands the adoption of
1
some theoretical stance( ) is accepted in general, then it is obvious that the
writing of Vietnamese grammar would be of no exception: it too needs a
theoretical framework for interpreting language in its socio-cultural context
in general and grammar in particular. But the adoption of a framework itself
imposes a further need — that of justifying the choice of the theory. For
example, so far as this study is concerned: Why chooses systemic functional
linguistics? What features of it are relevant to the study? And to what extent
is it possible to apply this model of language to the description and analysis

(1) For an interesting discussion of the unavoidability of a theoretical position in

language description, see Matthiessen and Nesbitt (1996).

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 Chapter 1 • GENERAL INTRODUCTION

of Vietnamese? The answers to these questions call for an identification of

some of the fundamental concepts underlying this model of language. This
is attempted in Chapters 3 and 5.
The adoption of systemic functional linguistics as the theoretical
framework for describing and interpreting the grammar of Vietnamese
implies that this study is a dialogue with scholars from two different
linguistic traditions. It is a dialogue with Vietnamese scholars; particularly
with those working within the framework of formal linguistics and its
applied areas; and it is a dialogue with systemic functional linguists since
this study is a functional description of Vietnamese grammar. Thus, for
formal (as well as non-systemic functional) grammarians of Vietnamese, this
study offers a new perspective on the description and analysis of
Vietnamese; and for systemic functional grammarians, it attempts to provide
insights into the grammatical description of a non-European language. In
particular, what this study hopes to offer to the systemic functional linguist
is an indication about the reaching power of the systemic functional theory
as developed by Halliday and other systemic linguists. In other words, this
study hopes to provide an indicative answer to the question: ‘How far is it
possible to apply systemic functional theory to the description and analysis
of Vietnamese?’
As pointed out in the Abstract, this study is concerned with an aspect of
Vietnamese grammar construed at the rank of the clause. ‘Clause’ is thus a
central concept for this study and represents another concept in need of
exploration. Like most languages of the world, in Vietnamese linguistic
scholarship too, ‘clause’ is not a univalent concept; it has been defined and
classified differently in different grammatical models. Therefore, in the
course of the study, it will be necessary to establish the senses in which the
term ‘clause’ is employed. The problem of the definition of the clause has to
be seen in the background of how scholars studying Vietnamese from
different linguistic traditions conceptualise that notion and what
considerations are important for the viability of the category. These issues
are discussed in Chapter 4.
In the systemic functional model (Halliday, 1967a, 1967b, 1968, 1970,
1978, 1994 and elsewhere; see also Chapters 3 and 4 of this study) the
representation of the clause of a language is not seen as having a single
strand of meaning but rather a number which are fused together or mapped
on to each other in the process of realisation to produce a single wording:

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

the experiential strand, the logical, the interpersonal, and the textual. This
implies that a full description of the clause of a language should take
account of all these components of meaning and their lexicogrammatical
realisations. However, to carry out such an enormous enterprise, one would
need to conduct research far beyond the scope of a study of this kind.
Therefore, the study is limited to exploring the experiential systems and
structures in the clause. The main reason is that whatever the model of
grammar chosen for the description of a language, this unit of language is
always a part of it. Thus, doing a grammar of transitivity in Vietnamese
provides us with a point of comparison and one can see what difference it
makes to approach the same area of language from a functional perspective.
The experiential grammar of the clause; i.e., an account of the transitivity of
the clause, takes up the major part of this study being represented in
Chapters 4 through to 9.
Some systemic functional studies (e.g., Tomasowa, 1990; Shore, 1992)
and even the seminal works by Halliday (1994), Halliday & Matthiessen
(2004), and the detailed grammar of English by Matthiessen (1995)
foreground either the ‘structural’ or the ‘systemic’ aspect. The present study
differs from these: it attempts to strike a balance between these two.
System networks, which represent the different choices, are provided, and
the structures realising the various systemic choices are presented via
examples.

1.3. Data and Descriptive Strategies

The illustrating material in this study is text-based, with the examples
taken from natural texts (both written and spoken). Ideally, every example
should be the whole text; but in practice, this ideal is unattainable. So, in
order to exemplify, I often scour short extracts or passages from complete
texts, which are understandable even apart from their contexts and contain
a number of examples in point.
It follows that the majority of examples in this study are authentic
examples. They are taken from a wide variety of sources which cover a large
number of genres: modern novels, modern short stories, widely distributed
Vietnamese newspapers, magazines, journals, grammar books of
Vietnamese, folk poetry, folk tales, poems, field notes of spontaneous
conversations, and so on. Details of these sources of data are provided in
Appendix 1, Pages 347-349.

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 Chapter 1 • GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Most of the written sources from which the examples are drawn were
published in the early and mid 1990s. The origin of each example is given in
square brackets, above the example, as illustrated in (1.1) below:
(1.1) [CD] (folk poetry)

Trên giời có đám mây xanh

on sky exist crowd cloud blue

There is a blue cloud in the sky.

Some examples, whose origin is not indicated, are drawn from my own
field notes of my conversations with friends, colleagues and members of my
family.
I have decided not to base the grammatical description on a particular
corpus, because the grammatical phenomena explored in this study are not
restricted to a particular genre or a particular text type. If one regards the
grammar of a language as a resource that underlies the use of language in
different contexts, then to use a particular corpus limited to some genre(s)
or other would unavoidably distort the picture (cf. Shore, 1992). It would be
pointless to base the description of the experiential grammar of Vietnamese
on a corpus of casual conversation, for example, or even on the large
computer corpora which cover only written Vietnamese.
Some of my examples are imaginary; i.e., based on my knowledge as a
native speaker of Vietnamese. This was made necessary for two reasons.
First, when a number of grammatical points need to be illustrated in one
and the same example (clause), often it is difficult to find an instance in a
given collection of texts. This does not mean that the imaginary example
cannot occur, but simply because of ‘the vast complexity of language’ (cf.
Palmer, 1980: 8), it would take a grammarian a lifetime to scour the texts for
it while as a native speaker of the language s/he knows that the example in
question is a ‘good’ clause in her/his language. And secondly, when I wish to
compare an authentic example with a possible variant, such agnate pair(s)
is/are also unlikely to occur in the data and it seems that to search for such a
minimally contrasting example would be taking the use of authentic
examples to unnecessary extremes.
As the majority of examples are authentic, they sometimes contain
elements which are irrelevant to the point under discussion and sometimes

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

are elliptical; i.e., certain elements have to be retrieved with the help of co-
text (of text) or context (of situation). In some instances, in order to avoid
overload of information not needed immediately, what I have done is (i) to
‘tidy up’ the original example by removing the irrelevant elements such as
false starts, stutters and so on or by reducing a highly complex nominal
group to a proper name, and (ii) to expand the elements of an elliptical
example, so as to remove ellipsis. It is hoped that these ‘editing’ steps, taken
minimally, in no way invalidate the suitability of the examples, especially
where the grammar of TRANSITIVITY is concerned.
In the systemic functional model, language is conceptualised as
polysystemic — a system of systems (Firth, 1957a, 1957b; Halliday, 1994)
and the whole grammatical system is seen as ‘hanging together’ (cf.
Halliday, 1994; Matthiessen, 1995; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004). This means
that ‘it is difficult to break in at any point without presupposing a great deal
of what is still to come’ (Halliday, 1994: xxxiii). As this study is concerned
mainly with the system of TRANSITIVITY in Vietnamese, it has to
presuppose the description of the other systems such as MOOD, THEME,
INFORMATION FOCUS, and so on. Such grammar of Vietnamese cannot truly
be taken for granted; to date it does not exist. However, at some point when
there is a need to bring out more clearly the nature of an experiential issue
some reference may need to be made to other aspects of the grammar of
Vietnamese. While recognising the shortcoming of taking descriptive
categories for granted, I have generally assumed that functions such as
Subject, Complement, Adjunct, Theme, and Rheme at least at the primary
level of delicacy resemble those in English.

1.4. Glosses and Symbols

In the explanatory text, names of functions have initial capital letter;
e.g., Actor, Goal, Beneficiary, etc. When they are introduced for the first time,
they appear in bold type and are usually followed by abbreviations enclosed
in parentheses; e.g., Actor (Ac), Senser (Sen), Phenomenon (Phen), and so
on. In contrast, names of systems are capitalised throughout; e.g., MOOD for
the system of MOOD, TRANSITIVITY for the system of TRANSITIVITY and so
on. The key to functional (including some formal) labels and their
abbreviations is provided in Appendix 2, Pages 350-352.
Each individual example is numbered in Arabic numerals which are
enclosed in parentheses. The first numeral indicates the number of chapter;

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 Chapter 1 • GENERAL INTRODUCTION

it is separated from the numeral(s) that indicate(s) the number of example

by a dot; e.g., (4.18) = Chapter 4, Example 18.
The presentation of examples is organised thus: the first line, which is
italicised, provides the Vietnamese wording; the second gives English inter-
glosses; the third provides the configuration of functions that each element
of the clause has; due to limited space, these functional labels are often in
1
abbreviated forms and appear in bold type( ); and the fourth represents an
idiomatic translation in English. For the non-Vietnamese speaker so far as
the grammar is concerned, it is the inter-glosses that are more relevant and
not the idiomatic translation, as the translation is an attempt to convey the
meaning and not the grammatical relations within the Vietnamese
clause. Below is an instance of how an example is presented:
(1.2) [TÐ](2)

Lá thu rơi rụng đầu ghềnh

leaf autumn fall head chute

Actor/Medium Process: material Circumstance: location

Autumn leaves fell on top of the chute.

The presentation of a reference entry is organised as follows: Surname,
Initials (for English and non-Vietnamese authors) or Surname, Finals (for
Vietnamese authors). (Date of publication). Title of work. Place of
publication: Publisher name. (n.d) means that no date known, (n.p) no place
of publication known, and (n.pub) no publisher known.
The table of symbols and notational conventions such as the boundary
of the clause, clause complex, and so on, is given in Appendix 3, Page 353.

(1) Where space permits, these functional labels are written in full.
(2) For convenience of reference, the names of Vietnamese authors are written in full.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

CHAPTER 2
A REVIEW OF THE EXTANT GRAMMAR
OF VIETNAMESE

2.1. Introduction
It must be said at the beginning that it is all too easy to exercise
hindsight and to point out errors of one’s predecessors. This is because we
are inclined to look at the past through the eyes of the present, an
inclination which, according to Robins (1997: 4), “often carries with it the
danger of evaluating all past work in a subject from the point of view in
favour at the present, and of envisaging the history of a science as an
advance, now steady, now temporarily interrupted or diverted, towards the
predetermined goal of the present state of the science”. The inclination to
evaluate unfavourably can also be found when several contemporary
approaches co-exist. Here we may find that scholars from one approach
criticise or reject the ideas and position of the others. Worse than that, their
criticisms sound as if all of the ideas put forwards by the others were
entirely wrong. These are real pitfalls for the reviewer. However, being
aware of these pitfalls does not necessarily mean that in doing a review on
the development of a subject, one should only look at the achievements and
merits of the works of one’s predecessors and contemporaries and should
ignore all the drawbacks inherent in their approaches. The point is that to
be an impartial reviewer, one should understand the position of the author
under review, the approach s/he has taken in treating the phenomenon, the
historical and theoretical background in which s/he postulated the idea, and
where the reviewer engages in critique, it appears necessary that his/her
position as a critic be clear.
Bearing in mind the above ideas, the review on the studies of
Vietnamese grammar from the second half of the 19th century up to the
present attempts to explore how scholars of different linguistic traditions
studying Vietnamese conceptualise the nature of language; what position

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 Chapter 2 • A REVIEW OF THE EXTANT GRAMMAR OF VIETNAMESE

they take on the relation between form and meaning in language study; and
how they look at the structure of the Vietnamese language. In discussing
these issues, I shall dwell upon the main achievements of the traditional as
well as modern Vietnamese grammarians in the study and description of the
language, typically on the levels of morphology and syntax, pointing out at
the same time the drawbacks and omissions in the approaches underlying
their descriptive works as seen from the systemic functional perspective.
It should be noted that most of the traditional and modern works on
Vietnamese grammar have employed the written language as the data for
investigation and in the development of Vietnamese there used to co-exist
different systems of writing which to a certain extent may have exerted
influence on the way Vietnamese scholars look at the structure of their
language. For this reason, it may be helpful to begin the review with a brief
account of the writing systems of Vietnamese.

2.2. A Brief History of the Writing Systems of Vietnamese

Historical records have shown that Vietnamese is a language which has
been spoken among the people of the community for over 4000 years.
However, as compared with the study of Greek, Latin, English, Chinese and
many other languages of the world, the study of Vietnamese grammar is
much more recent. One of the historical reasons for this delay was Vietnam’s
domination by the Chinese from the first to the tenth century A.D. when it
was considered to be one of China’s provinces. Even after the 10th century
A.D. up to the middle of the 19th (the time when the French invaded
Vietnam), it was continually invaded by either the Chinese or the Mongolian
who lived in North China. Under the cultural domination of the Chinese,
Vietnamese was made a mere vulgar vernacular unworthy of study.
Historical and anthropological evidence has suggested that in the far
past much before the Chinese domination began, Vietnamese might have
had its own writing system, perhaps of Indic origin, like that of the Laotian,
Thai, and some other South-Asian writing systems (cf. Cordier, 1932; Nguyễn
Văn Liễn, 1934; Thompson, 1985). However, it is not known why this system
disappeared. All that history records is that for nearly 19 centuries, the
official writing system of Vietnamese was the Chinese logographs.
Around the eighth century A.D., while still under Chinese dominance,
the feeling of being citizens of a nation started to inspire Vietnamese

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

scholars which led them to codify a system of writing for their own
language. The result of this attempt was that a new system of writing for
Vietnamese called ‘chữ nôm’ came into being. ‘chữ nôm’ (literally, the
‘southern script’ – the script of the Vietnamese as opposed to ‘chữ Hán’ – the
script of the Chinese) was a system of writing which drew heavily on the
Chinese script (for more detail, see Nguyễn Tài Cẩn, 1971, 2009; Đào Duy Anh,
1975; Lê Văn Quán, 1981; Vũ Thế Ngọc, 1989). Although during the Chinese
domination ‘chữ nôm’ was not recognised as the official writing system for
Vietnamese, it was used widely among Vietnamese scholars. However, due
to the inconvenience and the inconsistencies across phonology and
orthography, this system of writing ceased to exist, or to put it in
Vietnamese terms, ‘ended its historic mission’ by the end of the 19th century
(cf. Đoàn Thiện Thuật, 1977; Nguyễn Hữu Quỳnh, 1994).
A third attempt at producing a Vietnamese writing system began in the
seventeenth century A.D. as the result of the expansion of western religions
over Asia. This was ‘chữ quốc ngữ’ (‘national script’, literally, ‘national
writing system’). This Roman script-based system of writing was first
codified by a French Jesuit missionary named Alexander de Rhode (1591 –
1660), based on the works of earlier Portuguese missionaries (Gaspar do
Amarol and António Barbosa) who came to Vietnam to promulgate religions.
It was later developed and perfected by other western missionaries and
Vietnamese scholars. At first, the use of this writing system was confined
only to the Catholic and Christian Communities in Vietnam. However, due to
the convenience of this writing system and its advantages over the Chinese
logographs and ‘chữ nôm’, it soon gained its popularity and recognition
throughout the whole country and now it has become the official writing
system for Vietnamese. As Thompson (1985: 54) pointed out:
both of these systems (Chinese logograph and chữ nôm) were difficult to
learn, involving long and careful study and extensive practice, while chữ quốc
ngữ, because it made use of the alphabetic principle ( ... ), was simple and
direct, and could be learnt in relatively few hours without especially arduous
practice.

One of the main characteristics of ‘chữ quốc ngữ’ is that its orthography
is largely phonemic; that is, each phoneme is represented separately.
However, a degree of complexity is introduced by the fact that syllables are
separated from each other by space and each syllable represents a
morpheme. Thus the orthography does not indicate word boundary. Take
the word hợp tác xã (co-operative) as an example; it consists of three

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 Chapter 2 • A REVIEW OF THE EXTANT GRAMMAR OF VIETNAMESE

morphemes: hợp (unite, combine, be compatible), tác (make, do, act), and xã
(commune, village, association); each morpheme is realised by a syllable:
/həp/, /tak/, and /sa/, and is represented separately in writing: hợp tác xã.
However, when this word enters into syntactic relation with others such as
nông nghiệp (agriculture/agricultural), both the word and the morphemes
within it are separated by the same space: hợp tác xã nông nghiệp
(agricultural co-operative). These facts might explain in part why
Vietnamese scholars hold different views on the morphological structure
and classification of various units of the language (for more detail, see
Section 2.3.2; see also Thompson, 1985).

2.3. The Studies of Vietnamese Grammar

For the purpose of this review, the study of Vietnamese grammar is
divided into three periods. The first period, which may be referred to as
‘proto-grammatics of Vietnamese’, extends roughly from the 1850s through
to the 1930s; the second period – ‘the transitional stage’ – lasts from around
1940 up to the middle of the 1980s; and the third period – ‘functionalist
descriptions of Vietnamese’ – brings us up to date. In the following sections,
I shall look at the main features of each period, its achievements as well as
its drawbacks.
2.3.1. Proto-grammatics of Vietnamese
Due to the convenience and advantages of ‘chữ quốc ngữ’ over ‘chữ
Hán’ and ‘chữ nôm’ (cf. Section 1.2), during their domination over Vietnam
the French adopted the former as the official writing system of Vietnamese.
As a prerequisite to understanding and exploiting the new colony, the study
of the Vietnamese language became one of their priorities. At about the
same time, French scholarship became the means of importing new
perspectives on linguistic and language studies. For obvious reasons, French
views in particular started to find their way into Vietnam. This furnished a
model for Vietnamese scholars to study their own language. Thus, in this
stage one may find descriptive works on Vietnamese grammar written by
both French and Vietnamese grammarians such as Grammaire de la langue
Annamite by Aubaret (1864), Grammaire Annamite by Vatlot (1897), Notice
sur la Langue Annamite by Leon (1885), Notice sur la Langue Annamite by
Rosny (1885), Abrégé de Gammaire Annamite by Trương Vĩnh Ký (1867),
Grammaire de la Langue Annamite by Trương Vĩnh Ký (1883), Grammaire de
la Langue Annamite by Trương Vĩnh Tống (1876), Études sur la Langue

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

Annamite by Grammont & Lê Quang Trinh (1911), Cours Élémentaire

d’Annamite by Bouchet (1912), Cours de la Langue Annamite by Cheon
(1904), Grammaire Annamite by Barbier (1924), Cours Abrégé de Langue
Annamite by Maheu (1926), and many others.
The main characteristics of the approach to the description of
Vietnamese in this period can be summarised in two terms ‘practical’ and
‘imitative’ (Đinh Văn Đức, 1986: 3; Lưu Vân Lăng, 1988: 5). ‘Practical’ because
most of the work on Vietnamese grammar was for the purposes of
application; i.e., they were written either for use in Vietnamese schools or
for the French and other westerners who wished to learn Vietnamese.
‘Imitative’ refers to the fact that because of the absence of a tradition for the
study of language, the grammar of French became a source of reference, and
the most convenient and effective way for the grammarians of Vietnamese
to describe the language was to imitate the model of French grammar. This
‘imitative approach’ to the description of Vietnamese rested on the simple
but erroneous assumption that whatever grammatical category was
appropriate for the French translation of some Vietnamese expression could
also be equally well-suited as the grammatical category for describing the
original Vietnamese expression (cf. Nguyễn Kim Thản, 1977: 170). With this
confusion between language universality and language specificity as well as
between form and meaning in their approach, it is easy to understand why
most of the language facts and grammatical categories of French such as
nouns with persons, genders, and numbers; verbs with tenses, aspects,
mood and voices, etc. were used to explain and describe the language facts
and grammatical categories of Vietnamese. In fact, it could be claimed with
justification that the early works on Vietnamese grammar were a sort of
translation of the grammar of French.
Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that while imitating the model of
French grammar to describe Vietnamese, some scholars such as Grammont &
Lê Quang Trinh (1911), Bouchet (1912) and others started to realise that
many language features and grammatical categories of French did not have
equivalents in Vietnamese. Thus questioning whether there existed parts of
speech in Vietnamese, Grammont & Lê Quang Trinh (1911: 201-02) cited in
Nguyễn Kim Thản (1977: 14) remarked:
In Vietnamese there are no articles, nouns, pronouns, verbs; there are no
genders and numbers either, only words; these words are all monosyllabic
and in general invariable; their meanings are changed and determined by the

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 Chapter 2 • A REVIEW OF THE EXTANT GRAMMAR OF VIETNAMESE

positions of the words which precede or follow them, i.e., by their functions or
1
positions in the sentence.( ) *

One of the examples they provided to illustrate their point was the
word xe (vehicle) in Vietnamese. According to Grammont & Lê Quang Trinh
(ibid.), the word xe may correspond to rouler, roul (verb); roule, roulant
(adjective); and char (noun) in French.
At about the same time, in examining the characteristics of Vietnamese
verbs, Bouchet (1912) also made a similar remark, stating:
To put it accurately ..., there are no verbs in Vietnamese in the true sense of
the term. These (the verbs) are words which function as verbs.(2)

The ideas of Grammont & Lê Quang Trinh and Bouchet are linguistically
significant on two counts. First, these ideas presented an absolutely new
perspective on the morphological structures of Vietnamese, particularly in view
of the fact that even internationally the traditional, i.e., imitative, approach to
language study and language description was widely prevalent. Secondly, they
went on to suggest that for an isolating and tonal language such as
Vietnamese which possesses high analyticity, the classification of parts of
speech into nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns etc. could not be based
only on the formal features of words, the criterion which French scholars used
to classify the words of their language. Instead, whether a word is a noun, a
verb or an adjective is determined by the function it has in the sentence or in
its context in the Firthian and Hallidayan sense.
With regard to Vietnamese syntax, the early grammarians of
Vietnamese did not offer any deep insight. They analysed the Vietnamese
sentence by using the traditional western approaches, which, as is well
known, were themselves derived from the ancient grammars of Greek and
Latin, and were based on such logical concepts as those of proposition,

(1) Ibid., p. 14. This passage appears in the Vietnamese original as follows:
Trong tiếng Việt không có mạo từ, danh từ, đại từ, động từ, cũng không có giống, số mà
chỉ có những từ không thôi; những từ này đều là đơn âm tiết, nói chung không biến đổi,
ý nghĩa của chúng thay đổi hay được xác định nhờ những từ đặt trước hay theo sau,
nghĩa là, nhờ chức năng, vị trí của chúng ở trong câu.
* Unless otherwise stated, I am responsible for all the Vietnamese-English translations in
this study.
(2) Ibid., p. 14. This passage appears in the Vietnamese original as follows:
Nói cho đúng …, không có động từ về bản chất là động từ. Đó là những từ nào đó có chức
năng của động từ.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

subject, predicate, complement etc (cf. Lyons, 1968). It was not until the
second period – some thirty years later – that the ideas suggested by
Gammont & Lê Quang Trinh and Bouchet could find their expression in the
description of Vietnamese.
2.3.2. The Transitional Stage
2.3.2.1. Introductory Remarks
As the account presented so far suggests, because of the imitative
approach to the description of Vietnamese, in the proto-grammatic stage,
the picture of Vietnamese grammar was still too opaque and in many
instances the description looked cumbersome, and did not reflect the
specificities of Vietnamese as an isolating, monosyllabic and analytic or, to
use Thompson’s (1985) term, ‘syntactic language’. The result was that this
approach was strongly criticised and was later rejected by scholars of the
second stage. In evaluating the imitative approach, Nguyễn Giang (1950: 9)
cited in Trương Văn Chình & Nguyễn Hiến Lê (1963: 28-9) sarcastically wrote:
(...), the writer (grammarian) wanted to write a worthwhile book on the
grammar of Vietnamese, but in fact he only took some account of the
supposedly positive influence of Western (French) grammar upon the
grammar of his language (Vietnamese). The reader who did not know
anything about western grammar in advance would find the book
cumbersome, with many western characteristics which would be
incomprehensible to him/her, (and) if s/he did know something about it, s/he
would only want to read that “something” in order to get to know it more
clearly, but (s/he) would not believe that s/he could learn (any) more from the
book on the basis of what had been written there. The people who had not
read the book would burst into laughter when being told that in answer to a
question with có (the word which realises the polar interrogative in
Vietnamese), the respondent should use the word không (no).(1)
Nguyễn Giang went on to remark contemptuously that a grammar of
this kind was fit only for teaching Vietnamese to the French.

(1) Ibid., p. 28. This passage appears in the Vietnamese original as follows:
(...) người viết sách muốn viết một cuốn sách xứng đáng gọi là văn phạm Việt Nam,
nhưng thật ra chỉ mới nghĩ nhiều đến chỗ ảnh hưởng rất tốt của văn phạm Tây phương
vào tiếng mình. Người đọc sách, nếu chưa biết chút văn phạm Tây phương nào, thì thấy
cuốn sách cầu kì và có nhiều tính cách Tây phương khó hiểu; nếu đã biết đôi chút rồi thì
chỉ muốn soát lại chỗ đôi chút ấy để tự túc tự đại, chứ không tin rằng có thể nhờ cuốn
sách ấy mà tăng tiến được về các điều đã biết. Người không đọc sách thì cười ầm lên khi
nghe thấy có người nhắc lại cho biết rằng cuốn sách đã dạy chúng ta: “Trong một câu
hỏi, khi có tiếng có ở trên phải có tiếng không ở dưới.”

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 Chapter 2 • A REVIEW OF THE EXTANT GRAMMAR OF VIETNAMESE

In retrospect, it might be said that the imitative approach to the

description of Vietnamese in the proto-grammatic stage had left many
questions unsolved. To make matters worse, it created much doubt about
whether there were parts of speech in Vietnamese and whether Vietnamese
had a grammar of its own. This explains in part why morphology and syntax,
among other levels of language structure, became the main concern for
most of the descriptive works on Vietnamese grammar in the transitional
stage to which I now turn.
The transitional stage is characterised by the diversity of approaches to
the description of morphology and syntax. It might not be wrong to say that
most of the ‘isms’ in world linguistics can be found in the work of scholars
studying Vietnamese. On the one hand, one may note that French traditional
approach (or French traditionalism) to language study still existed in a
number of early grammars. On the other hand, the imprint of French
structuralism and Russian formalism could be found in the writing of
northern Vietnamese as well as Russian scholars studying Vietnamese, while
American descriptivism, or the “structuralist” approach, greatly influenced
the work of at least some southern Vietnamese and American grammarians
of Vietnamese. A brief account of the “isms” that are supposed to have
influenced the study of Vietnamese grammar would be useful but would go
beyond the scope of this chapter. The point of reference for these schools of
linguistics is to be found in such volumes as Schools of Linguistics by
Sampson (1980) and A Short History of Linguistics by Robins (1997). In what
follows, I shall focus on discussing the main achievements as well as
weaknesses of the Vietnamese linguistic scholarship in the transitional stage
by dividing it into two main periods which may be referred to respectively
as ‘pre-structuralist descriptions’ and ‘structuralist descriptions’. The first
period extends roughly from 1940 to 1948, and the second period, from
1948 to the middle of the 1980s. In describing the second period, an
attempt is made to look at how European structuralism and American
descriptivism influenced the studies of Vietnamese grammar. By way of
illustration, I will examine only some of the descriptive works which are
regarded as representative and have been influenced by a particular
linguistic school.
2.3.2.2. Pre-structuralist Descriptions of Vietnamese
The first descriptive work, which has been considered to be one of the
most important studies of Vietnamese grammar in the pre-structuralist
period, is Việt-nam Văn-phạm (A Grammar of Vietnamese) by Trần Trọng
Kim, Bùi Kỷ and Phạm Duy Khiêm (1940). It has been considered important

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

because it served not only as one of the most widely-used textbooks in

Vietnamese schools but also as a reliable reference for many studies on
Vietnamese grammar in the 1940s and 1950s (cf. Dương Thanh Bình, 1971).
Underlying the authors’ approach to the description of Vietnamese is
the idea that grammar provides the rules for teaching how to speak and
write correctly, and it must be based on logic as well as on people’s use of
words. The task of the grammarian then, according to them, is to present
and explain all the essential grammatical points and to illustrate them with
examples taken from everyday speech and from poems and novels. They
define grammar as:
the rules (method) of teaching how to speak correctly in accordance with the
rules of language. These rules, on the one hand, must be logically appropriate,
and on the other hand, must take the uses (of words) by predecessors as well
as the common usage by native speakers as the norm.(1)

What is noteworthy in this definition is the adherence to the

traditional approach with its rule-giving or prescriptive/normative
characteristics, which greatly influenced the work of these authors. Not
surprisingly, the role of the authors as legislators can be detected
throughout the book.
With regard to morphology, Trần Trọng Kim et al. concede that there
has never been a proper classification of parts of speech in Vietnamese. They
claim (but do not provide examples) that the traditional division of words in
Vietnamese into four groups – meaningful, empty, semi-meaningful, and
semi-empty – is inadequate and improper. They suggest that the division
was designed as a help in the writing of poetry.
Using logical meaning as their basis, Trần Trọng Kim et al. divide the
word in Vietnamese into thirteen parts of speech or word classes, some of
which are further divided into subparts of speech. The thirteen parts of
speech are: nouns, articles, classifiers, demonstratives, pronouns, adjectives,
verbs, prepositions, adverbs, conjunctions, interjections, suppletives, and
reduplicatives. Each of these parts of speech takes up one chapter in their
book and is discussed in some detail. The authors explicitly declare that
western methods, especially French methods, can be validly used in

(1) Ibid., p.13. This passage appears in the Vietnamese original as follows:
Văn phạm là phép dạy nói và dạy viết cho đúng mẹo luật của một tiếng nói. Những mẹo
luật này một đằng phải theo lý cho thuận, một đằng phải lấy những từ, những cách của
tiền nhân đã dùng quen, và sự thông dụng của người trong nước làm mẫu mực.

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 Chapter 2 • A REVIEW OF THE EXTANT GRAMMAR OF VIETNAMESE

classifying different parts of speech in Vietnamese. Meaning or rather word-

based meaning becomes the main criterion for explaining and dividing
words into parts of speech, while their function in context (linguistic as well
as situational in the Hallidayan sense) is completely ignored. Below are
some examples of how the authors define particular parts of speech.
Reflection on these definitions reveals confusion between what, following
Halliday (1994), Hasan & Fries (1995), have called definition criteria and
recognition criteria of a grammatical category. It becomes obvious that
‘logical meaning’ cannot be the only valid criterion for classifying words in
the language:
– Noun is a word which is used to name a thing or a person (p.39).
– Article is a word which precedes a noun that has already been
followed by another word or another demonstrative sentence (p.45).
– Verb is a word which performs the action of the subject (p.89).(1)
Syntax, in the authors’ view, means ‘phép đặt câu’ (methods or rules of
sentence construction). It is interesting to notice that Trần Trọng Kim et al.
are among the first to use the top-down approach to the description of
Vietnamese. They begin their book with the discussion of sentence structure
before dealing with the thirteen parts of speech. However, the shortcoming
of the traditional approach is iconically revealed by the structure of the
book: although the discussion of syntax comes first, it takes up only one out
of the eighteen chapters. This reminds us of the apt remark made by Roulet
(1975: 9) that traditional grammar gives a predominant place to
morphology and neglects syntax.
In the opinion of the authors of Việt-nam Văn-phạm, the methods or
rules of sentence construction are the methods of organising words into
propositions and organising these propositions into sentences. Proceeding
from this assumption they divide their chapters on sentence constructions
into two parts: the construction of propositions and the construction of
sentences. A proposition, according to the authors, consists of a subject plus
either an adjective or a verb. The subject is a word which stands as the head
of the proposition; the adjective, a word which designates the substance of

(1) Ibid., pp. 39, 45, and 89. These passages appear respectively in the Vietnamese
original as follows:
– Danh-từ là tiếng dùng để gọi một từ hay một vật. (Tr. 39)
– Mạo-từ là tiếng đứng trước danh-từ đã có một tiếng khác hay một câu chỉ định rồi.
(Tr. 45)
– Ðộng-từ là tiếng biểu diễn cái dụng của chủ-từ. (Tr. 89)

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

the subject; and the verb, a word which denotes the action of the subject.
They state that these words can all have complements. As for verbal
complements, they divide them into three types: (i) object complements, (ii)
indirect complements, and (iii) circumstantial complements such as time,
place, manner, etc.
Trần Trọng Kim et al. define the sentence as being ‘formed by a
proposition expressing a complete thought or by two or more propositions’
(p.27). They distinguish three kinds of propositions: independent, main and
subordinate. They then discuss each of the propositions in some detail. And
in their view, a sentence is composed of a cluster of propositions with a
main proposition preceded and/or followed by one or more subordinate
propositions.
In summary, although the French traditionalism is still felt in Việt-nam
Văn-phạm, this book appears to be (although implicitly) a strong reaction to
the sceptical idea that Vietnamese may have no parts of speech and no
grammar of its own. The book is the first attempt to draw a picture of
Vietnamese grammar based on the particularities of the language. It is this
book to which most of the works on Vietnamese grammar in the 1940s and
the early 1950s are indebted (cf. Dương Thanh Bình, 1971), among them are
Văn phạm mới (A New Grammar of Vietnamese) by Nguyễn Trúc Thanh
(1956), Phân tích từ loại và phân tích mệnh đề (The Analysis of Parts of
Speech and the Analysis of Propositions) by Phạm Tất Ðắc (1950), Những
nhận xét về văn phạm Việt Nam (Remarks on Vietnamese Grammar), Văn
phạm Việt Nam (A Vietnamese Grammar), Văn phạm Việt Nam dùng cho các
lớp trung học (A Vietnamese Grammar for Secondary Schools) by Bùi Đức
Tịnh (1949, 1952, and 1956 respectively). In these (text)books and
monographs one may notice that although different authors use different
methods and techniques to explore Vietnamese morphology and syntax,
their approaches all bear similarities to Việt-nam Văn-phạm and are by and
large influenced by French traditionalism. And “although linguistic studies
today have been making much progress, and the grammar of Vietnamese
has been extensively studied and described from different linguistic models,
Việt-nam Văn-phạm seems to be a grammar work of great value” (Hoàng
Văn Vân, 2007b: 84).
2.3.2.3. Structuralist Descriptions of Vietnamese: American Influence
The influence of the American descriptivism upon the study of
Vietnamese can be seen from 1951 onwards. Among the scholars who work
within this linguistic tradition, Emeneau, Honey, and Thompson are the

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representative writers. It is these authors’ works that I shall be concerned

with in this section.
In his Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) Grammar, Emeneau (1951) starts
with the analysis of Vietnamese words – the basic linguistic unit of the
structure of Vietnamese. He observes that words in Vietnamese are
phonologically free but not all of them are syntactically free. Emeneau states:
Many words cannot enter freely into the normal constructions of the language
but occur only in restricted co-occurrences, i.e., in construction with certain
words, usually themselves similarly restricted in occurrence. (Emeneau,
1951:2)

Emeneau notes that most of the Vietnamese bound morphemes are

substantives and verbs. They can be distinguished from free morphemes by
the fact that they cannot be freely combined with any words of appropriate
meaning and word class, but only with a limited number of words in a
limited number of constructions. One of his interesting observations is that
these bound morphemes are Chinese loan words. Emeneau presents in some
detail the ordinary and restricted types of substantive and verb phrases.
Their usual patterns are of three types : (i) restricted word + restricted word,
(ii) restricted word + free word, and (iii) free word + restricted word (pp. 44-
54). Emeneau recognises that such constructions can perform the same
syntactic function as free morphemes because they can ‘substitute for single
word morphemes of the same class’ (p.44).
With regard to parts of speech, Emeneau classifies the Vietnamese word
into five major classes: substantive, verb, conjunction, final particle, and
interjection. He points out that substantives and verbs in Vietnamese are more
difficult to classify than the other word classes. He concedes that his analysis is
not complete enough for identifying all subclasses of verbs.
He does, however, provide the following orders for a verb series as a general rule:

1 2 3 4...
sẽ chớ/đừng
cũng đã không/chẳng tự .....
chưa

Table 2.1. Orders for a Verb Series in Vietnamese

(Source: Emeneau, 1951: 74)

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According to Emeneau, sẽ and đã are assigned to the subclass of ‘time

verbs’ and chẳng, chớ, đừng and không (which are actually negative words)
to the subclass of ‘negative verbs’. His explanation for this subclassification
is that sẽ can precede chớ, đừng, không, chẳng while đã can precede only
không and chẳng; chưa can neither precede nor follow any element within
‘order 2’.
Based on their occurrence in syntactic constructions, Emeneau
subdivides substantives into classified nouns and nonclassified nouns,
classifiers, numerators, demonstrative numerators, personal and place
names, and pronouns. He distinguishes three types of substantive phrases
which he terms numeration, attribution and addition. According to
Emeneau, a numeration substantive phrase is one in which the noun is
preceded by a numerator as hai (two) in hai cuốn sách (two books) or
followed by a demonstrative numerator as đầu (first) in cuốn sách đầu (the
first book), or both as hai (two) and đầu (first) in hai cuốn sách đầu (the first
two books), with a classifier; e.g. cuốn, immediately preceding the noun if
the latter belongs to the subclass called classified. An attribution substantive
phrase is one in which the noun, whether numerated or not, is immediately
followed by an attribute or attributes, which may be noun, numerator
(rarely), pronoun, personal name (rarely), verb or verb phrase, or complete
predication (sometimes introduced by mà ...); e.g., cuốn sách hay (an
interesting book). An addition substantive phrase is one in which the head is
an additive series of nouns or pronouns, usually without co-ordinating
conjunction; e.g., thày mẹ (father and mother). (For more detail, see
Emeneau, 1951: 45).
The order of elements in ‘numeration constructions’ can be
represented as follows:

Classifier Classified noun Demonstrative

Numerator ± Attributive(s) numerator
Nonclassified noun

Table 2.2. Order of Elements in Numeration Constructions in Vietnamese

(Source: Emeneau, 1951: 84)

With respect to syntax, Emeneau notes that predication has as nucleus

a predicate which may, but need not, be preceded by a subject. He observes
that the presence of the subject is necessary only when it is required to
denote something that is being identified for the first time in the context,
and its omission would lead to ambiguity. He distinguishes two types of
predicate: substantive (consisting of a substantive or a substantive phrase)

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 Chapter 2 • A REVIEW OF THE EXTANT GRAMMAR OF VIETNAMESE

and verb (consisting of a verb or a verb phrase). He observes that of the two
types of predicates, the substantive is less numerous than the verb.
Emeneau discusses complex sentences on the basis of complex
predications. According to him, there can be two predications in a sentence,
one main and one subordinate. The subordinate predication usually
precedes the main one and consists of a substantive or a substantive phrase,
a verb or a verb phrase, or a predication with subject and verb predicate. The
different types of predication can be summarised in Table 2.3 below.
Simple predications (P)
(S) S. 2.7.4.1-3
n
(S) V (S) . 2.7.4.4
n
V (S) S. 2.7.4.5
Complex predications
S
V/VPh , (thì) P. 2.8
(C) P
Table 2.3. Types of Predication in Vietnamese
(Source: Emeneau, 1951: 61)

Notes: P = predication; S = substantive or substantive phrase; V = verb; VPh = verb

phrase; C = subordinating conjunction; ( ) indicates optional presence of that which
is enclosed; and n indicates one or more occurrences in series.

It can be said in summary that Emeneau’s Studies in Vietnamese

(Annamese) Grammar is a commendable attempt to look at Vietnamese
from the point of view of another approach – the American structuralist
approach to language description. This descriptive approach, as advocated
by its main architect – Leonard Bloomfield (1933) – sees language study as a
science. On the other hand, different from other grammarians, Emeneau
seems to be a theory user rather than a theory developer. This can be seen
in the fact that the concepts or terms he used as the tools for describing and
analysing Vietnamese were always never explicated by him. They were often
taken for granted and were used as if they had been known to the reader.
One more point that should be noted is that different from other descriptive
works on Vietnamese, Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) Grammar seems to
be written for foreigners studying Vietnamese. Reading Studies in
Vietnamese (Annamese) Grammar readers may have a feeling that they are
consulting a dictionary of Vietnamese word usage rather than reading a
grammar book of Vietnamese. But if this is really the aim of the book, it can

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

be affirmed that Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) Grammar has fulfilled its

aim: the learner of Vietnamese not only knows the meaning(s) of the word
but also how it is used in contexts, mostly the linguistic context in the sense
as postulated by Catford (1965). Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) Grammar
is a detailed, systematic and meticulous description of Vietnamese, and is
thus to be worthy of our admiration. (For a more detailed discussion of
Emeneau’s Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) Grammar and its contribution
to the study of Vietnamese grammar, see Hoàng Văn Vân, 2007a: 457-65).
In his paper Word Classes in Vietnamese published in the Bulletin of
the School of Oriental and African Studies in 1956, Honey uses distribution
and a number of words called ‘indicators’ as the main methods for
classifying words in Vietnamese. Combining these methods with the process
of elimination, Honey has succeeded in dividing Vietnamese words into
twelve classes which he labels numerically beginning with class 1 right
through to class 12. Honey, however, maintains that instead of being
designated by numbers, these word classes can be called adjectives, verbs,
qualified nouns, qualifiers, unqualified nouns, numerals, markers of plurality,
personal pronouns, initial particles, medial particles, final particles, and
polytopic particles. Although Honey does not claim that his classification of
word classes is the only ‘true one’, his method of analysis has proved to be
linguistically fruitful for classifying words in Vietnamese.
The influence of the American descriptivist/structuralist approach to
the study of Vietnamese grammar can best be seen in the American linguist
Laurence Thompson’s A Grammar of Vietnamese (1965). Ever since its
publication, Thompson’s work has been the most popularly prescribed
reading for the students of Vietnamese abroad and has remained ‘far and
away the best thing available in English and, thus, the most useful work for
the greatest number of potential users’ (Nguyễn Ðình Hoà, 1985: XIII).
A Grammar of Vietnamese is based on Thompson’s doctoral dissertation
entitled A Grammar of Spoken South Vietnamese (1954); in 1985 there has
appeared a new publication under the title A Vietnamese Reference
Grammar. In what follows I shall briefly review this important work.
Thompson’s book consists of two major parts: after some introductory
remarks on Vietnamese, the first part presents the phonological structure of
Hanoi dialect – the standard dialect of Vietnamese – followed by a
discussion of morphology; the second part is concerned with word classes,
phrase structures, sentence structures and some statements about style such
as levels of discourse, the kinship system, forms of address. However,
Thompson discusses these issues in the context of his discussion of the
sentence (utterance).

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 Chapter 2 • A REVIEW OF THE EXTANT GRAMMAR OF VIETNAMESE

Like most grammarians of Vietnamese, whether foreign or indigenous,

who are inspired by the American structuralist tradition (e.g. Gage & Jackson,
1953; Nguyễn Đình Hoà, 1957a, 1957b; and others), Thompson employs
immediate constituent analysis as the main method in his A Vietnamese
Reference Grammar for isolating components of the sentence as well as
constituents of each component. According to Thompson, an utterance is
analysed into two or more parts which balance one another in the make-up
of the whole. Each of these parts is then subjected to similar analysis, and so
on until the level of single morphemes is reached and no further
grammatical/morphological division can be made. Here we find linguistic
terms and concepts which are defined from the descriptivist/structuralist
perspective such as morpheme, word, phrase, construction, sentence, clause,
model, head, complement and many others. Thus following the main
Bloomfieldian position (see Bloomfield, 1933), for Thompson too the
smallest building block is a morph: it is a component which carries an
identifiable meaning recognisable as contributing to the meaning of the
whole utterance and contains no smaller meaningful bits which can be said
to make such a contribution. From this definition, a morpheme is the class of
all morphs having precisely the same meaning (p.105).
Words, in Thompson’s sense, are single free morphemes and/or basic
free morphemes (p.118) or the minimum freely distributed units of which
sentences are composed (p.116). Words can be either simple or complex,
independent or dependent (for more detail, see Thompson 1985: 118-9).
Phrases are constituents consisting of more than one word (p.123).
Constructions are phrases which have the same arrangement of heads and
complements (p.123). There are three types of construction: (i) co-
ordinating, (ii) subordinating, and (iii) mixed. A co-ordinating construction is
one which forms phrases with more than one head; a subordinating
construction is one which forms phrases with only one head; and a mixed
construction is one which is basically co-ordinating (i.e., it forms phrases
with more than one head) but which also has a complement. Subordinating
constructions can be either restrictive (forming phrases with the order of
head-complement) or descriptive (forming phrases with the order of
complement-head). A sentence is a sequence of one or more groups ending
with a terminal intonation and preceded by silence or by another such
sequence. In printed material, a sentence may be marked with capital letter
at the beginning and a period, a question mark, or exclamation point at the
end (pp. 111, 277).
Sentences are of two main types: independent and dependent.
Independent sentences are ones which occur in at least some environments
as opening sentences in independent utterances, and dependent sentences

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

are ones which occur only as second or later sentences in utterances or as

opening sentences in responsive utterances. Further, Thompson observes
that sentence structures are varied with one type being overwhelmingly
predominant – the sort of sentence which consists of a clause or series of
clauses, at least one of which is a head. He calls such sentences major
sentences and others minor sentences.
A clause, in Thompson’s view, is a predicate (together with any
complement it may have) viewed as a sentence constituent (p.277). For
Thompson, each time a predicate occurs, from the point of view of the
sentence in which it stands, it is a clause (or if the sentence has
complements, the head is a clause). Like other sentence elements, a clause is
sometimes head and sometimes complement. When a clause occurs as head
or as the whole of a certain sentence, it is the main clause. Conversely, when
a clause appears as complement to other sentence elements, it is a
subordinate clause. Subordinate clauses are further classified as descriptive
(following the head) and restrictive (preceding the head) (for more detail,
see Thompson, 1985, Chapter 12).
Having established the above terms and concepts, Thompson defines
the terms ‘model’ and ‘expansion’ as follows:
The syntactic structure of any language is observable as a relatively small
number of patterns in each of which the elements (although consisting of
infinitely varied morpheme sequences) bear the same basic relationship to
one another. Longer sequences are seen to have the same function as far
shorter sequences – that is, a longer sequence bears the same relationship to
its immediate constituent partner as a shorter sequence in the same position.
This is conveniently described by saying that the shorter sequence is the
model of the longer one, and that the longer one is an expansion of the
shorter one. (Thompson, 1985: 111)

Thompson provides some examples to illustrate his definition. One of

them is the English sentence John’s brother is playing tennis. Employing the
method of immediate constituent analysis, the sentence is segmented into
two parts: (i) John’s brother and (ii) is playing tennis. Thompson says that a
model for John’s brother is Jim, as in Jim is playing tennis. Similarly, a model
for is playing tennis is works, as in John’s brother works. Conversely, John’s
brother and is playing tennis are expansions respectively of Jim and works.
Thompson observes that often in Vietnamese one of the immediate
constituents of a particular constitute is a model of that constitute. He terms
such constitute a ‘nuclear model’ and defines it as ‘an immediate constituent
which can replace its constitute in the larger context, remaining the same
basic grammatical and referential relationship to that context’. Proceeding

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 Chapter 2 • A REVIEW OF THE EXTANT GRAMMAR OF VIETNAMESE

from this definition, Thompson defines heads as nuclear models of the

constitutes which are themselves either nuclear models or complete
sentences, and complements as non-model partners of heads. The analysis
into model, head, and complement can be illustrated by the following
example:
(2.1)

Ngày xưa có người hiếu lợi

day old exist person eager profit

Once upon a time there was a greedy person.

Ngày xưa (Once upon a time) complement
có người hiếu lợi : model, head
exist person eager profit
có: model, head
exist
người hiếu lợi: complement
person eager profit
người: model, head
person
hiếu lợi: complement
eager profit
......................................
(Based on Thompson 1985: 113-4)

Whereas in A Grammar of Spoken South Vietnamese (1954) Vietnamese

words are explicitly divided into six major classes; viz., aspects, verbals,
relators, numerators, substantives, and particles, in A Vietnamese Reference
Grammar, they are grouped into four major categories which are termed (i)
substantival elements, (ii) predicative elements, (iii) focal elements, and (iv)
particles. In each of the headings, based on the relationship between head
and complement in the construction and the position in which a word and
an element occurs, words are further subdivided and thoroughly discussed
(for more detail, see Thompson 1985, Chapters 8, 9, 10, 11).
In short, seen from the structuralist point of view, Thompson’s A
Vietnamese Reference Grammar has provided invaluable insights into the
phonological, lexical, and syntactic structures of Vietnamese in both

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

theoretical and practical dimensions. Unlike Emeneau’s Studies in

Vietnamese (Annamese) Grammar, A Vietnamese Reference Grammar does
not explore in detail the Vietnamese word and its usage. It is not at all an
applied linguistic work either. Rather, it is a descriptive work which strikes
in a systematic way a balance between theory and practice: it both
examines in some detail the underlying concepts for the description of
Vietnamese and provides examples to illustrate them. It is a grammar work
which meets most of the criteria of a standard reference grammar such as
meticulousness, comprehensiveness, lucidity, clarity, and arrogance. This is,
perhaps, the most comprehensive work of Vietnamese grammar which has
ever been described in the American descriptivist/structuralist tradition. This
explains why “when it first appeared in 1965, it went almost instantly to the
top of the list of required reading for serious students of the Vietnamese
language”, and “it remains far and away the best thing available in English
and thus, the most useful work for the greatest number of potential users”
(Nguyễn Đình Hoà, 1965: xiii). (For a more detailed discussion of Thompson’s
A Vietnamese Reference Grammar and its contribution to the study of
Vietnamese grammar, see Hoàng Văn Vân, 2007a: 465-74).

2.3.2.4. Structuralist Descriptions of Vietnamese: European Influence

The influence of European structuralism upon the study of Vietnamese
goes back to 1948, the year when Lê Văn Lý’s seminal book Le Parler
Vietnamien was published. The book consists of two major parts; part one is
concerned with phonology and part two with morphology or the
classification of words into parts of speech.
To some Vietnamese grammarians (Dương Thanh Bình, 1971; Nguyễn
Kim Thản, 1977, 1988), one of the merits of Lê Văn Lý’s grammar work which
distinguishes him from his contemporaries rests on his new approach to the
classification of Vietnamese words into parts of speech. It is generally
claimed that his approach is functional. Lê Văn Lý (1948: 131-32) cited in
Nguyễn Kim Thản (1977: 15) states:
The best way for the functionalist is to work not on the basis of the meaning
of words, but on the basis of their functions, their behaviour (comportement)
and their structures ... One should not look at the word itself to find out what
determines its properties, but at its environments, i.e., its combinabilities with
other words in the language. This is the central point in our method and it
can be regarded as the prop upon which our whole work will be based.(1)

(1) Ibid., p.15. This passage appears in the Vietnamese original as follows:

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Lê Văn Lý accordingly classifies Vietnamese words by examining the

environments in which they occur and their capacity for combining with
words of other parts of speech; i.e., he examines certain elements that occur
before or after the words belonging to one part of speech in all their possible
positions and thus tries to differentiate the words of one part of speech from
the words of other parts of speech. The elements that the author uses to
examine and differentiate one part of speech from another are particles which
he terms ‘mots-temoins’, i.e., words that can or cannot occur before or after
members of the parts of speech under examination. For Lê Văn Lý, a word is
determined as belonging to a part of speech by the presence or absence of
certain ‘mots-temoins’: its identity is determined by its potential of co-
occurrence with these ‘mots-temoins’. Using this method, Lê Văn Lý classifies
Vietnamese words into three large categories which he labels A, B, and C.
Within category B, however, he distinguishes a special subcategory of words
which is labelled B’. B’ differs from B in that B’ can occur after such items as rất
(very), khá (rather), khí or hơi (a little or slightly) while B cannot. Lê Văn Lý
subdivides category C into C1 (mots-personnels), C2 (mots de nombre) and C3
(particules) with category C3 accounting for all the words in the language
because, as he explains, words of C1 and C2 have their own ‘mots-temoins’
while words of C3 do not. From the classification, it would appear that A
corresponds roughly to traditional nouns; B to verbs; B’ to adjectives, and C to
all the remaining words in Vietnamese.

It has been claimed that Lê Văn Lý’s approach to classifying Vietnamese

words represents a new way of looking at the morphological structure of
Vietnamese: it ‘has opened up a new stage for the study of Vietnamese’
(Nguyễn Kim Thản, 1988: 36) because it ‘has proved to be a very sound and
effective method of classification’ (Dương Thanh Bình, 1971: 36). In his
approach, grammar no longer consists of a set of rules and the logic-based
explanation of meaning is relegated to a subordinate status.

However, it is clear from the account also that Lê Văn Lý’s approach is
still structurally-based, not quite functional in the systemic functional sense
of the term. If it is seen as functional, it might be understood in a way as

Người chức năng chủ nghĩa (fontionaliste) tốt nhất làm việc không dựa vào ý nghĩa của
các từ, mà dựa vào chức năng của chúng, sự ứng phó (comportement) của chúng và kết
cấu của chúng. ... Không phải là nhìn vào bản thân từ để tìm ra cái quy định các đặc tính
của nó, mà phải nhìn vào hoàn cảnh của nó, tức là các khả năng kết hợp với các từ khác
trong ngôn ngữ. Ðó là điều cốt yếu trong phương pháp của chúng tôi, và có thể coi đó là
rường cột mà toàn bộ công việc sau này dựa vào!

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‘first level function’ in Sampson’s (1980) sense or ‘linguistic function’ in

Halliday’s (1970) sense. To a large extent, Lê Văn Lý’s approach bears
similarities to the one used by some American distributionalists (to whom,
however, Lê Văn Lý does not seem to have any affiliation) who classify
English words into class 1, class 2 and so on (e.g., Marckwardt & Walcoh,
1939; Fries, 1940, 1952; Harris, 1951).
Fifteen years after the publication of Lê Văn Lý’s seminal work Le Parler
Vietnamien, there appeared in South Vietnam a monograph on Vietnamese
grammar entitled Khảo luận về ngữ pháp Việt Nam (A Treatise on the
Grammar of Vietnamese) by Trương Văn Chình & Nguyễn Hiến Lê (1963). This
work deserves discussion not only due to its rich descriptive content but also
due to the theoretical position its authors propose for the description of
Vietnamese.
Trương Văn Chình & Nguyễn Hiến Lê begin their book by providing a
detailed analysis of words and compound words in Vietnamese. They
recognise the existence of words which are composed of more than one
syllable. They also recognise that syntactically compound words function as
simple words.
Trương Văn Chình & Nguyễn Hiến Lê have less to say of the
classification of words in Vietnamese. In their work, words are tentatively
divided into three groups: (i) substantives, (ii) adverbs, and (iii) particles.
Adverbs, in their opinion, correspond to the traditional verbs, qualitative
adjectives, and adverbs of manner. They explain the difference between
particles and substantives and adverbs in Vietnamese as follows:
Substantives and adverbs are notional words, each word of which expresses a
meaning which we can perceive, imagine and explain. Notional words used in
the sentence have their grammatical functions.
There is one more group of words in our language which have no notional
meanings, or have lost their notional meanings, and which do not play any
grammatical function in the sentence. We call them particles. (Trương Văn
Chình & Nguyễn Hiến Lê, 1963: 180).(1)

(1) Ibid., p. 180. This passage appears in the Vietnamese original as follows:
Thể từ và trạng từ là tiếng có thực nghĩa, mỗi tiếng diễn tả một ý ta có thể quan niệm
được, hình dung được hay giảng giải được. Tiếng có thực nghĩa dùng trong câu nói, đều
có chức vụ ngữ pháp.
Tiếng ta còn một loại nữa, không có thực nghĩa, hoặc đã mất thực nghĩa, và dùng trong
câu nói không có chức vụ ngữ pháp nào, chúng tôi gọi là trợ từ.

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 Chapter 2 • A REVIEW OF THE EXTANT GRAMMAR OF VIETNAMESE

Trương Văn Chình & Nguyễn Hiến Lê make a distinction between two
kinds of grammatical functions which they refer to respectively as ‘primary
function’ and ‘secondary function’. The former is the function of units in a
sentence, and the latter, that of the units within sentence units. Proceeding
from this distinction, they identify thirteen grammatical functions, as
represented in Table 2.4 below:

1. topic
2. subject
3. predicate subordinate word of the sentence
Primary 4.5.6. modifier(s) of the sentence complement of the sentence
Functions appositive of the sentence
7. sentence connector
numeral
classifier
8.9.10.11.12. modifiers of words subordinate word of a word
Secondary complement of a word
Functions appositive of a word
13. word connectors.(1)

Table 2.4. Grammatical Functions in Vietnamese

(Source: Trương Văn Chình & Nguyễn Hiến Lê, 1963: 189)

In their description of the elements of an adverb cluster, Trương Văn

Chình & Nguyễn Hiến Lê distinguish ‘khách từ’ (the complement of the
adverb), ‘bổ từ không gian’ (the spatial complement), ‘bổ từ thời gian’ (the
temporal complement), ‘hình dung từ’ (adjective), and ‘phó từ’ (the

(1) Ibid., p.189. This table appears in the Vietnamese original as follows:
1. chủ đề
2. chủ từ
từ vụ 3. thuật từ phó từ của câu
chính 4. 5. 6. gia từ của câu bổ từ của câu
giải từ của câu
7. quan hệ từ của câu
lượng từ
loại từ
từ vụ 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. gia từ của tiếng phó từ của tiếng
thứ bổ từ của tiếng
giải từ của tiếng
13. quan hệ từ của tiếng

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

subordinate of the adverb). They discuss the possible positions of the

modifiers of adverbs. The reason why they place the analysis of the
modifiers of adverbs in the discussion of adverb clusters rests on their belief
that these modifiers modify adverbs alone.

Sentence structure is also discussed in their book. Trương Văn Chình &
Nguyễn Hiến Lê preface the discussion by the comment that the definition of
the sentence is a complex matter. However, based on the definition given by
Meillet (cited by Fries, 1952: 20), they tentatively offer the following definition:
A sentence is a complex of words used to express a state of affairs or many
states of affairs which are related to one another; this complex of words is by
itself relatively complete in meaning and is not grammatically dependent on
any other complex of words.(1)

According to Trương Văn Chình & Nguyễn Hiến Lê, a single sentence
may consist of (i) a subject, (ii) a predicate, (iii) a topic, (iv) complement(s),
(v) an appositive (of the sentence), (vi) a subordinate (of the sentence), and
(vii) a sentence connector.

Unlike Trần Trọng Kim et al. (1940), Trương Văn Chình & Nguyễn Hiến
Lê explicitly distinguish between a sentence and a clause. Their basis for
differentiating sentence and clause appears to be notional. Thus they claim
(ibid., p. 479) that:
in a sentence which expresses many states of affairs, each complex which is
used to express a state of affairs is called a clause.(2)

So far as their theoretical position for the description of Vietnamese is

concerned, Trương Văn Chình & Nguyễn Hiến Lê claim that they do not
adhere to any particular school of linguistics. In fact, in their introduction,
the authors criticise the early grammarians for adhering too closely to
French structuralism and for using too many incomprehensible Sino-

(1) Ibid., pp. 476-77. This passage appears in the Vietnamese original as follows:
Câu là một tổ hợp tiếng dùng để diễn tả một sự tình hay nhiều sự tình có quan hệ với
nhau; tổ hợp từ này tự nó tương đối đầy đủ ý nghĩa, và không phụ thuộc về ngữ pháp
vào một tổ hợp nào khác.
(2) Ibid., p. 479. This passage appears in the Vietnamese original as follows:
Trong cùng một câu diễn tả nhiều sự tình, thì mỗi tổ hợp dùng để diễn tả một sự tình,
chúng tôi gọi là cú.

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 Chapter 2 • A REVIEW OF THE EXTANT GRAMMAR OF VIETNAMESE

Vietnamese terms (cf. Dương Thanh Bình, 1971). They also criticise north
Vietnamese scholars for adhering to the Marxist philosophy of language (for
more detail of this point, see Hồng Giao, 1965; Nguyễn Kim Thản, 1988)
which, according to them, focuses too much on the formal properties of
language and ignores meaning.

The relationship between form and meaning in language study has

been one of the topics for many heated debates not only in linguistics
internationally but also in philosophy since the ancient times. Being aware
of this complex issue, Trương Văn Chình & Nguyễn Hiến Lê claim that in their
research both form and meaning are equally important. They write:
The most appropriate (conscientious) approach is one that is based on both
form and meaning of speech.(1)

Unfortunately, their actual work does not seem to conform to their

theoretical statement; that is, in their work, meaning seems to play a
predominant role while form appears to be not adequately considered
(cf. Nguyễn Kim Thản, 1988: 38). In his preface to Trương Văn Chình &
Nguyễn Hiến Lê’s Khảo luận về ngữ pháp Việt Nam (p.8), Bishop Cao Văn Luận
has drawn attention to this contradiction:
In language study, the approach which is considered to be the most advanced
one is the structural approach (structuralisme). However, scholars working
within this tradition are also divided into two different schools: one school is
based on the formal structures (structure formelle) of language, and the other
on its meaning (structure de la pensée).

The authors of Khảo luận về ngữ pháp Việt Nam belong to the latter category,
because they think that it is better suited for (the description of) Vietnamese...(2)

(1) Ibid., p. 42. This passage appears in the Vietnamese original as follows:
Phương pháp hợp với lương tri hơn cả, là phải căn cứ vào cả hình thức lẫn nội dung của
lời nói.
(2) Ibid., p. 8. This passage appears in the Vietnamese original as follows:
Về ngữ học, phương pháp coi là tiến bộ nhất là phương pháp nghiên cứu theo cách cấu
tạo (structuralisme). Nhưng những học giả theo phương pháp đó cũng chia làm hai phái
chủ trương khác nhau: một bên căn cứ vào “mặt chữ’” (structure formelle), một bên căn
cứ vào sự cấu tạo của tư tưởng (structure de la pensée) mà nghiên cứu.
Tác giả Khảo luận về ngữ pháp Việt Nam theo chủ trương thứ nhì, vì nghĩ rằng nó hợp
với Việt ngữ hơn cả.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

It is for their inconsistency in the methodological approach that Trương

Văn Chình & Nguyễn Hiến Lê are subjected to criticisms by many scholars,
particularly those in the north of Vietnam (cf. Hồng Giao, 1965; Nguyễn Kim
Thản, 1988). Further, because they do not adopt any linguistic model as the
theoretical framework but follow what I would refer to as an ‘eclectic approach’
to the study of Vietnamese grammar, their work seems to lack systematicity
and consistency. As a result, many of the solutions they offer for analysing
words, compounds, phrases and sentences appear to be inappropriate and
even theoretically contradictory (see Nguyễn Kim Thản, 1988).

The study of Vietnamese grammar in North Vietnam in the second

period of the transitional stage (roughly from 1954 when Vietnam was
divided into two parts) is said to rest on two theoretical grounds, one
linguistic and the other philosophical.

From the point of view of linguistics, northern Vietnamese scholars are

said to be influenced by Ferdinand de Saussure (1983)’s theory of language.
From the point of view of philosophy, however, their linguistic research is
said to be guided by the Marxist-Leninist philosophy of language, referred to
as ‘dialectical materialism in language study’. According to this philosophy,
language is seen as ‘a means of communication and a vehicle of thought. It
is a system of closely interrelated components, and the two facets of
language – form and meaning – are dialectically related’ (cf. Vološinov, 1973;
Morris [ed.], 1994; see also Nguyễn Kim Thản, 1988: 39).

Subscribing to these two theoretical/philosophical viewpoints,

northern Vietnamese scholars take Saussure’s état de langue as the object of
their investigation. They follow Saussure in treating each état de langue as a
static and closed or autonomous system consisting of different
hierarchical/structural strata or levels, each of which is said to possess two
features or categories: (i) the concrete (the observable) and (ii) the abstract.
The unit of the higher stratum is said to include the unit of the lower
stratum and, conversely, the unit of the lower stratum is said to be a
component part of the unit of the next higher stratum. The diagramme
below may be representative of the approach to language study by northern
Vietnamese scholars:

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 Chapter 2 • A REVIEW OF THE EXTANT GRAMMAR OF VIETNAMESE

The concrete The abstract

(observable)
sentence(s) model of sentence structure
consisting of realise(s)
phrase(s) model of phrase structure
consisting of realise(s)
word(s) word
consisting of realise(s)
(allo)morph(s) morpheme
consisting of realise(s)
(allo)phone(s) phoneme (1)

realise(s)
Table 2.5. Relations between Units of Language and Aspects of Language
(Source: Stepanov 1975: 220 cited in Cao Xuân Hạo, 2004: 34)

As can be seen from the above diagram, each stratum in the

hierarchical structure is the object of study for a branch of linguistics.

(1) Ibid., p.15. This table appears in the Vietnamese original as follows:
DIỆN CỤ THỂ DIỆN TRỪU TƯỢNG
(quan sát được)
Câu Mô hình cấu trúc của câu
thực hiện (hiện thực hóa)
gồm có
Cụm từ Mô hình cấu trúc của cụm từ
thực hiện
gồm có
Từ Từ
thực hiện
gồm có
Hình tố Hình vị
thực hiện
gồm có
Âm tố Âm vị
thực hiện

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

Accordingly, we have phonology – the study of the sound system of

language; lexicology – the study of the overall structure and the history of
words (vocabulary including certain morphs and words); and syntax – the
study of the way in which different meaningful units are combined to form
larger units such as sentences and the interrelationships of these larger
constructions.
It is noteworthy that like Trương Văn Chình & Nguyễn Hiến Lê (1963),
northern Vietnamese scholars claim that in their approach both form and
meaning are taken into account. However, there is a difference between
northern Vietnamese scholars and Trương Văn Chình & Nguyễn Hiến Lê and
this difference lies in the fact that while Trương Văn Chình & Nguyễn Hiến Lê
approach language from the point of view of meaning – and their approach
is strongly criticised (by the northern Vietnamese scholars) for being
subjective and idealistic – northern Vietnamese scholars seem to approach
language from the point of view of form (cf. Cao Xuân Hạo, 1991/2004;
Hoàng Văn Vân, 2005). This formal approach to language is based on the
assumption that in the relation between form and meaning, it is the form
that determines or dictates the meaning.
Working within the formalist/structuralist framework, northern
Vietnamese scholars concentrate on studying the hierarchical system of the
language. They attempt to define the units of language from the morpheme
to the sentence and demarcate the boundaries between them in a
hierarchical system. It should be added here that works and monographs on
Vietnamese grammar following this formalist approach are numerous, and
ideas on even a particular grammatical issue are so diversified that it would
be difficult to review even a selection of these within a study of this scope.
Therefore, what is provided here is a brief account of how these scholars
look at each linguistic unit in the hierarchical system of Vietnamese. I shall
begin with the morpheme.
(i) On defining the morpheme. Like many other formalist/
structuralist linguists of the world in the first half of the 20th century,
northern Vietnamese scholars, including some Russian scholars studying
Vietnamese, begin their exploration of the structure of Vietnamese by
looking at the unit which is commonly known in world linguistics as the
‘morpheme’. They unanimously define morpheme as ‘the smallest
meaningful unit of language’ (cf. Solncev, Lekomcev, Mxitarjan, & Glebova,
1960; Nguyễn Kim Thản, 1964; Hồ Lê, 1976; Lưu Vân Lăng, 1988) and refer to

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it by terms such as ‘hình vị’ (Solncev et al., 1960); ‘ngữ vị’ (Nguyễn Kim Thản,
1964, 1977); and ‘nguyên vị’ (Hồ Lê, 1976).
However, at the recognition level, opinions on the morphological
structure of Vietnamese seem to be diversified. There are at least three
different views about how a morpheme can be recognised. The first view,
which is held by most northern Vietnamese scholars, is that a morpheme in
Vietnamese may be composed of one or more than one syllable. For
example:
One syllable: sớm (early), sạch (clean)
Two syllables: thình lình (sudden), thằn lằn (lizard)
Three syllables: sạch sành sanh (clean, nothing left)
The second view derives from Thompson’s (1965) work. While
accepting the postulate of a morpheme as isomorphic with a syllable in
general, some scholars of this view go further, claiming the existence of
Vietnamese morphemes which consist of less than one syllable. For
example:
đ- (with first register tone) ‘relative location’ as in đ-ây (here).
Following Thompson’s view, some northern Vietnamese scholars even
attempt to prove that in Vietnamese there are rhyming morphemes such as
-âp in lập cập (shiver, tremble), -anh in đành hanh (wicked) (Nguyễn Đức
Dương, 1974). According to some scholars there exist discontinuous and
linking morphemes such as ch - v in chon von (very high and solitary) and nh
in nhỏ nhắn (slim, slender) respectively (Trần Ngọc Thêm, 1985).
Among the scholars who represent this latter view, Lưu Vân Lăng
(1970) seems to be the scholar who does not to confuse the notion of a
morpheme (a grammatical unit) with that of a syllable (a phonological unit).
However, when he provides actual examples to illustrate his point, the
confusion between these two different units can still be found. Lưu Vân Lăng
(ibid.) assumes that it is possible to define different units for different
aspects of the language (i.e., phonology, morphology, grammar, etc.). Thus
he states that the smallest grammatical unit in Vietnamese is ‘tiếng’ (which
may correspond either to a word or a morpheme, a syllable or even a
phoneme in English). A tiếng, according to Lưu Vân Lăng (ibid.), coincides
with a syllable on the phonological level (or aspect) but is different from a
‘hình’ (morph or morpheme) which is the smallest meaningful unit at the
lexicosemantic level. A hình, in his opinion, may be polysyllabic, e.g., ễnh

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

ương (a kind of animal of frog family), monosyllabic, e.g., lánh in lấp lánh
(twinkling), or it may even be smaller than a syllable, e.g. -âp in lấp lánh.
Apart from the disagreements noted above, northern scholars also
differ from each other in their analysis of some specific instances. Take the
word quốc kì (national flag) as an example. Ðái Xuân Ninh (1978) maintains
that it is a single morpheme word while Nguyễn Kim Thản (1964) analyses it
as a two-morpheme word.
There seems to be a consensus among northern Vietnamese scholars
that morphemes in Vietnamese belong to different classes. However,
depending on the method used for analysis, different scholars give different
labels to categories of morpheme such as ‘proper v. pseudo-morphemes’
(Nguyễn Kim Thản, 1964), ‘independent signs v. dependent signs’ (Hoàng
Tuệ, Lê Cận, & Cù Ðình Tú, 1962), ‘independent morphs v. dependent morphs’
(Nguyễn Tài Cẩn, 1975b), ‘free tiếngs of which there are unrestricted tiếngs
and restricted tiếngs v. bound tiếngs of which there are temporarily
independent tiếngs and meaningless tiếngs when isolated’ (Lưu Vân Lăng,
1970), and ‘notional, grammatical and structural morphemes’ (Hồ Lê, 1976).

(ii) On defining the word. Before addressing the issue of how

northern Vietnamese scholars define the notion of word, it is necessary to
note that traditionally each Vietnamese syllable has been regarded as a
word (cf. Emeneau, 1951; Thompson, 1985). This is partly justified because
“a great proportion of Vietnamese words especially those most current in
the spoken language are just one syllable long” (Thompson, 1985: 116-17).
Equally strong in the traditional attitude is another factor: Vietnamese was
first written with symbols borrowed from Chinese with each character
representing one morpheme. When chữ quốc ngữ is used, this orthography
too privileges morpheme but not word boundary (cf. Section 2.2 above). To
a certain extent, these facts seem to exert influence on the way northern
Vietnamese scholars look at the unit word. They may also help explain why
these scholars hold different views about this basic unit of Vietnamese
language.

Coming back to the notion of word in Vietnamese, in contrast to

Emeneau (1951) who assumes that in Vietnamese a morpheme and a word
coincide, Nguyễn Tài Cẩn (1975b) holds that in Vietnamese there is an
intermediate unit between the word and the morpheme. Agreeing with Lưu

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Vân Lăng’s (1970) position, he refers to this intermediate unit as tiếng.

Considering the status of tiếng, Nguyễn Thiện Giáp (1984) assumes that a
tiếng can be isomorphic with a word; this is because, argues Nguyễn Thiện
Giáp (ibid.), like a word, a tiếng is also a psycho-linguistic unit. Making the
confusion from these somewhat contradictory positions even more
confused, there is the view expressed by Cao Xuân Hạo (1985) who equates
a tiếng with a phoneme, a morpheme, and a word, i.e., tiếng = phoneme =
morpheme = word. Ðinh Văn Ðức (1986), on the one hand, seems to agree
with Cao Xuân Hạo and, on the other, still considers việc làm (work), đóng
góp (contribute), ao hồ (pond and lake), each of which consists of two
morphemes, as words without appearing to note the contradictions in his
position (cf. Lưu Vân Lăng, 1988: 10).
In terms of semantics, northern Vietnamese scholars define the unit
word in a variety of ways. They offer different notional criteria such as
‘completeness’ or ‘integrity’ (Hoàng Tuệ et al., 1962), ‘the capacity of being
used independently in syntax’ (Solncev, 1986), ‘substitutability’ (Hồ Lê, 1976)
and so on (for a more detailed discussion on this point, please see Lưu Vân
Lăng, 1988).
It is noticeable that although different scholars look at the issue of the
classification of Vietnamese words from different perspectives and thus
arrive at different results, the generally accepted view is that words in
Vietnamese are of three main types: (i) simple, e.g. tôi (I), chuối (banana), (ii)
complex, e.g. lạnh lùng (cold), bạn bè (friendship), and (iii) compound, e.g.
sinh vật học (biology), tư bản chủ nghĩa (capitalism) (cf. Lưu Vân Lăng, 1988;
see also Nguyễn Tài Cẩn, 1975b).
(iii) On defining parts of speech. As with many other languages so
also in Vietnamese, the classification of words into parts of speech appears
to be one of the most complex issues. Mention was made of Trần Trọng Kim
et al. (1940) (cf. Section 2.3.2.2) who use logical meaning as the main
criterion for classifying words, of Emeneau (1951), Honey (1956), and
Thompson (1985) (cf. Section 2.3.2.3) who use distribution, and of Lê Văn Lý
(1948) who uses the syntactic function of words, i.e., the combinabilities of
words of one class with those of others. On the whole, although their
approaches are different, they all have one feature in common: all are based
on some single criterion. For this reason, they are often referred to as ‘one-
criterion approaches’ (cf. Ðinh Văn Ðức, 1986; Lưu Vân Lăng, 1988).

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As for northern Vietnamese scholars, they are said to follow two

different approaches, one is still based on a single criterion and the other on
a number of criteria. Representative of the one-criterion approach is Nguyễn
Tài Cẩn (1975a, 1975b). In his monograph Từ loại danh từ trong tiếng Việt
hiện đại (Nouns in Modern Vietnamese), Nguyễn Tài Cẩn (1975a) maintains
that it is possible to classify words on the basis of phrase structure, thus
dividing words into classes and subclasses by taking phrase as the unit for
analysis.
Nguyễn Tài Cẩn’s phrase-based approach to the classification of
Vietnamese words can be best seen in his Ngữ pháp tiếng Việt: Tiếng – Từ
ghép – Ðoản ngữ (A Grammar of Vietnamese: Tiengs – Compounds –
Phrases) (1975b). In this monograph, noun phrase and verb phrase are the
two main units used to classify words into parts of speech. However,
although his methods and techniques of analysis are claimed to be the
advanced ones (cf. Ðinh Văn Ðức, 1993), they do not appear very different
from others inspired by American scholarship (cf. Fries, 1940, 1952). Thus, for
such a noun phrase as tất cả những con gà đẹp ấy (all those beautiful
chicken), one can see that con (generic classifier) and gà (noun), which
Nguyễn Tài Cẩn treats as co-heads of the noun phrase, are numbered -0 and
+0 respectively; những (plural marker) is numbered -1, tất cả (determiner) -2;
đẹp (adjective) +1; and ấy (demonstrative pronoun) +2. The complete
analysis of the phrase can be represented as follows:
(2.2)
tất cả những con gà đẹp ấy
all plural marker generic classifier chicken beautiful those
-2 -1 -0 +0 +1 +2

all those beautiful chicken

Based on this analysis of the phrase, a part of speech may be assigned
to each number denoting some class. Accordingly, words that can occur in
positions -0 and +0 are nouns. Similarly, words that can occur in position -1
are numeratives, -2 determiners, +1 adjectives, and +2 demonstratives.
However, in the concluding chapter of the monograph, Nguyễn Tài Cẩn
himself confesses the inadequacy of his phrase-based approach. He
recommends that to make the analysis more reliable, the clause should be
taken into account (p.307).

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Among the scholars who employ a number of criteria or ‘multi-criteria

approach’ for classifying Vietnamese words, Nguyễn Kim Thản (1964),
UBKHXH (1983), Lê Cận & Phan Thiều (1983), and Ðinh Văn Ðức (1986) are
said to be the representative writers. The criteria they offer for classifying
words in Vietnamese are of three types: (i) the abstract meanings of a
particular word class, e.g., the thingness of the noun, the actionness of the
verb etc., (ii) the syntactic functions which words of a particular part of
speech have in phrases and sentences, and (iii) their combinabilities with
words of other parts of speech.
(iv) On defining the sentence. Not surprisingly, the number of
definitions of the unit sentence to date exceeds some hundred (cf. Cao Xuân
Hạo 1991/2004). This suggests that defining the sentence is a complex
business. However, many scholars have attempted to define this complex
linguistic unit. Mention has already been made of the definitions by Trần
Trọng Kim et al. (1940) (cf. Section 2.3.2.2), Thompson (cf. Section 2.3.2.3), as
well as Trương Văn Chình & Nguyễn Hiến Lê (1963). In what follows, I shall
look at some of the representative definitions by northern Vietnamese
scholars as well as by Russian ones. As will be seen, most of the definitions
presented below are based on the one given by the Russian Academician
Vinogradov, who defines the sentence as follows:
A sentence is a complete unit of speech which is constructed in accordance
with the grammatical rules of a language, acting as the most important
vehicle for structuring, reflecting and conveying ideas. In a sentence, not only
is there an expression of ideas but also a relationship between the speaker
and reality. (Vinogradov, 1954, cited in Nguyễn Kim Thản, 1964: 147)(1)

Following this line of thinking and being aware of the complexity of

the problem, Bystrov, Nguyễn Tài Cẩn, and Stankevich (1975: 131) cautiously
suggest four main criteria for identifying a sentence. These may be
summarised as follows:
(i) A sentence is a linguistic unit expressing a relatively complete thought;
(ii) A sentence not only reflects reality but also contains the evaluation of
reality by the speaker;

(1) Ibid., p. 174. This passage appears in the Vietnamese original as follows:
Câu là đơn vị hoàn chỉnh của lời nói được hình thành về mặt ngữ pháp theo các quy luật
của một ngôn ngữ nhất định, làm công cụ quan trọng nhất được cấu tạo, biểu hiện và
truyền đạt tư tưởng. Trong câu không phải chỉ có sự truyền đạt và hiện thực mà còn có
cả mối quan hệ của người nói với hiện thực.

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(iii) A sentence possesses external features such as sentence-final particles

and sentence pauses;
(iv) A sentence possesses internal features; that is, its structure.

Discussing how to recognise a sentence in Vietnamese, Bystrov et al.

note that in normal cases, a sentence can be recognised by the presence of
its internal features, (i.e., by its normal subject + predicate structure).
However, when the internal features of the sentence are not present (i.e.,
when it is not expressed by its normal structure), one may appeal to its
external features, though recognition by reference to internal features is to
be preferred (p.132).
In the same vein, Hoàng Trọng Phiến (1980: 19) defines the sentence as
follows:
(...), a sentence is a linguistic level which is grammatically and semantically
complete and is constructed with an intonation in accordance with the rules
of a language; it is a means for expressing and conveying ideas about reality
and about the attitude of the speaker towards reality.(1)

In a textbook written for the undergraduates of Vietnamese and

linguistics at the Hanoi University of Education, Diệp Quang Ban (1987: 19)
tentatively provides the following definition:
A sentence is a linguistic unit which has an independent grammatical
structure (internal and external) and a terminal intonation; it expresses a
relatively complete thought and may contain an evaluation of reality by the
speaker which helps to convey ideas.(2)

Most recently, in his Ngữ Pháp tiếng Việt, Diệp Quang Ban (2005), like
Bystrov et al. (1975), does not attempt to define the sentence. Instead, in
comparing the notion of cú (clause) with that of câu (sentence), he points
out the following three features characterizing the sentence (p. 16):

(1) Ibid., p.19. This passage appears in the Vietnamese original as follows:
( ... ), câu là ngữ tuyến được hình thành một cách trọn vẹn về ngữ pháp và và ngữ nghĩa
với một ngữ điệu theo các quy luật của một ngôn ngữ nhất định là phương tiện diễn đạt,
biểu hiện tư tưởng về thực tế và về thái độ của người nói đối với hiện thực.
(2) Ibid., p. 19. This passage appears in the Vietnamese original as follows:
Câu là đơn vị của ngôn ngữ, có cấu tạo ngữ pháp (bên trong và bên ngoài) tự lập và ngữ
điệu kết thúc, mang một tư tưởng tương đối trọn vẹn và có thể kèm theo sự đánh giá
hiện thực của người nói, giúp hình thành và biểu hiện, truyền đạt tư tưởng.

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(i) A (simple) sentence is located at the highest level in the grammatical

system of a language; i.e. grammatically, no other grammatical units are
higher than the sentence.
(ii) A sentence has a grammatical structure; it is a syntagm centring around
a verb, taking the verb, not the subject and the predicate as its centre to
avoid the repetition of the subject-predicate structure in logic. This is
the lexico-grammatical structure of the sentence. It is due to this lexico-
grammatical organization that the speaker’s idea or intention is
formulated or constructed.

(iii) A sentence has a meaning expressing a state of affair. This kind of

meaning is used for interpreting the lexico-grammatical organization of
the sentence.(1)

On the whole, in each of the definitions above, one can recognise at

least three features of the sentence: (i) a sentence is a linguistic unit which
belongs to parole in the Saussurean sense; (ii) it has a grammatical structure
and a terminal intonation; and (iii) it has a meaning and its function is to
express an idea or a relatively complete thought (idea) in which there may
be an attitude of the speaker towards reality.
Since the sentence is defined from different perspectives, it is not
surprising that the criteria for their classification vary. Among the many
criteria used for classifying the sentence in Vietnamese, the most common
ones are based on (i) logic and the purpose of speaking and (ii) the
grammatical structure of the sentence (see UBKHXH, 1983; Diệp Quang Ban,
1987, 2005; Lưu Vân Lăng, 1988). According to these scholars, the first
criterion yields the following classes: (a) affirmative, (b) negative, (c)
indicative, (d) interrogative, (e) imperative, and (f) exclamatory; while
according to the second criterion sentences can be classified into (a) simple,
(b) complex, and (c) compound. However, what is meant by simple, complex,
or compound sentence does not seem to be entirely clear-cut. Whether a

(1) Ibid., p. 16. This passage appears in the Vietnamese original as follows:
a) Định vị câu (câu đơn) ở bậc cao nhất của hệ thống ngữ pháp của một ngôn ngữ, tức là
về ngữ pháp không có đơn vị nào lớn hơn câu.
b) Câu có cấu tạo ngữ pháp là một khúc đoạn ngôn ngữ tập trung chung quanh một vị tố,
tức là lấy vị tố làm trung tâm, không lấy hai thành phần chủ ngữ và vị ngữ làm cơ sở, để
tránh lặp lại cấu trúc của mệnh đề lôgic. Đây cũng chính là nói về cái tổ chức từ vựng –
ngữ pháp của câu. Nhờ tổ chức từ vựng – ngữ pháp này mà một ý nghĩ, một nội dung sự
việc và ý định của người nói được định hình, được kiến tạo nên.
c) Câu có mặt ý nghĩa là phần diễn đạt một sự thể. Nghĩa sự thể là cái được dùng để giải
thích cho tổ chức từ vựng – ngữ pháp của câu.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

sentence is treated as simple, complex or compound is perhaps an artefact

of a particular grammarian’s position. The following examples will serve to
illustrate the point:
(2.3) [LVL]

Họ vừa đi vừa cười vừa hát

they (while) go (while) laugh (while) sing

They walked laughing and singing.

(2.4) [LVL]

Vấn đề [[anh ấy nêu ra ]] vẫn chưa được giải quyết

problem he raise out still not pass.ptcl solve

The problem raised by him has not yet been solved.

(2.5) Cách mạng tháng tám thành công đem lại độc lập, tự do cho dân
tộc. [DQB]
The victory of the August Revolution brought independence and
freedom to the nation.

||[[Cách mạng tháng tám thành công]]

revolution august succeed

The victory of the August Revolution,

đem lại độc lập tự do cho dân tộc ||

bring back independence freedom for nation

brought independence and freedom to the nation.

Sentence (2.3) may be analysed in at least four different ways. First, it

could be treated as a simple sentence with one main predication (Nguyễn
Lân, 1956); second, it may be described as a compound sentence with three
predicates: đi (walked), cười (laughing), and hát (singing) (cf. Tổ Ngôn ngữ
học, 1964); the third analysis would hold that it is a one-clause sentence
with three propositions of the same function (Phan Ngọc & Phạm Đức
Dương, 1983); and the fourth point of view would maintain that it is a
simple sentence with a compound predicate (Lưu Vân Lăng, 1970).

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 Chapter 2 • A REVIEW OF THE EXTANT GRAMMAR OF VIETNAMESE

As for sentence (2.4), some scholars analyse it as a simple sentence

(Lekomcev, 1964; Diệp Quang Ban, 1987) while others treat it as a complex
sentence (Solncev et al., 1960).
With sentence (2.5), some scholars argue that although Cách mạng
tháng tám thành công (literally, revolution August succeed, ‘The victory of
the August Revolution’) is a clause, it functions as the subject of the
sentence. The whole sentence, therefore, should be treated as a simple one
(Diệp Quang Ban, 1987). By contrast, based on the traditional concept of the
sentence, other scholars hold that it is a complex sentence (Nguyễn Lân,
1956; Bystrov et al., 1975).
These analytical problems clearly point to the fact that the
structural/grammatical classification of the sentence cannot be independent
of the analysis of its component parts. Many scholars assume that the main
component parts of the sentence are the subject and the predicate and that
other components such as attributive phrases, adverbial phrases, and
complements are subordinate or secondary (Hoàng Tuệ et al., 1962; Hoàng
Trọng Phiến, 1980). In his study Nghiên cứu về ngữ pháp tiếng Việt, tập 1, 2
(Studies of the Vietnamese Grammar, volumes 1 and 2), Nguyễn Kim Thản
(1963, 1964) distinguishes between subordinate components of the phrase
and subordinate components of the sentence. He maintains that adverbial
and sentence-initial phrases are the components of the sentence, attributes
components of the substantive phrase, and complements are the
components of the predicative phrase. In a similar vein, Hoàng Trọng Phiến
(1980) distinguishes between attributes of nouns, attributes of predicates
and attributes of the sentence. Drawing on the insights of Trương Văn Chình
& Nguyễn Hiến Lê (1963), Diệp Quang Ban (1987) makes a distinction
between primary and secondary grammatical functions in the sentence. He
also distinguishes between subordinate words in the sentence, complement
of the sentence, appositive of the sentence and subordinate word of a word,
and appositive of a word respectively. From another angle, Lưu Vân Lăng
(1970) and UBKHXH (1983) maintain that topic and comment are the
components that constitute the nucleus of the sentence. According to Lưu
Vân Lăng (1988), these two components may be expanded by the
components at the lower level such as attributes, complements, modifiers.
In his opinion, components such as vocatives, continuatives are outside the
sentence nucleus.

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One of the issues giving rise to many debates among the scholars
concerns the grammatical functions of what are often referred to as
‘inverted elements’ or ‘focal elements’ in Thompson’s (1985) terms. The
debate itself arises from the fact that the grammatical functions of the
sentence components have never been explicitly defined. The subject of the
sentence, for example, is vaguely understood either as the topic of the
proposition or as a word/phrase that causes the action of the verb (cf. Cao
Xuân Hạo, 1991/2004). So when an element which does not perform either
of the above functions; e.g., a complement or an adverbial modifier, is
placed at the beginning of the sentence, it is treated either as a focal
element (Thompson, 1985), or an ‘inverted element’ (cf. Nguyễn Minh
Thuyết, 1981; Phan Thiều, 1988), which is said to have been inverted for
some stylistic purpose; or it is taken as a component outside the subject-
predicate structure which is assigned different labels such as khởi ngữ
(literally, sentence-initial phrase), đề ngữ (topic or theme) (Nguyễn Kim
Thản, 1963, 1964; Bystrov et al., 1975; Diệp Quang Ban, 1980, 1987) or yet
again, described as ‘a component outside the subject-predicate structure
which should be disregarded from the description of the sentence’ (Hoàng
Trọng Phiến, 1980).
Some scholars reject the very idea of inverted adverbial modifiers for
Vietnamese (i.e., those that are placed at the beginning of the sentence).
Rather they distinguish between the adverbial modifiers which precede the
subject and those that follow the predicate. In support of this distinction,
they claim that the adverbial modifiers which follow the predicate are of
secondary function and should therefore be considered to be the
complements of the verb. As for the adverbial modifiers that precede the
subject, they are treated either as ‘situational elements’ (UBKHXH, 1983) or
as ‘circumstantial elements/subordinate elements’ (Diệp Quang Ban, 1987).
These elements are said to be outside the subject-predicate structure. As a
result, the distinction between an adverbial modifier and a complement, a
khởi ngữ (sentence-initial phrase), a theme/topic and a subject appears to
be decided largely by their linear position. For example, in the sentence Xã
bên lúa tốt (In the next village, the rice is growing well), UBKHXH (1983)
holds that Xã bên (In the next village) is a situational element which is
outside the sentence nucleus. Its function is to modify the whole sentence;
lúa is topic/theme and tốt comment/rheme. Similarly, Diệp Quang Ban
(1987) treats Xã bên as the subordinate element of the sentence. However,
instead of analysing the sentence nucleus into topic and comment, he

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analyses lúa as the subject and tốt as the predicate. In contrast, Lưu Vân
Lăng (1988) holds that Xã bên is the main part of the sentence; it functions
as topic, and lúa tốt functions as comment. And with the sentence Hôm nay
mẹ về (Today mother will come back), Lưu Vân Lăng (ibid.) maintains that
there may be two different interpretations; one is that Hôm nay (Today) is
topic and mẹ về (mother will come back) is comment; and the other is that
Hôm nay is the inverted adverbial modifier of time, mẹ is topic and về
comment.
2.3.2.5. Summary
I have provided a brief account of the influence of different linguistic
schools upon the study and description of Vietnamese in the second period.
It is clear from the account that French traditionalism strongly influenced
the study of Vietnamese grammar in the pre-structuralist period. However,
in the later years, due to the fact that Vietnam was divided into two parts,
each of which was theoretically allied with one or two world linguistic
traditions, southern linguistic scholarship was influenced by the American
descriptivist/structuralist approach while northern linguistic tradition has
relied on European structuralism (particularly the linguistic theory of
Ferdinand de Saussure) and the Russian formalist/structuralist approach.
What is of significance, however, is that although influenced by one or
another of these linguistic schools, most scholars of the transitional stage,
including non-Vietnamese, are fully aware of the particularities of
Vietnamese as an isolating/analytic language. As a result, the structural
picture of Vietnamese has become much clearer as compared to the study of
Vietnamese grammar in the proto-grammatic stage. At this point, it is
appropriate to add that in the later years of the transitional stage, due to
the isolation of Vietnam from the western world, current linguistic
developments often arrived late, even ‘a decade late’ (Ðinh Văn Ðức, 1993:
41), and when they did arrive they often arrived in piecemeal form which
they continue to do even today. One of the consequences is that the
exhaustive and coherent application of a particular linguistic model to the
description of Vietnamese has not been possible. Thus many descriptive
works are based on the methods and techniques of several linguistic models
rather than of one. In these works, one may find a morphology that is based
on the methods and techniques of the traditional approach while the
discussion of syntax might rely on the so-called functional approach (e.g.,
Lưu Vân Lăng, 1970; UBKHXH, 1983).

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At this point, I leave the transitional stage. However, in the subsequent

chapters of this monograph, I shall find myself coming back again and again
to issues raised by the scholars of this period. I turn now to examine the
third period: the functionalist descriptions of Vietnamese.
2.3.3. Functionalist Descriptions of Vietnamese
2.3.3.1. Background to Functionalist Descriptions of Vietnamese
Before dealing with the third stage, it would be helpful to reiterate
that the division of the Vietnamese linguistic scholarship into three stages
should not be seen as absolute. It is made for the purpose of my review. In
fact, one may notice that even in the stage which I refer to as ‘functionalist
descriptions of Vietnamese’, the traditional approach, the European
structural approach and the American structuralist/descriptivist approach
still co-exist. One further point that needs to be emphasised is that although
the transformational-generative theory overshadowed the study of
language in many parts of the world in the 1960s and 1970s, it seems to
have had very little influence on the study of Vietnamese. Within the
available literature, the only grammar that has drawn upon this theory is
Vietnamese Grammar: A Combined Tagmemic and Transformational
Approach by Nguyễn Ðăng Liêm (1969).
Looking back to the first and second periods, it may be said that
although the study of Vietnamese grammar began much later as compared
with the study of other languages of the world, it has made considerable
achievements as seen from the point of view of the traditional and
structural approaches (Lưu Vân Lăng, 1988). By applying the methods and
techniques of different linguistic schools, scholars, including non-native
Vietnamese, have succeeded in describing the grammatical structure of
Vietnamese from the morpheme to the sentence. However, if language is
viewed as an instrument of social interaction between human beings, it is
obvious from the previous studies that the communicative aspect of
language has been almost ignored. What the scholars of these approaches,
or, to use Dik’s (1978) term, of the ‘formal paradigm’ did was to investigate
only the ‘instrument’. They focused on mechanising this instrument to see
how it was formally structured without paying due attention to how it was
used to serve the life of social man. Although the sentence is generally
considered to be a communicative unit, in most of their descriptive works it
was studied as if it were composed of different structural elements of its
lower levels, with the meaning of the sentence being simply a sum of the
meanings of the lower level units (cf. Cao Xuân Hạo, 1991/2004). For this

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reason, one may be justified in saying that despite their lip service to the
centrality of meaning and to the communicative nature of language, the
scholars of the formal paradigm have failed to address their avowed aim of
exploring the nature of language. A simple reason for this failure is that
language cannot be properly understood when it is approached only from
the point of view of structure while its main function as resource for
communication is not seriously taken into account. On the contrary, even if
the study of the formal mechanism of language is supposed to be the main
aim, it is an aim that cannot be achieved without considering the
functional/communicative aspect of language. The inherent weakness of the
formal paradigm in ignoring the functions of language, together with the
revival of the functional approaches to language study in many parts of the
world in the later decades of this century, has created an awareness of the
need for a new approach to the study of Vietnamese. Many scholars who
previously adhered to the formal paradigm are now showing greater
interests in studying the language from some functional perspective. The
result of these interests has culminated in the publication of Tiếng Việt: sơ
thảo ngữ pháp chức năng, quyển 1 (Vietnamese: An Outline of Functional
Grammar, volume 1) by Cao Xuân Hạo (1991). In 2004, this monograph was
revised and was published under the title Tiếng Việt: sơ thảo ngữ pháp chức
năng (Vietnamese: An Outline of Functional Grammar). In what follows, I
shall examine in some detail this important work to see how Cao Xuân Hạo
conceptualises the nature of language in general and the grammar of
Vietnamese in particular from his functional point of view.
2.3.3.2. Cao Xuân Hạo and Tiếng Việt: sơ thảo Ngữ pháp Chức năng
For the purpose of this review, Cao Xuân Hạo’s publication (1991/2004)
is divided into two parts. The first part is concerned with the discussion of
some theoretical issues of different current functional approaches to
language study such as (i) what is functional grammar? (ii) different three-
level approaches to syntax, (iii) the definition of sentence, (iv) the subject-
predicate structure in the formal paradigm, (v) the theme-rheme structure in
modern linguistics, (vi) the semantic structure of the sentence, and (vii)
some issues about pragmatics. The second part, consisting of three chapters,
presents the application of the author’s functional framework to the
description of the Vietnamese sentences. The first discusses the basic
syntactic structure of Vietnamese in some depth; the second deals with the
different types of sentence structure in discourse; and the third chapter with
the classification of sentences based on illocutionary force and cognitive
(i.e., representational) meaning.

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Functional grammar, for Cao Xuân Hạo, is

a theory and a system of methods which are built upon the view that sees
language as a means for exercising communication between human beings.
(Cao Xuân Hạo, 2004: 11)(1)

In evaluating the approaches of the formal paradigm, Cao Xuân Hạo

suggests that it would be inappropriate to say that the grammarians of the
formal paradigm did not pay attention to meaning in language study. He
claims that they really did. However, meaning in these approaches was
relegated to a secondary status. It was considered only when it was found
necessary; that is, to serve the purpose of studying the formal aspect of
language. This drawback of the formal approaches, according to Cao Xuân
Hạo, is inevitable considering that their main aim is to investigate the
structures of the linguistic signs in their static forms, or to use Saussure’s
(1983) term, the état de langue. Contrasting his own view with this
approach, Cao Xuân Hạo claims:
Functional grammar sets for itself the task of investigating, describing, and
explaining the rules that govern the operations of language on both the
formal and the content levels in their functional relationship (i.e., in the
relationships between means and ends) through observing and using
language in real communicative situations not only for establishing and
identifying systems and sub-systems of the linguistic units but also for
observing how language operates through its vivid manifestations when it is
used. (Cao Xuân Hạo, 2004: 15)(2)

And to clarify his functional view of language, Cao Xuân Hạo further
states:
The structure-constructing rules of the basic discoursal unit – the sentence –
are represented and explained in functional grammar on the basis of the close

(1) Ibid., p. 3. This passage appears in the Vietnamese original as follows:

một lý thuyết và một hệ thống phương pháp được xây dựng trên quan điểm coi ngôn
ngữ như một phương tiện thực hiện sự giao tiếp giữa người và người.
(2) Ibid., p. 15. This passage appears in the Vietnamese original as follows:
Ngữ pháp chức năng tự đặt cho mình cái nhiệm vụ nghiên cứu, miêu tả và giải thích các
quy tắc chi phối hoạt động của ngôn ngữ trên các bình diện của mặt hình thức và mặt
nội dung trong mối liên hệ có tính chức năng (trong mối liên hệ giữa những phương tiện
và những mục đích) thông qua việc quan sát cách sử dụng ngôn ngữ trong những tình
huống giao tế hiện thực không phải chỉ để lập những danh sách đơn vị và xác định
những hệ thống và tiểu hệ thống đơn vị ngôn ngữ, mà còn để theo dõi cách hành chức
của ngôn ngữ qua những biểu hiện sinh động của nó trong khi được sử dụng.

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 Chapter 2 • A REVIEW OF THE EXTANT GRAMMAR OF VIETNAMESE

relationship between language and thought in structuring and linearizing the

states of affairs which are reflected and reported in the interactive
environment between different situational and contextual factors with the
participation of conscious and subconscious objectives of the speaker under
the control of the co-operative contracts between the participants. (p. 16)(1)

As these two statements show, the task that Cao Xuân Hạo sets for his
functional grammar is rather ambitious. It encompasses not only linguistics
in the sense of the Saussurean état de langue but also several disciplines
such as pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics. Apart from these,
his grammar has to take account of a number of fundamental issues such as
the relations between form and meaning in language; langue and parole in
the Saussurean sense; language, reality and thought in the Whorfian sense;
and language and social context in the Firthian and Hallidayan sense.
Discussing the different three-level approaches to syntax, Cao Xuân Hạo
claims that most of the three-level models of syntax are inherited from the
semiotic theory introduced by Charles Morris (1938) who assumes that in
every semiotic system, there are three levels: (i) syntactic, (ii) semantic, and
(iii) pragmatic. Cao Xuân Hạo points out that the level that seems to cause
disagreement among scholars is the third. Here one may find that different
functionalists use different terms with different connotations to refer to the
nature of this level: ‘textual function’ (Halliday 1967b, 1968, 1970, 1975,
1978, 1994 and many other places), ‘pragmatic’ (Dik, 1978), ‘the organisation
of utterance’ (Daněs, 1964), and ‘logico-informative’ (Gak, 1981) (for more
detail, see Cao Xuân Hạo, 2004).
With regard to the basic syntactic structure of Vietnamese, Cao Xuân
Hạo rejects the idea popular amongst most scholars of the formal paradigm
that Vietnamese is a subject-predicate language. He explicitly states that
theme-rheme is the basic structure of Vietnamese. In support of this
statement, he provides two reasons. The first reason is based on an analysis
of some examples in French and their Russian counterparts. These examples
are reproduced below:

(1) Ibid., p. 16. This passage appears in the Vietnamese original as follows:
Những quy tắc xây dựng cấu trúc của đơn vị ngôn từ cơ bản – câu – được ngữ pháp chức
năng trình bày và giải thích trên cơ sở những mối quan hệ khăng khít giữa ngôn ngữ và
tư duy trong việc cấu trúc hoá và tuyến tính hoá những sự tình được phản ánh và trần
thuật, trong môi trường tác động của những nhân tố đa dạng của những tình huống và
văn cảnh, với sự tham gia của những mục tiêu hữu thức hay vô thức của người nói dưới
sự chi phối của những công ước cộng tác giữa những người tham dự hội thoại.

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(2.6) J’ai lu ce livre. (I read this book.)

(2.7) (Quant à) Ce livre, je l’ai lu. (This book, I read it.)
(2.8) ?? Ce livre a été lu par moi. (This book was read by me.)
(2.9) Я читал эту книгу. (I read this book.)
(2.10) Эту книгу я читал. (This book I read.)
(2.11) Чтo кажается этой книги, я eгo читал. (As for this book, I read it.)
(Source: Cao Xuân Hạo, 2004: 58-9)

By providing these examples in French and Russian and analysing the

thematic structure of sentence (2.7) in French and of sentence (2.10) in
Russian, Cao Xuân Hạo wishes to demonstrate that French, which is a
language of fixed word order, prefers what he calls ‘external theme’ while
Russian, which is a language of free word order, prefers ‘internal theme’.
The conclusion he actually arrives at is that in (2.7) the theme Ce livre, which
is not the subject of the sentence, is placed outside the syntactic structure of
the sentence. The following part Je l’ai lu, which is marked off from Ce livre
by a clear pause when spoken, is a complete sentence in which Ce livre is
replaced by the pronoun le. In contrast, in the Russian counterpart (2.10),
the theme Эту книгу (this book), which is not the subject of the sentence
either, is placed inside the syntactic structure of the sentence. However,
what proves that Эту книгу (this book) is inside the syntactic structure of
the sentence is not apparent from Cao Xuân Hạo's analysis. Cao Xuân Hạo
claims that this feature (that theme is placed inside the syntactic structure
of the sentence) of inflectional languages such as Russian is similar to that
of isolating or non-inflectional languages such as Chinese and Vietnamese.
The second reason for Cao Xuân Hạo’s claim derives from the result of
the study by Li & Thompson (1976). In their study which is based on the
typology of different languages of the world, Li & Thompson claim that there
are four main types of language: (i) languages that are subject-prominent
(e.g., Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Fino-Ugric etc.), (ii) languages that are
topic-prominent (e.g., Chinese, Lahu, Lisu etc.), (iii) languages that are both
subject-prominent and topic-prominent (e.g., Japanese, Korean etc.), and (iv)
languages that are neither subject-prominent nor topic-prominent (e.g.,
Tagalog, Illocano etc.). (For more detailed discussion, please see Li &
Thompson 1976: 457-89). Cao Xuân Hạo (ibid.) claims that like Chinese,
Vietnamese belongs to category (ii).

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 Chapter 2 • A REVIEW OF THE EXTANT GRAMMAR OF VIETNAMESE

The third evidence Cao Xuân Hạo provides in support of his statement
is statistical one. According to his calculations, only about 15% of
Vietnamese sentences are of subject-predicate type while about 85% of
them are of the theme-rheme type.
Thematic structure has been one of the foci which is extensively
explored and discussed in many functional approaches to language. Like
Halliday (1967b, 1968, 1978, 1994; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004), Cao Xuân
Hạo discusses the issue by first pointing out the confusion of the formal
paradigm between grammatical subject, logical subject, and psychological
subject. He suggests that the dichotomy of theme/rheme should not be seen
as a static picture of reality, but rather, it should be regarded as an oriented
manipulation of thought. According to him, when re-organising the reflected
reality, thought divides it into two parts by choosing a point of departure for
establishing the relationship between these two. He assumes that the part
that is chosen as the point of departure functions as theme and the
remainder as rheme (p. 150). In his opinion, the theme-rheme structure in
the sentence is a phenomenon which belongs to what he refers to as ‘the
logico-discursive domain’ (pp. 171, 179). It is ‘logic’ to the extent that logic is
linearized in discourse and it is ‘discursive’ to the extent that it reflects the
structure of the proposition.

Among the three levels of syntax accepted by most major functional

approaches in world linguistics, it seems that the theme-rheme structure in
Cao Xuân Hạo’s sense belongs to the level of logico-semantics (cf. Ðỗ Hữu
Châu, 1992; Hồ Lê, 1993, Nguyễn Lai, 1992). Further, although Cao Xuân Hạo
states that the theme-rheme structure is logico-discursive in nature, he
seems to be concerned more with the ‘logico’ than with the ‘discursive’
aspect and in looking at the relationship between these two, he seems to
place more emphasis on the psychological than on the social aspect of
language.

With regard to the order of theme and rheme in the sentence, Cao Xuân
Hạo observes that like most languages, the usual or unmarked theme-rheme
order in the Vietnamese sentence is that theme precedes rheme. However,
there are instances where this order is inverted. He provides a number of
examples to prove the point. One of them is reproduced below:

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(2.12)

Ðẹp biết bao những lời chân thật ấy!

beautiful how much plural marker word sincere those

Rheme Theme

How beautiful those sincere words are!

According to Cao Xuân Hạo, the theme-rheme order in the above

sentence is inverted. He explains that this inversion usually occurs in
exclamatory sentences. He even suggests that in similar situations this
inversion of theme-rheme order may be universal across languages.
Unfortunately, his analysis seems not to conform to the principle he has
established for identifying the theme-rheme order:
When uttering out a sentence, the speaker produces a Theme and says
something about that Theme or within the range of that Theme (p. 151).(1)

Cao Xuân Hạo classifies themes into (i) external themes and (ii) internal
themes. An external theme, according to Cao Xuân Hạo, is one that stands
outside the syntactic structure of the sentence or that has no ‘normal
grammatical functions’ (p.152). For example:

(2.13)

Anh Nam ấy à?

brother Nam that Interrogative particle

Theme

(Did you mention) Nam?

(1) Ibid., p. 151. This passage appears in the Vietnamese original as follows:
Khi nói một câu người ta đưa ra một cái đề, rồi nói một điều gì về cái đề đó hoặc trong
khuôn khổ của cái đề đó.

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 Chapter 2 • A REVIEW OF THE EXTANT GRAMMAR OF VIETNAMESE

Tôi vừa gặp anh ấy ở trường xong

I just meet he in school aspectual particle

Rheme

I’ve just met him at school.

By contrast, an internal theme is one that stands inside the syntactic

structure of the sentence. For example:

(2.14)

Trong cái bình này nhiệt độ lên đến 39 0

in gen.cl container this temperature rise up 390

Theme Rheme
o
In this container, the temperature rises up to 39 .

(2.15)

Cái bình này nhiệt độ lên đến 39 0

gen.cl container this temperature rise up 390
Theme Rheme
o
In this container, the temperature rises up to 39 .

(2.16)

Chân thành thì ai cũng quý

sincere ptcl who/everyone also like
Theme Rheme

Sincerity is what everyone likes.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

(2.17)

Anh Nam thì ai cũng quý

brother Nam ptcl who/everyone also like
Theme Rheme

Everyone likes Nam/As for Nam, everyone likes him.

According to Cao Xuân Hạo, in sentences (2.14) and (2.15) both Trong
cái bình này (in this container) and Cái bình này (this container) express the
range within which the statement nhiệt độ lên đến 39o (the temperature
rises up to 39o) is applicable. Similarly, in sentences (2.16) and (2.17), Chân
thành (sincerity) and Anh Nam (Nam) also express the range within which
the statement ai cũng quý (what/who everyone likes) is applicable. Thus
despite other more delicate differences each of these functions as internal
theme (for more detail, see Cao Xuân Hạo, 2004: 155).
The second part of Cao Xuân Hạo’s book concerns the boundary
distinction between theme and rheme in the sentence. Cao Xuân Hạo claims
that to mark the boundary between these two component parts, Vietnamese
often uses two markers or test words or ‘isolating particles’ (Thompson,
1985): thì and là. It thus follows from Cao Xuân Hạo that the boundary
between theme and rheme in a sentence can be recognised by the presence
of either of these two markers or by inserting either item without changing
the basic structure and the meaning of the sentence. According to Cao Xuân
Hạo, thì is a special word that is used to mark the boundary between theme
and rheme in the sentence and là is a multifunctional word but its main
function is to mark the theme-rheme boundary. However, là differs from thì
in that while thì is used to mark the thematic component, là is used to mark
the rhematic one. He points out that the most important function of là is to
signal the rhematicity of the syntagms which are not rhematically typical
such as noun phrases, prepositional phrases, proper nouns, personal
pronouns. He establishes a testing principle which reads as follows:
The boundary between Theme and Rheme in a sentence is or may be marked
by the presence of thì or là (p.234)(1)

(1) Ibid., p. 234. This passage appears in the Vietnamese original as follows:
Biên giới Ðề-Thuyết của câu đặt ở chỗ nào có hoặc có thể có THÌ hay LÀ.

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 Chapter 2 • A REVIEW OF THE EXTANT GRAMMAR OF VIETNAMESE

It is this principle for which Cao Xuân Hạo is subjected to criticisms by

many scholars. Ðỗ Hữu Châu (1992), for example, argues that the particles
thì and là have a variety of uses, it is, therefore, difficult to determine either
their main functions or their general meanings. In fact, he goes so far as to
suggest that Cao Xuân Hạo’s testing principle does not reflect the reality of
Vietnamese and is thus not a valid criterion for sentencehood (pp. 10-11).
The main reason, according to Ðỗ Hữu Châu, is that most of the examples
Cao Xuân Hạo provides for establishing the principle are context-free. When
they are considered in context (or when they are context-bound), thì and là
cannot work as test words, i.e., they cannot be filled without either changing
the meaning of the sentence or making it sound unnatural (p.11). Agreeing
with Ðỗ Hữu Châu’s position, Lưu Vân Lăng (1993) also claims that: “ ... chẳng
phải ranh giới đề-thuyết nào cũng có thể đặt chúng vào được” (p.25) (“... not
all theme-rheme boundaries can be filled in by thì and là”). He claims that
the theme-rheme boundary is determined by a particular context. Cao Xuân
Hạo’s functional views and his theme-rheme principle are also criticised by
Hồ Lê (1993) who points out that Cao Xuân Hạo’s approach to theme-rheme
distinction is inconsistent, his distinction between internal and external
themes is unclear, and the distinction between frame theme and adverbial
phrases is not clear either. He concludes that because of these weaknesses,
some of Cao Xuân Hạo’s analyses appear to be too complex and
inappropriate (for more detail of this critique, please see Hồ Lê, 1993: 52-3).

It may be said in summary that Tiếng Việt: sơ thảo ngữ pháp chức năng
(Vietnamese: An Outline of Functional Grammar) by Cao Xuân Hạo is the first
attempt to address the issues of Vietnamese grammar from a functional
perspective. It is one of the few monographs which is of both theoretical
and practical significance and has been highly appreciated by most
Vietnamese linguists (cf. Ðinh Văn Ðức, 1993). The merits of Cao Xuân Hạo’s
first volume rest on at least three points. First, it introduces in a relatively
systematic way the main ideas of some major functional views of language
currently existing in world linguistic scholarship. Secondly, it attempts to
apply the functional methods extensively to the description and
interpretation of the Vietnamese sentence. And thirdly, and perhaps more
importantly, it generates issues and ideas for many debates and discussions
among Vietnamese scholars (cf. Hồ Lê, 1993).

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Now the question is where should one situate Cao Xuân Hạo’s
functional views of language? It is rather difficult to give a definite and
reasonable answer to this question. However, this volume says enough to
justify the comment that his functional views of language are
psychologically-oriented. To put it more explicitly, it seems that he buys
both a logical and a psycholinguistic ticket to what is actually a
sociolinguistic destination. Further, in view of Cao Xuân Hạo’s claim that the
basic syntactic structure of Vietnamese is theme-rheme rather than subject-
predicate, several questions may arise, viz.: (i) to what extent can the
analysis of the sentence based on the dichotomy of theme/rheme be more
effective than that based on the traditional dichotomy of subject/predicate?
(ii) is theme-rheme the only function that is inherent in the Vietnamese
clause or (iii) are there still some other functions of the clause that have not
yet been explored? (cf. Hoàng Văn Vân, 2007c). Some of these questions will
be addressed in the chapters that follow.

2.4. Concluding Remarks

The review of the extant grammar of Vietnamese provided in this
chapter is by no means exhaustive as it has not been possible to trace all the
developments in the study of Vietnamese language. Needless to say, there
are numerous other works of Vietnamese grammar that are not mentioned
in this review. It was my purpose to trace only the major developments in
the study of Vietnamese grammar from the mid nineteenth century up to
the present time. That is why in providing this account, I have only been
concerned with the works of the scholars, both indigenous and foreign, who
I think are the representative writers of each stage in the development of
the study of Vietnamese grammar.

Looking retrospectively at the picture of Vietnamese linguistic

scholarship, one is reminded that language is an extremely complex
phenomenon. It is, therefore, not surprising that it can be approached from
different perspectives. As has been seen, the Vietnamese language has
chronologically been regarded first as a set of rules, then a hierarchical/
structural system from morpheme to sentence, and then ‘... rules that govern
the operations of language on both the formal and the content levels in
their functional relationships ...’ (Cao Xuân Hạo, 2004: 15). At this point, it

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 Chapter 2 • A REVIEW OF THE EXTANT GRAMMAR OF VIETNAMESE

may be appropriate to draw attention to at least four significant gaps that

remain unacknowledged by most of approaches reviewed here. First, the
clause – one of the most important categories in the grammar of any
language as seen from the point of view of systemic functional linguistics
(see Chapter 4) – is not explicitly recognised. It is either ignored or else
discussed in the guise of the simple sentence (e.g., Thompson, 1985; Trương
Văn Chình & Nguyễn Hiến Lê, 1963; Hoàng Trọng Phiến, 1980; Diệp Quang
Ban, 1987). Secondly, meaning in language study is not properly considered;
it is often dealt with in terms of lexical items (in terms of word-based
semantics). Thirdly, most scholarship has viewed language as a set of rules,
rather than a resource for making meaning. Fourthly, the social aspect of
language is largely neglected. If language is viewed as a social process or ‘a
part of the social system’ (Halliday, 1978: 39), it is obvious that the
approaches underlying the descriptive works on Vietnamese grammar
appear to be lacking, if not unacceptable. What is needed now is a broader
theoretical framework which can account for not only the linguistic system
itself but also the social/cultural context within which language operates.
These remarks take me to Chapter 3, where I shall explore systemic
functional linguistics – the model of language which is concerned with the
social nature of language and is expected to fill all the four gaps pointed out
above.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

CHAPTER 3
SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS

3.1. Introduction
In Chapter 2, I explored the influence of different linguistic schools
upon the study and description of Vietnamese from the middle of the 19th
century up to the present time. For the purpose of this review, the
Vietnamese linguistic scholarship was divided into three stages: the proto-
grammatics of Vietnamese, the transitional stage, and the functionalist
descriptions of Vietnamese. In each of these stages an attempt was made to
look at both the achievements and the weaknesses of the approaches
underlying the description of Vietnamese grammar. It was pointed out (cf.
Section 2.4) that because the approaches to Vietnamese grammar view
language as a static and autonomous system, they fail to address many
important issues such as the centrality of meaning, the relation between
form and meaning and, particularly, the important role of social context.
A viable grammar, it would seem, is a grammar that should pay equal
attention to both form and meaning. In addition, if it accepts functionalism
as the underlying principle, it should be able to account for the social aspect
of language on a non-ad hoc basis. Language is as it is because of the
functions it is made to serve in the life of social man (cf. Halliday, 1973, 1974,
1978; Hasan, 1993, 1995; Hasan & Perrett, 1994). A theory of language that
may activate or act as a resource for producing this kind of grammar is
systemic functional linguistics (henceforth SFL).

3.2. Systemic Functional Linguistics – a Model of Language in Context

It is not the purpose of this chapter to present a comprehensive
account of systemic functional linguistics; such an account is now widely
available: Halliday (1992b, 1996); Matthiessen (1995); Matthiessen &
Bateman (1991); Halliday & Martin (1981, 1993); Halliday & Hasan (1985);
Martin (1992); Berry (1975, 1977); Hasan (1993, 1995); Davies & Ravelli
(1992); Fawcett & Halliday (1987); Hasan & Fries (1995); Hasan, Cloran & Butt
(1996); Berry, Butler, Fawcett & Huang (1996); Ventola (1991); Halliday &
Matthiessen (1999), and many others. In this chapter, I will draw attention

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 Chapter 3 • SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS

to only those features of the model which appear directly relevant to a

grammatical study of this kind. To make the task manageable, the review is
organised around two major headings: (i) strata of the systemic functional
model and (ii) context, semantics, and lexicogrammar: metafunctional
resonance. The first is concerned with the different strata of language
postulated in the systemic functional model, the relation between the strata,
and the internal structure of each stratum and the second looks briefly at
the nature of the metafunctions of language and the metafunctional
resonance across the strata of context, semantics, and lexicogrammar. In
discussing these issues, an effort is made to bring in some other terms and
concepts which are crucial for the description of lexicogrammar.
3.2.1. Strata of the Systemic Functional Model
In most linguistic theories, language description has been stratified;
that is to say, language has been interpreted as consisting of different levels
of abstraction for description such as phonology, morphology, syntax and
lexicon. Within systemic functional linguistics, there have been various
proposals concerning the number of strata. I shall follow Halliday (1978 and
elsewhere), Hasan (1993, 1995, 1996), and Hasan & Perrett (1994) in
interpreting language as consisting of four strata, which, in order of
abstraction, are termed context, semantics, lexicogrammar, and
phonology as illustrated in Figure 3.1. Of these four, context is treated as a
stratum which is external to language itself but it is treated as an integral
part of the theoretical model:

Figure 3.1. The Four Strata of the Systemic Functional Model

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3.2.2. Relations between Strata: Realisation & Instantiation

Any model that postulates distinct strata for the description of
language as systemic functional linguistics does raise a question: ‘What is
the relation between these strata?’. Systemic functional linguistics claims
that the relation between the strata is that of realisation, with the lower
stratum realising the next higher one; thus, phonology realises
lexicogrammar which realises semantics which realises context. However,
the relation of realisation between strata is not the same everywhere. The
relation of the stratum of phonology to the stratum of lexicogrammar is
largely conventional or, to use the Saussurean term, arbitrary. This means
that the identity of a lexicogrammatical unit is neither defined nor
recognised by the phonological entities. Thus, the lexicogrammatical unit,
realised as /kæt/ could have had some other phonological form; its identity
is not given by its phonological form. The assignment of sounds to letters or
words is determined by convention (cf. Bolinger, 1975). In formal grammars,
the arbitrariness principle is extended to cover the whole language
including not only phonology in relation to other strata but also semantics
and lexicogrammar. However, as Matthiessen (1995) has pointed out, the
conventional relationship between grammar and phonology is a matter of
degree. For instance, in English the relation of build as /build/ is completely
conventional, but the relation of ‘polar-interrogative’ as rising tone is
natural. In other words, the relationship between the three higher strata is
not one-way but a dialectic or a bi-directional one. So far as the relation
between context and language is concerned, the bi-directional nature of
realisation is reflected in the fact that given a specific use of language
operative in context – i.e., a text – one may infer what the context may be;
and reciprocally given a particular context one may anticipate what kinds of
meanings are likely to be exchanged (cf. Halliday, 1978; Cloran, 1994). Here
the concepts activation and construal most clearly articulated by Hasan
(1993, 1995) and Hasan & Perrett (1994) are crucial. They reflect two aspects
of the relationship of realisation: the stratum above activates the stratum
below; the stratum below construes the stratum above. Thus,
lexicogrammar construes semantics which itself activates lexicogrammatical
choices. In the same way, semantics construes social context which itself
activates semantic choices (for more detail see Hasan, 1993, 1996; Hasan &
Perrett, 1994). As Hasan (1996: 110-11) claims:
..., this dialectic is significant: it implies that to be recognised as valid in the
systemic functional model, semantic features (by themselves or in company
with other semantic features) must display contextual significance and that
at the same time they must be formally ‘ratified’ (for a discussion of the
meaning and scope of ‘formal criteria’ see Hasan and Fries, 1995; Matthiessen
and Nesbitt in press). This is an interpretation of Halliday’s claim about the

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 Chapter 3 • SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS

‘natural’, ‘nonarbitrary’, relation between lexicogrammar and semantics:

whatever is a linguistic meaning is lexicogrammatically construed; the form
of language is a resource for meaning. Thus the term functional in systemic
functional is not in mutual exclusion from formal as it tends to be in much of
pragmatics or critical linguistics. The recognition of the semantic level as
distinct from the level of context is a crucial step in the denial of the
speaker’s intention as the determining factor in the listener’s interpretation;
at the level of semantics, there are no intentions, just as there are no
coconuts in the mind, only representations (Bateson, 1972). And the
separation of semantics and lexicogrammar is an essential ingredient in
showing the power of grammar as a resource for meaning: to hear
something as inappropriate, aggressive, and persuasive is to relate grammar,
meaning and context.
Another concept, which is equally important for the description of
lexicogrammar, is instantiation. In systemic functional linguistics,
instantiation refers to the relation between the semiotic system (the
meaning potential) and the observable events (the actual act of meaning),
by which the system is constituted (cf. Halliday, 1992a, 1992c, 1993). The
difference between realisation and instantiation is that while the former
typically refers to an interstratal relationship, the latter refers to an
intrastratal one. In his most recent writing, Halliday (1996: 31-2) explains
the relation of instantiation by discussing the internal semantic relation in
an intensive attributive clause. To quote him:
The attributive relationship involves a “Carrier” and an “Attribute”, where the
Attribute does not identify the Carrier as unique but places it as one among a
larger set. It was pointed out by Davidse (1992) that the Carrier / Attribute
relationship in the grammar is actually one of instantiation: the Carrier is an
instance of, or “instantiates”, the Attribute. It is thus analogous to the
relationship defined in the grammatics as that holding between an instance
and the (categories of the) system.

3.2.3. Context
As noted above, systemic functional linguistics is a model of language
in context. It attempts to explain, on a non-ad hoc basis, the continuities
between language and the social systems of a speech community (cf.
Halliday, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1978; Hasan, 1991, 1995). Seen from this point of
view, the notion of context is crucial for understanding the nature of
language. The arguments for the importance of context in the study of
language derive initially from the great anthropologist, Malinowski, and
derived from his study of the Trobriand Islanders. This account, however,
was not theorised (see Halliday, 1973; Halliday & Hasan, 1985; Hasan, 1985b,
1995). The seminal ideas of Malinowski (1923, 1935) on the centrality of the
context of culture and of situation to the uses of language in the living of

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

life were developed into a schematic construct – a set of generally usable

categories – by Firth who presented his view of the structure of situation as
follows (Firth, 1957a: 182):
A. The relevant features of participants: persons, personalities.
(i) The verbal action of the participants.
(ii) The non-verbal action of the participants.
B. The relevant objects.
C. The effect of the verbal action.
Firth’s notion of context of situation provided much insight into the
study of language in social life. His contextual framework served as the
foundation for the systemic functional model.
Like Firth, systemic functional linguistics describes context of situation
as the social environment of talk which includes the external phenomena
that surround the speaker as well as the internal state of the speaker, both
of which are highlighted by language in use. However, unlike Firth, the
theory interprets the concept ‘context of situation’ in still more abstract
terms (cf. Halliday, 1977a; Hasan, 1973, 1995). It views the context of culture
as a semiotic structure construed by the totality of meaning relations that
constitute the social system. This makes it possible to talk about the set of
general features that characterise a certain situation type – a context of
situation – in which a text is created (Halliday, 1975: 120). Context of
situation thus instantiates context of culture and is itself a theoretical
construct (cf. Halliday, 1991), comprising three dimensions: (i) the ongoing
social activity; (ii) the role relationships involved; and (iii) the symbolic or
rhetorical channels which are referred to respectively as Field, Tenor, and
Mode (see Halliday, McIntosh, & Strevens, 1964; Halliday, 1978 and
elsewhere; Gregory & Carroll, 1978). The ‘contextual construct’ (the term
used by Hasan, 1973, 1978) is specified by Halliday & Hasan as follows:

1. The FIELD OF DISCOURSE refers to what is happening, to the nature of

social action that is taking place: what is it that the participants are engaged
in, in which the language figures as some essential components?
2. The TENOR OF DISCOURSE refers to who is taking part, to the nature of
the participants, their statuses and roles: what kinds of role relationship
obtain among the participants, including permanent and temporary
relationship of one kind or another, both the types of speech role that they
are taking on in the dialogue and the whole cluster of socially significant
relationships in which they are involved?
3. The MODE OF DISCOURSE refers to what part the language is playing,
what it is that the participants are expecting the language to do for them in

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 Chapter 3 • SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS

that situation: the symbolic organisation of the text, the status that it has,
and its function in the context, including the channel (is it spoken or written
or some combination of the two?) and also the rhetorical mode, what is
being achieved by the text in terms of such categories as persuasive,
expository, didactic, and the like. (Halliday & Hasan, 1985: 12)
Field, tenor, and mode, according to Halliday et al. (1964), Halliday
(1973, 1974, 1978), and Halliday & Hasan (1976), are not kinds of language
use, nor are they components of speech setting. They are the conceptual
framework for representing the social context as the semiotic environment
in which people exchange meanings. In developing these three contextual
categories, systemic functional linguistics attempts to emphasise the fact
that given an adequate specification of the semiotic properties of the
context in terms of field, tenor, and mode, one can predict not everything,
but still a great deal about the language that will occur, with reasonable
probability of being right (cf. Halliday, 1978; see also Halliday, 1974). This
provides one explanation for treating context as a stratum integral to the
theoretical framework set up for the description of language.
3.2.4. Language Internal Strata
Turning to the three language internal strata – semantics,
lexicogrammar, and phonology – I shall first present some of the main
characteristics of each of the strata, then I shall discuss each in terms of the
concepts needed for the description of language, particularly of
lexicogrammar; these concepts are rank, system and structure, and
delicacy.
3.2.4.1. Characteristics of Language Internal Strata
In the most general terms the internal structure of semantics,
lexicogrammar, and phonology can be characterised as follows (Matthiessen
1995: 5-6):
Semantics: Resource for meaning. This level is the gateway to the linguistic
system; for instance, it enables us to act by means of meaning, i.e. by
adopting semantic strategies, and it enables us to reflect on the world by
turning it into meaning, i.e. by semanticizing it. The stratal role of semantics
is thus that of an interface – an interface between systems that lie outside
language and systems at the stratum of lexicogrammar. Since meaning is
interpreted as a resource, it is a functional / rhetorical / communicative
phenomenon rather than a formal / logico-philosophical one and this is
reflected in two ways in the conception of semantics: (i) it is multifunctional;
it is not concerned only with representational meaning (see Section 1.3); and
(ii) it is semantics of text (discourse), not only of propositions. The latter
follows from the observation that text (rather than words or sentences) is the
process of communication.

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Lexicogrammar: Resource for wording meanings, i.e., for realising

(expressing) them by means of structures and ‘words’ (more strictly,
grammatical and lexical items), or wordings. Lexicogrammar includes lexis
(vocabulary) as well as grammar in one unified system; lexis is interpreted as
the most specific (delicate) part of grammar. Grammar includes morphology
as well as syntax; the two are not stratally distinct.
Phonology: Resource for sounding wordings, i.e., for realising abstract
wordings as sound. Phonology includes intonational resources, which serve
to realise grammatical choices directly, as well as resources of rhythm and of
syllabic and phonemic articulation, which are not in direct realisation relation
to grammar. (Alternatively, this stratum may be the graphological system of
a language)
As can be seen, each stratum of language is a resource at a particular
order of abstraction. The heart of language is lexicogrammar. In the
linguistic space, this stratum is located between semantics and phonology;
whereas semantics relates upwards to context and phonology relates
downwards to the phonetics of articulation.
3.2.4.2. Rank
The overall organisation of language in context is based on orders of
abstraction. The organisation of structure within the language internal
strata is said to be rank-based: systemic functional linguistics claims that all
internal strata of language have the scale of rank. The notion of rank is
closely related to the three notions unit, constituency, and syntagm. In
systemic functional theory, unit is a category, set up to account for the
stretches of language of varying lengths and composition carrying
grammatical patterns (cf. Halliday, 1961; Halliday in Kress 1976; see also
Butler, 1985). When two units are combined, they form a unit which is
bigger in size – what has been referred to in traditional grammars as a
structure or syntagm, as, for example, by Saussure. The notion of
constituency is implicit in this discourse. Constituency helps to account for
units of different sizes on a horizontal scale (i.e., from the ‘largest’ to the
‘smallest’) while the placement of units on rank scale helps to explain those
units on a vertical (hierarchical) scale (i.e., from the ‘highest’ to the ‘lowest’).
The relation amongst the units, then, is that, going from top (largest) to
bottom (smallest), each unit consists of one, or of more than one, of the unit
next below (next smaller). Figure 3.2 is an example showing the different
ranks from clause to morpheme in Vietnamese, and the relation of rank, unit
/ constituent to syntagm at the stratum of lexicogrammar. The horizontal
arrow indicates the syntagm, the vertical double-headed one indicates the
rank scale, while the minimal bracketing analysis indicates the different
units or constituents of units through clause to word:

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clause
group
word
Hà Nội là thành phố cổ kính morpheme
Hanoi be city old/ancient
(Hanoi is an old city.)
Figure 3.2. Relation between Rank, Constituency, and Syntagm
Note: the horizontal arrow indicates the syntagm and the upward vertical
arrow indicates the rank scale

Rank is a general concept and applies to all language internal strata.

English phonology, English lexicogrammar and English semantics, for
example, each has a four-unit rank scale: tone group, foot, syllable, and
phoneme; clause, group/phrase, word, and morpheme; and text, rhetorical
unit, message, and message component respectively (cf. Halliday, 1994;
Hasan, 1991, 1996; Cloran, 1994, 1995). The rank scale of each stratum is
represented in Figure 3.3 below:

Phonology Lexicogrammar Semantics

tone group clause text
foot group/phrase rhetorical unit
syllable word message
phoneme morpheme message component

Figure 3.3. Rank Scale of Language Internal Strata

An important aspect of the rank-based theory is that it allows for a unit

of a particular rank to realise a functional element of the rank immediately
above; a group will serve to realise an element of clause structure, a word
will serve to realise an element of group structure, and a morpheme will
serve to realise an element of word structure. Further, the theory also allows
for what has been referred to as rankshift in more complex structures; that
is, a unit can function as part of another unit of equal or lower rank. For
example, the prepositional phrase of systemic choices in the clause A
structure is the realisation of systemic choices does not serve to realise a
clausal function but rather a nominal group function, acting as Qualifier to
Thing realisation.

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3.2.4.3. System & Structure

The concepts of system and structure go back to Saussure, Firth and
Hjelmslev. Saussure (1983) saw language as organised along two
dimensions: ‘syntagmatic’ and ‘associative’, or, to use Hjelmslev’s term,
‘paradigmatic’. Syntagmatic relations, in Saussure’s terms, hold in
praesentia. They hold between two or more terms co-present in a sequence.
Associative relations, by contrast, hold in absentia. They hold between terms
constituting a class, on the basis of shared features amongst the members.
In the same way, Firth (1957a) also saw language as organised along the
two dimensions. However, the terms he preferred to use were ‘structure’
and ‘system’ respectively.

Both Saussure and Firth insisted that paradigmatic and syntagmatic

relations in language should be carefully distinguished, and that both
dimensions are important. Yet the majority of modern linguistic schools,
such as the transformational generative model, have concentrated almost
exclusively on the syntagmatic dimension with constituency being the
predominant entry into grammar. Systemic functional linguistics, on the
other hand, has foregrounded the paradigmatic dimension, claiming that
the main principle of systemic grammar or deep grammar is paradigmatic
(cf. Halliday, 1966b). This paradigmatically oriented approach to language
does not mean that the syntagmatic dimension is ignored or underplayed in
the model. Rather, it would be appropriate to say that in systemic functional
linguistics language is interpreted as a network of relations (i.e., in terms of
paradigmatic relations), with structures (i.e., the syntagma) coming in as
realisation of these relations (cf. Halliday, 1994; Halliday & Matthiessen,
2004). “Through the key concept of ‘realisation’, syntagmatic units or the
actual manifestation of language are derived from the paradigmatic heart of
the grammar” (Davidse, 1987: 43). However, in formalising the two
Saussurean concepts – paradigm and syntagm, systemic functional
linguistics typically adopts the Firthian terms of system and structure.

To begin with the more familiar concept, structure, as pointed out

above, is formed by elements in syntagmatic relation at the level concerned
(Firth, 1957a), thus accounting for the composition of a unit in terms of
functional elements (Halliday in Kress, 1976).

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A distinction is made between ‘multivariate’ and ‘univariate’ structures.

Multivariate structures are composed of different variables, with different
relationships between them such as for example the relation of Actor,
Process, and Goal etc., which are discussed in the forthcoming chapters. By
contrast, univariate structures refer to those which consist of repeated
instances of the same type of relationship between them (cf. Halliday in
Kress, 1976, see also Butler, 1985) such as for example Submodifier, Modifier
etc., though the outstanding example of univariate structure is provided by
clauses that are in hypotactic or paratactic relation. It is in this sense that a
univariate structure is ‘recursive’ or ‘iterative’: they can be extended
infinitely at least in theory, while the multivariate ones are closed rather
than open-ended (cf. Berry, 1975; Butler, 1985).

System, in Firth’s terms, is made up of mutually exclusive paradigmatic

options that come into play at a particular place in a structure (Firth in
Palmer, 1968: 10). Halliday (1975) defines a system as

a set of options with a condition of entry; that is, it is a range of alternatives

which may be behavioural, semantic, grammatical etc., together with a
specification of the environment in which selection must be made among
these alternatives. It has the form “If x, then either a or b or ...” (Halliday,
1975: 7)

Hasan (1993, 1996) suggests that to understand the notion of system,

it is necessary to understand the notions of potentiality, choice, and
environment. The representation of language as system emphasises
language as potential: language as system refers to the potential (cf.
Halliday in Kress, 1976, 1991; Halliday & Martin, 1981; see also Cloran, 1994).
A system network represents alternatives from which choice must be made
within a given environment; the environment acts as an ‘entry point’ (or,
interchangeably, ‘entry condition’) to a system of choices or options. The
meaning or value, of any one option is determined by its relation to the
other available options within the system. The detail of description
increases as each option, in turn, acts as an entry point to further systems of
options. Below I present a fragment of the system of MOOD in English
illustrating the system notation conventions and the derivation of structure
from systemic features:

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Figure 3.4. A Fragment of the System of MOOD in the English Clause

(Source: Cloran, 1994: 142)

Figure 3.4 shows that the initial environment or the point of origin
(Hasan 1996) for the system network under description is the clause. At the
most primary degree of delicacy of the clause, the basic distinction is made
between [major] and [minor]; i.e., the clause serves as the initial
environment for the selections of the features [major] and [minor]. It is only
when the feature [major] is selected that choices or options can be made in
the MOOD system. In this instance, the feature [major] is said to serve as the
subsequent environment or entry point (Hasan op.cit.) for the MOOD
system. Figure 3.4. illustrates how terms in a system network may become
the environment for choices in another system. Thus, for example, the
feature [indicative] is the entry point to the system whose terms are
[interrogative] and [declarative], the former term in its turn being the entry
point for the choice between [polar] and [non-polar].
An entry point may be simple or complex. A simple entry point is one
which is constituted by a single feature as with the case of [interrogative]
which is the entry condition for [polar] v. [nonpolar]. However, two or more

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 Chapter 3 • SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS

features in either the relation and or the relation or may constitute an entry
point. When, of two or more features, either one or the other can serve as
the entry point to a specific system of options, the entry point is called
alternate or disjunct entry point. For example, in Figure 3.4, access to the
tag system; i.e., the system whose terms are [untagged] and [tagged] is via
the feature [declarative] or via the feature [imperative]. The right facing
square bracket indicates that one and the same systemic choice is available
in more than one environment or entry point. Another type of complex entry
point occurs when two or more features together constitute the entry point
to some system, this is known as conjunct entry point. For example, the
intersection or conjunction of the feature [tagged] and either the feature
[declarative] or the features [imperative:exclusive] constitutes the entry
point to the system whose terms are [constant] versus [reversed]. (For a
more detailed discussion of the different types of entry point, see Cloran,
1994; Hasan, 1996).
An option or a choice in a system network can be viewed as
instruction(s) to operate in a certain way; a specific structure is the outcome
of following these operations. The technical term for such instructions is
realisation statement. The notion of realisation has already been
discussed above (pp.83-5). A realisation statement is a mechanism
mediating between networks and structures (Hasan, 1987: 185); it specifies
the contribution made by that option to the structural configuration (cf.
Halliday, 1992b). Hasan (1996) recognises the following types of realisation
statement in English:
i structuring (a) insert element Mood
(b) expand Mood as Subject Finite
ii layering (c) order S F as S^F
iii pre-selecting conflate two / more functions, e.g. Subject /Actor
(a) from another rank within the same stratum
(b) from another stratum
Table 3.1. Types of Realisational Statement
(Source: Hasan 1996: 111)

From the point of view of the system, the deep grammar of a unit, e.g.,
clause, is represented in the networks whose point of origin is clause, such
as MOOD, TRANSITIVITY etc. The systemic description of a clause is the set
of choices made from some system. This is known as selection expression.
A selection expression enumerates the systemic options and their relations
which underlie the structure of some unit. Thus one possible selection

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expression from the system of MOOD in Figure 3.4 would be [indicative:

nonmodalised; declarative: tagged: constant]. This selection expression
would underlie such English clauses as He is leaving, is he? You are seeing
him tomorrow, are you? and so on.
In terms of the TRANSITIVITY system network of Vietnamese
presented in Figure 3.5 (see Section 3.2.4.4 below), the selection expression
underlying Table 3.1 would be [doing: material; effective: dispositive].
(3.1) [NM]

Hắn đánh Tuyết

he beat Tuyet
Actor/Agent Process: material Goal/Medium

He beat Tuyet.

3.2.4.4. Delicacy
If the scale of rank is set up to account for the different hierarchically
ordered units (i.e., units of different ranks) such as clause, group/phrase,
word, and morpheme at the stratum of lexicogrammar, the notion of
delicacy is employed to refer to the degree of differentiation that is made at
a particular rank (cf. Shore, 1992). Halliday explains the notion of delicacy as
follows:
This (delicacy) is depth of detail, and is a cline running from a fixed point at
one end (least delicate, or ‘primary’) to that undefined but theoretically
crucial point (probably statistically definable) where distinctions are so fine
that they cease to be distinctions at all, like a river followed up from the
mouth, each of whose tributaries ends in a moorland bog. (Halliday in Kress,
1976: 62)

To provide an example of delicacy, I present a simplified fragment of

the system of PROCESS TYPE in Vietnamese. At the primary degree of
delicacy, one might want to distinguish between doing, projecting, and
being processes, at a greater degree of delicacy one might then want to
distinguish between [material] and [behavioural] processes, and then in the
environment of [material] distinguish between [creative] and [dispositive]
and so on. Below is a fragment of the system of PROCESS TYPE in
Vietnamese illustrating its scale of delicacy. In Figure 3.5, the horizontal

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 Chapter 3 • SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS

arrow indicates the move in delicacy. So far as the fragment presented here
is concerned, the most delicate systemic choice is between the features
[creative] versus [dispositive].

Figure 3.5. Scale of Delicacy

3.3. Context, Semantics & Lexicogrammar: Metafunctional Resonance

A final concept which is central to the description of lexicogrammar
concerns what Halliday (1978), Hasan (1993), and Hasan & Perrett (1994)
refer to as ‘metafunctional resonance’ across the higher strata of the
systemic functional model: context, semantics, and lexicogrammar.

Metafunctional resonance across the various strata of language is what

defines the very nature of functionality in language. In systemic functional
linguistics the notion of metafunctional resonance is taken to mean that the
abstract organisation of each of these strata of linguistic description would
echo the organisation of the other two (cf. Hasan, 1993). To put it more
specifically, if the theory claims that context is a semiotic construct
consisting of three abstract parameters – field, tenor, and mode – it would at
the same time imply that at each of the strata of meaning (semantics) and
wording (lexicogrammar) there would be three resonating subsets such that
each contextual parameter would be related specifically to a subset of the
system of meaning which, in turn, would be related specifically to a specific
subset of the system of wording. To appreciate the significance of the claim
and its implication for the description of lexicogrammar, let me reproduce
Hasan’s (1993) table for illustration.

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Metafunction Contextual Meaning System Wording System

Variable

interpersonal social relation role exchange; mood system (e.g.

assessment of declarative v.
(= TENOR)
probability, obligation interrogative...);

systems of modality,
modulation

experiential states of affairs transitivity system

(e.g. material v.
social action classification of verbal...); lexical
phenomena system ...
(= FIELD)

logical relations of states of

affairs

textual semiotic point of departure; thematic,

organisation news focus information systems
(= MODE)
points of identity, phoricity, lexical
similarity field

Table 3.2. Context, Semantics & Lexicogrammar: Metafunctional Resonance

(Source: Hasan: 1993: 91)

Table 3.2 attempts to illustrate three points: (i) that language is

multifunctional, i.e., it consists of three metafunctions: interpersonal,
ideational (which is subclassified into experiential and logical) and textual;
(ii) that these metafunctions operate simultaneously in text, and (iii) that
each of the three contextual categories is metafunctionally specialised with
each set of the systems of meaning and wording. Let me elaborate on these
points.
If we take context as the starting point and begin with the functional
domain of tenor or social relation, we may recognise that this contextual
parameter activates the choices in the semantic systems of role exchange,
probability and obligation and specific semantic choices in turn enact a
specific kind of social relation. Hasan (1993: 90-1) provides an example to
show how the functional domain of tenor activates choices in the system of
speech role exchange and how these semantic choices are
lexicogrammatically realised as choices in the mood system. It is widely
accepted amongst systemic functional linguists that the primary choices
available in the system of speech role exchange are those of demanding and
giving, and what is demanded or given could be either information or

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 Chapter 3 • SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS

goods-&-services. Hasan points out that if demanding service is selected,

then further choices become available, such as direct order (e.g., Cook those
potatoes!) or consultative order (e.g., Could you cook those potatoes?) and
so on. At the lexicogrammatical stratum, these semantic choices are realised
as choices in mood, such as imperative (e.g., Cook those potatoes!), or
interrogative (e.g., Could you cook those potatoes?) and so on. What choices
would be made where is neither arbitrary nor random. Rather, the choice of
a consultative order Could you cook those potatoes is activated by/enacts a
social relation, significantly different from that which activates the choice of
an exhortative order Cook those potatoes. Hasan (ibid.) concludes that the
fact that the contextual parameter of tenor, the cluster of systems of
meaning – more specifically here the interpersonal meanings – and the
cluster of systems of wording – here the interpersonal lexicogrammar –
are realisationally related to each other constitutes evidence that language
has an interpersonal metafunction.
So far as field or social action is concerned, a similar kind of resonance
or correspondence across context, meaning and lexicogrammar will be
found. Table 3.2 shows that field activates the categories of meanings which
are referred to as states of affairs, classification of phenomena, and their
properties. In systemic functional linguistics, states of affairs are concerned
with different types of goings on such as doing, sensing, saying, which imply
the involvement of participants and circumstances. These types of meaning
or semantic choices are lexicogrammatically realised by choices in the
system known as transitivity. For example, the meaning ‘doing’ of the clause
Ði thẳng đến bưu điện (Go straight to the post office) construes part of the
social action with reference to which language is being used and this
meaning is realised as a material process Ði (go) in the system of
transitivity. The different types of meaning that construe the social action,
which are themselves construed by choices in the system of transitivity are
generally referred to as experiential meanings.
However, as Hasan (1993) has aptly observed, social action is not
typically construed by reference to simple entities and simple states of
affairs. In actual communication speakers may also refer to inter-related
goings on. The meaning systems that form the basis of such relations are
referred to as logical meanings and they are construed by choices in the
lexicogrammatical systems, what Hasan (ibid.) calls logical lexicogrammar,
exemplified by the systems of expansion and projection (see Halliday, 1994;
Matthiessen, 1995). The fact that there is a kind of dialectic relation that
links logical and experiential lexicogrammar to logical and experiential
semantics and these to contextual domain of field or social action justifies
the claim that language has the ideational metafunction.

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Turning to the functional domain of mode or semiotic organisation of

human relation and action, this parameter of context of situation activates a
subset of meanings which Hasan (ibid.) refers to in Table 3.2 as point of
departure, news focus, point of identity and similarity. These meanings or
semantic choices are realised at the lexicogrammatical stratum by systems
of theme and information focus, phoricity, and lexical-field formation. The
fact that the mode of discourse, the textual meanings, and the textual
lexicogrammar are related to each other argues that language has the
textual metafunction (cf. Hasan, 1993).
It may be said in summary that what is meant by function or
functionality in systemic functional linguistics is much deeper than the
notion of function which is equated only with ‘language use’ as by Leech
(1983). For the notion of function in systemic functional linguistics does not
simply refer to an ad hoc explanation of a linguistic phenomenon which
occurs under some situation but not others. Rather, it attempts to link the
whole of the structure and system of language to the living of life at a highly
abstract level. The above discussion has also attempted to show that
metafunctions are not simply a property of the stratum of semantics. They
are the name of the resonance that captures the whole relation from
context right down to the systems of meaning and wording. The fact that
such and such a part of the grammar calibrates with such and such a part of
semantics which calibrates with such and such a part of the social living or
social context proves that language is functional; and it is the calibration of
these strata that is the evidence that language is metafunctionally
organised (cf. Hasan, 1993; Hasan & Perrett, 1994).

3.4. Concluding Remarks

In this chapter, I have explored some of the most important concepts
underlying systemic functional theory which are relevant to the description
of lexicogrammar. It is obvious from the review that systemic functional
linguistics is a model of language in context which takes meaning as central
for linguistic study. At this point it may be appropriate to answer the
question, ‘why is it useful to apply systemic functional linguistics to the
description of Vietnamese grammar?’. I will approach the question from two
different but interrelated perspectives; one is practical and the other
theoretical.
From the practical perspective, the answer can be provided by looking
at the inadequacy of the different approaches underlying the studies of the
grammar of Vietnamese. In Chapter 2 (Section 2.4), I suggested that because
these approaches were concerned mainly with the formal properties of
language, they present an unsuitable model for the present study.

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From the theoretical perspective, the answer to the question rests on

the difference between systemic functional linguistics and other major
models of language in their view of the interrelation between language and
speech, and form and meaning.
It may be concluded from the linguistic literature that systemic
functional linguistics differs from other models of language both in how it
views the nature of language and the nature of linguistic enquiry. In other
words, they differ in their answers to the questions ‘what is language?’ and
‘what is linguistics?’. In terms of the first question, part of the difference can
be seen in the pairs of concepts underlying their model of language: langue
& parole (Saussure), competence & performance (Chomsky), the potential
and the actual (Halliday), and system & instance (Halliday, 1992c, 1996).
Whereas the terms in the formal models are pitted in opposition against
each other, in systemic functional linguistics both members of the pair are
seen as essential to the conceptualisation of language: language is not just
a system that exists independent of instances of use and use is not
something independent of the system. While Saussure (1983) presents
linguistics proper as the study of langue, and Chomsky (1965) views
linguistics as concerned with competence alone, systemic functional
linguistics insists that both the potential and the actual, the system and the
instances of its use are equally important for understanding the nature of
language.
It is this commitment to a non-ad hoc description of both system and
use in relation to each other, that led to the concept of functionality
described above. systemic functional linguistics treats the relation between
form (wording) and meaning in terms of dialectic realisation; i.e., form
(lexicogrammar) realises meaning (semantics) and meaning activates form;
and thus the relation between these two facets of language is natural, not
arbitrary. Perhaps more importantly, systemic functional linguistics views
meaning as the interface between wording (lexicogrammar) and the context
of situation. For these reasons, remaining within the systemic functional
framework, one has to pay attention not just to the wording as some
formalist models (see Chapter 2, Section 2.3.2) nor just to meaning as in
some versions of functionalism (see the discussion on Cao Xuân Hạo’s
functional view of language in Chapter 2, Section 2.3.3); so far as systemic
functional linguistics is concerned a grammar is valid only if it can show how
meanings are construed, and meanings are valid only if they can be shown
to underlie wordings. These reasons constitute my justification for adopting
systemic functional linguistics as the theoretical framework for the present
study. In the next chapter, I will examine the notion of clause in Vietnamese
and use this as an occasion for pointing out further general features of this
language model.

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CHAPTER 4
THE NOTION OF CLAUSE IN VIETNAMESE

4.1. Introduction
This chapter is concerned with the notion of the clause – arguably, one
of the most important grammatical categories in the grammar of not only
Vietnamese but any language. What is a clause and why is it considered
important? In an attempt to answer this question, I propose first to discuss
the centrality of the category ‘clause’ in general lexicogrammatical
description. The arguments here will be supported by considering the
concept in the grammar of English. The reason for adopting this strategy is
that English is the language which has been the most extensively described
in the systemic functional model. Having established, in general terms, the
centrality of the category clause and having suggested the criteria relevant
to its definition and recognition, I will then turn to the grammar of
Vietnamese. Two questions raised for exploration are: is clause needed as a
descriptive category in Vietnamese grammar? If so, how is it to be
recognised? I shall argue that, like English, the Vietnamese clause can be
defined and recognised along a number of dimensions: stratification, rank,
and metafunction (cf. Matthiessen, 1995; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004).
Details of this argument will be addressed in Sections 4.2 and 4.3.

4.2. The Centrality of the Clause in General Description

In systemic functional linguistics, the clause has received a special
status. This is because, it is a lexicogrammatical unit that provides, more
than any other unit, a clear indication of the distinct line of structures
associated with the different metafunctions (cf. Halliday, 1979, 1994).
Further, the location of the clause in the overall linguistic system is
suggestive of its importance: clause lies at the intersection of three
dimensions, viz., stratification, rank, and metafunction (cf. Matthiessen,
1995) as Figure 4.1 shows:

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 Chapter 4 • THE NOTION OF CLAUSE IN VIETNAMESE

Figure 4.1. The Location of the Clause in the Overall Linguistic System
(After Matthiessen, 1995: 123)
Convention: = stratification, = rank, = metafunctional resonance

According to this figure the clause is located at the stratum of

lexicogrammar. Being “the gateway from the semantics to the grammar”
(Halliday, 1985c: 66), it is related upwards at once to the three semantic
entities: it realises what Halliday (1994) calls a representation/exchange/
message at the stratum of semantics, each of which is related specifically to
field, tenor, and mode at the stratum of context (cf. Chapter 3, Section 3.3).
At the same time in the unmarked case, the clause is related downwards by
realisation to a tone group at the stratum of phonology (cf. Halliday, 1994;
Matthiessen 1995; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004). In terms of rank, the clause
is the highest-ranking unit from which units of the lower rank of
group/phrase, word, and morpheme can be decomposed (cf. Chapter 3,
Section 3.2.4.2). And in terms of metafunction, the clause is the meeting
place or the locus where the three context-construing strands of meanings –
ideational, interpersonal, and textual – are simultaneously realised as
wording through the systems of transitivity, mood, and theme (cf. Chapter 3,

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

Section 3.3). Below is an English example taken from Halliday (1994: 109). It
is provided to show the centrality of the clause in linguistic description.
(4.1) The lion chased the tourist lazily through the bush.
This linguistic expression is a clause. This is because it has a particular
overall shape (both semantic and lexicogrammatical). So far as rank is
concerned, its status as the highest unit of grammatical analysis can be seen
by the fact that it is made up of five constituents: two nominal groups The
lion and the tourist, one verbal group chased, one adverbial group lazily, and
one prepositional phrase through the bush.
In terms of metafunctions, the clause is a functional unit, displaying a
triple construction of meaning. From the point of view of the ideational
metafunction, the clause construes a state of affairs, representing a
configuration of doer The lion^doing chased^done to the tourist^manner
lazily^location through the bush. This strand of meaning is realised
lexicogrammatically in the clause by the structure Actor^Process:material^
Goal^Circumstance:manner^Circumstance:location (for more detail on
these experiential roles, please see Chapters 4 and 9). In addition, like any
language unit, the clause has a potential of entering into logical relations
with another clause by coordination and subordination (e.g., The lion chased
the tourist lazily through the bush, and that’s why the tourist managed to
escape or The lion chased the tourist lazily through the bush because it had
not been very hungry), construing logical relations between states of affairs,
and thus construing larger elements of what is going on in the social
context (see Hasan, 1993; Hasan & Perrett, 1994; see also Chapter 3, Section
3.3 of this monograph). From the point of view of the interpersonal
metafunction, the clause construes such semantic categories as statement,
question, command etc. For example statement is construed by a declarative
mood with a structural configuration Subject The lion^Finite^Predicator
chased^Complement the tourist^ Adjunct lazily^Adjunct through the bush.
And from the point of view of the textual metafunction, the clause functions
as the organiser of the message: it organises the meanings of the message.
Thus, here the doer The lion has a particular status, being presented as the
point of departure or as Theme, and the ‘residual element’ (Halliday, 1985c:
68) chased the tourist lazily through the bush as Rheme. It is partly through
this type of textual organisation that the clause is said to construe relevance
to other parts of co-text as well as participate in the semiotic organisation of
social activity and social relations; i.e. the contextual parameters of field and

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 Chapter 4 • THE NOTION OF CLAUSE IN VIETNAMESE

tenor are organised by the working of mode (cf. Halliday & Hasan, 1985;
Matthiessen, 1992; Hasan, 1993). In addition to the Theme-Rheme
organisation, the clause displays one more type of organisation which
Halliday (1967b, 1968, 1994) calls the ‘Given-New organisation of the
information unit’; for example, the clause The lion chased the tourist lazily
through the bush is realised by a tone group having a tonic nucleus with a
falling tone on the word bush. (For a more detailed discussion of the
meaning of tone in English, see Halliday, 1985c, 1994). Figure 4.2
summarises the main points discussed so far:
(i) (ii) (iii) The lion chased the tourist lazily through the
bush
Semantics Ideational: state of affairs construing a configuration of two participants
representation which are in doer-done to relationship + a doing + a manner +
a location.
Interpersonal: speaker/writer is giving information in the form of a
exchange statement expressed in the selection of a declarative mood.
Textual: message presenting doer as point of departure and location as
message news.

Grammar clause Ideational Actor Process Goal Circum- Circums-

stance tance
Subject Fin Pred- Complem- Adjunct Adjunct
Interpersonal cator ment
Mood Residue

Theme Rheme
Textual
Given New

group (preselection) nominal verbal nominal adver- prepositio-

group group group bial nal phrase
group

Phonology tone falling tone

group

Figure 4.2. The Centrality of the Clause in Terms of Rank,

Stratification & Metafunction
It can be said in summary that the clause is “perhaps the most
fundamental category in the whole of linguistics” (Halliday, 1985c: 67).
The clause is many-sided or multidimensional precisely in the sense that the
conceptualisation of this language unit takes account of not only its stratal
and rank environment but also its internal systemic and structural
organisation along the dimension of metafunctions, particularly the
metafunctional resonance across semantics and lexicogrammar (cf. Matthiessen,
1995), through the mapping of various types of functions on the same

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

syntagm. This, in turn, suggests that the criteria (both definition and
recognition) for clause identification should be established on a number of
dimensions rather than on any single one.

4.3. The Vietnamese Clause as Seen from the Systemic Functional

Perspective
4.3.1. Introduction
The recognition of the clause as a central unit for grammatical
description is crucial. Yet in the Vietnamese linguistic scholarship although
there do exist translation equivalents of clause (cú) and sentence (câu), the
notion of clause is hardly ever discussed as an independent notion: it is
typically subsumed under the notion of simple sentence (e.g., Trương Văn
Chình & Nguyễn Hiến Lê, 1963; Hoàng Trọng Phiến, 1980; Diệp Quang Ban,
1987). So far as the criteria for the simple sentence or clause are concerned,
they are based on different aspects of language: logico-semantic, structural,
communicative, phonological/prosodic and orthographic, and intuitive.
Some of these views associated with the major grammarians of Vietnamese
have been already presented in Chapter 2 (see Sections 2.3.2.2, 2.3.2.3,
2.3.2.4, and 2.3.3.2). For convenience of reference, let me summarise below
the criteria that various scholars offered of what counts as a clause in
Vietnamese. I shall use the term ‘clause’ instead of the term ‘simple
sentence’ in order to simplify the presentation.
From the point of view of logico-semantics, a clause is defined as
expressing ‘a proposition’ (Trần Trọng Kim et al., 1940), ‘a state of affairs’
(Trương Văn Chình & Nguyễn Hiến Lê, 1963), or ‘a relatively complete
thought’ (Bystrov et al., 1975; Diệp Quang Ban, 1987).
From the point of view of structure, clauses are variously classified:
independent clause, main clause, and subordinate clause (Trần Trọng Kim
et al. 1940); independent clause and dependent clause (Thompson 1985); or
two member-clause, one-member clause, and sub- or special clause (Trương
Văn Chình & Nguyễn Hiến Lê, 1963; Diệp Quang Ban, 1987).
From the communicative point of view, clauses can be divided into
declarative: those that make statements; imperative: those that issue
directives (orders, requests etc.); interrogative: those that ask questions; and
exclamative: those that make exclamations (cf. UBKHXH, 1983; Diệp Quang
Ban, 1987).

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 Chapter 4 • THE NOTION OF CLAUSE IN VIETNAMESE

From the point of view of phonology/prosody and orthography, a

clause can be recognised by a terminal intonation or a terminal pause
(Thompson 1985, Hoàng Trọng Phiến, 1980) or by the presence of a colon, a
semi-colon, or a coma at its end (Thompson 1985).
And from the point of view of intuition, a clause can be distinguished
from a non-clausal unit by reference to the speaker’s tacit knowledge of
language (Cao Xuân Hạo, 1991: 71).
One of the main problems with the traditional and non-systemic
functional conceptualisation of the clause in Vietnamese is that many of the
so-called ‘notional definitions’ (Greenbaum, 1996) of clause are not
explicated. As a result, there seems to be no relation between grammar and
semantics. Further, as the criteria for the clause are derived from various
approaches and one criterion seems to be offered in isolation from the
other(s), they seem to lack systematicity. In the following subsections,
I hope to present a view of the Vietnamese clause which might be more
viable than the traditional approaches presented above in summary form
and in some detail in Chapter 2.
In Section 4.2, the centrality of the clause in the linguistic system and
the criteria suggested for clause definition and identification from the
systemic functional perspective were presented by reference to English. So
far as the notion of clause in Vietnamese is concerned, the view presented
here is that the same general considerations apply; that is, like English, the
Vietnamese clause has a central status in grammar and can be
conceptualised along the dimensions of stratification, rank, and
metafunction. To avoid repetition, I shall assume that in terms of rank and
stratification, the Vietnamese clause closely resembles its English
counterpart; that is, like English, the Vietnamese clause is the highest unit of
grammatical analysis which is located on the lexicogrammatical stratum,
facing upwards to semantics and downwards to phonology. As for
metafunction, I shall assume that the definitions of the Vietnamese clause
from the point of view of the ideational, interpersonal, and textual
metafunctions may be the same as that of the English unit clause. However,
when it comes to the recognition/identification of the category, the position
may differ from one language to another. The metafunctional criteria for the
Vietnamese clause can be established on the principle of what Halliday
(1973, 1996: 26) has referred to as the ‘trinocular vision’ which can be stated
as follows: since the stratum within which the clause is located is
lexicogrammar, the criteria for it can be established (i) ‘from above’, i.e.,

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from the stratum of semantics; (ii) from ‘roundabout’ or within; i.e., from the
stratum of lexicogrammar itself; and (iii) ‘from below’, i.e., from the stratum
of phonology. As Vietnamese is a tonal language, it is doubtful that the
relation between clause and some phonological unit would reasonably be
established. Within the scope of this study, it is not possible to present
arguments in support of this claim, and as the focus of this study is on
lexicogrammar, in the discussion that follows, I shall ignore phonological
criteria and pay particular attention to the semantic and the
lexicogrammatical ones.
4.3.2. Semantic Criteria
From the point of view of formal approaches, the question basic to the
conceptualisation of the clause is: what does the constituent structure of a
clause look like? It is easy to answer that the Vietnamese clause is a
linguistic unit which is made up of phrases which are made up of words
which are made up of morphemes (cf. Cao Xuân Hạo, 1991/2004; see also
Chapter 2, Section 2.3.2 of this monograph). As a constituency-based
account, this approach is sound, but clearly this is not all that could be said
about the nature of the clause, especially when its communicative aspect is
taken into account. In the systemic functional model, however, the question
one asks is not: ‘what does the clause look like?’ but ‘what does the clause
do in discourse (text)?’ and the appropriate answer would be that (a) it
represents the speaker’s experience of the external world and the internal
world of his own consciousness, (b) it expresses the speaker’s own intrusion
into the speech situation, the speech role that s/he has chosen to adopt in
the situation, thus assigning role options to the addressee, and (c) it
expresses a message in the total communicative event (cf. Halliday, 1967b,
1970, 1994; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004; see also Section 4.2). These
functions constitute part of the definition criteria for the clause in
Vietnamese. To appreciate their significance, let me consider the following
extracts:
(4.2). a [ÐB]

- Lâu nay ông làm ăn ở những đâu?

long now Mr work eat in plural marker where

Where have you been working up till now?

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 Chapter 4 • THE NOTION OF CLAUSE IN VIETNAMESE

- Kiếm ăn ở ngoài phố

search eat in out street

In the city.
(4.3). a [NTTH]

Cô tiếp tục chờ đợi,

she continue wait

She kept waiting,

b

bởi vì dẫu sao cuộc sống vẫn là vô giá.

because anyhow life still be priceless

because, anyhow, life was still precious.

In order to identify how many clauses there are in extract (4.2), an
appropriate question to raise is: what are the speaker and addressee doing?
The answer is, they are demanding and giving information. Thus, in extract
(4.2) the syntagm Lâu nay ông làm ăn ở những đâu? (Where have you been
working up till now?) is one clause whose speech function here is that of a
question. On this ground Lâu nay ông làm ăn ở những đâu? (Where have you
been working up till now?) and Kiếm ăn ở ngoài phố (literally, earn a living
in the city ‘In the city’) cannot be treated as just one clause; they would be
viewed as two clauses, because each of these displays a distinct speech
function, one is the demanding of information expressed in the form of a
question (4.2a) and the other, the giving of information expressed in the
form of a statement (4.2b). Similarly, if one wishes to identify how many
clauses there are in extract (4.3) as seen from the point of view of the
experiential metafunction, one may recognise that it consists of two clauses
because each of these construes a state of affairs, one is characterised by a
doing tiếp tục chờ đợi (kept waiting) (4.3a) and the other, by a being là
(was) (4.3b). From the point of view of logical metafunction, extract (4.3) can
also be recognised as consisting of two clauses. This is because the two
states of affairs Cô tiếp tục chờ đợi (She kept waiting) and bởi vì, dẫu sao
cuộc sống vẫn là vô giá (because, anyhow, life was still precious) are logically

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

related to each other by means of expansion or, to be more specific,

enhancement; i.e., in this relation bởi vì, dẫu sao cuộc sống vẫn là vô giá
(because, anyhow, life was still precious) is said to enhance the meaning of
Cô tiếp tục chờ đợi (She kept waiting) by reference to cause bởi vì (because).
And if one wishes to identify the clause from the point of view of the textual
metafunction, one may characterise it as expressing a message, construing,
among other things, point of departure, and thus “breathing” relevance
(Halliday 1994) to other parts of co-text (for more detail, please see Halliday,
1994; Hasan, 1993; Hasan & Perrett, 1994; Cloran, 1994; Fries, 1981, 1995a,
1995b). This semantic definition of the clause has its resonance in the
thematic structure which will be discussed in Section 4.3.3 below.

4.3.3. Lexicogrammatical Criteria

At the stratum of lexicogrammar, the clause can be recognised by the
fact that it is the only unit which is capable of realising choices from the
systems of TRANSITIVITY, EXPANSION & PROJECTION, MOOD, and THEME.
As mentioned in Section 3.2, the system of TRANSITIVITY is said to
realise the experiential meanings which are associated with different
goings-on such as doing, sensing, saying etc. A clause will typically have a
function that expresses the going-on. This is known as Process. The notion
Process is a critical notion of the clause and it constitutes an important
recognition criterion for the Vietnamese clause. It is significant that typically
only one Process will enter directly into a clause. This Process may be either
material, mental, verbal or relational, but two or more Processes may not
operate in the clause, except indirectly via rank-shift as [[họ xây năm ngoái]]
(they built last year) in ||Ngôi nhà [[họ xây năm ngoái]] trông rất khang
trang || (The house they built last year looks magnificent). Thus,
(4.4)

- Lâu nay ông làm ăn ở những đâu?

long now Mr work eat in plural marker where
Circ: temporal Actor Pro: material Circumstance: location

Where have you been working up until now?

is one clause because it contains a material process làm ăn (literally, work

and eat (have been working)) and its experiential structure can be represented as

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 Chapter 4 • THE NOTION OF CLAUSE IN VIETNAMESE

Circumstance: temporal^Actor^Process: material^Circcumstance: location. In

contrast,
(4.5) [YB]

Tôi đẩy cửa,

I push door
Actor Process: material Goal

I pushed the door,

and
(4.6)

cửa chốt từ bên trong

door lock from side in

Goal Process: material Circumstance: location

(but) it (the door) was locked inside.

are two clauses not one because each of these contains a material process
đẩy (pushed) in (4.5) and chốt (was locked) in (4.6).
From the point of view of logical lexicogrammar, the clause can be
recognised through the systems of EXPANSION and PROJECTION. These two
systems are concerned with logico-semantic relations between clauses and
are said to have “syntactic structures that are iterative” (Hasan & Perrett,
1994: 194). Thus,
(4.7) [LNM]

Ðương nhiên nếu chú chẳng chịu giúp,

of course if junior not willing help

Of course, if you are not willing to help,

is identified as a clause not only because it expresses a state of affairs but

also because it is logically related to the next state of affairs in discourse by
enhancement as in

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

(4.8) [LNM]

thì họ ta vẫn phải đi mời luật sư

then clan we still have to go invite solicitor

our clan will have to find a solicitor.

And the relation between the two states of affairs may be recognised
by the schema nếu (if) state of affairs A, thì (then) state of affairs B. (For a
more detailed discussion of expansion and projection, see Halliday, 1994,
Chapter 7; Matthiessen, 1995, Chapter 3; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004,
Chapter 7).
In terms of MOOD, one can recognise the clause by the fact that no one
clause has more than one MOOD; that is, a clause is either indicative or
imperative; and if it is indicative it can either be declarative or imperative; it
will not at one and the same time be declarative and interrogative. Thus, the
syntagm
(4.9) [YB] indicative: declarative

Tôi đẩy cửa sổ,

I push window

Subject Predicator Complement

I pushed the window,

is a clause because it is characterised by the features [indicative: declarative]

which is realised by the configuration of structure Subject^Predicator
^Complement. In contrast,
(4.10) [YB] indicative: declarative

Rồi bố ôm lấy mẹ,

then father embrace mother

Adjunct Subject Predicator Complement

Then my father embraced my mother,

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and
(4.11) indicative: declarative

bố hít mãi vào tóc mẹ

father sniff forever in hair mother
Subject Predicator Adjunct Adjunct

(and) he kissed her hair lingeringly.

are two clauses because there are two mood functions in this clause
complex; both of them are declarative and their interpersonal structures can
be represented respectively as Adjunct ^ Subject ^ Predicator ^ Complement
and Subject ^ Predicator ^ Adjunct ^ Adjunct.
In much the same way, the clause can be recognised by looking at the
system of THEME. In English the clause is organised as a message by having
a status assigned to one part of it; one element of the clause is enunciated
as Theme, this in combination with the remaining part of the clause known
as Rheme, forms a message (cf. Halliday, 1967b, 1970, 1994; Halliday &
Matthiessen, 2004; Fries, 1981). Preliminary observation of Vietnamese has
shown that the thematic organisation of the clause is, by and large, similar
to that of the English clause; that is, like English, the thematic structure of
the Vietnamese clause is the Theme^Rheme configuration (cf. Cao Xuân Hạo,
1991/2004; Hoàng Văn Vân, 1994, 2005; Nguyễn Thượng Hùng, 1994).
However, the two languages differ in that while in English theme involves
three systems: (a) choice of types of theme (i.e., whether a theme is single or
multiple), (b) choice of marked and unmarked theme, and (c) choice of
predicated and unpredicated theme (cf. Halliday, 1994; Eggins, 1994;
Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004), in Vietnamese it is observed (Hoàng Văn Vân,
1994) that only two systems exist: (a) choice of types of theme and (b)
choice of marked and unmarked theme. If this observation is correct, it will
follow that these systems of theme can act as recognition criteria for the
Vietnamese clause. This means that for a syntagm to be recognised as a
clause, it must contain either a single or a multiple theme; it must also
contain either a marked or an unmarked theme; it can never at one and the
same time have both marked and unmarked themes or both single and
multiple themes. However, in identifying the clause from the point of view
of the thematic structure, it should be remembered that a Theme may be
single and marked, single and unmarked, multiple and marked, and multiple

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and unmarked (see Halliday, 1994, Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004; Hoàng Văn
Vân, 1994, 2005). Thus, the following extract which is taken from a famous
poem by the late famous Vietnamese poet Tản Đà,
(4.12) [TÐ]

Từ vào thu tới nay gió thu heo hắt,

from enter autumn till now wind autumn desolate
Theme (single, marked) Rheme

Since the arrival of Autumn, Autumn winds have been desolate,

(4.13)

Sương thu lạnh

dew autumn cold
Theme (single, unmarked) Rheme

Autumn dew has been cold

(4.14)

Trăng thu bạch

moon autumn white
Theme (single, unmarked) Rheme

Autumn moon has been white

can be identified as having three separate clauses because each of these has
its own thematic structure. Apart from that, clause (4.12) contains a single
and marked theme Từ vào thu tới nay (Since the arrival of Autumn); and
clauses (4.13) and (4.14) each contains a single and unmarked theme: Gió
thu (Autumn winds), and Trăng thu (Autumn moon) respectively. (For a more
detailed discussion of the notion of theme, see Halliday, 1985a, 1994; Fries,
1981; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004; Diệp Quang Ban, 2005; Hoàng Văn Vân,
2005, 2007c, 2008).
The conceptualisation of the clause from the point of view of rank,
stratification, and metafunction helps not only to define what a clause is but
also to distinguish it from non-clausal units, particularly from rank-shifted
clauses. The syntagm cậu đang làm (you are doing) in

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 Chapter 4 • THE NOTION OF CLAUSE IN VIETNAMESE

(4.15)
Bài tập [[mà cậu đang làm]] là rất khó
assignment which you asp.ptcl do be very difficult
Carrier Pro: rel Attribute
Subject Predicator Complement
Theme Rheme

The assignment (which) you are doing is a very difficult one.

is not treated as a clause on at least two grounds. First, in terms of rank, its
status is downgraded or rank-shifted: it has been embedded in the nominal
group Bài tập mà cậu đang làm (The assignment (which) you are doing) to
function as Qualifier to Thing Bài tập (The assignment). Secondly, unlike a
ranking clause of the same syntagm, it is ‘not accessible to arguability in
discourse’ (Matthiessen, 1995: 77; see also Halliday, 1994; Halliday & Hasan,
1976). In other words, unlike ranking clause, its mood function is invariable:
in this context it can only be declarative, it can never be imperative or
interrogative.
4.3.4. Major v. Minor Clause
In this section, I shall be concerned briefly with the distinction between
what Halliday (1984: 15) refers to as ‘major clause’ and ‘minor clausette’. These
choices are derived from the system which may be referred to as CLAUSE TYPE.
Each has a number of features that distinguish one from the other.
According to Halliday (1984, 1994), Hasan (1991, 1996), and
Matthiessen (1995), major clauses in English, whether independent (free) or
dependent (bound), are those that may select for transitivity, mood, and
thematic structure. In contrast, minor clauses are those that cannot have
this potentiality. They include calls; e.g., David!, greetings; e.g., Hello Quan!,
or exclamations; e.g., Well done! Assuming that the distinction between
major and minor clause in English is also relevant for Vietnamese, it will
follow that Chào bác ạ! (a greeting to an uncle or to a man/woman who is of
the same age with one’s uncle/aunt), Trời! (My God!), or Quân ơi! (Quan!) are
three minor clauses. They are minor clauses in the sense that they have no
transitivity, mood and thematic structure and a number of them, particularly
those of the greeting type, often occur at the boundaries of conversations
(cf. Matthiessen, 1995); e.g., Long đấy à! (Hello Long!) ... Thôi nhé or Tạm biệt
nhé (Bye bye!). In contrast, in discourse, particularly in interactional texts,
major clauses often carry the conversation forward (cf. Matthiessen, 1995:
78; Hoàng Văn Vân, 2006a). For example,

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(4.16) [NB]
Cô giáo dạy chiều à? demanding of
female teacher teach afternoon question information
particle

Will you have classes in the afternoon?

(4.17)
Không, em nghỉ hè rồi. denying and giving
no junior rest summer already information

No, I’m on summer holiday.

(4.18)
Quê cô giáo ở đây? demanding inferred information
homeland female teacher in here to be confirmed by addressee

Your home village is here, isn’t it?

(4.19)
Không, quê em ở dưới Cẩm Sa denying and giving
no home junior in under Camsa information

No, my home village is in Camsa.

4.4. Concluding Remarks

This chapter has been concerned with the notion of clause in
Vietnamese. Initially, I discussed the centrality of the clause in general
description. Then, drawing on the insights of systemic functional theory and
taking the English unit clause as a point of reference, I attempted to offer
some basic criteria for the Vietnamese clause. It is evident from the
discussion that, like English and many languages of the world, the clause in
Vietnamese is the most important grammatical category which can be
conceptualised from the point of view of stratification, rank, and
metafunctions. These dimensions, as I have demonstrated above, can act as
valid criteria (both definition and recognition) for defining and recognising
the clause in Vietnamese. At this point I leave Chapter 4 (and also Part I) and
turn to Chapter 5, where I will explore some basic notions related to the
description of the Vietnamese experiential grammar in Chapters 6 - 9.

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CHAPTER 5
THE SYSTEM OF TRANSITIVITY:
BASIC CONCEPTS

5.1. Preliminaries
As the title suggests, this chapter is concerned with the general
introduction to the experiential meaning, particularly that aspect which is
construed by TRANSITIVITY. It aims at (i) introducing some basic notions
related to the description of the experiential grammar in the clause, which
are generally referred to in systemic functional linguistics as “systemic
features” and (ii) attempting to establish the different “TRANSITIVITY
regions” (cf. Matthiessen, 1995) for exploration in Chapters 6 to 9. However,
before addressing these issues, it would be helpful to introduce some notes
of caution.
First, because the description of the TRANSITIVITY system in
Vietnamese presented in this study is written in English and, more
importantly, is based on the systemic functional model, reference is made, in
particular, to the works of Halliday. Apart from this, the writings of other
systemic functional grammarians such as Berry (1975, 1977), Butler (1985),
Fawcett (1980, 1984, 1987, 1996), Eggins (1994), Hasan (1972, 1987, 1996),
Martin (1981, 1991, 1992, 1996a, 1996b), Shore (1992), Matthiessen (1995),
Lock (1996), Halliday & Matthiessen (2004), and others are also taken as a
point of reference. Since all these studies are written in English and most of
them are about the grammar of the English language; and I am myself
writing in English, an inevitable corollary is that in describing the grammar
of Vietnamese, instead of coining new terms, I will be employing the
terminology or labels which Halliday and other systemic functional
grammarians of English have used to describe the English language. This,
however, does not necessarily mean that the grammatical categories which
systemic functional grammarians of English set up for interpreting the
grammar of English are identical in all respects to those employed in this

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 Chapter 5 • THE SYSTEM OF TRANSITIVITY: BASIC CONCEPTS

study for the description of Vietnamese. This is because “each language has
its own semantic code” (Halliday, 1994: xxx); and
any grammatical category that is established for the systemic functional
description of a language is, of necessity, language-specific, since it is an
abstraction based on the interrelations and oppositions found in the
grammatical organisation of the language being described. (Shore, 1992: 209)

And, in a strict sense, one would be justified in arguing that the

grammatical categories of no two languages can be regarded as identical
since the grammatical distinctions and oppositions that are made in any
language are unique to that language (see Hasan, 1971; Hasan & Fries,
1995). It follows that when borrowing a term or a label from one language
to name a grammatical category of another language, one has to be very
careful, selecting a label that may capture the most central meaning of the
grammatical category being described. However, it should be remembered
that the category which is assigned the same label in the “borrower
language” (i.e., the language which borrows the label from the other
language) is not necessarily equivalent to that in the “lender language” (i.e.,
the language whose label is borrowed).
Secondly, in applying a theoretical framework to the description of a
particular language, one is often working under the tension between what
has been referred to as language-universal and language-specific categories.
Here the distinction between ‘(meta)theoretical’ and ‘descriptive’ categories
as invoked by Matthiessen (1995) and Matthiessen & Nesbitt (1996) may
help to clarify the problem.
In my discussion of some fundamental concepts of systemic functional
linguistics in Chapter 3, I drew attention to categories that are seen as
applicable across languages. In this sense, systemic functional linguistics is a
‘metatheory’ – a theory of theories (Halliday, 1992c; Matthiessen, 1995). And
being a metatheory, the metatheoretical or fundamental concepts (i.e.,
categories) which underlie the theory and are built into it such as ‘context of
culture’, ‘context of situation’, ‘register’, ‘metafunctions’, ‘system’, ‘structure’,
‘stratum’, ‘realisation’, ‘instantiation’ and so on are considered in the theory
as universal across languages. In other words, they have the status of
abstractions for interpreting languages across the world, applicable to
English as well as many other languages. (...). By virtue of being
(meta)theoretical categories, they are general, or “universal”. The theory is
the system for interpreting any language. (Matthiessen, 1995: 60)

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In contrast, when one attempts to apply a metatheory to the

description of a particular language one has to establish instances of the
metatheoretical categories for interpreting that language. These categories,
according to Halliday (1994), Matthiessen (1995), and Hasan & Fries (1995),
are descriptive rather than metatheoretical ones and may be treated as
language-specific or language-‘particular’ in Halliday’s (1994) terms because
they are part of the description of that language. Thus, while the
fundamental concepts underlying systemic functional theory such as those
mentioned in the previous paragraph and discussed in some detail in
Chapter 3 are metatheoretical and are language-universal, categories such
as, ‘tense’ ‘finite’, ‘case’ etc., are descriptive and may be language-specific, as
is obvious from the fact that while these are well-established categories for
the description of English and other Indo-European languages, it would be
difficult, if not impossible, to justify the use of these concepts in the
description of, say, Chinese or Vietnamese. Whether or not a descriptive
category is universal is a ‘purely empirical issue’ (Matthiessen, 1995: 60), and
as Hasan & Fries (1995) have convincingly argued, the substantiation of this
claim is long, technical and often extremely complex.
However, the acceptance of the complexity of issues concerning the
universality of grammatical categories across languages does not
necessarily imply that at the descriptive level there are no similarities. In
fact, if descriptive categories of different languages are closely examined, it
will be noted they are at once similar and dissimilar. A brief comparison of
the first clause in a comparable exchange in three languages – English,
Vietnamese, and Russian – may serve to illustrate the point. Here is the
exchange:
(5.1a) English Do you love me?
No, I don’t.
(5.1b) Vietnamese Em có yêu anh không?
Không, tôi không yêu anh.
(5.1c) Russian Tы любищъ меня, да?
Heт, я нелюбю тебя.
Since in any comparison, one has to begin somewhere, I shall take the
English clause as the starting point. The reason is that English is the
language in which this study is written and at the same time it is the

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 Chapter 5 • THE SYSTEM OF TRANSITIVITY: BASIC CONCEPTS

language of the dominant tradition in linguistics in general and in systemic

functional linguistics in particular. In the examples presented below, the
first clause in each exchange is analysed in terms of MOOD and
TRANSITIVITY. The analysis is based on the framework provided in
Halliday’s (1994) An Introduction to Functional Grammar (IFG), Second
edition, and Halliday & Matthiessens’ (2004) An Introduction to Functional
Grammar, Third edition. The comparison is made on two levels: semantic
1
(i.e., ‘from above’) and lexicogrammatical (i.e., ‘from within’)( ). It should be
mentioned here that the purpose of this comparison is not to establish
whether or not there are universal categories across languages. The hunting
ground for universals, as I understand, can never be a comparison between a
small number of clauses and in only three languages (cf. Comrie, 1981; see
also Matthiessen, 1995). The comparison is made simply to find out whether
or not there is similarity of grammatical categories across these languages
and if there really is, it would be suggested, among other things, that
labels/terms in one language can be employed for the interpretation of
similar grammatical categories in another language. The analysis of the first
clause in each exchange is presented below:
(5.1a) English

Do you love me?

MOOD Finite Subject Predicator Complement
TRANS Senser Process: mental Phenomenon

(5.1b) Vietnamese

Em có yêu anh không?

you (junior) yes love brother no
MOOD Subject q.ptcl Predicator Compl q.ptcl
TRANS Senser Pro: ment Phen

Do you love me?

(1) It has been claimed (Halliday 1984 and elsewhere, Matthiessen 1990) that the mode
of expression for MOOD choices are prosodic rather than segmental in all languages (see
also Pike, 1959, 1967). Details of this, however, are not available in Russian and,
particularly, in Vietnamese. For this reason, the comparison between these clauses in
terms of phonology/prosody (i.e., “from below”) is not pursued here.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

(5.1c) Russian

Tы любищъ меня, да?

you love I yes
MOOD Subject Predicator Complement q.ptcl
TRANS Senser Process: mental Phenomenon

Do you love me?

A first look at the analysis of the above clauses reveals that there are
both similarities and dissimilarities. Semantically, they all have similar
features which can be described as [initiate; demand; information] (see
Hasan, 1989, 1996). Interpreting these clauses in relation to the exchange
which they form a part of, we note that they all possess the interpersonal
status of a ‘move’ (see Sinclair & Couthard, 1975). Further, what seems to be
also similar in these clauses is that these semantic features are congruently
realised at the lexicogrammatical level which can be represented in systemic
terms as [indicative: interrogative: polar] (see system network Figure 3.3,
Chapter 3).
On the lexicogrammatical level, one may note many features in
common to examples (5.1a-c), in terms of structural realisation. In terms of
MOOD, they all have the elements Subject, Predicator, and Complement and
interpersonal structure of the clause can be represented as
Subject^Predicator^Complement. In terms of TRANSITIVITY, these clauses
have the elements Senser, Process: mental, and Phenomenon and their
experiential structure can be shown as Senser^Process:
mental^Phenomenon. In addition to these, both the Subject and the
Complement in these clauses are congruently realised as a nominal group,
which consists of one word, a pronoun, and the Predicator as a verbal group.
However, a closer examination will reveal that certain categories
present in the clause of one language are not found in that of the other(s).
Most striking is the fact that in the MOOD structure of the English clause
there is the element Finite realised by the auxiliary verb Do which precedes
the element Subject you. This pattern of Finite + Subject, which functions as
an ‘interactional nub’ (Hasan & Fries, 1995; Eggins, 1994; Caffarel, 1995) in
the English clause and is referred to by Halliday (1967a, 1967b, 1970, 1985a,
1994 and elsewhere) as the ‘Mood element’, has no correspondence in either

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 Chapter 5 • THE SYSTEM OF TRANSITIVITY: BASIC CONCEPTS

the Vietnamese or the Russian clause. By contrast, in realising the similar

meanings [demand; information: confirm: enquire: ask] (see Hasan, 1989,
1996), Vietnamese employs, among other things, two traditionally called
‘adverbs’, one positive có (yes) which is placed between the Subject and the
Predicator, and the other negative không (no) which is placed at the clause-
final position, while in the Russian clause one can find only one positive
adverb ga (yes) which is placed at the clause-final position. Further,
although the Subject and the Complement are congruently realised as a
nominal group and the Predicator as a verbal group, categories such as
tense, case, number, person etc., are not found in the Vietnamese clause,
while these categories are obviously applicable to both English and Russian.
As this comparison suggests, there are both similarities and
dissimilarities between the clauses of these languages. This permits three
suggestions. First, when comparing two or more languages one should take
into account both their commonalities and their differences. Secondly, when
setting up grammatical categories for describing a language, one should
bear in mind that the commonalties may be language universal and the
differences may be language-specific. And thirdly, the fact that there exists
similarity of grammatical categories across languages gives support to the
idea that one can borrow labels or terminology, which have been employed
to interpret the grammar of one language, to name the grammatical
categories of another language. These suggestions are relevant to the
analysis of the experiential structure of Vietnamese presented below. As will
be noted, while the labels as used in systemic functional description of
English are retained, every effort is made to foreground the specificity of the
Vietnamese grammar.

5.2. Process, Participant and Circumstance

Halliday (1994: 106) claims that
language enables human beings to build a mental picture of reality, to make
sense of what goes on around them and inside them. Here again the clause
plays a central role, because it embodies a general principle for modelling
experience – namely, the principle that reality is made up of PROCESSES.

To claim that the clause embodies a general principle for modelling

experience is to say that its function is to represent a ‘state of affairs’.
As mentioned in Chapter 4, states of affairs refer to goings-on such as doing,
happening, sensing, etc. These goings-on, according to Halliday (ibid.), are

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

sorted out into the semantic system which is itself construed through the
grammar of the clause. Thus
as well as being a mode of action, of giving and demanding goods-&-services
and information, the clause is also a mode of reflection, of imposing order on
the endless variation and flow of events. The grammatical system by which
this is achieved is TRANSITIVITY. The transitivity system construes the world
of experience into a manageable set of PROCESS TYPES. (Halliday ibid.: 106)

Two points seem to stand out here. First, the term TRANSITIVITY in the
systemic functional model, when applied to the clause, does not refer simply
to the types of process (verb) as in the traditional descriptions; e.g., the
classification of verbs into transitive and intransitive. Rather, it refers to the
systemic choices underlying the process + participant (± circumstance)
configuration in the clause whereby experiential meanings are construed.
The term is thus parallel to other systems such as MOOD and THEME
(Halliday, 1967a, 1970). Seen from this point of view, TRANSITIVITY in
systemic functional theory is broader and more powerful than the
traditional concept denoted by the same label in earlier grammars. It
encompasses all those features of the clause that contribute to the linguistic
representation of the speaker’s experience (cf. Halliday, 1967a, 1967b, 1968;
Fawcett, 1980, 1987; Morley, 1985; Matthiessen 1995; Martin, 1996a, 1996b;
Rose, 1996; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004).
Secondly, as with the term TRANSITIVITY, the term PROCESS in
systemic functional linguistics is also to be understood in a broader sense.
Throughout this study, process is used in two senses. In its narrow sense, it
covers all phenomena to which the specification of time may be attached;
i.e., anything that can be expressed by a verb: event, whether physical or
not, state, or relation. (cf. Halliday, 1967a; Halliday in Kress, 1976; Fawcett,
1987; Davidse, 1992, 1996b; Shore, 1992; Matthiessen, 1995). In its wider
sense, it refers to what is known as a ‘state of affairs’ or a ‘representation’
(cf. Shore, 1992). Halliday (1994: 107) and Halliday & Matthiessen (2004:
175) claim that among human languages, there is a basic framework for the
interpretation of processes. This framework, according to him, is probably
universal across languages and in most general terms consists of the
following three components:
(i) the process unfolding through time;
(ii) participants involved in the process;
(iii) circumstances associated with the process.

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 Chapter 5 • THE SYSTEM OF TRANSITIVITY: BASIC CONCEPTS

According to Halliday (1985, 1994) and Halliday & Matthiessen (2004),

these components are organized in configurations that provide the models
or schemata for construing our experience of what goes on.
The position adopted in this study is that as with English so also in
Vietnamese, the basic framework for interpreting a process consists of three
components. The following chapters will elaborate on this general assertion,
providing the evidence for this claim. Below I discuss each of these notions
briefly by way of providing a foundation for subsequent discussions. The
process is characterised by its potential for organising participants into a
configuration and by its potential for development through time (cf.
Matthiessen, 1995). It is realised by a verbal group. Participants, typically
realised by nominal groups, are of two kinds: those that are inherent in the
process and those that are not (for detail about inherent & non-inherent roles,
see Section 5.3); they bring about the occurrence of the process or mediate its
occurrence. As will be demonstrated in the chapters that follow, there are a
number of ways in which a participant may take part in a process; it may act
out the process; it may sense through it; it may receive through or benefit
from it; it may be affected by it and so on. Circumstances, typically realised by
adverbial groups or prepositional phrases, specify different circumstantial
roles in the process. These circumstantial roles may be the extent of the
process in space or time; they may be the cause, the manner of its occurrence
etc. As compared with Participants, they are attendant rather than inherent in
the process (for more detail, see Chapter 9).
These three components: Process, Participant, and Circumstance
provide a frame of reference for interpreting the experiential meaning of the
clause; i.e., our experience of what goes on (cf. Halliday, 1994: 107). To see
how this frame of reference works in Vietnamese, let me apply it to the
analysis of the first three clauses from the following extract. The analysis of
the extract into clauses is based on the framework provided in IFG. The key
to functional labels is to be found in Appendix 2 and the key to notational
conventions in Appendix 3.
||Bác sĩ Khoa trở về lúc 6 giờ. ||| Cả nhà đang ăn sáng, || mọi người ngạc
nhiên nhìn chàng. ||| Chưa bao giờ Khoa tỏ ra mệt mỏi như buổi sáng hôm
nay.|| Mặt chàng hốc hác, tái xanh, || chỉ qua một đêm mà râu ria tua tủa. |||
Bà Lan, mẹ của Khoa, giục con rửa mặt || rồi ra dùng bữa sáng. ||| Khoa nói ||
chàng chỉ muốn ngủ thôi. ||| Chàng vào phòng, || để nguyên quần áo và cả
đôi giày, || ngả lên giường || ngủ vùi. ||| [QT]

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

||(Doctor) Khoa returned home at 6 am. ||| The family were having breakfast,
|| everyone looked at him in surprise. ||| Never had he been as tired as that
morning. ||| His face looked gaunt and pale, || after only one night his beard
and moustache had grown bristly. ||| Mrs Lan, his mother, told him to wash
his face || and then come out for breakfast. ||| Khoa said || he only wanted to
sleep.||| He went into his room, || fell into bed || and slept soundly, || still
wearing his clothes and shoes. |||

The experiential structure of the first three clauses of the above extract
may be represented as follows:
(5.2)

Bác sĩ Khoa trở về lúc 6 giờ.

doctor Khoa return moment 6 hour
Participant Process Circumstance

Khoa returned home at 6 am.

(5.3)

Cả nhà đang ăn sáng,

all house asp.ptcl eat morning
Participant Process Participant

The family were having breakfast,

(5.4)

mọi người ngạc nhiên nhìn chàng.

every person surprise look he
Participant Circumstance Process Participant

everyone looked at him in surprise.

The above analysis of the three clauses into Process, Participant, and
Circumstance demonstrates how in general the phenomena of the world
are presented in linguistic structures. On the other hand, it is perhaps also
obvious that just the three concepts of process, participant, and
circumstance are too general to distinguish the various specific process
types and the specific participant and circumstantial roles associated with

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 Chapter 5 • THE SYSTEM OF TRANSITIVITY: BASIC CONCEPTS

them. So far as clauses (5.2) - (5.4) are concerned: on the basis of the
analysis provided so far, we still do not know exactly what types of
process trở về (returned) in clause (5.2), ăn (was having/eating) in clause
(5.3), and nhìn (looked) in clause (5.4) are. Similarly, it is not clear from
the analysis what participant roles Bác sĩ Khoa (Khoa), Cả nhà (The whole
family), and sáng (breakfast) play in those clauses (i.e., whether they are
the same or different participant roles). Nor is it clear what types of
circumstance lúc 6 giờ (at six am) and ngạc nhiên (in surprise) are in
clauses (5.2) and (5.4) respectively (i.e., whether they are the same or
different circumstantial roles).
In short, the analysis simply in terms of Process, Participant, and
Circumstance does not tell us much about the experiential nature of the
clause. What is needed when interpreting the meaning of the clause is to
make moves in delicacy whereby the function of each category is made
more specific. This suggests that in exploring the TRANSITIVITY system of a
language, one should look in some depth at (i) the different types of process,
(ii) the different types of participant roles, and (iii) the different types of
circumstantial roles. These three experiential components or ‘experiential
regions’ (Williams, 1994; Matthiessen, 1995) constitute the main focus of the
chapters that follow. However, for the sake of presentation, the experiential
grammar of the Vietnamese clause is divided into two regions which,
borrowing Matthiessen’s (1995) terms, I shall refer to as ‘nuclear
TRANSITIVITY’ and ‘circumstantial TRANSITIVITY’. Nuclear TRANSITIVITY
refers to the combination of process and participants; it is concerned with
different process types and different participant roles associated with each
of them. Circumstantial TRANSITIVITY, as mentioned previously, refers to
the circumstantial resources of the clause; it is concerned with specifying the
various circumstantial roles in the clause. Both of these regions are the
resources of TRANSITIVITY in a broad sense. Before proceeding to the
discussion of these issues, it would be helpful to look briefly at what is
generally referred to in systemic functional theory as inherent & non-
inherent roles in the clause.

5.3. Inherent & Non-inherent Roles

In systemic functional grammar, a broad distinction is made between
what are known as inherent and non-inherent or ‘actual’ (Butler, 1985: 165)
participant roles in the clause. A similar distinction can be found in other

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

non-systemic functional grammars. Dependency grammar, for example,

distinguishes between actants and circumstances (Tarvainen, 1977, cited in
Shore, 1992). In his Functional Grammar, Dik (1978) refers to these roles as
nuclear arguments and satellites. Tagmemic theory (Pike & Pike, 1982)
makes a comparable distinction between nucleus (= Dik’s nuclear argument)
and margin (= Dik’s satellite). Huddleston (1984) draws a distinction
between what he calls nuclear and peripheral or extra-nuclear elements. A
similar distinction is employed by Foley and Van Valin (1984) and Van Valin
and LaPolla (2004). In their descriptions of English and other languages,
Foley and Van Valin (ibid.) and Van Valin and LaPolla (ibid.) propose an
opposition between nuclear/core (= inherent) and peripheral (= non-
inherent) arguments.
Scholars working within the framework of systemic functional theory
have also made a similar distinction. Fawcett (1980), for example, draws a
distinction between inherent and circumstantial roles. McGregor (1990) and
Shore (1992) in their description of Gooniyandi and Finnish respectively
propose an analogous distinction between what they call inherent and non-
inherent roles. In a similar manner, Matthiessen’s (1995) distinction
between nuclear TRANSITIVITY and circumstantial TRANSITIVITY echoes
the distinction between inherent and circumstantial roles by Fawcett and
inherent and non-inherent roles by McGregor and Shore. In fact, in systemic
functional linguistics the distinction between inherent and non-inherent
roles in the clause can be traced back to Halliday. As early as 1970, Halliday
was already recognising that the distinction between inherent and non-
inherent roles was crucial. Arguing in favour of these terms instead of what
he calls the ‘misleading’ obligatory/optional Halliday states:
the distinction between obligatory and optional roles helps us to relate
transitivity functions to a system of clause types. As, however, this involves
recognising that an ‘obligatory’ element may in fact be absent, we shall use
the term ‘inherent’ rather than ‘obligatory’. (Halliday, 1970: 150).

Halliday defines an inherent role as one that is always associated with

a given clause even if it is not necessarily expressed in the structure of all
clauses of that type (see also Halliday in Kress, 1976; McGregor, 1990).
Drawing on the work of Halliday (1994), Matthiessen (1995) has
elaborated on the notions of ‘nuclearity’ and ‘peripherality’. He theorises the
relation between participants (= inherent roles) and circumstances (= non-
inherent roles), conceptualising them as the endpoints of a cline, which

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 Chapter 5 • THE SYSTEM OF TRANSITIVITY: BASIC CONCEPTS

reflects the degree of involvement in the process. The more nuclear a

participant in relation to the process, he claims, the more inherent it is in the
process. The nuclearity/peripherality of involvement of inherent and non-
inherent roles in the clause is represented by Matthiessen (ibid.) as shown in
Figure 5.1.

degree of nuclearity/ outer

peripherarity circumstances
inner

realization: other participants

prep +
nom.gr.; process
adv. gr. Subject
nom. v.gr.
gr. medium
Theme
interpersonal
& textual
conflation

Figure 5.1: Cline of Nuclearity/Peripherality of Involvement

(Source: Matthiessen, 1995: 197)

Figure 5.1 shows that at one end of the cline one can find the nucleus
of the process plus the most centrally involved participant, the Medium. At
the other end, one can find what Matthiessen calls ‘outer’ circumstances
such as extent, location, manner etc. And between these endpoints one can
find other participants such as beneficiary and range. This cline is thus one
of the nuclearity/peripherality of involvement. (For a more detailed
discussion, see Matthiessen, 1995: 196-98, 327-32).
The consideration of inherent and non-inherent roles in the clause has
a number of important implications. First, it serves to classify and define
process types (cf. Halliday in Kress, 1976; Shore, 1992), and when there are
fuzzy cases between two processes it may serve as a criterion for
distinguishing one from the other. For example, in the case of (a) He drove
the car hot and (b) He made the car hot in English one of the grounds for us
to say that (a) is a material clause and (b) is a relational one is that the
Attribute which is realised formally by the adjective hot is non-inherent in

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

material clause while it is an inherent role in the relational one (cf.

Matthiessen, 1995). Secondly, it helps explain why even when a particular
transitivity function is not actualised in the structure, it can still be
interpreted as inherent in the clause (cf. Halliday, 1970). And thirdly, it may
also serve to explain why there are strong lexical ties or strong ‘collocations’
(Firth, 1935, 1957a) between inherent roles and the process (cf. Matthiessen,
1995).

5.4. The Notion of Process Type: a Preliminary Discussion

I now come to the central component of the framework for the
description of transitivity – the system of PROCESS TYPE in Vietnamese. To
understand how this system is organised, we need a ‘theory of experience’
(Halliday, 1994; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004; Hoàng Văn Vân, 2005) which
must satisfy at least two requirements: (i) it must be modelled on how
experience is represented in language, and (ii) it should be soundly
validated on the basis of what some systemic functional scholars (Halliday,
1973, 1992c, 1996; Hasan, 1995, 1996; Hasan & Fries, 1995; Cloran, 1994;
Matthiessen & Nesbitt, 1996) refer to as the ‘trinocular perspective’ in
validating systemic description.
In formal as well as non-systemic functional grammars, there have
been a number of models postulated for classifying what is referred to in
systemic functional linguistics as ‘process types’. However, as I will argue in
my presentation, these models are based largely on the lexical meaning of
the verb and the criteria designed for testing their validity, if there are any,
are less than satisfactory when seen from the point of view of the systemic
functional theory. For example, based on the verb classification scheme in
Vendler (1967), Dowty (1979) proposes a model of four classes of predicates
in English: states (e.g. know, believe, love etc.,), activities (e.g. walk, run,
swim etc.,), accomplishments (e.g. paint a picture, make a chair, draw a circle
etc.,), and achievements (e.g. recognise, spot, find etc.,). In addition, he also
designs a set of syntactic and (word-based) semantic tests for the
classification of these predicate types. Jackson (1991), drawing on the work
of Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik (1985) postulates a model of clause
types in terms of what we talk about. According to him, in a dialogue we
talk about (i) things that happen, e.g. How the wicked prosper!, (ii) what
people do, e.g. She sent you a message., and (iii) the way things and people
are, e.g. She’s the living example of that Marxist myth ... . He labels these

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categories respectively as ‘event’, ‘action’, and ‘state’ and subsumes them

under the general term ‘situation types’. He claims that the element that
serves to identify a particular situation type is the verb. Among the non-
systemic functional grammarians, Dik (1978) seems to have proposed a
more theoretically sound model for classifying what he calls ‘a typology of
states of affairs’ in English. However, unlike the other scholars, he explicitly
locates his framework at the level of semantics. According to Dik (ibid.),
states of affairs can be classified along two fundamental parameters:
dynamism and control.
Along the parameter of dynamism, he distinguishes between non-
dynamic and dynamic states of affairs. A non-dynamic state of affairs is one
that does not involve any change; i.e., where the entities are the same at any
point of the stretch of time during which the state of affairs is held to
endure; e.g., The substance is red and John remained in the hotel. A dynamic
state of affairs, in contrast, is one which in some way or other involves a
transition from one situation to another, e.g., John opened the door and The
tree fell down are dynamic. Dik calls a non-dynamic state of affairs a
‘situation’, and a dynamic one an ‘event’.
Cutting across the distinction between situation and event is another
distinction for Dik which relates to the parameter of control. Control, in Dik’s
view, can be divided into what he refers to as ‘controlled’ and ‘uncontrolled’.
A state of affairs is said to be ‘controlled’ if one of the entities involved in it
has the power to determine whether or not that state of affairs will obtain;
e.g., John opened the door and John remained in the hotel. In contrast, a
state of affairs which is not controlled is said to be an uncontrolled one; e.g.,
The substance is red and The trees fell down. The two parameters:
dynamism and control, when taken together, define four basic types of
states of affairs which as represented in Figure 5.2.

STATE OF AFFAIRS
+ Dynamic - Dynamic
EVENT SITUATION
Controlled Action Position
- Controlled Process State

Figure 5.2. Dik’s Typology of States of Affairs

(Source: Dik, 1978: 34)

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As evident from the presentation, Dik’s model of the typology of states

of affairs looks simple and attractive. However, what leaves it open to
question, it seems to me, is that his model is based only on semantic criteria;
that is, on the interaction between four semantic parameters: +Dynamic & -
Dynamic of the ‘predicate’ with +Controlled & -Controlled of the ‘nuclear
argument’. Since Dik does not provide lexicogrammatical criteria for
distinguishing between these categories of states of affairs, this raises a
question about their status: are they categories of semantic description? If
so, how are they construed by the grammatical resources of language?
Deliberation on these questions forces one to concede that Dik’s classes of
states of affairs are largely notional; i.e., based on meaning but without any
systematic connection with the lexicogrammatical resources of the
language.
Within systemic functional theory, a number of models of process types
have also been postulated. Martin (1996a), for example, in his description of
the transitivity system of Tagalog proposes a system of three major process
types: mental, material, and relational. In a similar way, Shore (1992)
postulates a model of three major options for the description of Finnish:
relational, material, and mental. In addition, her model of process types is
said to be postulated in line with what she refers to as the ‘theory of
prototype’ which states that these major process types recognised for
Finnish are not seen as discrete and absolute categories, but rather as
overlapping categories. She represents her model as follows:

RELATIONAL

MENTAL MATERIAL

Figure 5.3. Shore’s Model of Major Process Types in Finnish

(Source: Shore, 1992: 213)

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 Chapter 5 • THE SYSTEM OF TRANSITIVITY: BASIC CONCEPTS

Matthiessen (1995), in modelling the system of process types in English,

states:
The experiential metafunction serves to analyse experience into its
component parts and to combine these into configurations; but at the same
time it classifies the world into different fields or domains of experience. (...).
For English, we can identify the following fields of experience (Halliday,
1967/8, 1976; Halliday, 1994: 106-175; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004: 168-
305): a field of consciousness, a field of happening and doing, and a field of
being and having. (Matthiessen, 1995: 201-2)

He suggests that corresponding to each field of experience, there may

be one or two process types realising it. In his discussion of the system of
transitivity in English, Matthiessen recognises four major process types:
mental (internal field of consciousness), verbal (external field of
consciousness), material, and relational. The realisational relation between
the different fields of experience and the process types with their formal
representations can be given in Table 5.1 below.

Field of Experience Process Example

Type
field of consciousness: ‘internal’ mental they saw the ball
: ‘external’ verbal they said “ball”
field of doing & happening material they bounced the ball
field of being & having relational they were players

Table 5.1. Matthiessen’s Model of Fields of Experience and Process Type

(Source: Matthiessen 1995: 203)

Like Shore, Matthiessen does not see these process types as discrete or
absolute categories. He assumes that there are prototypical cases of all four
process types, but there are also more intermediate, borderline cases (p.
204). He discusses at some length the features that hold one process type
distinct from the others as well as the indeterminate cases where two or
more process types seem to be shaded into one another.
The most comprehensive and insightful theory for modelling
experience which most of the descriptive works of English and other
languages have drawn upon is one postulated by Halliday. In his An
Introduction to Functional Grammar, Halliday (1985a, 1994) begins

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modelling his theory with the question ‘What are the different process types,
as construed by the transitivity system in the grammar?’. In search of an
answer to this question, he first distinguishes between ‘inner’ and ‘outer’
experience. Inner experience, according to Halliday (ibid.), is what we
experience as going on inside ourselves, but its prototypical form is harder
to sort out because, as Halliday explains, it is partly a kind of replay of the
outer and partly a separate awareness of our states of being. Outer
experience, in contrast,, is what we experience as going on ‘out there’, in the
world around us. Its prototypical form is that of actions and events: things
happen, and people or other actors do things, or make them happen.
Halliday claims that the grammar distinguishes rather clearly between the
inner and outer experience and the grammatical categories he establishes
to account for them are MATERIAL and MENTAL processes.
Apart from the two mentioned above, Halliday recognises a third major
process type in the transitivity system of English which he labels
RELATIONAL process. The postulate of this category rests on the fact that in
life we learn to generalise and categorise experience, forming relationship
between one fragment of experience to another such as ‘this is the same as
that, this is a kind of the other’ (p.107).
In addition to the three main process types, Halliday recognises three
other intermediate process types which are located at the boundaries of
these three process types. These categories, according to him, are not clearly
set apart, but are nevertheless recognisable in the grammar as intermediate
between the different pairs – sharing some features of each, and thus
acquiring a character of their own. These are (i) BEHAVIOURAL process
located on the borderline between the material and mental; (ii) VERBAL
process located on the borderline between the mental and relational; and
(iii) EXISTENTIAL process located on the borderline between the relational
and material. Altogether, Halliday’s model of experience recognises six
process types: material, behavioural, mental, verbal, relational, and
existential and their order in the grammar is
like a colour chart, with red, blue and yellow as primary colours, and purple,
green, and orange along the borders; not like a physical spectrum, with red at
one end and violet at the other. (Halliday, 1994: 107)

In the form of a circle, Halliday’s model of experience in relation to the

six process types can be represented as follows:

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 Chapter 5 • THE SYSTEM OF TRANSITIVITY: BASIC CONCEPTS

Figure 5.4. Halliday’s Model of Experience and Process Types

(Source: Halliday 1994: 108)

The significance of Halliday’s theory of experience rests on two counts.

First, it models how experience is abstracted and represented in language;
and secondly, the validity of the design can be justified using his ‘trinocular
approach’ as a yardstick which, simplifying somewhat, can be stated as
follows: the system of process types postulated by the theory construes the
different fields of experience at the semantic stratum and, in turn, each
process type or clause option in the system is construed by a particular
configuration of process + participant at the lexicogrammatical stratum.
In this study, I shall use Halliday’s model of experience for describing. I
shall assume that all six clause options: material, behavioural, mental,
verbal, relational, and existential, which Halliday postulates for the
description of English, are available in the system of PROCESS TYPE in
Vietnamese. However, for the sake of presentation I shall organise these
options under three major headings: (i) Doing Processes, (ii) Projecting
Processes, and (iii) Being Processes. Doing processes is a cover term for
Halliday’s material and behavioural processes, projecting processes for

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

mental and verbal processes, and being processes for relational and
existential processes. These major clause options will be explored in
Chapters 6, 7, and 8 respectively. The system of PROCESS TYPE in Vietnamese
can be represented as follows:
material
doing
behavioural
PROCESS TYPE mental
projecting
verbal
relational
being
existential

Figure 5.5. The System of PROCESS TYPE in Vietnamese

Three points should be made here. First, the process types in
Vietnamese are represented in Figure 5.5 only as primary system. However,
as each clause option is explored in delicacy, more delicate choices will be
recognised, following the example of this excellent strategy by Hasan’s
(1987) The Grammarian’s Dream: Lexis as Most Delicate Grammar. Secondly,
it needs to be emphasised again that although I use the same labels that are
used in the systemic functional description of English and the primary
system of PROCESS TYPE I postulate for the description of Vietnamese is
identical to that which Halliday (1994), Martin (1996b), and Halliday &
Matthiessen (2004) postulate for the description of English, the Vietnamese
and English grammatical categories are not, and should not be considered
as, identical. Thirdly, as with Halliday (1970, 1994, 1996), Halliday in Kress
(1976), Shore (1992), Matthiessen (1995), and Halliday & Matthiessen (2004),
I assume that like other grammatical categories, the process types
recognised in the system of transitivity in Vietnamese are distinct at the
centre (i.e., there are features that hold one process type distinct from the
others), but the edges are not clear cut; they are fuzzy (i.e., there are
features which one process type may share with the others in the system).
These points will be brought out in the course of the description in the
following chapters.

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 Chapter 5 • THE SYSTEM OF TRANSITIVITY: BASIC CONCEPTS

5.5. Concluding Remarks

This chapter has been concerned with the general introduction of the
experiential meaning and transitivity in Vietnamese. I have provided some
of the most essential notions that are related to the description of the
experiential grammar: process, participants, inherent & non-inherent roles,
and nuclear and circumstantial transitivity. Drawing on Halliday’s model of
experience, I have proposed a system of PROCESS TYPE in Vietnamese which
recognises three major primary options: doing (processes), projecting
(processes), and being (processes). Having finished the tasks set for this
chapter, I now turn to Chapter 6, where I will explore the first primary option
in the transitivity system of Vietnamese: doing processes.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

CHAPTER 6
DOING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

6.1. Introduction
The aim of this chapter is to explore the grammar of the processes of
doing in Vietnamese. I begin my examination of the system of PROCESS
TYPE by considering doing processes “partly because they are the most
accessible to our conscious reflection, but also because throughout most of
the history of linguistics they have been at the centre of attention” (Halliday,
1994: 107). Three major questions on which the present chapter bears are:
1. What are doing processes in Vietnamese?
2. What are the semantic (definition) and lexicogrammatical
(recognition) criteria for identifying doing processes and
distinguishing them from other process options – the ‘projecting’
and the ‘being’ – in the transitivity system of Vietnamese?
3. What are the main options available in the environment of ‘doing’
in Vietnamese?
As Figure 5.5, Page 124 shows, ‘doing’ constitutes the entry condition
for the two process options ‘material’ and ‘behavioural’. I shall attempt to
examine these process options in turn in the sections that follow.

6.2. The Material Process

6.2.1. Identifying the Material Process: Definition Criteria
To answer question (i) raised in Section 6.1, let me consider the
following extracts:
Extract 6A
||| Hắn đến,||chửi toáng ngay từ đầu ngõ, bằng nhiều thứ ngôn ngữ [[mà ở
đây rất ít được nghe.]] ||| Chửi thỏa thích || hắn xông vào || đánh Tuyết. |||
Lúc hàng xóm gỡ được hắn ra khỏi người Tuyết, || hắn vẫn cố cắn vành tai của

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 Chapter 6 • DOING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

Tuyết như con chó dại || và nhổ toẹt xuống nền nhà môt bãi máu tươi kèm
theo câu nguyền rủa: ||| ... [NM]
||| He came, || insulting her loudly right from the gate (of her house) with a
kind of language [[ which was rarely heard in there.]] ||| After that he dashed
into the house || and beat her.||| When the neighbours tried to separate
them, || he was still biting one of her ears, || spitting the fresh blood down on
the floor || while swearing |||: ...

Extract 6B
||| Chép xong đề thi lên bảng, || tôi thả nhẹ mẩu phấn vào cái hộp đựng phấn
ở góc bảng || rồi xoa tay, || đến tựa lưng vào cửa sổ. ||| [TVH]
||| Having written the exam questions on the blackboard, || I lightly dropped
the piece of chalk into the chalk-box at one of the lower corners of the
blackboard, || rubbed my hands, || and then came to lean against the
window.|||

Even a cursory look at these extracts shows that the majority of

processes here are processes of the type that we might describe as those of
doing and/or happening. Thus in Extract 6A (the Vietnamese original) out of
eight main verbs, six refer to some form of doing, namely, đến (came), xông
(dashed (into)), đánh (beat), gỡ (separate), cắn (biting), and nhổ (spitting),
while in Extract 6B, except the verb Chép (Having written) every main verb
refers to some kind of doing. This is not to say that all these processes of
doing are exactly alike in every respect except their lexical meaning. I will be
drawing attention to these differences later in this chapter. At this point let
me examine a few of these clauses closely to establish criteria for identifying
the type of process they realise. Consider:
(6.1)

Hắn đến,
he come

He came,
(6.2)

hắn xông vào

he dash in

he dashed (into the house)

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

(6.3)

(hắn) đánh Tuyết

he beat Tuyet

(he) beat her (Tuyet)

(6.4)

Tôi thả nhẹ mẩu phấn vào hộp đựng phấn

I drop lightly piece chalk in box contain chalk

I lightly dropped the piece of chalk into the chalk-box

(6.5)

rồi (tôi) xoa tay

then I rub hand

then (I) rubbed my hands.

As the examples are intended to show, the main verb in clauses (6.1) -
(6.5) – đến (came) in (6.1), xông (dashed) in (6.2), đánh (beat) in (6.3), thả
(dropped) in (6.4), and xoa (rubbed) in (6.5) – describes some sort of action
or happening, which is usually concrete, physical, and tangible. In systemic
functional theory, processes of this type are generally referred to as material
process. There would be no ground (either theoretical or practical) for
claiming that a clause such as Tuyết yêu tôi (Tuyet loves me) is a material
process. This is because unlike the verbs in (6.1) - (6.5), yêu (loves) does not
represent a physical action but a sort of mental activity or an ‘activity of the
mind’ as Bell (1991: 125) has aptly put it. Similarly, it would also be
inappropriate to interpret a clause such as Tôi là Nhâm (I’m Nham/My name
is Nham) as having a material process for the reason that unlike the verbs in
(6.1) - (6.5) neither yêu (loves) nor là (am) construe an action: if yêu (loves)
construes an ‘activity of the mind then là (am) construes a ‘state of being’
(cf. Halliday, 1967a, 1967b; Fawcett, 1987; Eggins, 1994; Matthiessen, 1995;
Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004). Thus, from above (i.e., from the stratum of
semantics), the definition of the material process (in a somewhat narrow
sense) is that it is a process which typically construes some kind of physical
action or happening in the physical universe (cf. Halliday in Kress, 1976;
Halliday, 1994; Shore 1992; Eggins, 1994; Matthiessen 1995; Martin, 1996a).

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 Chapter 6 • DOING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

It does not need to be pointed out that an action does not happen by
itself. It always implies some entity or someone (who may or may not be
overtly mentioned in the clause) who acts or does the deed; e.g., Hắn (he) in
clauses (6.1) and (6.2), (‘hắn’) in (6.3), tôi (I) in (6.4), and (‘tôi’) (I) in (6.5).
Following the established systemic functional convention I shall refer to this
inherent role as Actor (Ac). An examination of clauses (6.1) to (6.5) also
reveals that an action does not necessarily stop at the Actor^Process
complex such as Hắn đến (He came) in (6.1) and hắn xông vào (he dashed
into the house) in (6.2). It may be extended or ‘go through’ to another entity
in the clause such as Tuyết (her) in (6.3), mẩu phấn (the piece of chalk) in
(6.4), and tay (my hands) in (6.5). In systemic functional theory, this optional
role is referred to as Goal (Go) (cf. Halliday, 1994: 110; Halliday &
Matthiessen, 2004: 179-81). We can now establish a definition criterion for
the material process by extending the previous definition as follows: a
material process is one that typically represents some kind of physical action
or happening in the external world. Its basic meaning is that some entity
does something tangible, undertakes some action which may (or may not)
be extended to some other entity (cf. Halliday, 1994; Halliday & Matthiessen,
2004; Hoàng Văn Vân, 2005).
6.2.2. Identifying the Material Process: Recognition Criteria
At the lexicogrammatical level, material process in Vietnamese may be
distinguished from other process options, particularly the mental and the
relational ones, by the following recognition criteria:
(i) Number and nature of participants
(ii) Strong collocation of material process with co-verb of direction
(iii) The probe
Each of the above characteristics is discussed in some detail below.
6.2.2.1. Number and Nature of Participants
It was pointed out in Section 6.2.1 that a material process may
involve one participant – Actor as (6.1) and (6.2) or two participants –
Actor and Goal – as (6.3) - (6.5). Actor is the entity that does the deed; it is
typically realised as a nominal; and the nominal can either be animate
such as hắn (he) in (6.3) hắn đánh Tuyết (He beat Tuyet) or inanimate
such as Quả táo (The apple) in Quả táo rơi (The apple fell). Goal is the
entity to which the process is extended. Like Actor, its lexicogrammatical

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

realisation is not restricted to any class of nominal: it can be also realised

either as an animate nominal such as Tuyết in (6.3) hắn đánh Tuyết (He
beat Tuyet) or as an inanimate nominal such as mẩu phấn (the piece of
chalk) in (6.4) tôi thả mẩu phấn vào hộp đựng phấn (I dropped the piece
of chalk into the chalk-box).

6.2.2.2. Collocation of Material Process with Co-verbs of Direction

A second recognition criterion to be discussed concerns the strong
collocational tie between verbs of action particularly those of the motion
type and what is referred to as ‘directional pro-verbs’ (Nguyễn Kim Thản,
1977) or ‘co-verbs of direction’ (Nguyễn Đình Hoà, 1979: xiii) such as đi (off,
away, forth), lại (back), lên (up, upwards), xuống (down, downwards), vào
(in, into, to), ra (out, out of), đến (to) and some others. These are said to be
full-fledged verbs which are reduced to the status of auxiliaries (Nguyễn
Đình Hoà, 1979: xiii) or take the role of co-verbs of direction when they are
in collocation with the main verb. In Vietnamese this collocational tie
between a verb of action and a co-verb of direction is so strong that it can
be regarded as a criterion for identifying material processes and
distinguishing them from other process types. Thus, for material processes,
it is possible to say
(6.6) [VK]

Từng đôi chim bay đi

each couple bird fly off

Circumstance Actor Process: material

The birds are flying away couple by couple.

(6.7) [NCH]

Lúc mâm cơm bưng lên

moment tray rice bring up

Circumstance Goal Process: material

When the food tray was brought up

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 Chapter 6 • DOING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

(6.8) [TDP]

Từ trên gò cao, già làng đi xuống

from on hillock high old village go down
Circumstance Actor Process: material

From a high hillock, the old villager went down.

In contrast, it would be impossible to collocate these co-verbs of
direction with non-material processes such as
(6.9) *

Tuyết yêu lên

Tuyet love up

Tuyet loves up
(6.10) *

Ngày xưa có ra người hiếu lợi

day old exist out person eager profit

Once upon a time, there was out a greedy person

(6.11) *

Tôi là vào Nhâm

I be into Nham

I’m/My name is into Nham

6.2.2.3. The Probe
A third recognition criterion for material processes has to do with the
ways they can be probed. Here the discussion of the notions ‘doing’ and
‘happening’ appears to be relevant. In a strict sense, the features ‘doing’ and
‘happening’ do not quite refer to one and the same thing but reflect two
different perspectives on the material clause. Doing refers to the perspective
taken from the point of view of Actor. Happening, in contrast, refers to the
perspective taken from the point of view of Goal. And as material processes
can be defined as a doing or a happening, ways of probing them can also be

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

derived from these perspectives. From the perspective of doing, a material

process can be probed by asking X đã làm gì Y? (What did X do to Y?), and
from the perspective of happening they can be probed by asking Y làm sao
thế? or Cái gì xảy ra với Y thế? (What happened to Y?). Thus, a material
clause such as hắn đánh Tuyết (he beat Tuyet) can be probed by asking
either hắn (‘đã’) làm gì Tuyết? (What did he do to Tuyet?) or Tuyết làm sao
thế?/Cái gì xảy ra với Tuyết thế? (What happened to Tuyet?). These probing
questions are then central to the recognition of the material process. Other
types of process cannot be probed in these ways. It would make no sense to
probe a clause such as
(6.12) [NÐC]

Ngày xưa có một anh chàng trẻ tuổi

day old exist one gen.cl guy young

Once upon a time, there was a young man.

by asking ngày xưa làm gì thế? (What did once upon a time do?) or Anh
chàng trẻ tuổi làm sao thế? (What happened to the young man?). This is
because (6.12) differs from (6.1) - (6.5) both in the nature of the process
itself and the participant(s) associated with it. In terms of the process, có
(‘there was’, literally, ‘exist’) does not represent a doing or a happening but
an ‘existing’, and as the process is not a material one, it can hardly be
probed by the question with ‘do to’ or ‘happen to’.
An aspect related to the ‘do to’ probe, which may also serve to
distinguish the material from other process types, is that a material process
can be substituted by the verb làm or tác động vào/tác động đến (do to) in
its near paraphrase. For the material clause hắn đánh Tuyết (he beat Tuyet),
for example, the paraphrase cái mà hắn tác động vào Tuyết là đánh cô ấy
(What he did to Tuyet was beat her) would be normal. By contrast, it would
sound unnatural to have a paraphrase of the mental clause Tuyết yêu tôi
(Tuyet loved me) as Cái/Việc mà Tuyết tác động đến tôi là yêu tôi (What
Tuyet did to me was love me).
6.2.3. Probing Types of Material Process
It should be emphasised that although the ‘do to’ and ‘happen to’
probes have been established in Section 6.2.2.3 above for distinguishing the
material from other process types, they seem to hold valid only for material

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 Chapter 6 • DOING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

processes which have Actor and Goal where Goal is impacted or disposed of
by the Process. When it comes to a type of material process where Goal is
not impacted but is created as a result of the Process (see Section 6.5.4),
these probes seem not to apply. The English clause John made the table, for
example, cannot be probed by either asking ‘What did John do to the table?’
or ‘What happened to the table?’. Rather, it would be appropriate to use as a
heuristic device the question ‘How did the table come about?’. There is still
another problem with the ‘do to’/‘happen to’ generalisation: not every
material process has a Goal. Clause (6.1) Hắn đến (He came), for example, has
only Actor. Therefore, neither the ‘do to’ nor the ‘happen to’ question seems
to be an appropriate probe for it. For such a material clause an appropriate
probe would be a simple ‘do’ question. So the clause Hắn đến (He came) can
be probed by asking the question Hắn làm gì thế? (What did he do?).
The fact that a material process may involve one participant, Actor, or
two participants, Actor and Goal, and that each of these is probed in a
different way has constituted a basis for the distinction which is
traditionally captured in grammars by the terms ‘intransitive’ and
‘transitive’. The traditional claim that an intransitive clause has one
participant, Actor and a transitive clause has two, Actor and Goal, poses
some problem, since the second half of the generalisation does not hold
because of the parameter of VOICE. Consider the following set of examples:
(6.13a)

Cửa mở
door open
Actor Process: material

The door opened.

(6.13b)

Cường mở cửa
Cuong open door
Actor Process: material Goal

Cuong opened the door.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

(6.13c)

Cửa được (Cường) mở

door pass. ptcl Cuong open
Goal Actor Process: material

The door was opened (by Cuong).

(6.13a) is traditionally known as an intransitive clause; (6.13b) is
transitive and active; and (6.13c) is a transitive and passive clause. Thus,
according to the analysis the transitive clause has two possible patterns:
active and passive. However, we may note that the Actor, Cường, in (6.13b) is
still introduced as the Actor in (6.13c) though is now preceded by a particle,
được, traditionally known as ‘passive particle’ (pass.ptcl). The active/passive
contrast is applicable only if the clause is transitive, and while it is possible
for the Actor to occur overtly in either case as (6.13b) and (6.13c) show,
when the clause is passive, the participant that is obligatory is Goal, not
Actor, a situation that is indicated in (6.13c) by putting the Actor, Cường, in
parentheses. Let me refer to the perspective presented above as the
transitive analysis. As Halliday (1967a, 1967b, 1968, 1994) has pointed out,
there does exist a complementary perspective, the ergative analysis. In the
following section, I shall discuss how the Vietnamese clause is organised in
terms of the transitive and ergative models.

6.3. Two Perspectives on Voice: Transitivity and Ergativity

The root of the nuclear TRANSITIVITY of processes and participants,
claims Matthiessen (1995), are two simultaneous systems: PROCESS TYPE
and AGENCY. The former is specifically related to the transitive model and
the latter, to the ergative one. These two alternative ways of organising the
clause: the transitive and the ergative, as Halliday (1970: 157, 1994) and
Halliday & Matthiessen (2004) have observed, are very widely distributed;
possibly all languages display both, in different mixtures, with perhaps one
or the other as the more dominant.
The transitive system realises a PROCESS AND EXTENSION model
(Davidse, 1992: 108; see also Halliday, 1977c, 1994; Halliday & Matthiessen,
2004; Hoàng Văn Vân, 2005, 2006b, 2007c). Its point of departure (taking
material process as representative) is that the Actor is engaged in the

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process. If the action ends with the Actor as in Cây rung (The tree shook),
then we have an intransitive clause realised by a structural configuration
Actor^Process, where Actor can also be interpreted as the participant being
‘affected’ (Halliday, 1970: 157) by the action. However, the action does not
have to stop at the Actor^Process combination. It can be extended to or
directs itself on to a Goal; as in Gió làm rung cây (The wind shook the tree).
In such an instance, we have a transitive clause realised by a structural
configuration Actor^Process^Goal, where Goal now is that which is to be
interpreted as the participant being affected by the process. Whether the
structure is Actor^Process as Cây rung (The tree shook) or
Actor^Process^Goal as Gió làm rung cây (The wind shook the tree), cây (the
tree) still functions as something to which the action rung (shook) happens.
Thus, if asked: Cái gì thế? (What happened?) or Cái cây làm sao thế ? (What
happened to the tree?) it would be reasonable to be told in response either
that Nó (cái cây) rung (It (the tree) shook) or that Gió làm nó rung (The wind
shook it (the tree)). In the first case, the action of shaking is presented as
confined to the tree; in the second, the action of shaking extends from the
wind to the tree. Thus the transitivity model is based on ‘extension’. Its basic
question is ‘whether the action extends beyond the actor or not’ (cf.
Halliday, 1968: 185).
With the ergative system, the picture is quite different. The ergative
system is said to be typically generalised and cuts across the various process
types (Halliday, 1994: 164; Matthiessen, 1995: 206). To use Davidse’s (1992:
109) expression, the ergativity system is an INSTIGATION OF PROCESS
model. In this model, there is one participant that is the key figure in the
process – the Medium (Med), defined by Halliday (1994: 163) as ‘one
through which the process is actualised, and without which there would be
no process at all’. A clause is middle (mid) if the process is presented as
‘internally instigated’ or ‘self-engendering’ (Halliday, 1994: 164; Halliday &
Matthiessen, 2004: 289): only the process and the key participant are
expressed in it. Thus, Cửa mở (The door opened), Cây đổ (The tree fell), and
Cây rung (The tree shook) are all middle clauses and have the same
structural configuration of Medium^Process. In contrast, a clause is
effective (eff) if the process is represented as ‘externally instigated’: it is
presented as if there were an external Agent (Ag), or instigator, causing the
process to happen. Thus Gió làm rung cây (The wind shook the tree), Cường
mở cửa (Cuong opened the door), and Hắn đánh Tuyết (He beat Tuyet) are all
effective clauses and have the same structural configuration of

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Agent/Instigator^Process^Medium. So unlike the transitive model, the

ergative form of organisation is based on ‘causation’. Its basic question is
‘whether the cause/instigation is external to the action or not’ (Halliday
1968, 1970, 1994; see also Matthiessen 1995; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004;
Hoàng Văn Vân, 2006b). Below is a schema representing the two alternative
models of transitivity in Vietnamese:
Transitive patterning

Intransitive Ac^Pro Cây rung (The trees shook)

Transitive Ac^Pro ± Go Gió làm rung cây
(The wind shook the trees)
Ergative patterning

middle Med^Pro Cây rung (The trees shook)

effective Ag ± Pro^Med Gió làm rung cây
(The wind shook the trees)
Figure 6.1. Transitive and Ergative Patterning in Vietnamese

As can be seen, each model has its own form of organisation. In the
transitive model, the process is inherently accompanied by the Actor and an
optional Goal which is indicated by ±. In the ergative pattern, on the other
hand, the participant that is centrally involved in the Process is the Medium
and the optional one is Agent. Halliday (1994: 165-66) and Halliday &
Matthiessen (2004: 291-2) have shown that the ergative function of Medium
– ‘the nodal participant throughout the system’ (Halliday ibid.: 165) – turns
up in all types of process: it is equivalent:

in material process to Actor (middle), Goal (effective)

in behavioural process to Behaver (Section 6.7)
in mental process to Senser (Section 7.2.2.4)
in verbal process to Sayer (middle) (Section 7.4.2.2 and
Target (effective) (Section 7.4.2.4)
in attributive process to Carrier (Section 8.3.2)
in identifying process to Identifying (Section 8.3.2)
in existential process to Existent (Section 8.4.2)
In contrast, Agent appears as a function only where the process is
instigated by an external agency. It is equivalent:

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in material process to Actor (effective)

in mental process to Phenomenon (effective)
in verbal process to Sayer (effective)
in attributive process to Attributor (Section 8.3.4)
in identifying process to Identifier/Token; and
to Assigner (Sections 8.3.2, 8.3.4)

Halliday (1994: 166) has provided a detailed table to account for the
calibration of Medium, Agent, and other ergative functions with the
participant roles in different types of process in English. This table is also
relevant to Vietnamese. Modifying somewhat, the calibration of Medium and
Agent with the participant roles in different types of process in Vietnamese
can be tabulated as follows:
Ergative
function Transitive function:
Material Behavioural Mental Verbal Ascriptive Identifying Existential
1 Process
2 Medium Actor(mid.); Behaver Senser Sayer (mid.); Carrier Identified Existent
Goal (eff.) Target (eff.)
3 Agent Actor (eff.); Pheno- Sayer (eff.) Attributor Identifier/
Initiator menon Token;
Assigner

Table 6.1. Transitivity Functions, Showing

Transitivity and Ergativity Equivalents
(adapted from Halliday, 1994: 166)

6.4. Voice in Vietnamese

The above discussion was intended to demonstrate, among other
things, one important point: that, like English, the Vietnamese clause
displays both perspectives on voice – the ergative and the transitive.
However, the applicability of the category of voice to the language has not
been universally accepted by scholars of Vietnamese. Section 6.4.1 below
provides a brief overview of the diversity of opinions on this issue. This is
followed by Section 6.4.2 where I offer my interpretation of voice in
Vietnamese using the concepts presented in Section 6.3.
6.4.1. Voice in Vietnamese: Conflicting Views
In the study of the Vietnamese grammar, there have been three
contradicting views about whether or not the category of voice is applicable

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to the language. Some grammarians (e.g., Trương Vĩnh Ký, 1867; Bùi Đức
Tịnh, 1952; Trương Văn Chình & Nguyễn Hiến Lê, 1963; Diệp Quang Ban,
1987) hold that the category of voice does exist in Vietnamese. The
distinction between what has been traditionally referred to as the active
and passive voice is said to rest on two conditions which generally coincide:
(a) the difference in the structure corresponding to the active and passive
voice in the clause and (b) the occurrence of the two traditionally called
common passive verbs bị and được. Simplifying somewhat, the different
structures corresponding to the active and passive voice in Vietnamese can
be represented respectively as follows, using the terminology of formal
grammar:
NP1 + V (act) + NP2 [active]
NP2 + V1 (pass) + NP1 + V2 (main) [passive]
These contrasting constructions can be exemplified again in formal
terms by the following clauses taken from Nguyễn Kim Thản (1977: 132):
(6.14a) active

Giáp đánh con ngựa

Giap beat generic classifier horse
NP1 V (active) NP2

Giap beat the horse.

(6.14b) passive

Con ngựa bị Giáp đánh

gen.cl horse Giap beat
NP2 V1 (passive) NP1 V2(main)

The horse is/was beaten by Giap.

However, there are grammarians (e.g., Bouchet 1912, Cordier 1932,
Trần Trọng Kim et al., 1940; Emeneau, 1951, Lê Đức Nhuận, 1980) who have
expressed doubts about the existence of voice in Vietnamese. They argue
against the need to recognise this category. To quote Emeneau (1951: 73):
Tense, mode, and voice, ... are not the categories of the Vietnamese verb; nor
are aspect, number and person of the subject and object. The verb has its class
meaning: it occurs and can occur as the nucleus of a predicate and cannot
occur as the subject of a predicate or as object of a verb, except when the verb
of the predicate is là (be).

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The rejection of the category of voice in Vietnamese is said to be

justified by the fact that Vietnamese is an isolating/analytic or non-
inflectional language. Verbs in Vietnamese do not change in form according
to tense, person, and number as those in many Indo-European languages.
Therefore, the contrast in verb forms which express the active/passive voice
distinction such as give v. is given, gave v. was given in English is not found
in Vietnamese. Further, it has been argued that the two most common forms
bị and được (see examples (6.13c) and (6.14b) above), which have been
referred to by some non-native grammarians of Vietnamese (e.g.,
Thompson, 1985) as the ‘passive particles’ are, to use the traditional
terminology, ‘fully notional verbs’ (see Nguyễn Kim Thản, 1977). In many
respects, they can still be used as transitive verbs in the sentence. Examples:
(6.15) [NKT]

Bác Hai bị một phát súng lục

uncle Hai suffer one gen.cl pistol
NP1 V (active) NP2

Uncle Hai got a gun shot.

(6.16)

Quân được điểm tốt

Quan benefit mark good
NP1 V (active) NP2

Quan got good mark.

The fact that bị and được can and do function as fully notional verbs
has resulted in the third position which holds that although Vietnamese
does not employ functional or morphological means, it uses syntactic means
(structure) to express the passive meaning (Nguyễn Kim Thản, 1977: 207).
Below I shall reproduce two more examples taken from Nguyễn Kim Thản
(1977: 207) to show how the voice contrast in Vietnamese is explained as
seen from the point of view of the third position:
(6.17) [NCH]

Pha (...) bưng mâm lên

Pha bring tray up
NP1 V (active) NP2 Adv

Pha brought the food tray into the house.

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(6.18)

(Lúc) mâm cơm bưng lên,

(moment) tray rice bring up
NP2 VP Adv

(When) the food tray was brought into the house,

According to Nguyễn Kim Thản (ibid.), in (6.17) Pha is the actor, bưng
(brought) is the verb expressing an action, and mâm (the food tray) is the
object which is affected by the action expressed by the verb bưng. From the
point of view of syntactic structure, this would be represented by the formal
grammarian as subject + predicate + object (complement) + adverbial
modifier of place. There is, however, an inversion of syntactic order in clause
(6.18). In (6.17) mâm (the food tray), which is NP2, follows the verb bưng
and acts as the object; however, in (6.18) mâm cơm (the food tray) which is
still said to be NP2 acts as the subject and precedes the verb bưng. Nguyễn
Kim Thản claims that the inversion of the order of the NP expressing the
object in clause (6.17) so that it acts as the subject and precedes the verb in
clause (6.18) indicates that the clause is passive. With regard to the
examples above, Nguyễn Kim Thản states:
In sentence 1 (= 6.17 here) the actor (of the action) and the subject (of the
sentence) are conflated; this permits us to say that the verb bưng lên (brought
up) expresses the active meaning. In sentence 2 (= 6.18 here), however, the
noun, which expresses the object (in 6.17 here), acts as the subject. So it
would be justified to say that this sentence is a passive one. The passive
meaning, which is expressed by the whole syntactic structure as such, is not
confined to the form of the verb but to the whole structure of the sentence.
1
(Nguyễn Kim Thản, 1977: 208)( )

Nguyễn Kim Thản’s consideration of the active/passive distinction in

terms of the different functions the subject plays in the clause is crucial.
It suggests that voice is more a feature of the clause than of the verb, thus

(1) Ibid. p. 208. This passage, which I have translated here for presentation, appears in
the Vietnamese original as follows:
Trong câu 1, chủ thể của hoạt động và chủ ngữ của câu trùng với nhau, và điều đó cho
phép ta khẳng định được rằng động từ bưng lên có ý nghĩa chủ động. Còn ở câu 2, danh
từ biểu thị đối tượng lại làm chủ ngữ của câu. Vì vậy có thể khẳng định rằng câu này có ý
nghĩa bị động. Những ý nghĩa bị động biểu thị bằng cả một cấu trúc cú pháp như vậy
không phải là dạng bị động của riêng động từ mà là ý nghĩa bị động của cả câu.

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 Chapter 6 • DOING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

reflecting the specificity of Vietnamese as a non-inflectional language where

verb form does not show whether the verb is active or passive. Further, what
seems to be of theoretical importance is that his view represents a shift in
focus from looking at the voice system totally from the point of view of the
internal structure of the verbal group to viewing it from the point of view of
the structure of the clause: in other words, the emphasis has shifted from
(verb) morphology to (clause) syntax.

6.4.2. Voice in Vietnamese: a Systemic Functional Interpretation

Examples in Section 6.3 demonstrated that Vietnamese displays both
the transitive and the ergative systems and each of these allows a more
delicate systemic contrast. Figure 6.1 below shows the ergative and
transitive as two concurrent systems with the system of process type for the
Vietnamese clause: the ERGATIVE system has the options middle v. effective,
and the TRANSITIVE system has the options transitive v. intransitive. The
rationale for including both in the network is that they represent two
complementary, not mutually exclusive, perspectives on clause organisation.

being
PROCESS TYPE projecting

doing
middle # *
ERGATIVE
effective *
intransitive #
TRANSITIVE
transitive *
# *
Convention: : intransitive; : transitive

Figure 6.2. Ergative and Transitive Systems: Primary Choices

In what follows, I shall argue that (i) the explanation of voice is

complex: it requires reference to all three metafunctions, and (ii) as with
English the system of active v. passive is also applicable to Vietnamese.

The active v. passive choice is a textual resource in the sense that it

allows certain thematic possibilities, which in its absence would not be
available. This remark concerns in particular the question of unmarked v.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

marked theme (cf. Chapter 4, Section 4.3.3). Taking a declarative clause as

the starting point, the constituent functioning as Subject will also have the
function of unmarked Theme, so long as it is the first constituent with an
experiential and interpersonal function as in:

(6.19a) [active voice]

Anh ấy sẽ hoàn thành luận án năm sau

he asp.ptcl complete dissertation year after

Actor Pro: mat Goal Circ: temporal

Subject Predicator Complement Adjunct

Theme (unmarked) Rheme

Given New

He will complete his dissertation next year.

The conflated realisation of these three functions –
Actor/Subject/unmarked Theme – by the same constituent construes a
specific kind of point of departure. An unmarked Theme construes a point of
departure which is not in contrast to any other, and typically does not
function as new information. The conflation of Theme in a declarative clause
with any other element than Actor/Subject will make the Theme marked, in
the sense that it will construe a point of departure that is in some sense
contrastive and/or presents new information as for example in:

(6.19b) [active voice]

Năm sau anh ấy sẽ hoàn thành luận án

year after he asp.ptcl complete dissertation

Circ: temporal Actor Pro: mat Goal

Adjunct Subject Predicator Complement

Theme (marked) Rheme

New Given

Next year he will complete his dissertation.

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 Chapter 6 • DOING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

(6.19c) [active voice]

Luận án anh ấy sẽ hoàn thành năm sau

dissertation he asp.ptcl complete year after

Goal Actor Pro: mat Circ: temporal

Complement Subject Predicator Adjunct

Theme (marked) Rheme

New Given

As for his dissertation he will complete next year.

Note that the voice in all three clauses above is active. However, it is
possible to choose as an unmarked Theme in a declarative clause something
other than the constituent with the conflated function of Actor/Subject. In
this case, however, the voice of the clause must be passive. For voice is a
resource for re-ordering of the experiential functions, with the result that
with different voice choices, different experiential functions will conflate
with different interpersonal ones. In particular, Subject in the passive clause
will be conflated with Goal, and Actor may or may not be present as in:
(6.19d) [passive voice]

Luận án sẽ được (anh ấy) hoàn thành năm sau

dissertation asp.ptcl pass.ptcl he complete year after

Goal Ac/Ag Pro: mat Circ: temp

Complement Subject Predicator Adjunct

Theme (unmarked) Rheme

His dissertation will be completed next year.

Turning to point (ii) made in the previous paragraph, two questions
raised for exploration here are: does the system VOICE exist in Vietnamese?
If so, how can the active and passive voice be distinguished? To facilitate the
discussion, let me produce below two examples and analyse them for
TRANSITIVITY, MOOD, and THEME:

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(6.20a) [active]

Cường nấu cơm này ngon

Cuong cook rice this delicious

Actor/Agent Pro: mat; eff Go/Med Circ: man: quality

Subject Predicator Complement Adjunct

Theme (unmarked) Rheme

Cuong cooked this rice well.

(6.20b) [passive]

Cơm này được Cường nấu ngon

rice this pass.ptcl. Cuong cook delicious

Goal/Medium Ac/Ag Pro:mat;eff Circ: man: quality

Subject Adjunct Predicator Adjunct

Theme (unmarked) Rheme

This rice was well cooked by Cuong.

Clause (6.20a) is transitive and active and clause (6.20b) is transitive

and passive. If these clauses are compared, it will be noted that they differ
from each other in a number of ways.
From the point of view of recognition, there is a re-ordering of the
participants in the passive version. Cường, which is Actor/Agent and stands
at the head of clause (6.20a), is still Actor/Agent but has moved to precede
the Process in (6.20b); and cơm này (this rice), which is Goal/Medium and is
preceded by the Process in clause (6.20a), is still Goal/Medium but has
moved to the head of (6.20b). This re-ordering of participants in the passive
clause has opened up the different possibilities of conflation with
lexicogrammatical functions that are realisationally related to the
interpersonal and textual metafunctions. Thus, instead of Actor/Agent as
Subject/Theme where Theme is unmarked in clause (6.20a), we have
Goal/Medium as Subject/Theme so that Theme is still unmarked in (6.20b).
This is in contrast to an agnate clause such as

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 Chapter 6 • DOING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

(6.20c)

Cơm này, Cường nấu ngon

rice this Cuong cook delicious
Goal/Medium Actor/Agent Process: material Circ: man: quality
Complement Subject Predicator Adjunct
Theme (marked) Rheme

This rice, Cuong cooked well.

where Goal/Medium/Complement is brought to the head of the clause,

and Theme is conflated with it: when Goal/Medium/Complement are
conflated with Theme, Theme is no longer unmarked: it construes a point of
departure which in some sense highlights it. The fact that there is a re-
ordering of participants in the passive voice and this re-ordering opens up
the different possibilities of conflation with Subject and Theme, leaving the
thematic choices of the clause unmarked, is important: the definition
criterion for the passive voice in Vietnamese is precisely the construal of
Goal as the speaker’s point of departure without implying any highlighting
for the information to which the element refers.
From the point of view of grammatical structure, (6.20b) can be
distinguished from (6.20a) in two respects. First, like (6.20a), Actor/Agent
Cường is present as direct participant in (6.20b); however, unlike (6.20a), it is
not conflated with Subject/Theme but is mapped on to Adjunct (Agent)/(part
of) Rheme. Further, the presence of Actor/Agent in (6.20a) seems to be
obligatory while the presence of Adjunct/Agent in (6.20b) may be optional.
Thus, it is possible to say either as (6.20b) or as the following:
(6.20d)

Cơm được nấu ngon

rice pass.ptcl. cook delicious

Goal/Medium Pro: material; effective Circ: man: quality

Subject Predicator Adjunct

Theme Rheme

The rice was well cooked.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

The second distinction between a passive clause and an active one has
to do with the difference in the internal structure of the verbal group
realising the Process in the passive clause. In (6.20a) the Process is realised
by the verb nấu (cooked); in (6.20b), however, the Process is realised by a
verbal group which consists of the same verb form nấu (cooked) and the
traditionally known ‘passive particle’, or ‘passive verb’ được.
The above discussion suggests that there are both semantic and
lexicogrammatical grounds for distinguishing the active from the passive
voice in Vietnamese. The active/passive distinction can be represented in
Figure 6.3 below:

PROCESS TYPE ...

doing
middle #*
ERGATIVITY
effective #*
active #
transitive VOICE
TRANSITIVITY
passive *
intransitive

Conventions: # = active; *
= passive
Figure 6.3. The System of VOICE in Vietnamese: Active & Passive

6.4.3. bị and được: Passive Particles?

In Vietnamese, the choice of passive constitutes the entry condition for
a further systemic choice, namely ‘desirable’ v. ‘undesirable’. These choices
are exemplified by the following:
(6.21) desirable

Cơm được Cường nấu ngon

rice benefit Cuong cook deliciously

The rice was well cooked by Cuong.

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 Chapter 6 • DOING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

(6.22) undesirable

Tuyết bị hắn đánh

Tuyet suffer he beat

Tuyet was beaten by him.

Desirable and undesirable can be distinguished on both semantic and
lexicogammatical grounds. Semantically, desirable refers to the meaning of
‘benefiting’ (Nguyễn Kim Thản, 1977; Diệp Quang Ban, 1987: 163) or
[+pleasant] (Nguyễn Đình Hoà, 1979: XI). In contrast, undesirable refers to
the meaning of ‘suffering’ (Nguyễn Kim Thản, 1977; Diệp Quang Ban, 1987:
163) or [-pleasant] (Nguyễn Đình Hoà, 1979: XI). Lexicogrammatically, each
of these choices is realised by a different form: desirable is realised by được
(benefit, get, obtain, receive, find etc.), and undesirable is realised by bị
(suffer, sustain, undergo, contract etc.). The desirable/undesirable contrast
may be represented in the following system network:

being
PROCESS TYPE projecting

doing
middle #*
ERGATIVITY
effective #*
active #
transitive VOICE
TRANSITIVITY desirable
passive* Ì được
intransitive undesirable
Ì bị

Figure 6.4. The System of Voice in Vietnamese: Desirable & Undesirable

Figure 6.4 claims that in Vietnamese the choice between desirable v.
undesirable (realised by được and bị respectively) is applicable if and only if
the clause has feature ‘passive’. This is obviously not true in the light of
earlier examples (e.g., (6.15) and (6.16)). There is however a difference
between the use of được and bị in an active clause as opposed to a passive.
This can be clarified by a consideration of the following examples:

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(6.23) [DQB] intransitive/middle

Tôi bị ngã
I suffer fall

I fell.
(6.24) transitive/middle/active

Mình được ăn một bữa sáng ngon

self benefit eat one gen.cl morning delicious

I had a delicious breakfast.

(6.25) [NKT] transitive/effective/active

Anh bị mất một chiếc ô trắng

he suffer lose one gen.cl umbrella white

He lost a white umbrella.

Compare now (6.23) - (6.25) with the following:
(6.23a) intransitive/middle

Tôi ngã
I fall

I fell.
(6.24a) transitive/middle/active

Mình ăn một bữa sáng ngon

self eat one gen.cl morning delicious

I had a delicious breakfast.

(6.25a) [NKT] transitive/effective/active

Anh mất một chiếc ô trắng

he lose one gen.cl umbrella white

He lost a white umbrella.

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it will appear clear that (6.23a) - (6.25a) are neutral while (6.23) -
(6.25) sound somewhat marked. This difference in marking can be
attributed to the presence or absence of được and bị: in the active clause the
presence of được or bị has the effect of making it marked.
The fact that desirable/undesirable may be present in all types of
clause and that, except in the case of passive, their presence in clauses with
[active] feature makes them sound marked suggests two points: (i) bị and
được are not passive particles per se but function in that capacity, and (ii) it
may be possible to establish a separate system to account for the
markedness of the presence of desirable/undesirable in clauses with [active]
feature in Vietnamese. This system may be called MARKEDNESS, and the
terms of the system are ‘neutral’ and ‘marked’. The features ‘marked’ and
‘passive’ act as disjunct entry conditions for the systemic choice between
‘desirable’ and ‘undesirable’: that is to say, the choice between the last two
systemic features is applicable either in the environment of ‘passive’ or in
the environment of ‘marked’. The system of MARKEDNESS with its more
delicate choices in concurrence with the systems of PROCESS TYPE,
ERGATIVE, and TRANSITIVE is represented in Figure 6.5 below.

being
PROCESS TYPE projecting
doing
middle
ERGATIVITY
effective
active
transitive VOICE
TRANSITIVITY passive
intransitive
desirable
marked Ì được
MARKEDNESS undesirable
Ì bị
neutral

Figure 6.5. The System of MARKEDNESS and Its More Delicate Choices

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6.5. Types of Material Process

6.5.1. Introduction
It was pointed out in Sections 6.3 and 6.4 that VOICE is a system that is
distributed across the various types of process in the system of PROCESS
TYPE. As far as material process is concerned, (taking the ERGATIVE SYSTEM
as the point of departure) the intersections of material with middle or
effective are said to define in delicacy a number of choices which are
referred to in this context as subtypes of material process. In sections 6.5.2
and 6.5.3 below, I will discuss material middle process and its more delicate
choices. This will be followed by Sections 6.5.4, and 6.5.5 where I will be
concerned with material effective process and its more delicate choices.
6.5.2. The Material Middle Process: Systemic Options
6.5.2.1. Range
To begin with, let me consider the following examples:
(6.26) [TDP]

Thày Năm trở vào

father Nam come in
Actor/Medium Process: material; middle

Father Nam came in(to the house).

(6.27)

Thày Năm chơi cờ

father Nam play chess
Actor/Agent Process: material; middle ?

Father Nam played chess.

What are the characteristics of these clauses? Do they belong to the
same or different type of material process? A cursory glance reveals that
(6.26) and (6.27) have some features in common: they both share the
features [doing; middle] and can permit the probing test Thày Năm làm gì?
(What did Father Nam do?). However, what seems to set them apart is that
there is what Halliday (1994: 167) and Matthiessen (1995: 237) call ‘an

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additional participant’ present in clause (6.27) – cờ (chess). What function

does cờ have in this clause? And in what way does it differ from Goal in a
material effective clause? In an attempt to search for the answer, let me
compare clause (6.27) with clause (6.3) below:
(6.3)

Hắn đánh Tuyết

he beat Tuyet
Actor/Agent Process: material; effective Goal/Medium

He beat Tuyet.
Both clauses (6.27) and (6.3) will be said to have material process on
the ground that they construe the meaning ‘doing’. However, the respect in
which they differ is that while (6.3) is a material effective clause, (6.27),
although it is said to have ‘an additional participant’– cờ (chess), is a
material middle one. This is reflected in the fact that the ‘do to’ question
which is used for probing the material effective clause does not seem to
apply to (6.27). Thus, while it is possible to probe (6.3) by asking Hắn đã làm
gì Tuyết? (What did he do to Tuyet?) to which Hắn đánh cô ấy (He beat her)
would be a possible answer; it would make no sense to probe (6.27) by
asking Thày Năm làm gì cờ? (What did Father Nam do to chess?) and the
answer Thày Năm chơi nó (He played it) would certainly sound odd if not
impossible. This strongly suggests that the function of cờ (chess) in (6.27) is
to be regarded as different, not that of Goal as Tuyết in (6.3).
What this discussion suggests is that although cờ (chess) in (6.27) is
treated as if it is a separate participant in the lexicogrammar, semantically it
is not separate from the Process chơi (played) (cf. Halliday, 1967a, 1994: 148;
Eggins, 1994). In fact, a comparison of (6.27) with (6.3) would show that the
relationship between cờ (chess) and chơi (played) in (6.27) is much closer
than that between Tuyết and đánh (beat) in (6.3). The main reason is that,
unlike Tuyết, cờ (chess) is not an autonomous entity or (object) and cannot
exist independently of the process chơi (played); it is just really ‘the name
for the process’ itself (Halliday, 1994: 147; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004: 192-
94). There is no such thing as cờ other than the act of playing it. The
expression chơi cờ (playing chess) refers to a unified activity where cờ is not
an independent being that is affected by the process; rather it refers to the
quality of the process, specifying its scope or domain. It follows from this

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discussion that the function of cờ is not that of Goal. It is a distinct

transitivity role and following Halliday (1967a, 1994) and Halliday in Kress,
1976), I shall refer to this role as Range (Ra).
Range, as I have argued above, is a distinct function from that of Goal:
unlike Goal, it cannot be probed by the ‘do to’ question’. Apart from this
characteristic, Range may be distinguished from other participant roles,
particularly from Goal, in a number of respects. First, unlike Goal, Range is
typically realised as an inanimate nominal. We often come across common
verbal collocations such as leo/trèo thang (climb the ladder), chơi ghi ta
(play the guitar), nhảy vũ khúc Tây Nguyên (dance/perform a Tay Nguyen
dance) etc., but not leo mèo (climb the cat), chơi người (play people), nhảy
bạn (dance/perform the friend) etc. Secondly, Range has the characteristics
of both a participant and a circumstance. As a participant, it can be realised
as a nominal group such as đàn ghi ta (the guitar) in Tôi chơi đàn ghi ta (I
played the guitar), and can be made Subject in the clause such as Cây đàn
ghi ta này (This guitar) in Cây đàn ghi ta này đã được ông chơi hồi còn bé
(This guitar was played by him when he was young). As a circumstance, it
can be realised by the preposition + nominal complex such as qua + hàng
rào (over the fence) in Hắn nhảy qua hàng rào (He jumped over the fence).
And thirdly, although potentially Range can be conflated with Subject, this
potentiality is much less likely than Goal. In fact, the conflation of Range
with Subject in Vietnamese is very rare, much rarer than that of
Goal/Subject. In my calculation of 1000 clauses from five different text types
in Vietnamese – popular science, news report, short story, fairy tale, and
natural or hard science – only 3 material clauses have Range conflated with
Subject as against 52 clauses where the function of Goal and Subject is
conflated. This strengthens the claim that Range in Vietnamese occurs
typically in middle clauses and Range and Goal are different types of
participant role.
The above discussion has clearly pointed to the fact that there is a
systemic contrast applicable to all material middle processes in Vietnamese:
a systemic choice whose terms are non-ranged v. ranged, exemplified by
(6.26) and (6.27) above, is applicable in the environment of feature middle.
6.5.2.2. Types of Range
The classification of Range may be approached from two distinct
directions: (a) their logico-semantic relation to process (cf. Matthiessen,
1995) and (b) distinctive features which distinguish one class of Range from

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another (cf. Halliday, 1967a, 1994; Eggins, 1994). In a functional model such
as systemic functional linguistics, there is no conflict between these
positions, only a difference of perspective.
In terms of the first view, Range in Vietnamese can be classified into (i)
existential Range, e.g., quyết định (decision) in Thủ trưởng ra quyết định
(The boss has made a decision) and (ii) expanding Range which covers three
subcategories: (ii-a) elaborating Range, e.g., cờ (chess) in Thày Năm chơi cờ
(Father Nam played chess), (ii-b) extending Range, e.g., as điểm (mark) in
Quân được điểm tốt (Quan got a good mark), and (ii-c) enhancing Range,
e.g., as rào (fence) in Họ vượt rào (They jumped the fence); whereas from the
point of view of the distinctive feature, Range in Vietnamese can be
classified into (i) non-autonomous Range and (ii) autonomous Range. The
two are discussed below.

(i) Non-autonomous Range refers to one that does not exist

independently of the process. In fact, as has already been pointed out in the
previous discussion, it might be best to treat this type of Range as a sort of
co-extension or nominalisation of the process (cf. Halliday, 1967a) (see the
discussion of cờ (chess) and the relationship between chơi (played) and cờ
(chess) in clause (6.27).

One important recognition criterion for non-autonomous Range is that

it may be realised by an etymologically cognate item: it is this function that
has been referred to as ‘cognate object’ in traditional grammars. Here the
nominal element realising Range is said to be directly related to the verbal
meaning itself (cf. Robins, 1980, Huddleston, 1984; Quirk et al., 1985; Crystal,
1992, Chalker & Weiner, 1994). Examples of this are điệu nhảy (a dance) and
bài ca (a song) in

(6.28) [TDP]

Họ nhảy một điệu nhảy rất lạ

they dance one gen.cl dance very strange

Ac/Agent Pro: mat; middle Range/Medium

They performed a very strange dance.

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(6.29)

Tôi ca bài ca quan họ

I sing gen.cl song quan ho

Actor/Agent Pro: material; middle Range/Medium

I sang a quan ho (1) folk song.

A second feature that is characteristic of non-autonomous (cognate)
Range in Vietnamese is that the cognate noun which functions as Range
does not occur by itself in the clause. Very often, it is found to co-occur with
an Epithet such as lạ (strange) in Họ nhảy một điệu nhảy rất lạ (They
performed a very strange dance) (6.28) or with a Classifier such as quan họ
(quan ho) in Tôi ca bài ca quan họ (I sang a quan ho folk song) (6.29).
Without such modifiers – Epithet and Classifier – the cognate Range would
be pointless as Huddleston (1984: 193) has pointed out with reference to
English. It would sound somewhat marked in Vietnamese to say only, for
example,
(6.30)

Tôi ngủ một giấc ngủ

I sleep one gen.cl sleep

I slept a sleep
or
(6.31)

Ông ta chết một cái chết

he die one gen.cl death

He died a death
without giving giấc ngủ (a sleep) and cái chết (a death) some quality
such as ngon (sound) or sâu. (deep) and thanh thản (peaceful). Examples:

(1) quan họ is a type of Vietnamese traditional folk songs.

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(6.30a)

Tôi ngủ một giấc ngủ ngon

I sleep one gen.cl sleep sound

I slept a sound sleep.

(6.31a)

Ông ta chết một cái chết thanh thản

he die one gen.cl death peaceful

He died a peaceful death.

(ii) Autonomous Range, by contrast, refers to some entity that exists
independently of the process. It is the entity which indicates the domain or
specifies the scope of the process. Examples are sáo (the flute) and cây (the
tree) in
(6.32) [NÐC]

Chàng thổi sáo

he blow flute
Actor/Agent Process: material; middle Range/Medium

He played the flute.

(6.33)

Thằng Quân đang leo cây

guy Quan aspectual particle climb tree
Actor/Agent Process: material; middle Range/Medium

Quan is climbing the tree.

In these clauses, sáo (the flute) and cây (the tree) are said to exist
independently of the process. And although the purpose of their existence
may be different; i.e., sáo (the flute) may exist solely for the purpose of
playing while cây (the tree) may not exist solely for the purpose of climbing
(cf. Halliday, 1994; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004), they both specify the

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domain over which the processes of thổi (playing) and leo (climbing) take
place.
6.5.3. The Material Effective Process: Creative v. Dispositive
As discussed in Section 6.3, the ERGATIVE system distinguishes as its
primary options between middle and effective. Now, if effective is selected it
will act in conjunction with material as the entry point for two more delicate
choices which are known in systemic functional linguistics as creative and
dispositive process. Note that a similar distinction has also been proposed in
traditional as well as non-systemic functional grammars: affectum object
and effectum object (cf. Fillmore, 1968), goal and object of result (Lyons,
1968), affected goal and effected goal (Dik, 1978), affected object/patient
and unaffected object/patient (Huddleston, 1984). In other words, the
categories are well recognised as is obvious from the currency of the labels.
But so far as grammar is concerned, the question is whether there exist any
grammatical criteria to distinguish the two. In what respect does one differ
from the other? Let me begin with the following examples:
(6.34)

Giáp phá căn nhà

Giap destroy gen.cl house
Actor/Agent Process: material; effective Goal/Medium

Giap destroyed the house.

6.35)

Giáp xây căn nhà

Giap build gen. cl. house
Actor/Agent Process: material; effective Goal/Medium

Giap built the house.

The transitive and ergative analysis of the clauses does not appear to
distinguish them: transitively, both clauses are realised by the structure
Actor^Process: material: effective^Goal and ergatively they are realised as
the configuration of the functions Agent^Process: material:
effective^Medium. What makes one clause distinct from the other seems to
rest on ‘the nature of the impact on the Goal’ (Matthiessen, 1995: 241) by the

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Process. In (6.34) căn nhà (the house) is said to exist prior to and
independently of its being destroyed by the Actor Giáp – the disposer of it. In
(6.35), in contrast, căn nhà (the house) is not yet in existence – it is being
brought into existence as a result of the process of xây (building). It is this
difference that is captured in referring to the process in (6.34) as
‘dispositive’ and to that in (6.35) as ‘creative’ (cf. Halliday, 1985a, 1994;
Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004).
The distinction between the dispositive and the creative process is not
merely a ‘purported’ one; nor does it have a ‘marginal status’ in the
grammar (contra. Dik, 1978: 41). In fact, I would argue that this sub-
classification is not made arbitrarily; it does account for systematic
distinctions in the grammar and is thus coded systemically in Vietnamese.
This is because it has lexicogrammatical relevance. A process of the creative
type, for example, does not permit the ‘do to’ probe while a process of the
dispositive type does. Thus one may respond with clause (6.34) but not with
(6.35) to the question
(6.34a)

Giáp đã làm gì căn nhà?

Giap aspectual particle do what generic classifier house

What did Giap do to the house?

It is an aspect of the same distinction that while clause (6.34) has

clause (6.34b) as a paraphrase, clause (6.35a) is not acceptable as a
paraphrase of clause (6.35).
(6.34b)

Việc mà Giáp tác động vào căn nhà là phá nó

event that Giap impact to gen.cl house be destroy it

What Giap did to the house was destroy it.

(6.35a) *

Việc mà Giáp tác động vào căn nhà là xây nó

event that Giap impact to gen.cl house be build it

What Giap did to the house was build it.

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These considerations suggest that the choice between creative v.

dispositive is a systemic one.
6.5.4. The Material Effective Dispositive Process: Systemic Options
6.5.4.1. Benefactive v. Non-benefactive
In Section 6.5.3 above the system dispositive v. creative was discussed.
In this section an attempt is made to explore a more delicate systemic
contrast derived from the entry point dispositive, that between benefactive
and non-benefactive. To get an idea of what is meant by the terms
‘benefactive’ and ‘non-benefactive’, let me consider the following examples:
(6.34) dispositive: non-benefactive

Giáp phá căn nhà

Giap destroy gen.cl house
Actor/Agent Process: material; effective Goal/Medium

Giap destroyed the house.

(6.36) dispositive: benefactive

Giáp gửi một món quà cho me

Giap send one gen.cl present to mother
Actor/Agent Pro: mat; eff Goal/Medium ?

Giap sent a present to his mother.

The analysis of (6.34) and (6.36) shows that they have a number of
features in common: they both have the systemic features [doing; effective:
dispositive] and can permit the ‘do to’ probing test. However, a close
examination of these clauses will reveal that the kind of doing (6.36)
construes is not the same as that construed in (6.34). This is because, unlike
(6.34), (6.36) has a third participant which is traditionally known as ‘indirect
object’ – cho mẹ (to his mother). Therefore, it would be more appropriate to
say that (6.36) construes a kind of ‘transfer’. A transfer, as always, implies (i)
someone or some entity who does the transfer, e.g., Giáp; (ii) an object
being transferred, e.g., một món quà (a present); and (iii) someone or some
entity who benefits from the process of transferring, e.g., cho mẹ (to his
mother). Here (i) and (ii) have the transitivity function of Actor and Goal
respectively. But what about (iii)? What label should be given to it?

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Following the established systemic functional conventions I shall refer to

this function as Beneficiary (Ben), and the clause in which this Beneficiary
occurs as material: effective: dispositive: benefactive clause.
There are both semantic and lexicogrammatical criteria for
distinguishing Beneficiary from other participant roles, particularly from
Goal and Range. Semantically, if Goal is defined as ‘the entity to which the
process is extended’ (cf. Section 6.2.2.1), Range, as ‘the scope or domain over
which the process takes place’ (cf. Halliday, 1994: 146-49), Beneficiary can be
broadly defined as ‘the one for whom or to whom the process is said to take
place’ (Halliday, 1994: 144; see also Eggins, 1994; Halliday & Matthiessen,
2004). Lexicogrammatically, Beneficiary differs from Goal and Range in a
number of ways. First, like Range, Beneficiary may be realised either as a
participant or as a circumstance. The lexicogrammatical implication is that
Beneficiary may enter the process indirectly as a prepositional phrase
(circumstance-like) such as cho mẹ (to his mother) in (6.36) or directly as a
nominal group (participant-like) such as mẹ (his mother) in
(6.36a)

Giáp gửi mẹ một món quà

Giap send mother one gen.cl present

Actor/Agent Pro: mat; eff Beneficiary Goal/Medium

Giap sent his mother a present.

Secondly, unlike Range, Beneficiary is typically human, e.g., mẹ

(mother) in (6.36) and (6.36a). This is not to say that Beneficiary function
cannot be assigned to an inanimate entity, although this is not typical, it is
permissible e.g., cây (the plant) and lúa (the rice) are in the following:
(6.37)

Tôi tưới nước cho cây

I pour water for tree

Actor/Agent Pro: mat; effective Goal/Medium Beneficiary

I am giving the plant some water.

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(6.38)

Họ đang bón phân cho lúa

They asp.ptcl feed fertiliser for rice

Actor/Agent Pro: mat; eff Goal/Medium Beneficiary

They are giving the rice some fertiliser.

And thirdly, like Goal, Beneficiary can be made Subject in the clause. In
fact, in Vietnamese the potentiality of Beneficiary to be conflated with
Subject is greater than that of Range. In my calculation of 1000 clauses from
five different text types in Vietnamese – popular science, news report, short
story, fairy tale, and natural or hard science – only 3 material clauses have
Range conflated with Subject as against 8 clauses where the function of
Beneficiary and Subject is conflated. An example of Beneficiary/Subject
conflation is presented below:
(6.39)

Long được tôi đưa cho một món quà

Long pass. I give to one gen.cl present
ptcl.
Ben/Subject Ac/Agent Pro: mat Goal/Medium

Long was given a present by me.

6.5.4.2. Recipient v. Client

If the systemic feature benefactive is selected, this will function as an
entry point for a more delicate systemic choice: the options in this system
are recipient v. client. Consider the following examples:
(6.40a) [NKT] benefactive: recipient

Hắn đưa bức thư cho bà cụ

he give gen.cl letter to old lady

Actor/Agent Pro: material; effective Goal/Medium Ben: recipient

He gave a letter to the old lady.

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(6.40b) benefactive: recipient

Hắn đưa cho bà cụ bức thư

he give to old lady gen.cl letter
Actor/Agent Pro: mat; effective Ben: recipient Goal/Medium

He gave the old lady a letter.

(6.41a) benefactive: client

Hắn vẽ bức tranh cho bà cụ

he paint gen.cl picture for old lady
Actor/Agent Pro: mat; effective Goal/Medium Ben: client

He painted a picture for the old lady.

(6.41b) benefactive: client

Hắn vẽ cho bà cụ bức tranh

he paint for old lady gen.cl picture
Actor/Agent Pro: mat; eff Ben: client Goal/Medium

He painted the old lady a picture.

The analysis of the above examples shows that (6.40a) and (6.40b)
have the function of Recipient (Rec) and (6.41a) and (6.41b) have the
function of Client (Cli). (6.40a) and (6.41a) are alike in that the Beneficiary
functions, though they differ in delicacy, occur in clause-final position while
(6.40b) and (6.41b) are alike in that, though they differ in delicacy, occur in
post-process position. In all cases the preposition cho (to/for) is present.
This raises the question: is there justification for recognising this more
delicate choice between Recipient and Client?
A close examination of the above clauses shows that there are both
semantic and lexicogrammatical criteria for distinguishing Recipient from
Client. Semantically, what makes (6.40a) and (6.40b) distinct from (6.41a)
and (6.41b) is that in (6.40a) and (6.40b) Recipient is ‘one that goods are
given to’ (Halliday, 1994: 145) while in (6.40b) and (6.41b) Client is ‘one that
services are done to’ (Halliday ibid.). Lexicogrammatically, Recipient may be
distinguished from Client by at least two criteria. First, while in the clause of

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the recipient type Recipient can occur naturally without the preposition cho
(to), in the post-process position, in the clause of the client type the
presence of cho (for) in the same position is obligatory. Thus, while (6.40b)
can either take the form
(6.40b) [NKT] benefactive: recipient (+ cho)

Tôi đưa cho bà cụ bức thư

I give to old lady gen.cl letter
Actor/Agent Pro: mat; eff Beneficiary: recipient Goal/Medium

I gave (to) the old lady a letter.

or
(6.40c) benefactive: recipient (-cho )

Tôi đưa bà cụ bức thư

I give old lady gen.cl letter

Actor/Agent Pro: mat; eff Beneficiary: recipient Goal/Medium

I gave the old lady a letter.

(6.41b) can permit only the form
(6.41b) benefactive:client (+cho )

Hắn vẽ cho bà cụ bức tranh

he paint for old lady gen.cl picture

Actor/Agent Pro: mat; eff Beneficiary: client Goal/Medium

He painted the old lady a picture.

but not
(6.41c) * (-cho )

Hắn vẽ bà cụ bức tranh

he paint old lady gen.cl picture

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The obligatory and optional occurrence of cho (to/for) in recipient and

client clauses in clause-final position and in the position following the
process can be tabulated as follows:

post-process position clause-final position

Recipient ± +
Client + +

Table 6.2. Recipient and Client Distinction in Relation to the Occurrence of

cho in Position Following the Process and in Clause-Final Position
In the cases discussed so far the Beneficiary function is not conflated
with Subject. The second criterion for distinguishing Recipient from Client
concerns whether or not either function can occur naturally without cho
when it is conflated with Subject. Here it is interesting to note that only
clause of the Recipient/Subject type can permit the absence of cho. Thus,
while a Recipient/Subject clause such as (6.40b) can take as its passive
version either
(6.40d) Recipient/Subject (+cho)

Bà cụ được hắn đưa cho một món quà

old lady pass. ptcl he give to one gen.cl present

Recipient Ac/Ag Pro: mat; eff Goal/Medium

Subject Agent Predicator Complement

The old lady was given (to) a present by him.

or
(6.40e) Recipient/Subject (-cho)

Bà cụ được hắn đưa một món quà

old lady pass. ptcl. he give one gen.cl present

Recipient Ac/Ag Pro: mat; eff Goal/Medium

Subject Agent Predicator Complement

The old lady was given a present by him.

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a Client/Subject clause such as (6.40b) can take as its passive version only
(6.41d) Client/Subject (+cho)

Bà cụ được hắn vẽ cho bức tranh

old lady pass. ptcl. he paint for gen.cl picture

Client Ac/Ag Pro: mat; eff Goal/Medium

Subject Agent Predicator Complement

The old lady was painted a picture by him.

but not
(6.41e) * Client/Subject (-cho)

Bà cụ được hắn vẽ một bức tranh

old lady pass.ptcl he paint one gen.cl picture

6.6. Summary
This section has been concerned with the grammar of material
transitivity in Vietnamese. I established the criteria for identifying and
distinguishing material process from other process options in the language.
Realising the importance of voice in the interpretation of different process
options, I devoted two major sections to discussing (i) two perspectives on
voice: the ergative and the transitive and (ii) some conflicting views on
whether or not voice exists as a grammatical category in Vietnamese. Then
drawing on the insights of systemic functional theory, I made an attempt to
interpret the system of VOICE in the language. The remainder of the chapter
explored in some detail a number of basic options available in the
environment of material process such as middle: ranged/non-ranged,
effective: creative/dispositive, dispositive: benefactive/non-benefactive, and
benefactive: recipient/client. Figure 6.6 represents these options taking
material + middle and material + effective as the conjunct entry points. In
the following section I turn to a brief discussion of behavioural process.

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being

projecting
behavioural
doing creative
material non-benefactive
dispositive recipient
benefactive Ì +Rec
client
Ì +Cli
effective
Ì +Ag
ranged
middle Ì +Ra
non-ranged

Figure 6.6. Material TRANSITIVITY in Vietnamese: Basic Choices

6.7. The Behavioural Process

6.7.1. Criteria for Identifying the Behavioural Process
Consider the following extract:
Extract 6C
||| Gyưng vượt cạn gian khổ cực thế || nhưng không hề gì. ||| Còn Diao, chừng
ba tháng sau, [[đang khỏe mạnh ]] nhuốm bệnh nửa ngày || lăn ra chết nhanh
như ngủ. ||| Cả nhà than khóc.|| Người trong buôn mang rượu ghè đến, ||
uống || và khóc suốt buổi. |||
|| Người ta buộc xác Diao vào trụ nhà.||| Nhưng một ông già đến,|| ngửi khắp
xác chết,|| hách xì mấy cái thật to,|| rồi bắt tháo ra.||| (TDP)
||| Gyung had experienced much hardship in giving birth to the baby || but
she could survive well.||| But Diao, normally in good health, three months
later suddenly fell ill for half a day ||| and died soon afterwards (as easily as a
man could fall asleep). ||| The whole family cried.|| The people of the
commune brought the ‘ghe’ alcohol to the house.|| They drank || and cried all
night.|||
|| Diao’s body was tied to one of the pillars in the house.|| But then an old
man came.||| He sniffed all over the dead body, || sneezed very loudly several
times, || and told the people to untie it.|||

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I would draw attention to the following clauses:

(6.42)

Họ uống
they drink

They drank.
(6.43)

Họ khóc cả buổi
they cry all session

They cried all night.

(6.44)

Ông già ngửi khắp xác chết

man old sniff over body dead

The old man sniffed all over the dead body.

(6.45)

Ông già hách xì mấy cái thật to

man old sneeze some gen.cl really loud

The old man sneezed very loudly several times.

If one holds that the above clauses belong to one and the same super-
ordinate process type, one has to admit the fact that they seem to have no
clearly defined characteristics of their own. This is because they may have
some feature of a material process (perhaps all of the above clauses), some
feature of a verbal process, e.g., khóc (cried) in (6.43), and some feature of a
mental process, e.g., ngửi (sniffed) in (6.44) and hách xì (sneezed) in (6.45).
Halliday (1985a, 1994, and elsewhere) and Eggins (1994) describe the
corresponding clauses in English as a ‘half-way house’ between material and
mental processes. Halliday (ibid.) labels such processes as behavioural and
defines them as processes of ‘physiological and psychological behaviour’
(Halliday, 1994: 139; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004: 248).

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Behaviour by itself involves some entity or someone who is ‘behaving’,

e.g., Họ (They) in (6.42) and (6.43) and Ông già (The old man) in (6.44) and
(6.45). I shall refer to this inherent role as Behaver (Beh). Behaviour may
also (but not quite necessarily) involve some entity or something that is
being ‘behaved towards’, e.g., mấy cái thật to (literally, some generic
classifier (sneezing) really loud) in (6.45). I shall refer to this non-inherent
role as Phenomenon (Phen). Lexicogrammatically, the typical structure of a
behavioural process in Vietnamese can be represented as follows:
Behaver^Process: behavioural^(‘Phenomenon’)
As a process option lying on the borderline between material, mental,
and verbal, behavioural processes display some features in common with all
the three. They are partly material processes in the sense that in many of the
behavioural processes in Vietnamese Phenomenon behaves somewhat like a
goal at which the behaviour is said to be targeted such as Tao nhìn mày
(literally, I look you (I’m looking at you)), Nó đang nghe đài (literally, He
listen radio (He is listening to the radio)) and so on. Further, like Goal in
material process, in many of the behavioural processes Phenomenon can be
made Subject. For example:
(6.46)

Thằng ấy bị con Hoa nó lườm

he pass. ptcl gen.cl Hoa she stare
Phenomenon Behaver Process: behavioural

He was stared at by Hoa.

(6.45a)

Xác chết được một ông già ngửi

body dead pass. ptcl one man old sniff
Phenomenon Behaver Process: behavioural

The dead body was sniffed by the old man.

One more piece of evidence for claiming that behavioural processes are
partly material has to do with the fact that they can be probed in the normal
way for both material middle and material effective processes. For example,
it is possible in Vietnamese to probe clause (6.42) by asking:

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(6.42a)

Họ làm gì thế?

they do what q.ptcl

What did they do?

and the appropriate answer would be
(6.42)

Họ uống

they drink

Behaver Process: behavioural

They drank
Similarly, a clause such as Hắn lườm tôi (literally, he stare I ‘He stared at
me’) can be probed by asking either
(6.47a)

Nó làm gì mày thế?

he do what you q.ptcl

What did he do to you?

or
(6.47b)

Cái gì đấy mày?

what that you

What happened to you?

Behavioural processes are partly mental and partly verbal in the sense
that their Medium/Behaver is typically realised by a conscious being. Thus, it
is natural to say

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 Chapter 6 • DOING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

(6.45)

Ông già ngửi khắp xác chết

man old sniff over body dead
Behaver Process: behavioural Circumstance: location

The old man sniffed all over the dead body.

but not
(6.48)*

Cái kim ngửi khắp xác chết

generic classifier needle sniff over body dead

The needle sniffed all over the dead body

Further, like mental and verbal processes, a number of behavioural
processes can take Macrophenomenon (i.e., Phenomenon that is realised by
a clause) (see Chapter 7, Sections 7.2.3 and 7.4.3). For example:
(6.49)

Mẹ nhìn Quân học

mother look Quan study
Behaver Process: behavioural Macrophenomenon

Mother watched Quan study.

Unlike both mental and verbal processes, however, most behavioural
processes cannot project. It is not possible to say
(6.50a) *

Họ uống rằng hôm nay trời đep lắm

they drink that today sky beautiful very

They drank that it’s a very nice day today.

or
(6.50b) *

Họ uống: “ Hôm nay trời đẹp lắm”

they drink today sky beautiful very

They drank: “it’s a very nice day today”

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

However, behavioural projections may appear in narrative or fictional

narrative, as a means of attaching a behavioural feature to the verbal
process of saying (cf. Halliday, 1994). For example:

(6.51) Sau lưng ông có kẻ đã cười diễu: “Ông ẩm IC rồi”. [ÐL]

Once behind his back someone laughed at him jeeringly: “you are
abnormal”.

Sau lưng ông có kẻ đã cười diễu:

behind back he exist someone asp.ptcl laugh jeeringly

“Ông ẩm IC rồi”
Mr wet IC already

6.7.2. Types of Behavioural Process

Like English, behavioural processes in Vietnamese too can be tentatively
classified into: intro-active and inter-active behavioural processes (cf.
Matthiessen, 1995). The difference between these two subtypes is that the
Behaver in an inter-active process may be realised by a nominal group complex
where the two (or more) nominal groups are logically related by extension
such as Chị và tôi (She and I) in (6.52) below. In other words Chị và tôi (She and
I) here are co-participants of the same process:
(6.52)

Chị và tôi ngắm nhìn bông hoa

she and I gaze gen.cl flower
Behaver Process: behavioural Phenomenon

She and I gazed at the flower.

This also explains the possibility of the choice of Circumstance of
accompaniment as in (6.53):
(6.53)

Họ hát với cô
they sing with she
Behaver Process: behavioural Circumstance: accompaniment

They sang with her.

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 Chapter 6 • DOING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

One more feature of inter-active behavioural process is that when the

extension occurs within the Behaver, a reciprocal pronoun với nhau (each
other) functioning as Circumstance of accompaniment may be added in
clause-final position. For example:
(6.54)

Ðình và Dung nói chuyện với nhau

Dinh and Dzung chat with each other
Behaver Process: behavioural Circ: accompaniment

Dinh and Dzung chatted with each other.

1
These features are not found in intro-active behavioural processes( ).
Behavioural processes can also be classified with respect to the domain
they share with other process types:
(i) Para-material: processes which are typically realised by verbs such as ho
(cough), ngáp (yawn), hát (sing), thở (breathe), quỳ (kneel), ngủ (sleep) etc.

(ii) Para-verbal: processes which are typically realised by verbs such as thì
thầm (murmur/whisper), bi bô (babble), cằn nhằn (grunt), càu nhàu (mutter),
lụng bụng (grumble) etc.
(iii) Para-mental: processes which cover three subcategories: (for detail, see
Chapter 7, Section 7.3)

(iii-a) Cognitive: processes which are typically realised by verbs such as nghĩ
(think), cân nhắc (ponder), mơ (dream), ngẫm nghĩ (meditate), băn khoăn
(worry), dằn vặt (obsess) etc.

(iii-b) Affective: processes which are typically realised by verbs such as cười
(laugh), khóc (cry), rên rỉ (moan), hò hét/la ó (clamour), ợ (burp), mỉm cười
(smile) etc.

(iii-c) Perceptive: processes which are typically realised by verbs such as

quan sát (watch/observe), nghe (listen), nhìn (look), sờ (feel/touch), ngồi
(sniff/smell), nếm (taste) etc.

It is interesting to note that although in Vietnamese, verbs of the para-

mental type indicate their relationship with mental processes; many of them
in fact contrast with their mental process synonyms. This can be recognised

(1) For an interesting discussion of these features of the inter-active process in relation
to the delicate grammar of share in English, see Hasan (1987: 202-06).

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by the fact that when they realise behavioural processes they are simple
verbs. However, when they realise mental processes they often take the
compound form with the morpheme thấy or sometimes ra (see or realise) as
the suffix. Below are given some example:

Behavioural verbs Mental verbs

Vietnamese English translation Vietnamese English translation
nhìn look nhìn thấy see/realise
sờ touch/feel sờ thấy find out (by feeling/touching)
ngửi sniff/smell ngửi thấy find out (by sniffing/smelling)
nghe listen nghe thấy hear
tìm search/look for tìm thấy find out
mơ dream mơ thấy dream of

Now if we take behavioural as the entry point, a tentative network of

behavioural processes in Vietnamese may be diagrammed as follows:

intro-active

inter-active

Behavioural para-material

para-verbal
cognitive
para-mental affective
perceptive

Figure 6.7. Behavioural Process in Vietnamese: a Tentative System Network

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 Chapter 6 • DOING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

6.8. Concluding Remarks

This chapter has been concerned with the grammar of doing processes
construed at the clause rank in Vietnamese. Vietnamese doing processes
were grouped under two primary process options: the material and the
behavioural. Throughout the description, an attempt was made to establish
both definition and recognition criteria for each process type as well as for
their more delicate choices. Materials processes typically construe ‘doings’ or
‘happenings’ and are realised by the structure Actor^Process: material^
(‘Goal’); and behavioural processes construe ‘physiological and psychological
behaviour’ and are realised by the structure Behaver^ Process: behavioural^
(‘Phenomenon’). It is clear from the description that there are features that
make material processes and behavioural processes distinctive as separate
categories. However, there are also features that they share with other types
of process. This strongly suggests that like any grammatical categories these
process options, in particular, cannot and should not be regarded as discrete
or absolute but as overlapping (cf. Halliday in Kress, 1976; Halliday, 1994,
1996; Shore, 1992; Matthiessen 1995; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004; Hoàng
Văn Vân, 2005). This fuzziness of grammatical categories can also be seen in
projecting and being processes to which I now turn in the next two
chapters.

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CHAPTER 7
PROJECTING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

7.1. Introduction
Every day encounters do not rest only on how speakers make sense of
(or represent) what goes on in the outer world. This means that in
exchanging information as well as goods-&-services, apart from using
material and behavioural processes like those discussed in Chapter 6,
speakers of a language also select other process options to talk about what
they sense – think, perceive, feel, and long for, and what someone says to
someone else. These ‘goings-on’ in the inner world or processes of ‘human-
like consciousness’ (Halliday, 1994; Shore, 1992; Halliday & Matthiessen,
2004) are the main concern of this chapter. They constitute what may be
referred to as projecting processes. The same three questions, which were
raised for exploring doing processes in Chapter 6, will be raised also for
exploring projecting processes in this chapter:
1. What are projecting processes in Vietnamese?
2. What are the semantic (definition) and lexicogrammatical
(recognition) criteria for identifying projecting processes and
distinguishing them from other process options – the ‘doing’ and
the ‘being’ – in the transitivity system of Vietnamese?
3. What are the main options available in the environment of
‘projecting’ in Vietnamese?
As specified in Figure 5.5, Page 124, ‘projecting’ is the entry point for
the two process options ‘mental’ and ‘verbal’ in the transitivity system of
Vietnamese. I shall address these process options in turn in the sections that
follow.

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 Chapter 7 • PROJECTING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

7.2. The Mental Process

7.2.1. Identifying the Mental Process: Definition
Consider the following examples:
(7.1) [NM]

Tuyết yêu tôi

Tuyet love I

Tuyet loves me.

(7.2) [NMC]

Tôi thấy vẻ buồn trên khuôn mặt bà

I see bearing sadness on frame face she

I saw an air of sadness in her face.

(7.3) [HÐQ]

Tầm hai giờ chiều tôi tìm thấy nhà Năm Minh
around two hour afternoon I find house Nam Minh

At about two o’clock, I found Nam Minh’s house.

(7.4)

Người già muốn sự thoải mái

people old want gen.cl comfort

Old people want comfort.

(7.5) [NMC]

Bu thương thằng Hòa lắm

mother love gen.cl Hoa much

I (Mother) love Hoa very much.

By comparison with the processes discussed in Chapter 6, clauses (7.1) -
(7.5) do not represent the concrete and tangible world of ‘doings’ or
‘happenings’; rather they construe the world of ‘human consciousness’ (cf.

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Halliday, 1970, 1994; Shore 1992; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004; Matthiessen,
1995; Butt, Fahey, Spinks, & Yallop, 1995). These processes are concerned
with the activities of the mind such as yêu (loves) in (7.1), thấy (saw) in (7.2),
tìm thấy (found) in (7.3), muốn (want) in (7.4), thương (love) in (7.5) rather
than with those of the body such as đánh (beating), đi (walking), cho
(giving) etc. Their domain of experience is ‘sensation’ rather than ‘action’ (cf.
Bell, 1991; Matthiessen, 1995). In systemic functional theory, processes of
this type are referred to as mental processes. So from above, mental
processes can be broadly defined as those that typically construe the inner
world of consciousness or ‘sensings of various kinds’ (Matthiessen, 1995:
256). This constitutes the definition criterion for mental processes in
Vietnamese.
7.2.2. Identifying the Mental Process: Recognition Criteria
The grammar of the Vietnamese mental process differs from that of
other processes, especially the material, in the following respects, and each
of which is discussed in the following sections.
(i) The number of participants
(ii) Appropriate probe
(iii) Strong collocation of mental process with circumstance: manner:
degree
(iv) The nature of Senser
(v) The nature of Phenomenon
(vi) Projection
7.2.2.1. The Number of Participants
A sensing usually requires some entity or someone who ‘senses’, e.g.,
Tuyết in example (7.1), Tôi (I) in (7.2) and (7.3), Người già (Old people) in
(7.4) and Bu (I, literally, mother) in (7.5). It also implies some entity or
something that is being ‘sensed’, e.g., tôi (I) in (7.1), vẻ buồn (an air of
sadness) in (7.2), nhà Năm Minh (Nam Minh’s house) in (7.3), sự thoải mái
(comfort) in (7.4), and thằng Hòa (Hoa) in (7.5). In systemic functional
theory, the participant that ‘senses’ is referred to as Senser (Sen), and the
one that is ‘sensed’ is referred to as Phenomenon (Phen) (cf. Halliday,
1994; Eggins, 1994; Matthiessen, 1995; Martin, 1996a; Halliday & Matthiessen,
2004). Thus, unlike material processes which may have one, two, or even

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 Chapter 7 • PROJECTING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

three participants, a mental process in Vietnamese typically involves two key

participants. Even when one participant is not overtly present in the
syntagm it can still be understood or retrieved from the context. When
someone utters the clause Tôi biết (I know/understand), for example, it
always implies Tôi biết một người nào đó (I know someone) or Tôi biết một
cái gì đó (I know something). The typical structure of a mental process in
Vietnamese can be represented as follows:
Senser^Process: mental^Phenomenon
The fact that a mental process may involve two key participants implies
that in terms of the transitive model, it is always transitive. To use Hasan’s
(1985c) terminology, it has an -er participant, i.e., Senser comparable to
Actor, and an -ed participant, comparable to Goal. However, from the point
of view of the ergative model a mental process clause can be either middle
or effective. This is because the transitive and ergative functions conflate
differently in a mental process clause. As Chapter 6 shows, in the material
clause at least in the active voice, the ergative function Agent can never be
conflated with Goal, i.e., whatever is Agent will also be Actor, e.g., Hắn (He)
in Hắn đánh Tuyết (He beat Tuyet). The reverse is, however, not true: thus in
Bác sĩ Khoa đến muộn (Dr Khoa came late), where Bác sĩ Khoa (Dr Khoa) is
Actor but instead of being Agent, must be seen as Medium, since there is no
external instigation. By contrast, in a mental process clause, the situation is
different: here the Phenomenon (the participant that is not Actor and so by
exclusion can be seen as more Goal-like) may conflate with Agent even when
the clause is active. These points can be illustrated in the following
examples:
(7.6) transitive/middle

Mọi người tin cách lí giải của ông ta

everyone believe way explanation of he

Tran Senser Pro: ment Phenomenon

Erg Medium Pro: ment Range

Everyone believed his explanation.

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(7.7) transitive/effective

Cách lí giải của ông ta thuyết phục mọi người

way explanation of he convince everyone
Tran Phenomenon Pro: mental Senser
Erg Agent Pro: mental Medium

His explanation convinced everyone.

The analysis above shows that each clause has two participants: Senser
and Phenomenon. The voice in both clauses is active, since it is possible to
cite their passive agnates as clauses (7.6a) and (7.7a), respectively:
(7.6a) [passive]

Cách lí giải của ông ta được mọi người tin

way explanation of he pass.ptcl everyone believe
Phenomenon Senser Pro: ment
Range Medium Pro: ment

His explanation was believed by everyone.

(7.7a) [passive]

Mọi người bị cách lí giải của ông ta thuyết phục

everyone pass.ptcl. way explanation of he convince
Senser Phenomenon Pro: ment
Medium Agent Pro: ment

Everyone was convinced by his explanation.

However, the asymmetry in the ordering of the Actor-like and Goal-like
elements in the syntagm is notable. In (7.6), there can be no Agent: the
process of tin (believing) is clearly ‘self-engendering’; thus Senser has to be
seen as Medium, and cách lí giải của ông ta (his explanation) which in the
transitive analysis is the Phenomenon, must be viewed from the ergative
point of view as Range, specifying the domain of the process (see Chapter 6,
Section 6.5.2). At this point then, we have to acknowledge that the
resemblance of Phenomenon to Goal is only partial, just as the resemblance

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 Chapter 7 • PROJECTING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

of Agent to Senser is also partial. In (7.7), the process is externally

instigated: the activity of thuyết phục (convincing) is caused by the Agent
Cách lí giải của ông ta (His explanation) which in the transitive analysis must
still be seen as Phenomenon; the Senser, i.e., mọi người (everyone) is
Medium; it is through this Medium that the activity of being convinced is
actualised. This discussion indicates that to account for the various aspects
of the mental process clauses we do need both perspectives: the transitive
and the ergative, and that the feature middle is not identical with the
feature intransitive anymore than the feature effective is identical with the
feature transitive. The two analyses present two complementary
perspectives on the clause, as Halliday (1994, 1996) and Hoàng Văn Vân
(2006b) have maintained.
7.2.2.2. Appropriate Probe
In Chapter 6, Sections 6.2.2.3 and 6.2.3, I discussed appropriate probes
for material process. In particular, it was pointed out that the probes differ
according to more delicate features of the process. This also applies to
mental process. With mental middle process, for example, clearly the ‘do to’
probe is not applicable just as it is not in material middle process. It would
make no sense to probe mental middle processes such as (7.1) and (7.6) by
asking
(7.1a)

Tuyết làm gì tôi?

Tuyet do what I

What does Tuyet do to me?

and
(7.6b)

Mọi người làm gì cách lí giải của ông ta?

everyone do what way explanation of he

What did everyone do to his explanation?

while the answer to each question is supposed to be

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

(7.1) transitive/middle

Tuyết yêu tôi

Tuyet love me
Senser/Medium Process: mental Phenomenon/Range

Tuyet loves me.

and
(7.6) transitive/middle

Mọi người tin cách lí giải của ông ta

everyone believe way explanation of he
Sen/Medium Process: mental Phenomenon/Range

Everyone believed his explanation.

With these clauses, it would make more sense to probe by asking
(7.1b)

Tuyết cảm thấy thế nào về tôi?

Tuyet feel how about I

What does Tuyet feel about me?

and
(7.6c)

Mọi người nghĩ gì về cách lí giải của ông ta?

everyone think what about way explanation of he

What did everyone think about his explanation?

The above discussion suggests that the general probe for mental
middle process may be X nghĩ / cảm thấy / biết gì về Y? (What does X feel /
think / know about?).
With mental effective process, however, the ‘do to’ probe is on border
line, instead of ‘do to’ we can ask ‘do for’ and the effective clause appears to
be an appropriate answer. For example:

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 Chapter 7 • PROJECTING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

(7.7b)

Cách lí giải của ông ta đã làm gì cho mọi người?

way explanation of he asp.ptcl do what for everyone

What did his explanation do for everyone?

(7.7) transitive/effective

Cách lí giải của ông ta thuyết phục họ

way explanation of he convince they
Phenomenon/Agent Pro: mental Senser/Medium

His explanation convinced them.

7.2.2.3. Strong Collocation of Mental Process with Circumstance:
manner: degree

A third characteristic that makes mental processes distinct from other

types of process, particularly the material, has to do with the fact that there
is a strong collocation of mental process verbs, particularly those of the
cognitive and emotive types (discussed in Sections 7.3.2 and 7.3.4 below)
and what Matthiessen (1995: 280) refers to with reference to English as
‘Circumstantial manner of degree’ or ‘Circumstantial manner of
intensification’, where intensity is construed not only in terms of general
specifications of high degree such as rất (very), rất lắm/nhiều lắm (very
much/a great deal) but also in terms of, to use Matthiessen’s (ibid.) term,
‘vertical space’, e.g., thắm thiết/một cách sâu sắc (deeply/profoundly), or of
‘coverage’, e.g., hoàn toàn (completely), tuyệt đối (absolutely) etc. Below are
given some examples:
(7.8) [NMC]

Bu rất thương thằng Hòa

mother very love gen.cl Hoa

Senser Circ: man: degree Process: mental Phenomenon

I (Mother) love Hoa very much.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

(7.9) [CD]

Anh yêu em thắm thiết vô cùng

brother love junior deep very

Senser Pro: mental Phenomenon Circ: manner: degree/space

I love you very deeply.

(7.10)

Ông ấy hoàn toàn hiểu vấn đề

he completely understand problem

Senser Circ: man: degree/coverage Pro: mental Phenomenon

He completely understood the problem.

Note that in Vietnamese material processes can collocate with what
may be referred to as Circumstantial manner of quantity such as the
following:
(7.11)

Hắn đánh Tuyết rất nhiều

he beat Tuyet very many

Actor/Agent Pro: mat Goal/Medium Circ: man: quantity

He beat Tuyet a lot.

However material clauses with Circumstantial manner of degree such
as (7.12) and (7.13) are unacceptable:
(7.12) *

Hắn rất đánh Tuyết

he very beat Tuyet

He very beat Tuyet

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 Chapter 7 • PROJECTING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

(7.13) *

Hắn hoàn toàn đánh Tuyết

he completely beat Tuyet

He completely beat Tuyet

The fact that mental processes, particularly those of the cognitive and
emotive types, can collocate with Circumstantial manner of degree and that
material processes do not have this potentiality suggests that this
collocational patterning can act as a valid criterion for a majority of mental
process types in Vietnamese.
7.2.2.4. The Nature of Senser
A fourth criterion for mental processes in Vietnamese derives from a
consideration of the participant function. Here the function especially
relevant is what Hasan (1985c) calls the ‘-er role’ and Eggins (1994: 234) the
‘active participant’. This subsumes such transitivity functions as Actor,
Behaver, Senser, Sayer etc.
It was pointed out in Chapter 6 that so far as material process is
concerned, the nominal group realising the function Actor is relatively
unrestricted: it may or may not be animate, and if animate, it may or may
not be human. By contrast, the Senser can be realised only by nominal
groups with the feature [+human]. Thus for material processes, we may
have, for example, Quả táo (The apple: inanimate) rơi (The apple fell), or Khỉ
con (The little monkey: animate/non-human) rơi (The little monkey fell), or
Thằng bé (The little boy: human) ngã (The little boy fell). For mental
processes, however, while it would be unremarkable to say Tôi (I: human)
nhớ bạn (I missed my friend), it would be somewhat marked to say Khỉ con
(The little monkey: animate/non-human) nhớ bạn (The little monkey missed
its/his/her friends), or, even more highly marked to say Quả táo (The apple:
non-human/inanimate) nhớ bạn (The apple missed its friends).
However, the assertion that the Senser must always be human does
not necessarily mean that only human nominal can realise this role. In fact,
in Vietnamese, mental processes with non-human nominal Senser such as
Khỉ con nhớ bạn (The little monkey missed its/his/her friends) and Quả táo
nhớ bạn (The apple missed its friends) can still occur, but if so, the contexts
in which they occur would be quite restricted, e.g., in fairy tales, magical

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accounts etc. In these instances, the speaker is said to have personified or, to
be more specific, anthropomorphised the Senser; so that even when these
clauses are used in an appropriate context, they construe the Senser Khỉ con
(The little monkey) or Quả táo (The apple) as a being that can feel, think,
perceive, or react like human beings. This feature is typical of Senser in
mental processes.
7.2.2.5. The Nature of Phenomenon
A fifth characteristic that distinguishes mental process from other
process options concerns the nature of Phenomenon. As Halliday remarks
with reference to English:
the set of things that can take on this role (Phenomenon) is not restricted to
any particular semantic or grammatical category; it is actually wider than the
set of possible participants in a material process. It may be not only a ‘thing’
but also a ‘fact’. (Halliday, 1994: 115)
In the subsections that follow, I shall discuss the nature of
Phenomenon by (i) making a brief comparison between Phenomenon and
Goal and (ii) attempting to draw a system network for the different
Phenomenal options in Vietnamese.
(i) Phenomenon and Goal: a brief comparison. A brief discussion of
Phenomenon and Goal has already been presented (see Sections 7.2.2.1 and
7.2.2.2). In this section the focus of my enquiry is the sorts of entities that
can function as Phenomenon in a clause. Consider the following clauses:
(7.1) [NM]

Tuyết yêu tôi

Tuyet love I
Senser Process: mental Phenomenon: thing

Tuyet loves me.

(7.2) [NMC]

Tôi thấy vẻ buồn trên khuôn mặt bà

I see bearing sadness on frame face she
Senser Pro: mental Phen: thing Circumstance: location

I saw an air of sadness in her face.

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 Chapter 7 • PROJECTING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

(7.3) [HÐQ]

Tầm hai giờ chiều tôi tìm thấy nhà Năm Minh
around two hour afternoon I find house Nam Minh
Circumstance: temporal Sen Pro: ment Phenomenon: thing

At about two o’clock, I found Nam Minh’s house.

If Goal is compared with Phenomenon in the above clauses, it may be
reasonable to say that there is nothing distinctive about Phenomenon. This
is because, like Goal, Phenomenon in these clauses represents what Halliday
(1994: 115) calls a ‘thing’ – a phenomenon of our experience such as person,
object, abstraction etc., which can be realised by a human nominal such as
tôi (I) in (7.1) or by a non-human nominal such as vẻ buồn (an air of
sadness) in (7.2) and nhà Năm Minh (Nam Minh’s house) in (7.3). However, a
close examination of Phenomenon in other environments will reveal that it
differs from Goal in two respects. First, unlike Goal, Phenomenon can be
what Halliday (1994 and elsewhere) refers to as an ‘act’; i.e., it is realised by
a clause:
(7.14)

Tôi nhìn thấy chiếc xe ca đang chạy ngoài đường

I see gen.cl car asp.ptcl run out road

Senser Pro: ment Phenomenon: act

I saw a car running on the road.

Secondly, it can also be a ‘fact’ (Halliday ibid.); i.e., it is realised by a
rằng + cú bị bao (that + embedded clause):
(7.15)

|| Anh nhận ra [[rằng mình sai ]] ||

he realise that self wrong

Senser Process: mental Phenomenon: fact

He realised that he was wrong.

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Note that these possibilities are not open with Goal. A material clause
such as (7.16a), where a human nominal ‘thing’ as Goal is normal but (7.16b)
and (7.16c) are unacceptable:
(7.16a) [NM]

Hắn đánh Tuyết

he beat Tuyet
Actor/Agent Process: material Goal/Medium: thing

He beat Tuyet.
(7.16b) *

Hắn đánh Tuyết chạy ngoài đường

he beat Tuyet run out road

He beat Tuyet run on the road.

(7.16c) *

Hắn đánh rằng Tuyết chạy ngoài đường

he beat that Tuyet run out road

He beat that Tuyet run on the road.

The fact that Phenomenon may itself have a fairly complex structure
which results from embedded projection as in (7.14) and (7.15) is
significant: since this potential of projection is not present for Goal in
material process, and is very rare with behavioural process as well as with
processes of being (see Chapter 8), it can be treated as a criterion for
distinguishing the mental process from all of these varieties of process.
(ii) Types of Phenomenon. It follows from the above discussion that
Phenomenon in Vietnamese can be classified into three main subtypes: (a)
Simple Phenomenon, or Phenomenon (Phen) for short, (b)
Macrophenomenon (Macrophen), and (c) Metaphenomenon
(Metaphen). These subtypes can be distinguished from one another on both
semantic and lexicogrammatical grounds. Semantically, a Phenomenon
represents a ‘thing’, a Macrophenomenon, an ‘act’, and a Metaphenomenon,
a ‘fact’. Lexicogrammatically, a Phenomenon is typically realised as a
nominal group such as Tuyết in (7.1), vẻ buồn (an air of sadness) in (7.2) and

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 Chapter 7 • PROJECTING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

nhà Năm Minh (Nam Minh’s house) in (7.3) and may occur with many types
of mental process; a Macrophenomenon is realised as a clause such as chiếc
xe ca đang chạy ngoài đường (a car running on the road) in (7.14) and may
occur typically with mental processes of perception (see Section 7.3.1); and a
Metaphenomenon is realised as rằng (that) + one or more embedded
clauses such as rằng [[mình sai ]] (that he was wrong) in (7.15) and may
occur typically with some mental processes of cognition. Matthiessen (1995:
256) has attempted to draw a system network to account for the complexity
of the role Phenomenon in English. This system, which he refers to as
PHENOMENALITY, is simultaneous with the system of SENSING or MENTAL
PROCESS TYPE (see Section 7.3 below). With some modifications, the system
of PHENOMENALITY in Vietnamese can be represented as in Figure 7.1 (see
also Figure 7.2, Page 197 below):

...
SENSING
...
emotive
mental
phenomenal (thing)
Ì +Phen: nominal.group
PHENOMENALITY macrophenomenal (act)
Ì +Macrophen: clause
metaphenomenal (fact)
Ì +Metaphen: rằng + embedded clause

Figure 7.1. System of PHENOMENALITY in Mental Processes in Vietnamese

7.2.3. Mental Process and Projection

7.2.3.1. The Notion of Projection
I introduced the notion of projection in Section 4.3.3 (see Page 98).
I claimed there that projection is one of the two logico-semantic systems in
the clause complex that can act as a valid criterion for distinguishing a
clause from a non-clausal unit in Vietnamese. In this section, an attempt is
made to examine in some detail the nature of projection in Vietnamese
particularly in relation to mental processes. The aim is to point out that

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

projection is a major feature that makes mental and verbal processes

distinct from other process options. The following examples illustrate
projection by mental process:
(7.17) [TÐK]

||| Một người lính nghĩ: ||| “Ngày mai mình sẽ trở về” |||

one gen.cl soldier think tomorrow self asp.ptcl return

Senser Pro: ment Circ: temp Ac/Med Pro: mat

1 projecting “ 2 projected

A soldier thought: “I will return after the war”.

(7.18) [ÐB]

||| Anh nghĩ || rằng anh sẽ bảo vệ chị |||

he think that he asp.ptcl protect she

Senser Pro: ment Ac/Ag Pro: mat Go/Med

α projecting β projected

He thought that he would protect her.

(7.19)

||| Mình hi vọng || bạn sẽ trở thành một giáo viên giỏi |||

self hope you asp.ptcl become one teacher excellent

Senser Pro: ment Car Pro: rel Attribute

α projecting β projected

I hope you will become an excellent teacher.

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 Chapter 7 • PROJECTING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

(7.20)

|||Tôi tin || rằng anh vẫn còn nhớ tôi |||

I hope that you still remember I
Senser Pro: ment Senser Circ Pro: ment Phen
α projecting β projected

I believe (that) you still remember me.

Each of these examples has two clauses. The relationship between
them is one where one clause projects or ‘ushers in’ the other. These are
known in systemic functional theory as projecting and projected clause
respectively (cf. Halliday in Kress, 1976; Halliday, 1994; Eggins, 1994;
Williams, 1994, Butt et al. 1995, Matthiessen 1995; Halliday & Matthiessen,
2004; Hoàng Văn Vân, 2005). In examples (7.17) - (7.20), the first clause does
the projecting, the second is the projected one. Note that the process in the
projecting clause is mental for example nghĩ (thought) in (7.17) and (7.18),
hi vọng (hope) in (7.19), and tin (believe) in (7.20) while the process in the
projected clause is not restricted to any single type. Thus, we have material
process trở về (return) in (7.17) and bảo vệ (protect) in (7.18), relational
process trở thành (become) in (7.19), and mental process nhớ (remember) in
(7.20).
7.2.3.2. Taxis: Forms of Projection
In a projection complex, the projected clause is related to the
projecting one by the relation of ‘taxis’ which is said to fall into two main
types: paratactic and hypotactic (cf. Halliday 1994, Matthiessen 1995;
Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004; Hoàng Văn Vân, 2005). A paratactically
projected clause is one that has equal or independent status with the
projecting clause such as “ngày mai mình sẽ trở về” (“I will return after the
war”) in (7.17). A hypotactically projected clause, in contrast, is one that
modifies or is dependent on the projecting clause such as rằng anh sẽ bảo
vệ chị (that he would protect her) in (7.18), bạn sẽ trở thành một giáo viên
giỏi (you will become an excellent teacher) in (7.19), and rằng anh vẫn còn
nhớ tôi (that you still remember me) in (7.20). Thus, unlike traditional and
non-systemic functional grammars where all clauses of the type which are
labelled ‘projected’ would be seen as embedded or rankshifted having the
role of complement vis-à-vis the verb of the clause (cf. Quirk et al., 1985:
1022), in systemic functional grammar they are treated as separate clauses.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

In systemic functional grammar whatever is embedded must be able to

function as a nominal either as Thing, or as Qualifier. Halliday (1994: 267)
and Eggins (1994: 247-48) have offered a number of useful criteria for
distinguishing a projected clause from an embedded clause in English. Four
of them are relevant to Vietnamese. These four criteria derive from the
possible relation of the projected clauses to a (class of general) nominal
expression (cf. criteria (i) and (ii) below) and with the potential of taxis (cf.
criteria (iii) and (iv) below). Consider the following examples:
(7.21)

||| Anh nghĩ || rằng mình sai |||

he think that self wrong
Senser Process: mental Carrier Attribute
α projecting β projected

He thought that he was wrong.

(7.15)

|| Anh nhận ra [[rằng mình sai ]] ||

he realise that self wrong

Senser Process: mental Phenomenon: fact

He realised that he was wrong.

We can tell that in (7.21) the projected clause rằng mình sai (that he
was wrong) is not embedded because it cannot be preceded by the nominal
cái thực tế (the fact). This constitutes criterion (i):
(7.21a) *

Anh nghĩ cái thực tế rằng mình sai

he think gen.cl fact that self wrong

He thought the fact that he was wrong

Criterion (ii) refers to the fact that a projected clause cannot be
replaced by the nominal sự sai lầm của mình (his mistake):

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 Chapter 7 • PROJECTING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

(7.21b) *

Anh nghĩ sự sai lầm của mình

he think gen.cl mistake of self

He thought his mistake.

Criterion (iii) refers to the taxis potential of the projected clause. It is

the case that embedded clauses can never be paratactic to the clause within
which they are embedded, whereas projected clauses can be, since they can
be quoted as in (7.21c), which contrasts with (7.21) above:
(7.21c) paratactic

||| Anh nghĩ: ||“ Mình sai” |||

he think self wrong

Senser Process: mental Carrier Attribute

1 projecting “2 projected

He thought: “I’m wrong”.

And finally criterion (iv) refers specifically to the systemic potential of

embedded v. projected clauses. An embedded clause has no choice of mood
or theme – for example, it can only be declarative – whereas when the
clause is non-embedded, projected and quoted, it does have these options
available. Thus:
(7.15)

|| Anh nhận ra [[rằng mình sai ]] ||

he realise that self wrong

Senser Process: mental Phen: fact (MOOD indicative: declarative)

He realised that he was wrong.

is normal but

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

(7.15b) *

|| Anh nhận ra rằng “mình có sai không?” ||

he realise that self yes wrong no
Senser Pro: ment Phen: fact (MOOD indicative: interrogative)

He realised that “Am I wrong?”

is unacceptable in Vietnamese.
7.2.3.3. Quoting and Reporting: Meaning in Projection
Mental processes may project a ‘meaning’ or ‘idea’ (Halliday, 1994: 252)
– a paraphrase or a summarised report of what was thought as for example
rằng anh sẽ bảo vệ chị (that he would protect her) in
(7.18) [ÐB] reporting

||| Anh nghĩ || rằng anh sẽ bảo vệ chị |||

he think that he asp.ptcl protect she
Senser Pro: ment Ac/Ag Pro: mat Go/Med
α projecting β projected

He thought that he would protect her.

It may project not a meaning but a ‘locution’ (Halliday, 1994: 253) –
purporting to represent the exact wording in the mind of the Senser as for
example tôi sẽ bảo vệ em (I’ll protect you) in
(7.18a) quoting

||| Anh nghĩ: ||“Tôi sẽ bảo vệ em” |||

he think I asp.ptcl protect junior
Senser Pro: ment Ac/Ag Pro: mat Go/Med

He thought: “I will protect you”.

In systemic functional theory, the first mode of projection is referred to
as reporting and the second one as quoting. As with English, in Vietnamese
too reporting can be contrasted with quoting on both semantic and
lexicogrammatical dimensions.

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 Chapter 7 • PROJECTING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

Semantically, the distinction between the two lies in particular type of

taxis associated with each; that is, when the relation between the projecting
and the projected clause is that of quoting-quoted, the projected clause is in
paratactic or independent relationship with the projecting one; when the
relation is that of reporting-reported, then the projected clause is hypotactic
or dependent on the projecting one.
Lexicogrammatically, reporting differs from quoting in that with
reporting it is possible to insert the conjunctive rằng (that) between the
projecting and projected clause, whereas with quoting, the insertion of this
element appears to be impossible. Thus, while for a mental projection
complex of the reporting mode, it is possible to say either
(7.18) [ÐB] reporting (+rằng)

||| Anh nghĩ || rằng anh sẽ bảo vệ chị |||

he think that he asp.ptcl protect she
Senser Pro: ment Ac/Ag Pro: mat Go/Med
α projecting β projected

He thought that he would protect her.

or
(7.18b) reporting (- rằng)

||| Anh nghĩ, || anh sẽ bảo vệ chị |||

he think he asp.ptcl protect she
Senser Pro: mental Ac/Agent Pro: mat Goal/Medium
α projecting β projected

He thought, he would protect her.

For a mental projection complex of the quoting mode, it is possible to say
(7.18a) quoting

||| Anh nghĩ: ||“Tôi sẽ bảo vệ em” |||

he think I asp.ptcl protect junior
Senser Pro: ment Actor/Agent Pro: mat Goal/Medium

He thought: “I will protect you”.

but not

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

(7.18c) *

Anh nghĩ rằng: “Tôi sẽ bảo vệ em”

he think that I asp.ptcl protect junior

He thought that: “I will protect you”

In Vietnamese, unlike English, the feature of ‘sequent tense selection’
(Halliday in Kress, 1976; Halliday, 1994) does not apply. However, deixis
displays systematic variation. Thus in reporting if reference is to the third
person, e.g., chị (literally, senior sister ‘her’) in quoting the reference is to the
second person, e.g., em (literally, junior sister ‘you’), and in reporting if
reference is to the first person, e.g., anh (he), in quoting the reference is to
the first person Tôi (I).
7.2.3.4. Proposition and Proposal
It is claimed in Section (7.2.3.2) that the system of MOOD is applicable
to projected clauses. This is certainly true regarding the primary choices,
even if not each type of mental process is free to project every MOOD choice.
Semantically the general distinction between proposition – giving and
demanding information by making a statement or asking a question – and
proposal – giving and demanding goods-&-services by making an offer or a
command – is systematically construed in a projection complex. Thus, a
projected clause may be a proposition or a proposal. Below are given some
examples:
Proposition
(i) statement
(7.18a) quoting

||| Anh nghĩ: ||“Tôi sẽ bảo vệ em” |||

he think I asp.ptcl protect junior

Senser Pro: ment Ac/Ag Pro: mat Go/Med

1 projecting “2 projected (MOOD indicative: declarative)

He thought: “I will protect you”.

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 Chapter 7 • PROJECTING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

(7.18b) reporting

||| Anh nghĩ, || anh sẽ bảo vệ chị |||

he think he asp.ptcl protect she
Senser Pro: ment Ac/Ag Pro: mat Go/Med
α projecting β projected (MOOD indicative: declarative)

He thought, he would protect her;

(ii) question
(7.22a) quoting

||| Anh ấy băn khoăn: || “Mình có sai không nhỉ? |||

he wonder self yes wrong no q.ptcl
Senser Pro: ment Carrier Attribute
1 projecting “2 projected (MOOD indicative: interrogative)

He wondered: “Am I wrong?”

(7.22b) reporting

||| Anh ấy băn khoăn || liệu anh ấy có sai không

|||
he wonder if he yes wrong no
Senser Pro: ment Carrier Attribute
α projecting β projected (MOOD indicative: declarative)

He wondered if he was wrong.

Proposal
(i) offer
(7.23a) quoting

||| “Mình sẽ giúp cô ấy ”, || Tôi kiên quyết |||

self asp.ptcl help she I determine
Actor/Agent Pro: mat Go/Med Senser Pro: ment
“1 projected (MOOD indicative: declarative) 2 projecting

“I will help her,” I determined.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

(7.23b) reporting

||| Tôi kiên quyết || giúp cô ấy |||

I determine help she
Senser Pro: ment Pro: material Goal
α projecting β projected (MOOD indicative: declarative)

I was determined to help her.

(ii) command
(7.24a) quoting

|||“Mày cút đi !” || Tôi mong |||

you off go I wish
Actor Pro: material Senser Pro: mental
“1 projected (MOOD: imperative) 2 projecting

“(You) go away!” I wished.

(7.24b) reporting

||| Tôi mong || hắn cút đi |||

I wish he off go
Senser Pro: mental Actor Pro: material
α projecting β projected (MOOD indicative: declarative)

I wished (for) him to go away.

The above examples are intended to illustrate three points. First, in

terms of taxis, the relation between the projecting and projected clause in
both mental proposition and mental proposal can be either paratactic or
hypotactic: in other words, they can either be quoting or reporting.
Secondly, there is a clear distinction between quoting and reporting:
whereas with quoting the MOOD choices of the projected clause are varied
– declarative as in (7.18a) and (7.23a), interrogative as in (7.22a), and
imperative as in (7.24a) – with reporting the MOOD choice of the projected
clause is very restricted: in all cases it is declarative. And thirdly, there is an
important distinction between propositions and proposals: whereas

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 Chapter 7 • PROJECTING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

propositions are projected mentally by processes of cognition such as nghĩ

(thinking), phân vân / băn khoăn (wondering), hiểu (understanding), biết
(knowing) etc., proposals are projected mentally by what may be referred to
as affective processes of desideration (see Section 7.3.3) such as mong
(wishing), muốn (wanting), hi vọng (hoping), kiên quyết (determining) etc.

7.3. Types of Mental Process

Within the overall category of mental process, it is possible to
distinguish between four main subtypes: (i) perceptive, (ii) cognitive, (iii)
desiderative, and (iv) emotive. These choices constitute the system of
SENSING or MENTAL PROCESS TYPE which, in concurrence with the system of
PHENOMENALITY, can be represented as follows:

phenomenal (thing)
Ì +Phen: nominal group
PHENOMENALITY macrophenomenal (act)
Ì +Macrophen: clause
mental metaphenomenal (fact)
Ì +Metaphen: rằng + embedded projection

perceptive
SENSING cognitive
desiderative
emotive

Figure 7.2. Mental TRANSITIVITY in Vietnamese: Primary Choices

In the remaining sections, I shall be concerned with specifying the

semantic as well as grammatical bases for classifying these subtypes of
mental process.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

7.3.1. Mental Processes of Perception

In terms of category meaning, mental processes of perception in
Vietnamese can be broadly defined as processes of human senses such as
nhìn thấy/trông thấy (seeing), nghe thấy (hearing), ngửi thấy/đánh hơi thấy
(smelling), sờ thấy (touching/feeling), nếm thấy (tasting). They may also
include processes that do not specify a specific mode of perception such as
cảm thấy (sensing/feeling), nhận thấy/tri giác thấy (perceiving), quan sát
thấy (observing) etc. Examples:
(7.25) [HÐQ]

Em có nghe thấy tên chị ấy

I yes hear name she

Senser Process: mental: perceptive Phenomenon

I heard (someone mention) her name.

(7.26)

Họ nhìn thấy một vật lạ ở trên trời

they see one object strange in on sky

Senser Pro: ment: per Phenomenon Circ: location

They saw a strange object in the sky.

(7.14)

Tôi nhìn thấy chiếc xe ca đang chạy ngoài đường

I see gen.cl car asp.ptcl run out road

Senser Pro: ment: per Macrophenomenon: act

I saw a car running on the road.

Lexicogrammatically, two properties are central to the recognition of
the mental perceptive process in Vietnamese. First, unlike most subtypes of
mental process, a mental perceptive process can take a Macrophenomenon
such as chiếc xe ca đang chạy ngoài đường (a car running on the road) in
(7.14).

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Secondly, unlike mental processes of cognition and desideration

(discussed in Sections 7.3.2 and 7.3.3), a mental perceptive process cannot
project an ‘idea’ either in quoting or in reporting mode. Perceptive clause
complexes such as (7.14a) and (7.14b) are unacceptable in Vietnamese:
(7.14a) *

Tôi nhìn thấy: “chiếc xe ca đang chạy ngoài đường”

I see gen.cl car asp.ptcl run out road

1 projected “2 projecting

I saw: “a car running on the road”.

(7.14b) *

Tôi nhìn thấy rằng chiếc xe ca đang chạy ngoài đường

I see that gen.cl car asp.ptcl run out road

α projecting β projected

I saw that a car was running on the road

7.3.2. Mental Processes of Cognition

The mental process of cognition in Vietnamese represents ‘mental
activities’ such as nghĩ (thinking), hiểu (understanding), biết (knowing),
tin/tin tưởng (believing), nhớ (missing/remembering), quên (forgetting), mơ
(dreaming) etc. Examples:
(7.27) [HÐQ]

Anh nhớ tôi

he miss I

Senser Process: mental: cognitive Phenomenon

He missed me.

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(7.28) [NB]
Nga biết mình đẹp
Nga know self beautiful
Senser Process: mental: cognitive Carrier Attribute
α projecting β projected

Nga knew (that) she was beautiful.

A major lexicogrammatical property that makes the cognitive process
distinct from other subtypes of mental process is that, like desiderative
process, it can project an ‘idea’ either in quoting or in reporting mode.
Examples:
(7.17) [TÐK] quoting

||| Một người lính nghĩ: ||| “Ngày mai mình sẽ trở về” |||

one gen.cl soldier think tomorrow self asp.ptcl return

Senser Pro: ment Circ: temp Ac/Med Pro: mat

1 projecting “ 2 projected

A soldier thought: “I will return after the war”.

(7.17a) reporting

Một người lính nghĩ rằng ngày mai anh ta sẽ trở về

one gen.cl soldier think that tomorrow he asp.ptcl return

Senser Pro: ment Circ: temp Ac/Med Pro: mat

α projecting β projected

A soldier thought that he would return after the war.

However, as pointed out earlier in Section 7.2.3.4, there is a basic
difference between cognitive and desiderative projection: while
desiderative process typically projects a proposal, cognitive process typically
projects a proposition such as “ngày mai mình sẽ trở về” (I will return after
the war) in (7.17) and rằng ngày mai mình sẽ trở về (he would return after
the war) in (7.17a).

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A second major feature that is characteristic of cognitive processes is

that a number of them can stand for probabilities; i.e., a sort of
interpersonal metaphor or ‘metaphor of modality’ (cf. Halliday, 1994;
Matthiessen, 1995; Hoàng Văn Vân, 1999); e.g., Tôi nghĩ (I think) = có lẽ/có
khả năng (probable) (where = sign means “approximately the same as”) in
(7.29)
Tôi nghĩ anh ta sẽ đến
I think he asp.ptcl come
Senser Pro: mental Actor/Medium Pro: material
Subject Predicator Subject Predicator

I think he will come.

Có khả năng anh ta sẽ đến
probably he asp.ptcl come
Circumstance Actor/Medium Pro: material
modality: probability Subject Predicator

Probably he will come.

or Tôi cho rằng (I suppose) = có thể (perhaps) in
(7.30)
Tôi cho rằng anh ta đúng
I suppose that he right
Senser Process: mental Carrier Attribute
Subject Predicator Subject Complement

I suppose that he is right.

Có thể anh ta đúng

perhaps he right
Circumstance Carrier Attribute
modality: probability Subject Complement

Perhaps he is right.
This feature cannot be found in other subtypes of mental process in
Vietnamese.

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7.3.3. Mental Processes of Desideration

Mental processes of desideration are those that express the different
types of desire such as ước ao (desiring), muốn (wanting), mong (longing
for) mong muốn (wishing), định (intending), hi vọng (hoping), quyết
(determining), quyết định (deciding) etc. examples:
(7.4)

Người già muốn sự thoải mái

people old want gen.cl comfort
Senser Process: mental: desiderative Phenomenon

Old people want comfort.

(7.31)

Họ đang mong cô ấy
they asp.ptcl long for she
Senser Process: mental: desiderative Phenomenon

They are longing for her.

Two properties are central for the recognition of desiderative
processes in Vietnamese. First, like cognitive process, a number of
desiderative processes can project an idea Phenomenon, typically in
reporting mode. For example:
(7.32)

||| Mẹ hi vọng || con sẽ học giỏi |||

mother hope child asp.ptcl learn well
Senser Pro: ment Ac/Ag Pro: mat Circ: man
α projecting β projected

I (mother) hope you will study well.

However, there is a basic distinction between cognitive and
desiderative projection: while a cognitive process can project a proposition
as in (7.17) and (7.17a), a desiderative process can project a proposal such as
con sẽ học giỏi (you will study well) in (7.32).

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Secondly, like English, a number of desiderative processes in

Vietnamese such as muốn (want), mong muốn (wish) etc., can stand for
inclinations and obligations; e.g., Nó muốn (He wanted) = Nó phải/Nó nên
(He must/should) in
(7.33)

Nó muốn gặp giáo sư

he want meet professor
Senser Pro: ment: desideration Pro: material Goal/Medium
Subject Predicator Predicator Complement

He wanted to see his professor.

Nó phải gặp giáo sư

he must meet professor
Actor/Agent Pro: material Goal/Medium
Subject modality: obligation Predicator Complement

He must see his professor.

7.3.4. Mental Processes of Emotion

In terms of category meaning, emotive processes in Vietnamese can be
broadly defined as those that express ‘mental reactions’ towards some
phenomenon such as yêu (loving), quý/mến (being fond of/liking), thích
(liking), ghét (hating), căm ghét (loathing), ghê tởm (detesting) dọa
(frightening), sợ (scaring), khiếp (terrifying/horrifying) etc. Examples:
(7.1) [NM]

Tuyết yêu tôi

Tuyet love I

Senser Process: mental: emotive Phenomenon

Tuyet loves me.

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(7.34)

Tôi quý vợ chồng Ða-vít

I like wife husband David
Senser Process: mental: emotive Phenomenon

I like David and his wife.

Lexicogrammatically, an emotive process in Vietnamese can be
recognised by two major properties. First, like the perceptive process, it can
only project clause internally through embedding, not clause externally
through clause complexing. In Vietnamese, emotive clause complexes such
as (7.34a) and (7.35) are unacceptable:
(7.34a) *
Tôi quý rằng vợ chồng Ða-vít tốt
I like that wife husband David good

I like that David and his wife are good

(7.35) *
Tuyết yêu: “Hắn đánh cô ấy”
Tuyet love he beat she

Tuyet loved: “He beat her”

Secondly, there is what Matthiessen (1995: 276) calls with reference to
English ‘the scalar nature of the verbs that realise emotive processes’: in
other words, there seem to be degrees of intensification among the verbs
that realise the emotive process. Some of them may be tabulated as follows:

Non-intensified Intensified
Vietnamese English translation Vietnamese English translation
thích like yêu love
quý/mến fancy, be fond of mê fall in love,
sợ/hãi fear khiếp be addicted to
ghét hate ghê tởm terrify/horrify
v.v... etc. căm ghét loathe
v.v... detest
etc.

Table 7.1. Scales of Intensification in Mental Processes of Emotion in Vietnamese

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7.3.5. Summary
This section has been concerned with some of the most essential
aspects of the grammar of mental process in Vietnamese. Initially, I provided
a definition criterion for identifying mental processes in the language. Then
I attempted to look at some of the most important grammatical features
which make mental processes distinct from other process options,
particularly material processes. I also examined different subtypes of mental
process: perceptive, cognitive, desiderative, and emotive. It is obvious from
the description that mental processes in Vietnamese differ from other types
of process not only in the nature of the process itself but also in the nature
of the participant roles involved in it. It is also clear from the description
that each subtype of mental process possesses a number of features (both
semantic and lexicogrammatical) that make it distinct from the others in the
system of SENSING. I leave mental processes with this summary and turn to
examine verbal processes in Vietnamese.

7.4. The Verbal Process

7.4.1. Identifying the Verbal Process: Definition
Let me begin my discussion of verbal processes with a consideration of
the following clauses:
(7.36) [NHTh]
Tôi bảo: “Vâng”
I say yes

I said: “Yes”.
(7.37) [NHTh]

Quyên hỏi: “Anh có họ hàng gì với tôi không?”

Quyen ask you exist relation what with I no

Quyen asked: “Do you have blood relation with me?”

(7.38) [NHTh]

Sư Thiều hỏi Quyên

monk Thieu ask Quyen

Monk Thieu asked Quyen.

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(7.39) [NKC]

Ông đáp: “Qua nhà anh Hai mày”

he reply across house brother Hai you

He replied: “To your brother’s house”.

(7.40)

Tòa án kết tội tên giết người

court accuse gen.cl murderer

The Court has accused the murderer.

As the examples are intended to show, the verbs in clauses (7.36) -
(7.40) such as bảo (said) in (7.36), hỏi (asked) in (7.37) and (7.38), đáp
(replied) in (7.39), and kết tội (has accused) in (7.40) do not represent the
world of ‘physical actions’ as those in material processes. They also do not
describe the world of ‘physiological and psychological behaviour’ as those in
behavioural processes. Rather, like mental processes, they can be said to
represent some sort of ‘human consciousness’ (cf. Shore, 1992: 279;
Williams, 1994; Matthiessen, 1995). However, they seem to differ from
mental processes in that while the verbs in mental processes are said to
construe the different kinds of ‘sensing’ or different forms of ‘internal
consciousness of human mind’, these verbs can be said to describe some
sort of ‘verbal action’ (Eggins, 1994) or ‘saying’, to use Halliday’s (1994) term
– what Shore (1992) and Matthiessen (1995) refer to as ‘external
verbalisation of consciousness’. In systemic functional theory, such processes
are called verbal processes. Thus, from above, i.e., from the semantic
perspective, verbal processes in Vietnamese can be broadly defined as
processes that construe ‘verbal action’ or ‘saying’. This constitutes the
definition criterion for the verbal process in Vietnamese.

It should be noted here that ‘verbal action’ is not restricted to verbs of

saying in the proper sense of the term such as those in (7.36) - (7.40).
Rather, it covers ‘any kind of symbolic exchange of meaning’ (Halliday, 1994:
140) such as chỉ (showed) and ra hiệu (signalled) in:

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(7.41)

Ðồng hồ chỉ sáu giờ tối

watch/clock show six hour evening

The clock showed that it was six p.m.

(7.42) [TDP]

Bà ra hiệu cho thày leo lên thang

she signal for father climb up ladder

She signalled him to climb up the ladder.

7.4.2. Identifying the Verbal Process: Recognition Criteria
At the lexicogrammatical level, the verbal process in Vietnamese may
be distinguished from other process options by two major characteristics:
(i) The number and nature of different participant relationships in
verbal process
(ii) Strong collocation of verbal process with circumstance of matter
Each of these characteristics is discussed in some detail below:
7.4.2.1. The Number and Nature of Participants in the Verbal Process
A crucial feature that holds the verbal process distinct from other
process options is that it can be recognised through the different participant
relationships. A verbal action usually implies someone or some ‘symbol
source’ (Matthiessen, 1995: 281) – the Sayer (Sa) who says something – the
Verbiage (Vrbge) which may be directed to some entity or someone else –
the Receiver (Rec). In most general terms, the structure of a verbal process
in Vietnamese can be represented as follows:
Sayer^Process: verbal (^‘Receiver’) (^‘Verbiage’)
The fact that a verbal process may involve one or more than one
participant implies that from the transitive point of view it can be either
intransitive or transitive and from the ergative point of view it can be either
middle or effective. Matthiessen (1995: 282) has attempted to draw a
system network to account for the complexity of the different transitivity
functions in the English verbal process. A similar system network could be

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

drawn for Vietnamese, which, modifying somewhat, can be represented as

follows:

effective

middle
doing
mental
no receiver
projecting ADDRESSEE
receiver
Ì +Receiver
verbal as behaviour
being Ì ±Sayer/ non-verbalisation
Medium as impact
Ì +Target
VERB
as name
Ì +Verbiage
verbalisation quoting

reporting
as
locution proposition

proposal

Figure 7.3. Verbal Processes in Vietnamese: System of Participant

Relationships
(After Matthiessen, 1995: 282)

Note: VERB = VERBALISATION, the name of the system

As Figure 7.3 shows, the relationships between the different
participants in verbal process are fairly complex. The entry point ‘verbal’,
which is realised by the inherent participant – Sayer, opens up two systems
which may be termed ADDRESSEE and VERBALISATION. Each of these
subsystems is concerned with two further choices: the system of ADDRESSEE
is the entry point for the ‘receiver’ and ‘no receiver’ distinction, and the
system of VERBALISATION is the entry point for the ‘non-verbalisation’ and

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‘verbalisation’ distinction. The entry point ‘non-verbalisation’ allows for two

more delicate choices: ‘as behaviour’ v. ‘as impact’ and the entry point
‘verbalisation’ is concerned with the distinction between verbalisation ‘as
name’ and verbalisation ‘as locution’. These systemic choices are central for
the recognition of verbal process in Vietnamese, which will be addressed in
the subsections that follow.
7.4.2.2. The Sayer
Sayer is a participant which is crucially involved in a verbal process. As
a symbol source, Sayer is not necessarily a conscious being. Rather, it can be
anything that is capable of putting out a signal: it can be either a conscious
being such as Tôi (I) in (7.36), Quyên in (7.37), Sư Thiều (Monk Thieu) in
(7.38) Ông (He) in (7.39), an institution such as Toà án (The Court) in (7.40)
or an instrument such as Đồng hồ (The clock) in (7.41). This potentiality is
very limited in the mental process where it was pointed out in Section
7.2.2.4 that human is an obligatory requirement for Senser. It would sound
unacceptable in Vietnamese to say, for example:
(7.43) *

Ðồng hồ muốn sáu giờ tối

watch/clock want six hour evening

The clock wants six p.m

(7.44) *

Cuốn sách ấy nghĩ về cuộc sống mới

gen.cl book that think about life new

The book thinks about the new life.

7.4.2.3. The Receiver
Not all verbal processes entail the function Receiver, even if
contextually there may be some hearer present. Thus, Ông ta nói hai tiếng
đồng hồ (He spoke for two hours), Sáng nào ông ấy cũng giảng bài (He
lectures every morning), Chúng tôi thảo luận vấn đề (We discuss the
problem) etc. appear to have no Receiver. As pointed out in Section 7.4.2.1
that a verbal action does not necessarily stop at the Sayer + Process
complex. In fact in a number of verbal clauses, the saying or what is said can

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also be directed to someone or some other entity – the Receiver. Examples

are Quyên and cho tôi (literally, to me (me)) in:
(7.38) [NHTh]

Sư Thiều hỏi Quyên

monk Thieu ask Quyen
Sayer Process: verbal Receiver

Monk Thieu asked Quyen.

(7.45) [NMC]

Bà kể cho tôi nhiều mẩu chuyện

she tell to I many piece story

Sayer Process: verbal Receiver Verbiage

She told me many stories.

As a grammatical category in the verbal process, Receiver has a number
of distinctive features. First, like Beneficiary in material process, Receiver has
the possibility of being conflated with Subject in clauses which are passive.
For example:
(7.45a)

Tôi được bà kể cho nhiều mẩu chuyện

I pass.ptcl she tell to many piece story

Rec/Subject Sayer Pro: vrb Verbiage

I was told many stories by her.

Secondly, it shares with Beneficiary in material process in having the
feature which might be called ‘recipiency’; i.e., both Receiver in verbal
process and Beneficiary in material process can be characterised as a
recipient of some sort. What makes one different from the other, however, is
that while Beneficiary in a material process is said to be the recipient of
goods-&-services, Receiver in a verbal process can be described as the
recipient of some saying.

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 Chapter 7 • PROJECTING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

It should be emphasised that the possibility of having a Receiver is

characteristic of verbal processes. Mental processes do not have this
possibility. Thus, for a verbal process one may say, for example,
(7.46) [NHTh]

Quyên hỏi tôi về Sư Thiều

Quyen ask I about Monk Thieu

Sayer Pro: verbal Receiver Circumstance: matter

Quyen asked me about Monk Thieu.

but, (7.47) would be unacceptable:
(7.47) *

Quyên muốn tôi về Sư Thiều

Quyen want I about Monk Thieu

Quyen wanted me about Monk Thieu

Although mental and verbal processes can both be said to be processes
of human consciousness, each of them construes a distinct aspect of
consciousness: while mental processes are linked with unspoken thoughts
or ‘senser-internal content’ (Matthiessen, 1995: 293) of consciousness, verbal
processes are concerned with what may be referred to as the ‘external
content of verbalisation’.

7.4.2.4. The Target

When a verbal process in Vietnamese has the feature ‘impact’ this is
realised by the presence of a participant called Target (Tgt). This participant
behaves somewhat like a goal at which the verbal action is said to be
targeted. Unlike Receiver, Target is found to occur typically with ‘processes
of verbal impact’ (Matthiessen, 1995: 285) such as lăng mạ (insult), buộc
tội/kết tội (accuse), nịnh hót (flatter), phê bình/phê phán (criticise), ca ngợi
(praise), đổ tội (blame), chúc mừng (congratulate), lên án (condemn) etc.
Examples:

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(7.40)

Tòa án kết tội tên giết người

court accuse gen.cl murderer
Sayer Process: verbal Target

The Court has accused the murderer.

(7.48)

Người ta ca ngợi ông lên đến trời

people praise he up to sky
Sayer Pro: verbal Target Circumstance

They praised him to the sky.

In the above examples, tên giết người (the murderer) and ông (him)
function as Target. They are not construed as Receiver or Beneficiary for the
reason that in these clauses there is no verbalisation but only verbal action
such as kết tội (has accused) in (7.40) and ca ngợi (praised) in (7.48). Further,
unlike the verbs that can be verbalised (i.e., those can either take a Verbiage
or they may project) (see Sections 7.4.2.5 and 7.4.3 below), verbs that take a
Target do not easily project a reported speech. Thus, in Vietnamese, it is
possible to say
(7.49)

||| Anh hỏi em: ||“Bao giờ trở lại?” |||

you ask junior when return
Sayer Pro: verbal Receiver Circ: temporal Pro: material

He asked me: “When will you come back?”

(7.50)

Tôi có thể hỏi anh một câu được không?

I can ask you one sentence possible no
Sayer Pro: vrb Rec Verbiage

Can I ask you a question?

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 Chapter 7 • PROJECTING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

but it may sound odd to say

(7.51) *

Hắn ca ngợi: “Thủ trưởng thật tuyệt vời”

he praise boss really brilliant

He praised: “You are really excellent”.

(7.52) *

Ông có thể lên án chúng một câu được không?

Mr. can condemn they one sentence possible no

Can you condemn them a condemnation?

In fact, as Halliday (1994), Matthiessen (1995), and Halliday &
Matthiessen (2004) have pointed out with reference to English, verbal
clauses of this (the Target) type should be treated as lying on the borderline
between the verbal domain and the material domain. They are verbal in the
sense that they have a Sayer who performs the verbal action but not the
physical action; and they are material in the sense that the verbal action
performed by the Sayer can be construed as impacting directly upon another
participant (the Target).
7.4.2.5. The Verbiage
In quite a great number of verbal processes in Vietnamese, in addition
to Sayer, Receiver, and Target, one may find another participant whose
function is to correspond to ‘what is said’. In systemic functional theory, this
participant is referred to as Verbiage (Vrbge). Examples of this are Hà Nội in
(7.53) and hai li rượu (two glasses of wine) in (7.54):
(7.53)

Hà Nội được mô tả như là một thành phố cổ kính

Hanoi pass.ptcl describe as one city old

Verbiage Pro: verbal Circumstance: manner

Hanoi is described as an old city.

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(7.54)

Anh gọi hai li rượu

he call/order two glass wine
Sayer Process: verbal Verbiage

He ordered two glasses of wine.

Halliday (1994) makes a distinction between two types of Verbiage in
English, which could also be relevant to Vietnamese. With Halliday (ibid.), a
Verbiage can be the ‘content of what is said’ such as Hà Nội in (7.53) and hai
li rượu (two glasses of wine) in (7.54). It can also be the ‘name of the saying’
– a sort of ‘cognate object’ in the folk linguistic terminology. For example:
(7.45) [NMC]

Bà kể cho tôi nhiều mẩu chuyện

she tell to I many piece story
Sayer Pro: verbal Receiver Verbiage

She told me many stories.

(7.50)

Tôi có thể hỏi anh một câu được không?

I can ask you one sentence possible no
Sayer Pro: vrb Rec Verbiage

Could I ask you a question?

It is important to emphasise here that the definition of Verbiage as
‘what is said’ does not mean that it should cover the quoted and reported
speech as it is usually treated in traditional as well as non-systemic
functional grammars. In fact the function of Verbiage should not be
identified with the function of the projected clause in a verbal clause
complex (contra. Tomasowa 1990: 103). Verbiage and clause projection are
different categories: a Verbiage functions as a participant of a verbal clause
whereas a projected clause functions not as a participant but as a separate
clause which is related to the projecting clause by means of ‘taxis’ (cf.
Section 7.2.3.2, see also Section 7.4.3 below).

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7.4.2.6. Strong Collocation of Verbal Process with Circumstance of

Matter
One of the features that is crucial for the recognition of verbal
processes in Vietnamese is that quite a number of verbs that realise verbal
processes are often found to occur with what is referred to in systemic
functional grammar as Circumstance of matter (see Chapter 9, Section 9.4.7).
Examples:
(7.55) [HÐQ]

Tôi kể cho chú về chuyện tôi

I tell to uncle about story I
Sayer Process: verbal Receiver Circumstance: matter

I’ll tell you about my story.

(7.56)

Cuốn sách ấy nói về cuộc sống mới

gen.cl book that speak about life new
Sayer Process: verbal Circumstance: matter

The book speaks about the new life.

Note that material processes and mental processes (except those of the
cognitive type) do not have this potentiality. In Vietnamese, it would sound
unacceptable to say, for example,
(7.57) *

Tôi đánh chú về chuyện ấy

I beat junior about story that

I beat you about my story.

(7.58) *

Mẹ tôi nhìn thấy tôi về vấn đề ấy

mother I see I about problem that

My mother saw me about that problem.

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The fact that the collocational patterning of Process: verbal +

Circumstance: matter is typical of many verbal processes and this
collocational tie cannot be found in other process types (except some types
of mental process) suggests that it can be considered as a criterion for
identifying verbal process in Vietnamese.
7.4.3. Verbal Projection
A major feature that serves to distinguish verbal processes from other
types of process (except mental processes) is that they can project; that is,
like mental clauses, verbal clauses too can have the potentiality of entering
into a projection clause complex. It is due to this distinctive feature of verbal
and mental processes that they are referred to in this study as ‘projecting
processes’ (cf. Shore, 1992; Williams, 1994; Butt et al., 1995).
There is, however, a basic difference between a verbal projection and a
mental projection: while a mental process is said to project an ‘idea’ or
‘unspoken thought’, a verbal process can be said to project a ‘locution’ (cf.
Halliday, 1994).
The principles of verbal projection are just the same as those of mental
projection. In a verbal clause complex, the projecting clause is a verbal
process and the projected clause can be of any process type: material (7.59),
mental (7.60), relational (7.61) etc. Examples:
(7.59) [NHTh]

||| Chú Phụng hỏi: ||“Mày về luôn chứ? |||

uncle Phung ask you return immediately q.ptcl
Sayer Pro: vrb Ac/Med Pro: mat Circumstance

(Junior) Uncle Phung asked me: “Are you going home right now?”
(7.60) [NHTh]

||| Quyên bảo: ||“Bố mẹ cháu nhớ ngày giỗ ông” |||
Quyen tell parent niece remember day death grandfather
Sayer Pro:vrb Senser Pro: ment Phenomenon

Quyen said: “My parents remembered grandfather’s death”.

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 Chapter 7 • PROJECTING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

(7.61) [NHTh]

||| Tôi bảo: ||“Tôi là Nhâm” |||

I tell I be Nham
Sayer Process: verbal Token Process: relational Value

I said: “I’m Nham”.

As with mental projection, verbal projection too can be of a quoting
mode, i.e., a verbal process can project the wording as in the last three
examples. The relationship between the projecting clause and the projected
clause in such clause complexes is paratactic. Projection may be in a
reporting mode, with the verbal process projecting a summary or
paraphrase of what was actually said as in (7.62) and (7.63). The
relationship between the projecting clause and the projected clause in such
complexes is hypotactic. Examples:
(7.62)

Mình khẳng định rằng ông ta đúng

self confirm that he right

Sayer Process: verbal Carrier Attribute

α projecting β projected

I confirmed that he was right.

(7.63)

Ông bảo ông phải về sớm

grandfather tell grandfather must return early

Sayer Pro: verbal Ac/Agent Pro: mat Circ: temp

α projecting β projected

Grandfather said that he had to go home early.

The quoted and the reported clauses can be a proposition as in (7.59) -
(7.63), or they may also be a proposal. Examples:

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(7.64) [LNM]

Tôi bảo các bác cất tiền đi

I tell pl.mrkr uncle put money go
Sayer Pro: vrb Ac/Ag Pro: mat Go/Med
α projecting β projected

I asked them to put the money somewhere.

(7.65)

Có phải cô Lưu dặn anh đón tôi không?

yes right aunt Luu ask brother meet I no
Sayer Pro: vrb Ac/Ag Pro: mat Go/Med
α projecting β projected

Did Aunt Luu ask you to meet me?

7.4.4. Types of Verbal Process
Due to the semantic diversity of the verbs that realise verbal processes
and the complexity of the participant relationships, the subclassification of
verbal processes appears to be fairly complex. As specified in Figure 7.3, they
can be differentiated along a number of dimensions: (i) those that can take
a Receiver v. those that cannot, (ii) those that can take a Target v. those that
cannot, (iii) those that can take a Verbiage v. those that can project, (iv)
those that can project a proposition v. those that can project a proposal, (v)
those that are middle v. those that are effective and so on. As (i) to (iv) have
actually been explored in Sections (7.4.2.3), (7.4.2.4), (7.4.2.5), and (7.4.3),
here I will briefly examine (v).
Consider the following examples:
(7.66) middle: non-ranged

Chúng tôi thường trò chuyện với nhau

we often chat with each other
Sayer Circumstance Process: verbal Circ: accompaniment

We often chatted with each other.

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(7.67) middle: ranged

Họ thảo luận hai vấn đề

they discuss two problem
Sayer Process: verbal Verbiage

They discussed two problems.

(7.68) effective

Chúc mừng bạn về thành công của mình

congratulate friend about success of self

Process: verbal Target Circumstance: matter

Congratulations on your success!

Clauses (7.66) and (7.67) are middle and clause (7.68) is effective. They
differ in a number of respects. First, while the former type may be non-
ranged (i.e., the clause has only the Sayer) as in clause (7.66) or ranged (i.e.,
the clause may take a Verbiage) as in clause (7.67); the last type, i.e., (7.68),
can typically take a Target which is ‘Goal-like Target of verbal impact’
(Matthiessen (1995: 285). Secondly, unlike verbal effective processes, most
verbal middle processes cannot project. Verbal clause complexes such as
(7.69) and (7.70) often sound odd in Vietnamese:
(7.69) *

Chúng tôi thường trò chuyện: “Anh ấy tốt lắm”

we often chat he good very

We often chatted: “He’s very good”

(7.70) *

Chúng tôi thường trò chuyện rằng anh ấy tốt lắm

we often chat that he good very

We often chatted that he was very good

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And thirdly, verbal middle clauses can also be distinguished from verbal
effective ones in that only the former type can take a Circumstance of
accompaniment realised as với + nominal such as với nhau (with each other)
in (7.66) and với anh ta (with him) in (7.71). Thus, it is possible to have a
verbal middle clause such as
(7.71)

Tôi trò chuyện với anh ta

I chat with he

Sayer Process: verbal Circumstance: accompaniment

I chatted with him.

but it would be impossible to have a verbal effective clause such as
(7.72) *

Tôi chúc mừng với anh ta

I congratulate with he

I congratulated with him

7.4.5. Summary
In this section, an attempt has been made to specify the nature of
verbal processes in Vietnamese. In answer to the questions raised at the
beginning of the chapter, I established some of the most essential criteria
for identifying verbal processes and distinguishing them from other types of
process in the language. I also attempted to look at the different ways of
subclassifying verbal processes. As mentioned in Section 7.4.4, due to the
wide semantic range of the verbs that realise verbal processes and the
complexity of the different participant relationships, ways of classifying
verbal processes in Vietnamese appear to be more complex than the
classification of material and mental processes, and cross-overs of one
category to the other can often be found. Much more work is needed in this
area in order to establish a better way or more appropriate method for
classifying verbal processes in Vietnamese.

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7.5. Concluding Remarks

I began this chapter by raising three similar questions which had been
raised for exploring doing processes in Chapter 6. In an attempt to answer
the questions, I examined in some detail the two options of projecting
processes: mental processes and verbal processes. I established criteria for
distinguishing each process option from other types of process and specified
the semantic as well as grammatical bases of their subtypes. It is obvious
from the description that both mental processes and verbal processes
possess a number of distinctive features which make each of them distinct
as a separate grammatical category. Semantically, mental processes are
processes of different kinds of ‘sensing’ and verbal processes are processes
of ‘verbal action’. Lexicogrammatically, they can be distinguished from each
other by a number of properties which have been discussed in some detail
in the preceding pages. What the mental process and the verbal process
have in common is that they both have the potential of projecting another
clause. This potentiality is not typical of doing and being processes. At this
point, I leave Chapter 7 and move on to Chapter 8, where I shall explore the
grammar of being processes in Vietnamese.

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CHAPTER 8
BEING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

8.1. Introductory Remarks

In Chapters 6 and 7, I presented the experiential grammar of ‘doing’
and ‘projecting’, covering some of the major systemic options of ‘material
and ‘behavioural’, and ‘mental and ‘verbal’. In Chapter 6, I also introduced
the concepts of voice and ergativity – the concepts that are relevant to the
description of the majority of the process types in Vietnamese. In this
chapter, an attempt is made to look at the final major option in the system
of TRANSITIVITY in Vietnamese: being processes.
It has been suggested (Halliday, 1994; Bell, 1991; Eggins, 1994; Halliday
& Matthiessen, 2004) that every language accommodates, in its grammar, a
number of distinct ways of expressing states of being, represented as
different types of relational and existential processes in the clause. In order
to examine how the different ways of being are organised in Vietnamese,
the same three questions, which were raised for exploring doing processes
in Chapter 6 and projecting processes in Chapter 7, will be raised also for
exploring being processes in this chapter.
1. What are being processes in Vietnamese?
2. What are the semantic (definition) and lexicogrammatical
(recognition) criteria for identifying being processes and
distinguishing them from other process options – the ‘doing’ and
the ‘projecting’ – in the transitivity system of Vietnamese?
3. What are the main options available in the environment of ‘being’ in
Vietnamese?
As shown in Figure 5.5, Page 124, ‘being’ is the entry point for the two
process options ‘relational’ and ‘existential’. I shall examine these two
process options in turn in the sections that follow.

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 Chapter 8 • BEING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

8.2. The Relational Process

8.2.1. Identifying the Relational Process: Definition
Consider the following clauses:
(8.1) [TH]

Con chim gáy hiền lành

generic classifier bird crowing gentle

The tigrine dove is/was gentle.

(8.2) [VTXH]

Anh vẫn là một vị thánh

you still be one gen.cl god

You are still a God.

(8.3) [DQB]

Ông tôi ở ngoài sân

grandfather I locate out yard

My grandfather is/was in the front yard.

(8.4) [LNM]

Thứ này 7 ngàn một bao

kind this 7 thousand one packet

This kind of cigarette costs/is 7 thousand dongs(1) a packet.

(8.5) [DQB]

Em Linh nặng tám kilô

junior Linh heavy eight kilo

Linh is/weighs eight kilos.

(1) dong is a monetary unit of Vietnamese currency.

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(8.6) [VTXH]

Nó vẫn chưa có con

she still not yet have child

She still did not have a child.

(8.7)

Mũ này là của Quân

hat this be of Quan

This hat is Quan’s.

(8.8) [NHTh]

Tôi là Nhâm
I be Nham

I am Nham/ My name is Nham.

(8.9) [DQB]

Ngày mai là chủ nhật

tomorrow be sunday

Tomorrow is/will be Sunday.

As the examples are intended to show, relational processes in
Vietnamese cover a very rich but fairly complex area of relational
TRANSITIVITY. They are complex because each of the clauses above seems
to express a particular kind of ‘being relation’. Clause (8.1) can be generally
described as the attribution of some quality hiền lành (gentle) to some
entity Con chim gáy (The tigrine bird); clause (8.2), the inclusion of some
entity Anh (You) into some super-ordinate class of entities thánh (God);
clause (8.3), the presence – present, past or future – of some entity Ông tôi
(My grandfather) in a particular location ở ngoài sân (in the front yard);
clauses (8.4) and (8.5), the measurement of some entity Thứ này (This kind
of cigarette) and Em Linh (Linh) by some conventional units of measure 7
ngàn một bao (7 thousand dongs a packet) (monetary unit) and tám kilô
(eight kilos) (unit of weight); clauses (8.6) and (8.7), the possession of
something or some entity con (child) and Mũ này (This hat) by some entity

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 Chapter 8 • BEING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

or someone Nó (She) and của Quân (Quan’s); and clauses (8.8) and (8.9), the
equation of something or some entity Tôi (I) and Ngày mai (Tomorrow) with
something or some entity Nhâm and Chủ nhật (Sunday).
Nevertheless, the semantic diversity which the above clauses are said
to cover does not necessarily mean that there are no similarities across
them. In fact, a careful examination would reveal that they have many
features in common. Most important is the fact that unlike material and
mental processes, they do not describe physical actions or mental activities
but encode what has been known in linguistic scholarship as ‘states of
being’. Thus, relational processes in Vietnamese can be broadly defined as
processes that construe ‘states of being of various kinds’ (cf. Halliday, 1994;
Eggins, 1994; Matthiessen, 1995; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004; Hoàng Văn
Vân, 2005). Each of these states is at once both semantically alike and
different from other states, and each is construed lexicogrammatically by
features which establish it as a distinct grammatical category. The
subsequent subsections of this chapter will discuss the lexicogrammatical
features of each delicate type of state illustrated by (8.1) - (8.9) above. To
facilitate the discussion, however, it would be helpful to establish some of
the basic recognition criteria for identifying the relational process and
distinguishing it from other process types in the transitivity system of
Vietnamese.
8.2.2. Identifying the Relational Process: Recognition Criteria
At the lexicogrammatical level, there are a number of features which
can help to distinguish the relational process as a grammatical category
from other types of process in the transitivity system of Vietnamese,
particularly the material and the mental.
The first feature is that the relational process can be probed in a way
which is quite different from the material and the mental processes. It was
pointed out in Chapters 6 and 7 and elsewhere that the material process is a
process which typically construes some kind of physical action or happening
in the physical universe, and it can be typically probed by asking the
question X (đã) làm gì (Y)? (What did X do (to Y)?); and the mental process is
a process of sensing or mental activity of various kinds, and it can be
typically probed by asking the question X cảm thấy/nghĩ thế nào về Y? (What
does X feel/think about Y?). The relational process, in contrast, is not a kind
of doing; nor is it a kind of sensing. It, therefore, cannot be probed by asking
such questions. For a relational process such as (8.1) Con chim gáy hiền lành

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(The tigrine dove is/was gentle), it would be utterly impossible to probe it

by asking either * Con chim gáy làm gì hiền lành? (What did the tigrine bird
do to gentle?) or * Con chim gáy cảm thấy thế nào về hiền lành? (How did
the tigrine feel about the gentle?). It is, however, possible to use the
following probes:
(8.10)

Con chim gáy như thế nào?

generic classifier bird crowing how

How is the tigrine bird?

(8.11)

Bạn có thể mô tả con chim gáy được không?

friend can describe gen.cl bird crowing possible not

Can you describe the tigrine bird?

Secondly, unlike the material process and some types of the mental
process, the majority of relational processes cannot take the imperative
form. In Vietnamese, relational clauses like (8.12) and (8.13) are
unacceptable:
(8.12) *

Là đi!
be imperative particle

Be please!
(8.13) *

Hãy trở nên tốt!

let become good

Become good please!

Thirdly, unlike the material process, benefactive is not a typical feature
of the relational process and thus it cannot have the function Beneficiary in
it. A material clause such as (8.14) is normal but a relational clause such as
(8.15) will be considered odd:

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 Chapter 8 • BEING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

(8.14)

Tôi mài dao cho Ðình

I sharpen knife for Dinh

I sharpened the knife for Dinh.

(8.15) *

Con dao sắc cho Ðình

generic classifier knife sharp for Dinh

The knife is/was sharp to/for Dinh

Fourthly, unlike the material process, the relational process cannot
collocate with a Circumstance of means as in (8.16) and a Circumstance of
quality(1) as in (8.17):
(8.16) *

Con dao này sắc bằng đá

generic classifier knife this sharp with whetstone

This knife is sharp with whetstone

(8.17) *

Con chim gáy hiền lành một cách chủ định

gen.cl bird crowing gentle one way intention

The tigrine bird is/was gentle intentionally

Fifthly, unlike the mental process and the verbal process, most types of
the relational process cannot project. (8.18) and (8.19) are not acceptable in
Vienamese:
(8.18) *

Tôi tốt: “Anh đi đâu đấy?”

I good brother go where interrogative particle

I am good: “Where are you going?”

(1) For the concepts “Circumstance of means” and “Circumstance of quality”, see Chapter 9.

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(8.19) *

Con chim gáy hiền lành rằng nó sẽ bay

gen.cl bird crowing gentle that it asp.ptcl fly

The tigrine bird is/was gentle that it would fly

A final distinction that is characteristic of the relational process in
Vietnamese has to do with the different way it negates; that is, while other
types of process in Vietnamese usually negate by using only the simple
negative form không (not) such as Tôi không đi (literally, I not go (I won’t
go)), Tôi không biết (literally, I not know (I don’t know)), Tôi không cười
(literally, I not laugh (I didn’t laugh)) etc., the relational process typically
negates by using the compound form không phải (literally, not right / not
correct). (8.20) and (8.21) are the examples:
(8.20)

Con chim gáy không phải hiền lành

generic classifier bird crowing not right gentle

The tigrine bird is/was not gentle.

(8.21)

Anh không phải là một vị thánh

you not right be one gen.cl god

You are not a God.

(8.22)

Thứ này không phải 7 ngàn đồng một bao

kind this not right 7 thousand dong one packet

This kind of cigarette does not cost 7 thousand dongs per packet.
(8.23)

Tôi không phải là Nhâm

I not right be Nham

I am not Nham.

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In sum, the above criteria justify the claim that relational processes in
Vietnamese constitute a distinct grammatical category in the system of
PROCESS TYPE. Most of the recognition criteria offered above specify what
sorts of things are not possible in the context of relational process, e.g., the
absence of certain kind of probe, the inapplicability of a certain MOOD choice
under certain conditions, the inapplicability of the system of benefaction,
and so on. However, in a paradigmatically organised grammar, this presents
no problem, for the grammar does not simply describe a specific syntagm or
even the features underlying a specific syntagm: it describes the potential
for a particular paradigmatically identified feature. Since by definition, a
paradigm is concerned with patterns in absentia (Saussure, 1983: 123), the
features presented here as recognition criteria are in keeping with the spirit
of the systemic functional grammar: they specify what is or is not possible in
the environment of the relational process. As my discussion of the more
delicate features of the relational process continues in the following
sections, further recognition criteria, many of which are ‘positive’, will be
offered.

8.3. Types of Relational Process

8.3.1. Types of Relational Process: Non-systemic Functional Views
As can be seen from Section 8.2, the relational process covers a very
rich but fairly complex area of TRANSITIVITY. It is, therefore, not surprising
that views (whether systemic functional or non-systemic functional) on how
to subcategorise them are varied. Lyons (1968), a non-systemic functional
linguist, for example, has attempted to approach the problem from the point
of view of logic. He examined the different functions of the verbs be and
have in English in reference to the corresponding verbs in some other
languages, and has arrived at differentiating what is referred to in this study
as ‘being processes’ into, to use his terms, (i) Sortal Sentences (i.e., sentences
which serve to group individual into classes and tend to have a nominal
predicate), e.g., Apples are fruit, (ii) Characterising Sentences (i.e., sentences
which refer to qualities, states etc., and tend to have an adjectival predicate),
e.g., Apples are sweet, (iii) Existential and Locative Sentences, e.g., There will
be coffee in a moment and Coffee will be here in a moment, and (iv)
Possessive Sentences, e.g., The book is John’s and John has a book.
In a comprehensive monograph on Chinese grammar, Li & Thompson
(1981) have offered another perspective on differentiating ‘being processes’

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in Chinese. Although they do not treat being processes under one super-
ordinate category, the discussion in Chapters 4 and 17 of their publication
establishes three subtypes:
(i) Simple Adjectival Sentence (= Lyons’ characterising sentences), e.g.
(8.24)

tà pàng
s/he fat

S/He is fat.
(ii) Simple Copula Sentence (= Lyons’ sortal sentences), e.g.
(8.25)

tà fùqin shì wàijiào bùzhăng

s/he father be foreign affair minister

His/Her father is the foreign minister.

(iii) Presentative Sentences (= Lyons’ existential & locative and
possessive sentences), e.g.,
(8.26)

(Zài) yuànzi – li you yi – zhì gou

at yard – in exist one – gen.cl dog

There’s a dog in the yard.

(8.27)

shui – li piào – zhe yi kuài mùtou

water – in float – Dur one piece wood

A piece of wood is floating in the water.

(8.28)

tà you sàn – ge háizi

s/he exist three – classifier child

S/He has three children.

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 Chapter 8 • BEING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

Attempts have also been made to classify being clauses in Vietnamese.

Based on the lexical meaning of the verb, Nguyễn Kim Thản (1977)
distinguishes between (i) động từ xuất hiện, tồn tại, và tiêu hủy (Verbs of
Appearance, Existence and Disappearance) (= Lyons’ possessive sentences
and existential sentences), (ii) động từ hệ từ (Copula Verb) (= Lyons’ sortal
sentences and a subgroup of characterising sentences). Similarly, Nguyễn
Đình Hòa (1979) makes a distinction between (i) Verbs of Existence,
Appearance and Disappearance, (ii) Copula Verb là (be), and (iii) Stative
Verbs. A somewhat similar approach to classifying being clauses in
Vietnamese can also be seen in UBKHXH’s (1983) Ngữ pháp tiếng Việt (A
Grammar of Vietnamese). The author establishes two subtypes of relational
sentence:

(i) Câu tính chất (Attributive Sentences) or Câu tả (Descriptive

Sentences), e.g.
(8.29)

Kết quả đạt được khá tốt

result gain possible rather good

The result was fairly good.

(ii) Câu luận (Equative Sentences), e.g.
(8.30)

Người là vốn quý nhất

people be property precious first

Human beings are the most precious capital/property.

Among the Vietnamese grammarians, Diệp Quang Ban (1987) seems to
have offered a more detailed and comprehensive approach to classifying
relational clauses in the language. His approach can be said to rest on the
semantic relations between what he calls the predicate and the various
types of complement. Diệp Quang Ban (ibid.) begins by differentiating
between vị ngữ chỉ trạng thái (stative predicates) and vị ngữ chỉ quan hệ
(relational predicates). Within relational predicates, Diệp Quang Ban
distinguishes ten subtypes. These are given with examples below:

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(i) Vị ngữ quan hệ đồng nhất (Predicate of Equative Relation):

(8.31)

Người này là thợ mộc

person this be carpenter

This man is the carpenter.

(ii) Vị ngữ quan hệ với vật liệu (Predicate of Substantive/Material
Relation):
(8.32)

Ấm này là bằng nhôm

teapot this be equal aluminium

This teapot is/was made from aluminium.

(iii) Vị ngữ chỉ nguyên nhân (Predicate of Cause):
(8.33)

Việc này là tại nó

event this be because s/he

It (the reason why it is like this) is because of him.

(iv) Vị ngữ chỉ mục đích (Predicate of Purpose):
(8.34)

Cái bàn này là để ăn

generic classifier table this be for eat

This table is for eating at.

(v) Vị ngữ quan hệ sở thuộc (Predicate of Ownership Relation):
(8.35)

Mũ này là của Long

hat this be of Long

This hat is Long’s.

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 Chapter 8 • BEING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

(vi) Vị ngữ định lượng (Predicate of Quantitative Relation):

(8.36)

Em Linh ba tuổi
junior Linh three year

Linh is three years old.

(vii) Vị ngữ quan hệ định vị (Predicate of Locative Relation):
(8.3)

Ông tôi ở ngoài sân

grandfather I locate out yard

My grandfather is in the front-yard.

(viii) Vị ngữ quan hệ sở hữu (Predicate of Possessive Relation):
(8.37)

Anh Long có một chiếc xe đạp

brother Long have one gen.cl bicycle

Long has a bicycle.

(ix) Vị ngữ quan hệ so sánh (Predicate of Comparative Relation):
(8.38)

Anh Long bằng anh Bính

brother Long equal brother Binh

Long is as tall as Binh.

(x) Vị ngữ quan hệ biến hóa (Predicate of Resultative/Alterative
Relation):
(8.39)

Nước biến thành hơi

water turn become vapour

The water has turned into vapour.

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The diversity of opinions on classifying relational clauses in different

languages, particularly in Vietnamese, suggests that we need a model of
relational processes which should meet at least three conditions: (i) it
should consider ‘relational’ as a feature of the clause, not just a feature of
the verb or the predicate, (ii) it should capture a generalisation, i.e., it should
be abstract while still being powerful enough to account for the
particularities of relational processes in Vietnamese; and (iii) it should be
well validated by the relevance of both semantic and lexicogrammatical
criteria. Throughout this work, following the principles of systemic
functional model, the systemic features of all process types have been
treated as making a difference to the syntagm, i.e., the clause. Further, in the
above discussion, I have offered a generalisation regarding the nature of the
relational process (see Section 8.2.1), and some criteria for accepting or
rejecting the description of the relational process have already been
presented (see Section 8.2.2), though others, more delicate ones are to
follow. In the light of the position established, I will examine two
complementary systemic functional models of relational processes: the
Fawcett Model and the Halliday Model. In examining the two models, I will
explain why the insights of the Halliday Model, but not those of the Fawcett
Model, will be adopted as the theoretical framework for the description of
the relational process in Vietnamese.
8.3.2. Types of Relational Process: Systemic Functional Views
8.3.2.1. The Fawcett Model of Relational Process
In an article The Semantics of Clause and Verb for Relational Processes
in English, Fawcett (1987) has attempted to develop a model for interpreting
relational processes in the language. This model, as Fawcett (ibid.: 178)
claims, has been widely used for the purpose of textual analysis in English.
Underlying Fawcett’s approach is the conviction that the system of relational
processes in English consists of two primary choices or primary systems,
which (although he seems not to label them) might be referred to as ‘the
system of RELATIONAL PROCESS TYPE’ and ‘the system of CARRIER TYPE’.
The system of RELATIONAL PROCESS TYPE is the entry point for the
three types of relational process: (i) Relational Attributive Process, e.g., Ivy is
successful; (ii) Relational Locational Process, e.g., Ivy is in Peru; and (iii)
Relational Possessive Process, e.g., Ivy has the key.

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The system of CARRIER TYPE, on the other hand, is the entry point for
four types of Carrier in the relational process: (i) Simple Carrier such as Ivy in
Ivy is in Peru, (ii) Affected Carrier such as the prisoner in He marched the
prisoner, (iii) Agent Carrier such as Ike in Ike got a cold, and (iv) Third Party
Agent such as Ivy in Ivy gave Ike a cold. The two primary systems of
relational process in English as developed by Fawcett can be represented as
follows:

attributive
locational
possessive
relational

simple carrier
affected carrier
agent carrier
third party carrier

Figure 8.1. Fawcett’s Model of Relational Processes in English:

Primary Systems
(Source: Fawcett, 1987: 160)

The intersections of the choices in the system of RELATIONAL PROCESS

TYPE and those in the system of CARRIER TYPE yield twelve subtypes of
relational process, as displayed with examples in Figure 8.2 below:
simple carrier Ike was poor.
affected carrier Ike became poor.
attribution agent carrier Ike became poor.
third party agent The war made Ike poor.
simple carrier Ike was there.
relational affected carrier The parcel went there.
locational agent carrier Ike went there.
third party agent Fred sent Ike there.

simple carrier Ike has a cold.

affected carrier Ike got a cold.
possessive agent carrier Ike got a cold.
third party agent Ivy gave Ike a cold.

Figure 8.2. A Displayed Network for Relational Processes in English

(Source: Fawcett, 1987: 159)

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To modify his model, Fawcett (ibid.) subsumes affected carrier and

agent carrier under the category which he labels ‘compound carrier’ and
adds two more choices: ‘change’ and ‘maintain’. These choices are said to be
derived from the conjunctive entry point ‘compound carrier’ and ‘third party
agent’. Fawcett defines these choices and illustrates the difference between
them by providing two examples: (i) Ivy got the key and (ii) Ivy kept the key.
According to Fawcett (ibid.: 160), (i) has the feature [change] in that it could
be glossed as ‘Ivy caused the situation to one where she had the key’,
whereas, (ii) might be glossed as ‘Ivy caused the situation of her having the
key not to change’, and is therefore [maintain]. Fawcett’s modified model
which consists of twenty one subtypes of relational process in English can be
maximally economically summarised in Figure 8.3:

attributive
locational
possessive
relational simple carrier
affected carrier

compound carrier agent carrier

change
third party carrier
maintain

Figure 8.3. Fawcett’s Modified Model of Relational Processes in English:

A Maximally Economical System Network
(Source: Fawcett, 1987: 161)

From what Fawcett (ibid.) calls ‘essential findings’ as presented above,

he moves on to examine in some detail the different subtypes of relational
process in English, taking attributive, locational, and possessive as the entry
points of the three subsystems. He goes on to establish points of difference
between his model and Halliday’s (1985a) model of relational process type
which, for lack of space, cannot be pursued here in detail. (For detail, see
Fawcett, 1987: 161-78).
Fawcett’s model for interpreting relational processes is thorough and
offers much insight into the nature of this type of process in English.
However, there are certain problems with the model, which prevent its
being adopted as the framework for this monograph. First, as his model

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seems to be concerned more with the particularities than the generalities of

the relational process, one may wonder if it could capture a generalisation.
Secondly, the system of VOICE – which is acknowledged by Fawcett himself
as ‘an important one that needs to be provided in any self-respecting
grammar’ (ibid.: 139) and has been considered as an important system that
implicates the various functional dimensions of the clause such as
TRANSITIVITY, MOOD and THEME, particularly across the different
transitivity types (cf. Halliday, 1967a, 1967b, 1970, 1994; Matthiessen 1995;
Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004; see also Section 5.4), seems to be neglected in
Fawcett’s model. This raises the issue of whether the model is valid. And
thirdly, as Fawcett includes in his model many types of process which would
for this monograph probably be material ones; e.g., Ivy gave Ike a cold, Ike
went there and so on, the question of what are the definition and
recognition criteria for the relational process, and whether the language has
any other process types or not remains completely open.
8.3.2.2. The Halliday Model and the System of Relational Process in
Vietnamese
Among the systemic functional scholars to date, Halliday has made the
most valuable contribution to our understanding of the relational process
(Fawcett, 1987: 131). His model of the relational process in English is at once
insightful, detailed, and offers generalisations, many of which are also
relevant to Vietnamese. In the following section, an attempt will be made to
apply the insights of this model for interpreting relational processes in
Vietnamese.
As with English, relational processes in Vietnamese can be classified
along two main dimensions: ‘mode of being’ (which can be said to be
associated with the system of VOICE) and ‘type of being’ (which is associated
with the different types of relational process as primary choices). These
dimensions constitute the primary systems of relational process, which I
shall refer to respectively as ‘MODE OF RELATION’ and ‘TYPE OF RELATION’.
The primary systemic contrast in MODE OF RELATION is that of
‘ascriptive’ (generally described as ‘a là thuộc tính của x’ (a is an attribute of
x) versus ‘identifying’ (‘a là sự đồng nhất của x’ (a is the identity of x)).
TYPE OF RELATION, on the other hand, is a three term system: (i)
‘being’ or, to borrow Halliday’s (1994) term, ‘intensive’ (described in the
most general terms as ‘x là a’ (x is a); (ii) ‘being at’ or ‘circumstantial’ ‘x ở a’

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(x is located at a); and (iii) ‘having’ or ‘possessive’ ‘x có a’ (x has a) (cf. Lyons,

1968, 1985, 1987; Halliday, 1994; Matthiessen, 1995; Halliday & Matthiessen,
2004; Hoàng Văn Vân, 2005).
The intersections of the choices from these systems yield six basic
types of relational process: (i) intensive ascriptive process, (ii) circumstantial
ascriptive process, (iii) possessive ascriptive process, (iv) intensive
identifying process, (v) circumstantial identifying process, and (vi) possessive
identifying process. In the most general terms, the system of relational
TRANSITIVITY in Vietnamese can be represented as in Figure 8.4:

ascriptive
MODE OF
RELATION
identifying
relational
intensive

TYPE OF circumstantial
RELATION
possessive

Figure 8.4. Relational TRANSITIVITY in Vietnamese: Primary Choices

In the remaining sections, an attempt is made to explore in some detail
the six basic types of relational process as specified in Figure 8.4. An attempt
is also made to look at some other subtypes which are not covered in the
system network. To facilitate the discussion, however, it would be helpful to
introduce the distinction between ascriptive and identifying mode.
8.3.3. Ascriptive v. Identifying Mode
Let me begin the discussion by raising two questions for exploration:
(i) What exactly is meant by ascriptive and identifying modes? i.e., how are
they defined? and (ii) how are they distinguished from one another in
Vietnamese? i.e., what recognition criteria exist at the level of
lexicogrammar that help to distinguish them.
8.3.3.1. Definition
Consider the following examples:

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(8.1) [TH]

Con chim gáy hiền lành

generic classifier bird crowing gentle

The tigrine bird is/was gentle.

(8.8) [NHTh]

Tôi là Nhâm
I be Nham

I am Nham/My name is Nham.

(8.1) is ascriptive and (8.8) is identifying. These two modes differ in
that in the ascriptive, the clause construes a relation between one
participating entity which referred to in this study as the Carrier (Car), e.g.,
Con chim gáy (The tigrine bird) and an attribute referred to as the Attribute
(Attr), e.g., hiền lành (gentle). Its basic meaning is ‘x mang thuộc tính a’ (x
carries an attribute a) if considered from the perspective of x or ‘a là một
thuộc tính của x’ (a is an attribute of x) if considered from the perspective of
a. In the identifying mode, on the other hand, the clause construes a relation
between two participating entities; one is referred to as the Identified (Id),
e.g., Tôi (I) and the other, the Identifier (Ir), e.g., Nhâm (Nham). Its basic
meaning is ‘x là a’ (x is a) if considered from the point of view of x or ‘a là sự
đồng nhất của x’ (a is the identity of x) if considered from the point of view
of a.
The semantic distinction between an ascriptive clause and an
identifying clause has lexicogrammatical relevance which will be discussed
in the following section.
8.3.3.2. Recognition Criteria
At the level of lexicogrammar, there are a number of criteria for
differentiating the Vietnamese ascriptive process from the identifying one.
First, associated with each mode is a different set of grammatical functions,
as illustrated in the following schematic structures:
Ascriptive: Carrier^Process: relational^Attribute
Identifying: Identified^Process: relational^Identifier

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Secondly, in terms of voice, ascriptive clauses are middle whereas

identifying ones are effective. This is reflected in the fact that an ascriptive
clause has only one participant – the Carrier – while an identifying clause
must have two – the Identified and the Identifier. Further, while the two
participating entities in an identifying clause can be reversed without
changing the experiential meaning, those in an ascriptive one cannot (cf.
Halliday, 1967a, 1967b, 1994; Eggins, 1994; Williams, 1994; Halliday &
Matthiessen, 2004; see also Lyons, 1968). Thus, for a relational identifying
clause one can either say (8.8) or (8.8a):
(8.8)
Tôi là Nhâm
I be Nham
Identified Process: relational Identifier

I am Nham/My name is Nham.

(8.8a)
Nhâm là tôi
Nham be I
Identified Process: relational Identifier

Nham is me/Nham is my name.

By contrast, in the case of the ascriptive process this possibility does
not exist. The pattern of Carrier ^ Attribute as in (8.1) is normal, but the
pattern of Attribute ^ Carrier (with reversed constituents) as (8.1a) is odd:
(8.1)

Con chim gáy hiền lành

generic classifier bird crowing gentle
Carrier Attribute

The tigrine bird is/was gentle.

(8.1a) *

Hiền lành con chim gáy

gentle generic classifier bird crowing

Gentle is the tigrine bird

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Thirdly, in a Vietnamese ascriptive clause, the presence of the process

(i.e., the verb) is usually optional whereas in an identifying clause, the
presence of the process appears to be obligatory. Thus, in the ascriptive
mode, either member of the pair is acceptable:
(8.40)

Làm như vậy tốt

do like that good
Carrier Attribute

It (is) good to do like that.

(8.4) [LNM]

Thứ này 7 ngàn một bao

kind this 7 thousand one packet

Carrier Attribute

This kind of cigarette (costs) 7 thousand dongs a packet.

(8.5) [DQB]

Em Linh nặng tám kilô

junior Linh heavy eight kilo

Carrier Attribute

Linh (is/weighs) 8 kilos.

or
(8.40a)

Làm như vậy là tốt

do like that be good

Carrier Process: relational Attribute

It is good to do like that.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

(8.4a)

Thứ này giá 7 ngàn một bao

kind this cost 7 thousand one packet

Carrier Pro: relational Attribute

This kind of cigarette costs 7 thousand dongs a packet.

(8.5a)

Em Linh cân nặng tám kilô

junior Linh weigh heavy eight kilo

Carrier Process: relational Attribute

Linh is/weighs 8 kilos.

However, in the identifying mode it would be highly marked, if not
impossible, to say
(8.8b) *

Tôi Nhâm

I Nham

I Nham
(8.7a) *

Của Quân mũ này

of Quan hat this

Quan’s this hat

Finally, while the verb là (be) may realise either the ascriptive or the
identifying process, each of these process types is realised by a distinct set of
verbs. Some of these are given below:

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 Chapter 8 • BEING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

Ascriptive Identifying
Vietnamese English translation Vietnamese English translation
trở nên become làm work/act as
phát triển/tăng grow đóng vai play/act as
trưởng
chiếm occupy/take up
giữ keep
kéo dài last/prolong
nhìn/trông/nom look
gọi call
cảm thấy/thấy look/feel
đặt tên name
giống resemble

8.3.4. Intensive Process

As mentioned earlier (Section 8.3), relational intensive processes in
Vietnamese are characterised by the fact that they set up a relationship of
‘sameness’ or ‘identity’ between the two terms in the clause, which can be
described in the most general terms as ‘x là a’ (x is a). However, by moves in
delicacy, they construe the various relationships that are fundamental in
semiotic systems. Of particular importance are instantiation; i.e., ‘x cụ thể
hoá a’ (x instantiates a) or ‘a là một trường hợp cụ thể của x’ (a is an
instance of x) and realisation; i.e., ‘x nghĩa là/hiện thực hoá a’ (x
means/realises a) (cf. Matthiessen, 1995; Davidse, 1996a, 1996b; Halliday &
Matthiessen, 2004). These types of semiotic relationship are said to be
related to the two modes of relational intensive process, which I shall
explore below.
8.3.5. Intensive Process: System of Causation
Relational intensive process has an option open to it, which are not
available for circumstantial and possessive processes: the intensive relation
between the two terms in the clause may be caused or brought about by an
external agent(1). This option is referred to as relational intensive causative
process. Causation is also a feature that makes intensive process distinct
from the other two where the relation between the two terms such as Ông
tôi (My grandfather) and ngoài sân (in the front yard) in Ông tôi ở ngoài sân

(1) With regard to relational circumstantial and relational possessive clauses, an external
cause or agency is said to be construed by a material process; e.g., Tôi có một cuốn sách
(I have a book) : Giáo sư tôi tặng tôi một cuốn sách (My professor gave me a book) and
Tôi ở Sydney (I was in Sydney) : Họ cử tôi đi Sydney (They sent me to Sydney).

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(My grandfather is in the front yard) and Tôi (I) and một cuốn sách (a book)
in Tôi có một cuốn sách (I have a book) holds without being caused. As with
all subtypes of intensive process, the causative process in Vietnamese occurs
both in the ascriptive and the identifying mode.
In the ascriptive mode, the basic meaning of a causative process can be
described as an external agent, referred to in this study as the Attributor
(Attor), which causes the Carrier to have an Attribute ascribed (cf. Eggins,
1994; Matthiessen, 1995). The causative process is typically realised by verbs
such as làm/làm cho (make), khiến cho/gây cho/khiến/gây (cause).
Examples:
(8.41)

Anh ấy làm tôi buồn

He make I sad
Attributor Process: causative Carrier Attributive

He made me sad.
(8.42)

Ðói khát khiến nó trở thành một kẻ lưu manh

hunger cause he become one gen.cl ruffian
Attributor Pro: causative Car Pro: rel Attributive

Hunger caused him to become a ruffian.

With the identifying mode, the external agent, referred to in this study
as the Assigner (Asger), causes the Token to take a Value (for a discussion
of Token and Value please see Section 8.3.7 below). The causative Process
can be realised by verbs such as bầu (elect), gọi (call), đặt tên/gọi tên
(name), coi/xem (consider), nặn/dựng (make/shape) etc. Examples:
(8.43)

Họ bầu ông Clinton là tổng thống

they elect Mr Clinton be president
Assigner Pro: causative Token Pro: rel Value

They elected Mr Clinton president.

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(8.44)

Tôi đặt tên nó là Quân

I name he be Quan
Assigner Pro: causative Token Process: relational Value

I name/call him Quan.

The causative system is concurrent with another system, that of
alteration with two terms: ‘alterative’ v. ‘non-alterative’, with other systemic
choices depending on them. These are represented in Figure 8.5. As most of
these apply to intensive ascriptive processes, I shall now turn to the
description of that process.
8.3.6. Intensive Ascriptive Process
First a few words about the ascriptive process in general. Consider the
following examples:
(8.45a)

Hổ dữ
tiger fierce
Carrier Attributive

A tiger is fierce.
(8.45b)

Hổ là một loài động vật

tiger be one species animal
Carrier Process: relational Attributive

A tiger is an animal.
As with all relational clauses of the ascriptive mode, intensive
ascriptive clauses usually involve two terms. One – the Carrier – has to be a
nominal as Hổ (A tiger). However, as these clauses show, the Attribute can
be either an adjective such as dữ (fierce) in (8.45a) or a nominal group such
as một loài động vật (an animal) in (8.45b). Although the two clauses are
realised differently, they have one feature in common; that is, the
relationship between the two terms in both cases is to be interpreted as one

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of ‘class-membership’ or ‘inclusion’, described in general terms as ‘x là một

thành viên của lớp a’ (x is a member of class a) or ‘x thuộc vào lớp a’ (x
belongs to class a). To put it in semiotic terms, a relational intensive clause
construes the general relationship of instantiation: the entity serving as the
Carrier is ascribed to the class it instantiates. Thus, by saying Hổ là một loài
động vật (A tiger is an animal) we mean Hổ là một thành viên hay một
trường hợp cụ thể của lớp các động vật (A tiger is a member or an instance
of the class animal) or Hổ thuộc vào lớp các động vật (A tiger belongs to the
class animal). Similarly, by saying Hổ dữ (A tiger is fierce), we mean Hổ là
một thành viên hay một trường hợp cụ thể của lớp các động vật dữ (A tiger is
a member or an instance of the class of animals which are fierce) or Hổ
thuộc về lớp các động vật dữ (A tiger belongs to the class of animals which
are fierce) (cf. Lyons, 1968; Bell, 1991; see Halliday, 1967a, 1994; Halliday in
Kress, 1976; Davidse, 1996a, 1996b; Hoàng Văn Vân, 2005). Thus, the basic
meaning of an intensive ascriptive clause is about classification.
At the lexicogrammatical level, an intensive ascriptive clause has a
number of characteristics which distinguish it as a separate sub-category.
The first characteristic, already mentioned, pertains to all ascriptive type: it
is not reversible (cf. Section 8.3.2).
Secondly, in an intensive process when the Attribute is realised as an
adjective, the presence of the verb is usually optional as shown in clause
(8.45a). However, when it is realised as a nominal group, the presence of the
verb is obligatory and the nominal group is usually indefinite. In
Vietnamese, the indefiniteness of a noun is marked by the presence of
number marker whether singular or plural. Below are two pairs of examples
showing the indefiniteness/definiteness contrast:
indefiniteness definiteness
(8.46a) [singular] (8.46b)
Tôi là một giáo viên Tôi là giáo viên
I be sg.mrkr (one) teacher I be teacher

I am a teacher. I am the teacher.

(8.47a) [plural] (8.47b)

Chúng tôi là những giáo viên Chúng tôi là giáo viên

we be pl.mrkr teacher we be teacher

We are teachers. We are the teachers.

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Thirdly, an intensive ascriptive clause can be probed by questions such

as Gì? (What?), Như thế nào? (How, What ...like?); e.g., Hổ là gì? (What is a
tiger?), Hổ như thế nào? (What is a tiger like?).
And finally, the verbs that realise intensive ascriptive processes in
Vietnamese seem to form a distinct set; e.g., trở nên (become), đâm/hoá
(go), cảm thấy (feel), ăn/nếm (taste), bị (get) etc.
Intensive ascriptive processes in Vietnamese cover a considerable
range. This means that they include a large number of delicate options.
These options are given in Figure 8.5 below:

possessive

circumstantial
TYPE OF causative
RELATION
non-causative
intensive
alterative
relational
non-alterative

specified

ascriptive non-specified
internal
MODE OF
RELATION external
identifying

Figure 8.5. More Delicate Options of Intensive Process Type

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It is to be noted that the most unmarked form of the intensive

ascriptive clause is one that is non-causative, non-alterative and domain-
non-specified. The system of state pertains to all ascriptive intensive
processes. This is one with which I begin my discussion.
8.3.6.1. Internal State Process
In Vietnamese, there is a variety of intensive ascriptive process in
which the Attribute denotes some inner state or emotion such as buồn
(sad/upset), vui (joyful/happy), sung sướng/phấn khởi/hạnh phúc (happy),
mừng (glad/happy), ngượng/ngượng ngùng (embarrassed), xấu hổ (shy),
bực/tức (angry), mệt/mệt mỏi (tired/sick), lo/lắng (be worried), etc.
Examples:
(8.48) [LNM]

Tôi lo lắng thực sự

I worry really
Carrier Attribute Circumstance

I was really worried.

(8.49) [QT]

Chàng tỏ ra mệt mỏi

he prove tired
Carrier Pro: relational: internal Attribute

He looked tired.
(8.50) [VTXH]

Tôi mừng cho Diêu

I happy for Dieu
Carrier Attribute Circumstance

I was happy for Dieu.

Processes of this type are actually a half-way house between relational
domain and mental domain of emotion. They are mental in the sense that
the element that realises the role Attribute expresses some inner state or

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inner emotion such as lo lắng (worried) in (8.48), mệt mỏi (tired) in (8.49),
and mừng (happy) in (8.50), and the element that realises the role Carrier is
typically a conscious nominal such as Tôi (I) in (8.48), Chàng (He) in (8.49),
and Tôi (I) in (8.50). They are relational on the ground that the Attribute is
typically realised as an adjective and therefore can be interpreted as
construing a relationship in which a participant (the Carrier) is assigned a
certain quality (an Attribute); e.g., lo lắng (being worried), mệt mỏi (being
tired), mừng (being happy) etc. In fact, as Matthiessen (1995: 278) has
observed for English, in Vietnamese, too, the emotive domain is one which
can be construed either mentally as Senser’s emotive processing or
relationally as ascription of an emotive Attribute to a Carrier.
8.3.6.2. Alterative Process
Intensive ascriptive processes cover not only processes of ‘being’ but
also those of ‘becoming’ or ‘coming into being’ referred to in this study as
‘alterative process’. This subtype of intensive process is typically realised by
verbs such as trở nên/trở thành (become), biến thành/hóa thành (turn into),
hóa ra (turn out) etc. As a subtype of intensive ascriptive process, alterative
process shares with processes of the being type in that the Attribute can be
realised either as an adjective or as a non-specific nominal and the clause is
not reversible. However, there are both semantic and lexicogrammatical
distinctions between the two. Semantically, whereas an intensive ascriptive
process of the being type construes the relation between the Carrier and the
Attribute as a state, an intensive alterative one construes the relation
between these terms as a state of change. Lexicogrammatically, an
alterative process may be distinguished from a process of the being type in
two respects. First, unlike processes of the being type, those of the alterative
type always demand the presence of the verb. Thus, it is possible to say, for
example,
(8.51a) [NÐC]

Ðê trở nên sung sướng, giàu có

De become happy rich

Carrier Process: relational: alterative Attribute

De became happy and rich.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

(8.52a) [NÐC]

Tấm hóa thành con chim vàng anh

Tam turn into gen.cl bird (gold) oriole
Carrier Process: relational: alterative Attribute

Tam turned into a golden oriole.

but the following verbless versions would not be taken to be alterative:
(8.51b) *

Ðê sung sướng, giàu có

De happy rich

De happy and rich

(8.52b) *

Tấm con chim vàng anh

Tam generic classifier bird (gold) oriole

Tam a golden oriole

Secondly, while a process of the being type negates by the compound
form không phải (not right/not correct), an alterative process typically
negates by the simple negative form không (not) (cf. Section 8.2.2). Thus
(8.52c) is normal
(8.52c)

Tấm không hóa thành con chim vàng anh

Tam not turn into gen.cl bird (gold) oriole

Carrier Pro: rel: alt Attribute

Tam did not turn into a golden oriole.

but (8.52d) would not be taken to be alterative:

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 Chapter 8 • BEING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

(8.52d) *

Tấm không phải hóa thành con chim vàng anh

Tam not right turn into gen.cl bird (gold) oriole

Tam (did not have to) turn into a golden oriole

8.3.6.3. Domain-specified Process
Domain-specified process refers to a subtype of intensive ascriptive
process in which the Carrier usually contains two grammatically separate
but semantically interrelated elements such as Nhà này (literally, House this
(In this house)) and tường (the walls) in
(8.53)

Nhà này tường trắng

house this wall white

This house, the walls are white.

In formal and non-systemic functional grammars of Vietnamese, these
elements have been variously treated. Trương Văn Chình & Nguyễn Hiến Lê
(1963), for example, refer to them respectively as topic and subject. Hoàng
Trọng Phiến (1980) and UBKHXH (1983), on the other hand, analyses them as
sentence-initial element or sentence-initial phrase and subject. And
Thompson (1985: 245) treats them as a kind of ‘specialising focal complex’,
which he defines as one that has “as the outermost (first) complement some
general element which is more specifically identified by the inner
complement”. It is worth noting that, unlike a circumstantial element which
is typically realised as a prepositional phrase and is semantically related to
the whole clause, the first element of the complex is usually realised as a
nominal group and is semantically related to the second element by a
whole-part relationship; i.e., the first element represents the whole and the
second element – a part. To the first element, I shall assign the label
Domain (Dom) and for the second element, rather than introduce a new
concept, I shall retain the label Carrier. The experiential structure of clauses
of this type can be represented as in (8.53) and (8.54) below:

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

(8.53)

Nhà này tường trắng

house this wall white
Domain Carrier Attribute

This house, the walls are white.

(8.54) [DQB]

Anh Long phổi yếu

brother Long lung weak

Domain Carrier Attribute

Brother Long, his lungs are weak.

In terms of logico-semantic relations, domain-specified processes can
be subclassified into ‘elaborating’ (i.e., Carrier elaborates the meaning of the
Domain by further specifying or describing it) and ‘extending’ (i.e., Carrier
extends the meaning of the Domain by adding something new to it).
Examples of these subtypes are given below:
Elaborating
(8.55)

Chiếc bàn này hình vuông

gen.cl table this shape square

Domain Carrier Attribute

This table, its shape is square.

(8.56)

Chiếc bút kia màu xanh

generic classifier pen that colour blue

Domain Carrrier Attribute

That pen, its colour is blue.

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Extending

(8.57) [DQB]

Anh Hùng tay khỏe

brother Hung hand strong

Domain Carrier Attribute

Brother Hung, his hands are strong.

(8.58) [LT]

Các cô Việt Nam môi lúc nào cũng đỏ

pl.mrkr gen.cl (female) Vietnam lip all time red

Domain Car Circ Attr

Vietnamese girls, their lips are always red.

8.3.7. Intensive Identifying Process
Intensive identifying processes in Vietnamese contrast with the
ascriptive ones in a number of ways. Semantically, if an intensive ascriptive
process construes an inclusion or classifying relationship, the intensive
identifying one construes a ‘defining’ or identifying relationship (cf. Halliday,
1967a, 1967b, 1994; Shore, 1992; Eggins, 1994; Matthiessen 1995; Halliday &
Matthiessen, 2004). To put it in semiotic terms, if the relationship between
the two terms in an intensive ascriptive clause is that of instantiation, the
relationship between the two terms in the identifying one is that of
realisation (cf. Section 8.3.2). Thus, in the clause
(8.59)

Quân là học sinh giỏi nhất

Quan be student excellent first
Identified Pro: relational Identifier

Quan is the best student.

Quân – the Identified – is defined or realised by học sinh giỏi nhất (the
best student) – the Identifier.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

Shore (1992: 223) argues that relational intensive ascriptive clauses

can be used to identify someone or something. This is misleading. We may
grant that in everyday conversations people do sometimes use a clause such
as Cô ấy người nhỏ, tóc đen (She is small and dark-haired) so as to describe
someone hoping that the description will recall the right person. But this
does not mean that an identifying clause has been produced. In fact, the so-
called ‘identifying characteristics’ such as người nhỏ (small) and tóc đen
(dark-haired) are too general. The main reason is that with these
characteristics Cô ấy (She) is not yet made what Halliday (1994) refers to as
‘a one-member class’ as Quân is in (8.59), and by saying Cô ấy người nhỏ, tóc
đen (She is small and dark-haired) one still allows that there are other small
and dark-haired girls around. Therefore (contra. Shore, 1992: 223), the
clause cannot be said to have identifying function in the proper sense of the
term.

Lexicogrammatically, the first difference to be noted between the

ascriptive and the identifying process is as follows: unlike an ascriptive
clause, an identifying clause usually involves two nominal participants and,
more importantly, the second participant is typically realised as a specific or
definite nominal, or else a proper noun or pronoun. As pointed out earlier
(see Section 8.3.6, examples (8.46a), (8.46b), (8.47a), (8.47b) for the
indefiniteness/definiteness contrast) in Vietnamese the definiteness or
specificity of a noun is always indicated in such a clause.

The second distinction rests on the different ways they can be probed.
In Vietnamese an intensive identifying clause can be probed by asking
questions with Ai/ Người nào? (Who/Which person?), Cái nào/Chiếc nào?
(Which thing/one?); e.g., Ai là giáo viên chủ nhiệm? (Who is the teacher in
charge?), Người nào là Lê Anh Xuân trong tấm hình này? (Which is Le Anh
Xuan in this photo?), Chiếc mũ nào là của cậu? (Which hat is yours?).

The third characteristic is that the verbs that realise intensive

identifying processes seem to form a set which is distinct from the set that
realises relational intensive ascriptive processes. Below are some of them:

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Vietnamese English translation

minh họa exemplify/illustrate
đại diện represent
bao hàm/bao gồm include/comprise
bằng equal
đóng play/act as
biểu đạt express
hiện thực hóa realise
nghĩa là mean/signify
etc.

A final characteristic is that they are reversible. This means that unlike
intensive ascriptive processes, they have both the active and passive forms
(see Section 8.3.8 below).
As noted earlier, the reversibility of an intensive identifying clause
derives from the fact that the two nominal expressions are unique in the
context in which they occur (cf. Halliday, 1994: 123). As a result, either can
be used to identify the other; i.e., either of them can function either as
Identified or as Identifier. In clause (8.59), for example, Quân là học sinh giỏi
nhất (Quan is the best student), Quân is the Identified and học sinh giỏi nhất
(the best student) is the Identifier. But in the inverted clause Học sinh giỏi
nhất là Quân (The best student is Quan), Học sinh giỏi nhất (The best
student) is the Identified and Quân is the Identifier. This Identified/Identifier
analysis, however, does not reflect the experiential nature of the identifying
clause. This is because if it is used for experiential analysis, it would mean
that the experiential meaning of the clause is changed as it is inverted. This
suggests that, apart from the Identified/Identifier distinction which reflects
the semiotic nature of realisation, there may exist another pair of concepts
which will account for the experiential nature of the clause of this type (i.e.,
a pair of concepts which will help to show that even when the clause is
inverted the experiential function of the two terms are still constant).
8.3.8. Token and Value
Halliday (1967a, 1967b, 1968, 1994) and Halliday & Matthiessen (2004)
have introduced two grammatical concepts to account for the experiential
functions of the two nominal expressions in an identifying clause which they

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

refer to respectively as Token (Tk) and Value (Vl). These notions are also
relevant to Vietnamese. According to Halliday (ibid.) and Halliday &
Matthiessen (ibid.), a Token refers to the element which stands for what is
being defined, and a Value refers to one which defines.
The reversibility and the non-inflecting characteristic of the
Vietnamese language raise the question of which segment of the clause is
the Token and which segment is the Value. This, as Halliday has pointed out
with reference to English, can be determined on both semantic and
lexicogrammatical grounds. Semantically, in any identifying clause, the
segment that realises the role Token will always be the ‘outward sign, the
name, the form, the holder or the occupant’ and the segment that realises
the role Value will always be ‘a meaning, a referent, a function, a status, or a
role’ (cf. Halliday, 1985a, 1994; Eggins, 1994). Lexicogrammatically, the
recognition of these segments can be done by conflating the Token/Value
with the Identified/Identifier pair. Here obviously the conflation can go
either way; i.e., either the Token or the Value can serve as the Identifier.
Thus in the clause
(8.60a)

Tôi là giáo viên

I be teacher
Token/Identified Process: relational Value/Identifier

I am the teacher.
Tôi (I) functions as Token and Identified and giáo viên (the teacher)
functions as Value and Identifier. However, in the inverted clause
(8.60b)

Giáo viên là tôi

teacher be I
Value/Identified Process: relational Token/Identifier

The teacher is me.

Giáo viên (The teacher) still functions as the Value but is now the
Identified and Tôi (I) still functions as the Token but is now the Identifier.
Thus, one can see that in both the original and the inverted clause, the
functions Token and Value remain constant while the functions Identified
and identifier are varied.

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 Chapter 8 • BEING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

Halliday’s postulate of Token and Value for the two roles in an

identifying clause is crucial as it helps not only to analyse the experiential
meaning but also to determine which realises the feature active and which
passive in this clause type. As with English, the active/passive distinction in a
Vietnamese identifying clause particularly one which is realised by the
equative verb or, to use the folk linguistics term, the copula verb là (be)
appears to be extremely complex. To do this, one needs a grammatical test
which involves a number of technical steps: (i) select a relational intensive
identifying clause with the verb là (be), e.g., Tôi là giáo viên (I am the
teacher); (ii) replace the verb là (be) with one of the synonymous intensive
identifying verbs as đóng (play (the role of)) in Tôi đóng vai giáo viên (I play
(the role of) the teacher); (iii) invert the substituted clause into the passive
form, e.g., Vai giáo viên được tôi đóng (The role of the teacher is played by
me); (iv) analyse the substituted clauses (both the active and the passive
form) and the corresponding original là (be) clauses into MOOD and
TRANSITIVITY; and (v) establish the correlation: the clause is active when
the Subject is conflated with the Token and it is passive when the Subject is
conflated with the Value. The analysis is shown in examples (8.61a) and
(8.61b):
(8.61a)

Tôi đóng vai giáo viên : Tôi là giáo viên

I play role teacher I be teacher

Subject Pred Complement Subject Pred Compl

Token Pro: rel Value Token Pro: rel Value

I play (the role of) the teacher. I am the teacher.

(8.61b)

Vai giáo viên được tôi đóng : Giáo viên là tôi

role teacher pass. ptcl I play teacher be I

Subject Compl Pred Subject Pred Compl

Value Token Pro: rel Value Pro: rel Token

(The role of) the teacher is played by me. The teacher is me.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

As the analysis shows, the clause Tôi là giáo viên (I am the teacher) is
active because the Subject is conflated with the Token and the clause Giáo
viên là tôi (The teacher is me) is passive because the Subject is conflated
with the Value.

8.3.9. Circumstantial Process

Relational circumstantial processes are concerned with the relational
transitivity of ‘being at’. They differ from intensive processes (Section 8.3.4)
and possessive processes (Section 8.3.10 below) in that in the circumstantial
process, the relationship is not between two entities, but between an entity
and its static location or setting such as space, time, manner,
accompaniment, role etc. When we say, for example,
(8.62)

Nhà tôi ở gần trường

house I locate near school
Carrier Process: relational Attribute

My house is near the school.

We are providing the information that an entity Nhà tôi (My house) is
located at some particular point in space ở gần trường (near the school).
Similarly, when we say
(8.63)

Cuộc họp vào lúc chín giờ sáng

gen.cl meeting at moment nine hour morning

Carrier Attribute

The meeting was at nine am.

We are providing the information that some event Cuộc họp (The
meeting) took place at some particular moment of time vào lúc chín giờ
sáng (at nine am).
As with intensive processes, circumstantial processes in Vietnamese
occur in both ascriptive and identifying modes.

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 Chapter 8 • BEING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

8.3.9.1. Circumstantial Ascriptive Process

As the title of the section suggests, a circumstantial ascriptive process
can be defined as one that encodes or construes a relation in which the
circumstantial element is an Attribute that is being ascribed to some entity
(the Carrier) as in clauses (8.62) and (8.63) above. One of the significant
characteristics of this type of process is that the circumstantial feature is
realised either within the Attribute – circumstance as attribute, or within the
Process – circumstance as process.
In the first form, the circumstantial element expressed in the Attribute
is typically realised as a prepositional phrase. For example:
(8.64)

Cuộc thảo luận tối qua là về tham nhũng

gen.cl discussion evening past be about corruption

Carrier Pro: rel Attribute

The discussion last night was about corruption.

In the second form, the Attribute is typically realised as a nominal
group and the circumstantial meaning is encoded in the verb; e.g., ở (locate),
cân (weigh), đong/đo (measure), giá (cost), chứa/đựng (contain), kéo dài
(last), liên quan/liên quan đến (concern) etc. These verbs express a wide
range of circumstantial relations such as ‘be + extent in space’ as in (8.65),
‘be + matter’ as in (8.66), ‘be + extent in time’ as in (8.67), ‘be + measure of
weight’ as in (8.68), ‘be + measure of capacity’ as in (8.69), ‘be + measure of
price’ as in (8.70), ‘be + measure of age’ as in (8.71), and so on.
(8.65) be + extent in space [CD]

Nhà tôi ở dưới đám dâu

house I locate under crowd mulberry

Carrier Process: relational Attribute

My house is under a mulberry tree.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

(8.66) be + matter

Cuộc thảo luận liên quan đến tham nhũng

gen.cl discussion concern with corruption
Carrier Process: relational Attribute

The discussion concerned/was concerned with corruption.

(8.67) be + extent in time

Cuộc họp kéo dài bốn giờ

gen.cl conference last four hour
Carrier Process: relational Attribute

The conference lasted for four hours.

(8.68) be + measure of weight

Quân cân nặng hai mươi kilô

Quan weigh heavy twenty kilo
Carrier Process: relational Attribute

Quan is/weighs twenty kilos.

(8.69) be + measure of capacity

Thùng này có thể chứa được mười lít

bucket this can contain ten litre

Carrier Process: relational Attribute

This bucket can contain ten litres.

(8.70) be + measure of price

Cuốn sách này giá năm nghìn đồng

gen.cl book this price five thousand dong

Carrier Process: relational Attribute

This book costs five thousand dongs.

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 Chapter 8 • BEING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

(8.71) be + measure of age

Quân lên tám tuổi

Quan rise/up eight year
Carrier Process: relational Attribute

Quan is eight years old.

Being ascriptive, these processes are non-reversible. This means that
there are no passive forms such as
(8.66a) *

Tham nhũng được cuộc thảo luận liên quan đến

corruption pass. ptcl gen.cl discussion concern with

Corruption was concerned with by the discussion

(8.67a) *

Bốn giờ bị cuộc họp kéo dài

four hour pass.ptcl gen.cl conference last

Four hours were lasted by the conference

And being ascriptive, the presence of the verb in these clauses is not
obligatory. One can either say
(8.68)

Quân cân nặng hai mươi kilô

Quan weigh heavy twenty kilo
Carrier Process: relational Attribute

Quan weighs/is twenty kilos.

(8.69)

Thùng này có thể chứa được mười lít

bucket this can contain ten litre
Carrier Process: relational Attribute

This bucket can contain ten litres.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

or
(8.68a)

Quân nặng hai mươi kilô

Quan heavy twenty kilo
Carrier Attribute

Quan (is) twenty kilos.

(8.69a)

Thùng này mười lít

bucket this ten litre

Carrier Attribute

This bucket (is/contains) ten litres.

8.3.9.2. Circumstantial Identifying Process

In the circumstantial identifying clause, the circumstantial feature
takes the form of a relationship between two entities in terms of time, place,
or manner, etc. One important characteristic that serves to distinguish this
subtype of relational process from the circumstantial ascriptive one is that
(unlike the ascriptive) the circumstantial meaning in the identifying process
is encoded either within the Participants – circumstance as participant, or
(like the ascriptive) within the Process – circumstance as process.
In the first form, the Token and Value are circumstantial elements of
time, location, and the verb remains intensive. Examples:
(8.72)

Hôm qua là chủ nhật

tomorrow be sunday

Token/Circ: temporal Process: relational Value/Circ: temporal

Yesterday was Sunday.

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 Chapter 8 • BEING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

(8.73)

Hà Nội là thủ đô của Việt Nam

Hanoi be capital of Vietnam

Token/Circ: location Process: relational Value/Circ: location

Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam.

As the examples show, the relation between the Participants in these
clauses can be considered as one of sameness. In fact, as Halliday (1994:
131) has aptly observed for English, these processes are in this respect like
relational intensive clauses; the only difference being that the two halves of
the equation or the two participating elements are ‘circumstantial elements
in disguise’.
Being identifying, these clauses show reversibility. One can either say
as (8.72) and (8.73) or the following:
(8.72a)

Chủ nhật là hôm qua

sunday be yesterday

Sunday was yesterday.

(8.73a)

Thủ đô của Việt Nam là Hà Nội

capital of Vietnam be Hanoi

The capital of Vietnam is Hanoi.

In contrast with the above where the circumstantial meaning is
expressed as participant, the circumstantial meaning may be expressed
through verbs such as kéo dài (prolong), chiếm (take up/occupy), theo sau
(follow), tháp tùng/hộ tống (accompany), giống (resemble) etc. Below are
some examples:

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

(8.74)

Trọng tài kéo dài thời gian của trận đấu

referee prolong time of match
Token Process: relational Value

The referee prolonged the (time of the football) match.

(8.75)

Chiếc bàn này chiếm nhiều diện tích

gen.cl table this take up much area
Token Process: relational Value

This table takes up much space.

Like all relational identifying processes, these clauses are reversible.
One can either say as clauses (8.74) and (8.75) or their passive versions as
the following:
(8.74a)

Thời gian của trận đấu bị trọng tài kéo dài

time of match pass.ptcl referee prolong

Value Token Pro: relational

The (time of the football) match was prolonged by the referee.

(8.75a)

Nhiều diện tích bị chiếc bàn này chiếm mất

much area pass.ptcl gen.cl table this take up

Value Token Pro: relational

Much space is taken up by this table.

Further, being identifying the presence of the verb seems to be
obligatory. It would be impossible in Vietnamese to have agnate clauses of
(8.74) and (8.75) as

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 Chapter 8 • BEING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

(8.74b) *

Trọng tài thời gian của trận đấu

referee time of match

The referee (the time of the) match

(8.75b) *

Chiếc bàn này nhiều diện tích

gen.cl table this much area

This table much space

8.3.10. Possessive Process
Relational possessive processes are concerned with the relational
transitivity of ‘having’. They contrast with those of the intensive and
circumstantial types in a number of ways. In terms of category meaning, if a
relational intensive process is said to encode the meaning of sameness and
a relational circumstantial clause – a relationship between an entity and its
setting, a relational possessive clause can be said to construe the meaning
of ownership or possession between clausal participants. Following the
systemic functional conventions, I shall refer to the participant that owns or
possesses as the Possessor (Psor) and the participant that is owned or
possessed, the Possessed (Psed). Examples:
(8.76) [VTXH]

Tao cũng có một trái tim

I also have one gen.cl heart
Carrier/Possessor Circ Pro: rel Attribute/Possessed

I also have a heart.

(8.77)

Cuốn sách này là của cậu

generic classifier book this be of you
Carrier/Possessed Pro: rel Attribute/Possessor

This book is yours.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

As with the intensive process and the circumstantial process, the

possessive process may occur both in the ascriptive and the identifying
modes.
8.3.10.1. Possessive Ascriptive Process
Possessive ascriptive processes in Vietnamese construe a number of
possessive relationships depending on whether the feature ‘possession’ is
encoded within the Attribute – possession as attribute, or within the Process
– possession as process.
In the first form, the possessive relationship can be described as the
ownership of the Carrier (the Possessed) by the Attribute (the Possessor).
The clause is non-reversible and typically does not contain a verb. The
Attribute is typically realised as a prepositional phrase such as của Quân
(literally, of Quan (Quan’s)) as in
(8.78)

Mũ này của Quân

hat this of Quan

Carrier/Possessed Attribute/Possessor

This hat (is) Quan’s.

In the second form – possession as process, the clause allows two more
delicate choices. In the first choice, the basic meaning can be described as
the ownership of an entity (the Attribute/Possessed) by another entity (the
Carrier/Possessor). The Process is typically realised by verbs such as có
(have), thiếu/vắng (lack) etc. Examples:
(8.6) [VTXH]

Nó vẫn chưa có con

she still not yet have child

Car/Psor Circ Circ Pro: rel Attr/Psed

She still did not have a child.

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 Chapter 8 • BEING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

(8.79)

Mình thiếu mười nghìn đồng

self lack ten thousand dong
Carrier/Possessor Pro: rel Attribute/Possessed

I lacked ten thousand dongs (Vietnamese currency).

In the second choice, the Process is commonly realised by the verb
thuộc về (belong), the Carrier represents the possessed and the Attribute –
the Possessor. The basic meaning of the clause is similar to that of (8.78),
the difference being that while in (8.78) the possessive feature is expressed
within the Attribute, in a clause of this type it is encoded within the Process.
For example:
(8.80)

Chiếc trống này thuộc về thời đại đồ đồng

gen.cl drum this belong to age bronze

Carrier/possessed Pro: rel Attribute/Possessor

This drum belongs to the Bronze Age.

Being ascriptive, processes of this type are non-reversible. In
Vietnamese, it would be impossible to have (8.6a) and (8.80a) as the passive
forms of (8.6) and (8.80) respectively
(8.6a) *

Con vẫn chưa được nó có

child still not yet pass.ptcl she have

A child was not yet had by her

(8.80a) *

Thời đại đồ đồng được chiếc trống này thuộc về

age bronze pass.ptcl gen.cl drum this belong to

The Bronze Age is belonged to by this drum

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However, unlike other relational processes of the ascriptive mode, the

presence of the verb seems to be obligatory in these processes. It would
sound highly marked, if not impossible, to say, for example,
(8.80b) *

Chiếc trống này thời đại đồ đồng

gen.cl drum this age bronze

This drum the Bronze Age

(8.79a) *

Mình mười nghìn đồng

self ten thousand dong

I ten thousand dongs

8.3.10.2. Possessive Identifying Process
Possessive identifying processes usually take the form of a possessive
relationship between two participating entities. In clauses of this type,
the possessive feature may again be encoded either within the
Participant – possession as participant, or within the Process – possession as
process.
In the first form, both participating entities in the clause can be said to
represent the notion of possession, one – the Value – is representing the
property of the possessor, e.g., của Thành (literally, of Thanh (Thanh’s)), and
the other – the Token – signifying the thing possessed, e.g., Bài viết này
(That article/writing). The Process is realised by the verb là (be) and the
Value is typically realised as a prepositional phrase. Thus, in the clause
(8.81) [QTa]

Bài viết ấy là của Thành

gen.cl writing that be of Thanh
Token/Possessed Process: relational Value/Possessor

That article is/was Thanh’s.

both Bài viết ấy (That article) and của Thành (Thanh’s) refer to ‘that
which Thanh possesses’ and the relationship between them can be
interpreted as one of identification or realisation.

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In the second form, the Process is commonly realised by verbs such as

nắm giữ/chiếm giữ/sở hữu (own), chiếm giữ (hold/occupy); the Token being
the Possessor and the Value – the Possessed. Examples:
(8.82)

Nhà nước nắm giữ ngân sách

state own exchequer
Token/Possessor Process: relational Value/Possessed

The state owns the exchequer.

(8.83)

Ông ta giữ một vị trí quan trọng

he hold one position important
Token/Possessor Pro: rel Value/Possessed

He held an important position.

Being identifying, these clauses are reversible. One can either say as
(8.81) to (8.83) or as the following:
(8.81a)

Của Thành là bài viết ấy

of Thanh be gen.cl writing that

Value/Possessor Process: relational Token/Possessed

Thanh’s is that article.

(8.82a)

Ngân sách được nhà nuớc nắm giữ

exchequer pass.ptcl state own

Value/Possessed Token/Possessor Pro: relational

The exchequer is owned by the state.

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(8.83a)

Một vị trí quan trọng được ông ta nắm giữ

one position important pass. ptcl he own
Value/Possessed Token/Psor Pro: rel

An important position was held by him.

And being identifying, the presence of the verb in these clauses is
obligatory. It would be impossible to say in Vietnamese, for example,
(8.82b) *

Nhà nước ngân sách

State exchequer

The state exchequer

(8.83b) *

Ông ta một vị trí quan trọng

he one position important

He an important position
8.3.11. Cases of Ambiguity
In Sections 8.3.4 to 8.3.10, I have provided a description of three
primary options of relational process in Vietnamese, with each being
organised in two modes: ascriptive and identifying. It is clear from the
description that there are both semantic and lexicogrammatical distinctions
between clauses of these modes. However, as they are ‘part of a single
semantic field’ (Halliday, 1994; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004) there may be
some cases of ambiguity between them.
The first case of ambiguity can be found in relational alterative
processes. By ways of illustration, let me consider an extract in which the
example in point occurs. This extract is taken from a Vietnamese folk tale
‘Tấm Cám’ (The Tale of Tam and Cam). It describes how Tam, the Queen, was
killed by her stepmother out of envy when she was climbing up the areca
tree to pick the fruit for celebrating her father’s funeral rites. The example in
point is underlined.

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Nhưng Tấm chưa kịp xé cau thì cây đã đổ. Tấm ngã lăn xuống ao, chết. Mụ dì
ghẻ vội vàng lột áo quần của Tấm cho con mình mặc vào, rồi đưa vào cung nói
dối với vua rằng Tấm không may bị rơi xuống ao chết đuối, nay đưa em vào để
thế chị. Vua nghe nói trong bụng không vui, nhưng không nói gì cả.
Lại nói chuyện Tấm chết hóa thành chim Vàng Anh. Chim bay một mạch đến
vườn ngự. ... (NÐC)
(But hardly had Tam got any areca fruit when the tree fell off. Tam fell off
with the tree down into the pond and died. Her stepmother immediately took
off her clothes and put them on for Cam (her daughter). Then she took Cam to
the king’s palace, lying to him that Tam had been drowned and she took Cam
there to replace Tam. The king heard the story. He was not happy but did not
say anything.
Coming back to Tam’s story, she died and turned into a golden oriole. The bird
flew straight to the imperial garden. ...)

(8.84) ?

Tấm hóa thành con chim Vàng Anh

Tam turn into gen.cl bird golden oriole

Carrier Process: relational Attribute

Token Process: relational Value

Tam turned into a (the?) golden oriole.

I put the question mark above the example to show that it is not
always easy to identify whether the clause is ascriptive or identifying in
Vietnamese. Is the relation between Tấm and con chim Vàng Anh (golden
oriole) one of inclusion or one of identity? To put it more specifically, is con
chim Vàng Anh (golden oriole) a member of the class of Vàng Anh or the
only one member of the class? The textual context seems to support the
view that (8.84) is an intensive ascriptive clause which is shown in the
English translation Tam turned into a golden oriole. The structure of the
clause in the text, however, seems to show that it is an identifying one. This
is reflected in that in the Vietnamese original, the Value is realised by a
specific nominal con chim Vàng Anh (literally, generic classifier bird golden
oriole (the golden oriole)) (i.e., the nominal does not contain a number) and
the clause can be reversible.

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The ambiguity can also occur in circumstantial and possessive

processes. In the case of the circumstantial, it is not always clear whether
the expression such as ngoài sân (in the front-yard) in
(8.3)

Ông tôi ở ngoài sân

grandfather I locate out yard

My grandfather is in the front-yard.

designates a class that has members; i.e., whether Ông tôi (My
grandfather) belongs to the class of people who are in the front-yard or is
the only one member who is located there. The distinction becomes less
obvious when we come across a clause such as
(8.72)

Hôm qua là chủ nhật

yesterday be Sunday

Yesterday was Sunday.

This is because clause (8.72) seems to have the features of both the
ascriptive and identifying modes. Being an ascriptive clause, it may occur
without the copula verb là (be)
(8.72b)

Chủ nhật hôm qua

Sunday yesterday

Yesterday (was) Sunday.

and in this instance, the reversibility of the clause seems to be highly
marked. However, when là (be) is present, the clause is reversible and, in this
instance, can be interpreted as identifying. Thus, one can either say
(8.72)

Hôm qua là chủ nhật

yesterday be Sunday

Yesterday was Sunday.

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 Chapter 8 • BEING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

or
(8.72a)

Chủ nhật là hôm qua

Sunday be yesterday

Sunday was yesterday.

In the case of the possessive, it might also be hard to decide whether a
clause such as
(8.81)

Bài viết ấy là của Thành

gen.cl writing that be of Thanh

That article is/was Thanh’s.

is an ascriptive or an identifying clause. It can be interpreted as an
ascriptive clause on the grounds that it may occur without the copula verb là
(be) and in this instance the reversibility of the clause seems to be
impossible. For example:
(8.81b) *

Của Thành bài viết ấy

of Thanh gen.cl writing that

Thanh’s that article.

And it can be interpreted as an identifying clause on the grounds that
when là (be) is present, the clause is reversible. Thus one can either say as
(8.81) or
(8.81a)

Của Thành là bài viết ấy

of Thanh be gen.cl writing that

Thanh’s is that article.

The above cases of ambiguity illustrate the point that the distinction
between ascriptive and identifying modes in relational clauses in

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Vietnamese is not always clear-cut. This strengthens the claim of Halliday

(1967a, 1967b), Halliday in Kress (1976), Halliday (1994), and Halliday &
Matthiessen (2004) that like any semantic distinctions, the distinction
between ascriptive and identifying is a graded one; and as Matthiessen
(1995) has aptly commented with reference to English, one may say of
Vietnamese too that there are always borderline cases between the two.
8.3.12. Summary
This section has been concerned with one of the richest but most
complex fields of experience in the system of PROCESS TYPE in Vietnamese –
the relational process. Drawing on the insights of Halliday’s descriptive
model of relational process in English, I have attempted to explore the six
basic subtypes of relational process in Vietnamese: the intensive ascriptive
process, the intensive identifying process, the circumstantial ascriptive
process, the circumstantial identifying process, the possessive ascriptive
process, and the possessive identifying process. Apart from these, I have
made an attempt to examine a number of other subtypes of relational
process; one of them, I believe, is specific to Vietnamese: domain-specified
process. I have also looked briefly at some cases of ambiguity between
ascriptive and identifying modes as related to each of the three primary
options of relational process: intensive, circumstantial, and possessive. At
this point I leave relational processes and turn to explore existential
processes – the final option to be discussed in the system of PROCESS TYPE
in Vietnamese.

8.4. The Existential Process

8.4.1. Identifying the Existential Process: Definition
Consider the following examples:
(8.85) [NMT]

Có một lão hà tiện

exist one man stingy

There was a stingy man.

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 Chapter 8 • BEING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

(8.86)

Có trộm ở nhà bên

exist robbery in house next

There is/was a robbery at the next-door neighbour’s.

(8.87) [NÐC]

Ngày xưa có anh học trò nghèo

day old exist gen.cl student poor

Once upon a time there was a poor student.

(8.88) [UBKHXH]

Trên tường treo một bức tranh

on wall hang one gen.cl picture

On the wall there hung a picture/There was a picture on the wall.

As the examples are intended to show, like relational processes, the
above clauses do not express physical or physiological and psychological
actions as in material and behavioural processes; they also do not express
the world of sensings of various kinds and verbalisation as in mental and
verbal processes. What they do can be described as a kind of ‘state of being’.
In a strict sense, this kind of state of being is, however, not like those which
are encoded in relational processes. If clauses (8.85) - (8.88) are compared
with any of the clauses in Section 8.2, it will be noted that there are both
semantic and lexicogrammatical distinctions between these two types of
process. Semantically, unlike relational processes which construe the
transitivity of ‘being’, ‘having’, and ‘being at’, these clauses can be said to
construe the transitivity of ‘existing’; i.e., they represent experience by
positing that something or some entity exists or happens (cf. Halliday, 1994;
Eggins, 1994; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004; see also Li & Thompson, 1981 for
the corresponding Chinese clauses). In systemic functional theory, processes
of this type are referred to as the existential process.
8.4.2. Identifying the Existential Process: Recognition Criteria
At the lexicogrammatical level, one may note that existential processes
in Vietnamese differ from other types of process, particularly relational

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process, not only in the nature of the process itself but also in the number
and nature of the participants that can enter into the process. Unlike
relational processes which usually have two participating elements, in an
existential process there is only one obligatory participant referred to in this
study as Existent (Existt). As with English, Chinese and many other language
of the world, in Vietnamese too, the Existent always follows the Process in
the sequence Process: existential^Existent. It is typically realised as a
nominal group and may be an entity of any kind: person, object, event etc.
Examples:
(8.89)

Có khách [person]

exist visitor/guest

Process: existential Existent

There is a visitor.
(8.90)

Có một cuốn sách ở trên bàn [object]

exist one gen.cl book in on table

Pro: existential Existent Circumstance

There is a book on the table.

(8.86)

Có trộm ở nhà bên [event]

exist robbery in house next

Pro: existential Existent Circumstance

There is/was a robbery at the next-door neighbour’s.

In addition to the Process: existential^Existent complex, an existential
clause in Vietnamese may involve a distinct circumstantial element of time
or place. This circumstantial element may occur initially in the clause such as

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 Chapter 8 • BEING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

(8.91) [CD]

Trên giời có đám mây xanh

on sky exist crowd cloud blue
Circ: location Pro: existential Existent

In the sky there is a blue cloud.

or it may occur in clause-final position such as
(8.91a)

Có đám mây xanh trên giời

exist crowd cloud blue one sky
Pro: existential Existent Circ: location

There is a blue cloud in the sky.

Existential processes in Vietnamese typically employ verbs such as có
(exist) and còn (remain/exist). Their presence in the clause seems to be
obligatory. However, when the noun functioning as Thing in the nominal
group which realises the Existent is premodified by indefinite Numeratives
such as nhiều/đông (much/many), ít/thưa (little/few) etc., the presence of
these verbs may be optional. Examples:
(8.92)

Nhiều muỗi quá

many mosquito too
Existent

(There are) so many mosquitoes.

(8.93)

Hôm nay ở chợ ít người lắm

today in market few people very
Circ: temporal Circ: location Existent

(There were) very few people at the market today.

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Apart from these verbs, existential processes in Vietnamese may also

employ two other groups of verb. These are tabulated below:

Group 1 Group 2
Vietnamese English translation Vietnamese English translation
treo hang nổi lên emerge
ngồi/ngự sit nổi float
đứng stand tồn tại exist
nằm lie mọc grow
đặt put/place xuất hiện appear
v.v... etc. biến mất disappear/vanish
xảy ra happen
nhảy ra jump out
v.v... etc.

One of the characteristics of these verbs is that although they typically

realise the meaning of ‘happening’ (which is typical of a material process),
they encode in themselves the ‘meaning of existence’ (which is typical of an
existential process) – a feature which Halliday (1994: 142), with reference to
English, describes as the ‘circumstantial feature’; Li & Thompson (1981: 510),
with reference to Chinese, as ‘posture’; and Diệp Quang Ban (1987), with
reference to Vietnamese, as ‘tham biến không gian’ (spatial variable). In
fact, if a material process is compared with an existential process which is
realised by one and the same verb, it will be noted that they differ from each
other not only in verb meaning but also in a number of respects.
Semantically, the difference rests on the fact that in a material process
there is a feature of ‘agency’ whereas in an existential process no such
feature exists. Consider, for example,
(8.94)

Bức tranh treo trên tường

generic classifier picture hang on wall
Actor/Medium Pro: material Circ: location

The picture hung/was hung on the wall.

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 Chapter 8 • BEING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

Here Bức tranh (The picture) functions as Actor/Medium and the clause
would be analysed as material: middle. Its material effective agnate would
be:
(8.95)

Ai đó treo bức tranh trên tường

someone hang gen.cl picture on wall

Actor/Agent Pro: mat Goal/Medium Circ: location

Someone hung the picture on the wall.

Here bức tranh (the picture) functions as Goal/Medium and Ai đó
(Someone) as Actor/Agent. In an existential process of the same verb, by
contrast, the Existent is always Medium, but there is no Actor/Agent or Goal.
For example:
(8.88)

Trên tường treo một bức tranh

on wall hang one gen.cl picture

Circ: location Pro: existential Existent

On the wall there hung a picture.

In terms of lexicogrammar, there are at least three characteristics that
distinguish an existential process from a material process which is realised
by one and the same verb. The first difference has to do with the
grammatical structure. As was seen in Chapter 6, a material clause in
Vietnamese can be realised either by the structure Actor/Medium^Process (if
middle) or Actor/Agent^Process^Goal/Medium (if effective). An existential
clause, on the other hand, is typically realised by the structure
Process^Existent/Medium. The second characteristic is that although both
types of clause can take circumstantials of time and place, these elements
seem to have more mobility in the material than in the existential. Thus, for
a material clause one can either say

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(8.96a)

1 2 3 4
Tôi treo một bức tranh trên tường
I hang one gen.cl picture on wall
Actor/Agent Pro: mat Goal/Medium Circ: location

I hung a picture on the wall.

or
(8.96b)

1 2 3 4
Trên tường tôi treo một bức tranh
on wall I hang one gen.cl picture
Circ: location Actor/Agent Pro: mat Goal/Medium

On the wall I hung a picture.

or (unlike English)
(8.96c)

1 2 3 4
Tôi treo trên tường một bức tranh
I hang on wall one gen.cl picture
Actor/Agent Pro: mat Circ: location Goal/Medium

I hung on the wall a picture.

For an existential clause, in contrast, it is possible to say
(8.88)

1 2 3
Trên tường treo một bức tranh
on wall hang one gen.cl picture
Circ: location Pro: existential Existent

On the wall there hung a picture.

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 Chapter 8 • BEING PROCESSES IN VIETNAMESE

but hardly ever

(8.88a) *

1 2 3

Treo trên tường một bức tranh

hang on wall one gen.cl picture

Hung on the wall a picture

and
(8.88b) *

1 2 3

Treo một bức tranh trên tường

hang one gen.cl picture on wall

Hung a picture on the wall

The third distinction is that, unlike material processes, when these
verbs realise existential meaning, expressions of modality, modulation,
volition, wish, aspect, etc., and Circumstantials of quality and means are not
permitted in the clause. Thus, an existential clause would sound odd or
would lose its existential meaning if one says, for example,
(8.97a) * expression of modality

Cạnh hàng rào có thể mọc một cây chanh

next fence may grow one tree lemon

Beside the fence there may grow a lemon tree

(8.97b) * circumstantial of quality

Cạnh hàng rào mọc rất đẹp một cây chanh

next fence grow very beautiful one tree lemon

Beside the fence there grows very beautifully a lemon tree

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(8.97c) * expression of aspect

Cạnh hàng rào đang mọc một cây chanh

next fence asp.ptcl grow one tree lemon

Beside the fence there is growing a lemon tree

A final characteristic of existential processes in Vietnamese is that they
are sometimes followed by another clause and together they form a clause
complex. For example:
(8.98) [LNM]

|||Có khách ở quê || ra |||

exist visitor in home village come

Pro: existential Existent Circ: location Pro: material

Literally: There are visitors from home village coming.

Idiomatically: You have visitors coming from your home village.

8.4.3. Summary

This section has been concerned with the final option in the system of
PROCESS TYPE in Vietnamese – the existential process. I have provided a
number of criteria, both semantic and lexicogrammatical, for distinguishing
the existential process from other process options. Semantically, existential
process is a process of ‘existing’. This category meaning of the existential
process is marked by the absence of the feature ‘agency’ as compared with a
material process that is realised by one and the same verb.
Lexicogrammatically, the existential process differs from other process
options, particularly from material processes in a number of respects: the
grammatical structure, the degree of mobility of the circumstantial elements
of time and place in the clause, the permission of modal and aspectual
expressions, Circumstantials of means and quality, and so on.

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8.5. Concluding Remarks

This chapter is an attempt to look at one of the richest but the most
complex fields of experience in the system of PROCESS TYPE in Vietnamese:
being processes. As with Chapters 6 and 7, I began the chapter by raising the
same three questions for exploration. In answer, I examined in some depth
the two options of being processes: ‘relational’ and ‘existential’. It is obvious
in the descriptions above that these process types – the relational and the
existential – are interrelated in the sense that they both construe the
semantic feature of ‘state of being’; they are, however, distinct from each
other in the sense that each of them is concerned with a particular state of
being: while the relational process is said to construe the transitivity of
‘being’ or intensive relation, ‘having’ or possessive relation, and ‘being at’ or
circumstantial relation; the existential process can be said to construe the
transitivity of ‘existing’; i.e., positing that something or some entity exists or
happens. At the lexicogrammatical level, there are a number of features that
distinguish being processes from doing processes and projecting processes,
and within being processes; and within being processes, there are also
features that distinguish the relational process from the existential one.
These remarks conclude the exploration of being processes, and at the same
time they conclude my journey into the nuclear TRANSITIVITY of
Vietnamese. In the next chapter, I shall make an attempt to look at the
circumstantial TRANSITIVITY of the language.

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CHAPTER 9
CIRCUMSTANTIAL TRANSITIVITY
IN VIETNAMESE

9.1. Introduction
In the last three chapters, I was concerned with ‘nuclear TRANSITIVITY’
in Vietnamese. I examined the different types of process, taking in the
Process function, together with those participant roles which were central to
the distinction between one process type and another. I also introduced two
other participant roles: Beneficiary and Range, which can be said to be
associated with many of the process types, although still having somewhat
different implications in each. In this chapter, an attempt will be made to
look at what is generally known in systemic functional grammar as
‘circumstantial TRANSITIVITY’ (cf. Matthiessen, 1995). In order to examine
what circumstantial TRANSITIVITY is and how it is organised in the
Vietnamese clause, the same three questions, which were raised for
exploring doing processes in Chapter 6, projecting processes in Chapter 7
and being processes in Chapter 8, will be raised also for exploring
‘circumstantial TRANSITIVITY’ in this chapter.

1. What is circumstance in Vietnamese?

2. What are the semantic (definition) and lexicogrammatical

(recognition) criteria for identifying circumstances and
distinguishing them from participants in the Vietnamese clause?

3. What are the main options available in the environment of

circumstantial TRANSITIVITY in Vietnamese?
Question 1 will be addressed in Section 9.2. Question 2 will be
answered by contrasting the features of circumstances with those of

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participants. And Question 3 will be answered by identifying and examining

the different types of circumstance in the system of circumstantial
TRANSITIVITY in Vietnamese. In addressing Question 3, an attempt is made
to establish a system network for circumstantial TRANSITIVITY in
Vietnamese.

9.2. The Notion of Circumstance

To get a clear idea of what a circumstance is in Vietnamese, let me
consider the following clause, as if it were reporting a scene from a drama
(9.1)

Tối qua ở khách sạn Thắng Lợi,

evening past in hotel Thangloi

Last night at Thangloi hotel,

Nam mời Lan một li rượu đắt tiền

Nam offer Lan one glass spirit expensive money

Nam offered Lan a glass of expensive spirit.

A drama, as always, has participants or actors who take on particular
roles; and it takes place within a particular space and time. In (9.1), the
participants of the drama of ‘offering’ are Nam, Lan, and một li rượu đắt tiền
(a glass of expensive spirit). In other words, the drama of ‘offering’ in (9.1)
has the cast of ‘offerer’ Nam, ‘offeree’ Lan, and ‘thing offered’ một li rượu đắt
tiền (a glass of expensive spirit). In systemic functional theory they are
assigned the experiential roles of Actor, Beneficiary: Recipient, and Goal
respectively (cf. Chapter 6, Section 6.2). The other two elements: Tối qua
(Last night) and ở khách sạn Thắng Lợi (at Thangloi hotel), cannot be said to
take on participant roles. They tell us when the ‘offering’ took place – Tối
qua (Last night), and where it took place – ở khách sạn Thắng Lợi (at
Thangloi hotel). In systemic functional grammar, the clausal elements that,
as it were, express aspects of the setting such as time, place, manner,
accompaniment etc., are generally referred to as Circumstance. In what
follows, I shall attempt to answer the first and the second question by
contrasting the features of circumstances with those of participants.

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9.3. Circumstances v. Participants

Circumstances are distinguished from participants in Vietnamese in a
number of respects. First, the way these experiential components are
realised in Vietnamese is specific to them. If a nominal group such as Nam,
Lan and một li rượu đắt tiền (a glass of expensive spirit), is the main way in
which Vietnamese constructs a model of participant, prepositional phrase
such as Trên giời (in the sky) in (9.2) and adverbial group such as thắm thiết
vô cùng (very deeply) in (9.3) are the main ways in which the language
constructs a model of circumstance.
(9.2) [CD]

Trên giời có đám mây xanh

on sky exist crowd cloud blue
prepositional phrase verbal phrase nominal group
Circumstance Pro: existential Existent

There is a blue cloud in the sky.

(9.3) [CD]

Anh thương em thắm thiêt vô cùng

brother love junior deep very
nominal group verbal group nominal group adverbial group
Senser Pro: mental Phenomenon Circumstance

I love you very deeply.

Secondly, in terms of mobility, circumstances are more mobile in the
clause than participants. In a clause when the order of a participant is
changed, its experiential meaning is supposed to be changed too. Thus, in
clause (9.4), for example,
(9.4) [NM]

Hắn đánh Tuyết

he beat Tuyet
Actor Process: material Goal

He beat Tuyet.

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Hắn (He) is Actor and Tuyết (Tuyet) is Goal. However, in clause (9.5)
(9.5)

Tuyết đánh hắn

Tuyet beat he
Actor Process: material Goal

Tuyet beat him.

Tuyết is Actor but not Goal and hắn (he) is Goal but not Actor.
By contrast, the order of a circumstance can be changed without
changing its experiential meaning. Thus, one can either say, for example,
(9.6)

Bất ngờ hắn đánh Tuyết

suddenly he beat Tuyet
Circumstance Actor Process: material Goal

Suddenly he beat Tuyet.

or
(9.7)

Hắn bất ngờ đánh Tuyết

he suddenly beat Tuyet
Actor Circumstance Process: material Goal

He suddenly beat Tuyet.

or
(9.8)

Hắn đánh Tuyết bất ngờ

he beat Tuyet suddenly
Actor Process: material Goal Circumstance

He beat Tuyet suddenly.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

Thirdly, in terms of MOOD, a participant can function as Subject as Ông

(You) does or Complement as chục ngàn (ten thousand dongs (Vietnamese
currency)) does, whereas a circumstance maps onto Adjunct such as Mỗi
ngày (a day) in (9.9) below,
(9.9) [PK]

Mỗi ngày ông được chục ngàn không?

each day Mr receive ten thousand q.ptcl
Circumstance Actor Pro: mat Goal
Adjunct Subject Predicator Complement

Can you earn ten thousand dongs a day?

Fourthly, in terms of inherency, participants tend to be inherent
elements in the clause, whereas circumstances (except those in relational
circumstantial clauses) tend not to. A particular state of affairs represented
by a Process with a particular meaning always expects certain casts of
participants. Thus, the drama of ‘offering’ as represented in clause (9.1)
expects Actor Nam, Beneficiary: recipient Lan, and Goal một li rượu đắt tiền
(a glass of expensive spirit). It would be incomplete without the explicit or
implicit presence of these participants. Note that a participant may be
implicit or presupposed by ellipsis (see Halliday & Hasan, 1976, 1985). An
example of this can be found in the answer (9.11) to the question (9.10):
(9.10)

Nam mời Lan cái gì?

Nam offer Lan what
Actor Pro: material Beneficiary: recipient Goal

What did Nam offer Lan?

(9.11)

Một li rượu đắt tiền

one glass spirit expensive money
Goal

A glass of expensive spirit

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As could be seen, in (9.11) both the Actor Nam and the Beneficiary Lan
are elliptically presupposed, precisely because they can be retrieved from the
context, or to be more specific, in this case from the co-text, so that they can
be regarded as being present by implication.
Circumstances, in contrast, cannot be said to be necessary for the
completeness of a proposition. Compare clause (9.1) and clause (9.1a):
(9.1)

Tối qua ở khách sạn Thắng Lợi

evening past in hotel Thangloi
Circ: locational: temporal Circumstance: location: space

Last night at Thangloi hotel,

Nam mời Lan một li rượu đắt tiền

Nam offer Lan one glass spirit expensive money
Actor Pro: mat Ben: rec Goal

Nam offered Lan a glass of expensive spirit.

(9.1a)

Nam mời Lan một li rượu

Nam offer Lan one glass spirit
Actor Pro: material Ben: recipient Goal

Nam offered Lan a glass of spirit.

Clause (9.1) has the experiential elements Circumstance: location:
temporal Tối qua (Last night) and Circumstance: location: spatial ở khách
sạn Thắng Lợi (at Thangloi Hotel). Clause (9.1a), in contrast, has no
circumstantial elements. However, unlike (9.11) which is said to be elliptical,
clause (9.1a) cannot be either regarded as incomplete or elliptical. This
suggests that circumstances are attendant rather than directly involved in
the process (cf. Halliday, 1967a, 1967b, 1994; Matthiessen, 1995; Halliday &
Matthiessen, 2004). They are, in a strict sense, ‘not essential for the creation
of a logically satisfactory proposition’ (Bell 1991: 127). However, they are
crucial in providing ‘background’ or ‘situation’ without which the content of

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the proposition would be bare and uninteresting (cf. UBKHXH, 1983; Bell,
1991; Jackson, 1991).
Fifthly, participants and circumstances are distinguished by the fact
that they answer different questions in the clause. While, roughly speaking,
participants may be probed by asking Ai? (Who?), Cái gì? (What?);
circumstances may be probed by asking Khi nào? (When?), – Đâu? (Where?),
Như thế nào? (How?), Vì sao? (Why?) etc., (for more detail, see Section 9.4).
Finally, participants and circumstances can be distinguished from the
point of view of the textual metafunction. If a particular text is analysed in
terms of grammatical cohesion, it will be noted that the ‘cohesive chains’
(Halliday & Hasan, 1976, 1985; Hasan, 1984b, 1985b; Halliday, 1985a, 1994)
or ‘reference chains’ (Matthiessen, 1995) are always longer for participants
than for circumstances. The following extract, which is taken from the old
folk tale Tấm Cám (The Tale of Tam and Cam) will serve to illustrate the
point. The reference chains for participants are charted in Figure 9.1, the
circumstantial elements in point are underlined, and the clauses of the
extract are analysed for TRANSITIVITY.
Extract 9A
|| Ngày xưa ở một gia đình kia, có hai chị em cùng cha khác mẹ là Tấm và Cám.
|| Mẹ Tấm mất sớm, || sau đó ít năm cha Tấm cũng qua đời. || Tấm ở với dì
ghẻ là mẹ của Cám. ||
|| Một hôm, mẹ Cám đưa cho Tấm và Cám mỗi đứa một cái giỏ, || sai đi xúc
tép, || đứa nào xúc được nhiều thì được thưởng yếm đỏ. || Tấm [[vốn chăm chỉ
lại sợ dì mắng]] nên mải miết suốt buổi || xúc được đầy giỏ cả tôm lẫn tép. ||
Còn Cám [[vốn được mẹ nuông chiều,]] chỉ ham chơi || nên chẳng xúc được gì
cả. || (ĐQL & VT).
Once upon a time in a family, there were two half-blooded sisters (who were
the daughters of one and the same father but different mothers): Tam and
Cam. Tam’s mother died (early) when she was young; a few years later her
father died too. She had to live with her stepmother who was Cam’s mother.

One day her stepmother gave Tam and Cam each a bamboo basket and sent
them to the rice-field to catch shrimps and fish. She promised to give a red
bra to the one who managed to catch more shrimps and fish. Tam, who was
hard-working by nature and was always scared of her stepmother, worked
restlessly (the whole day) and caught a basket full of shrimps and fish. On the
contrary, Cam, who was pampered by her mother, was lazy and (she) could
not catch anything.

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 Chapter 9 • CIRCUMSTANTIAL TRANSITIVITY IN VIETNAMESE

Participant
No of Tam Tam’s Tam’s Cam Cam’s Circumstance
clause mother father mother

1 * * * * * (Circ: loc: temp) Ngày xưa (Circ: loc: spa) ở

một gia đình kia, (Pro: exist) có (Existt) hai
chị¸ em cùng cha khác mẹ tên là Tấm và Cám.
Once upon a time in a family, there were two
sisters who were the daughters of one and the
same father but different mothers: Tam and Cam.
2 * * (Ac) Mẹ Tấm (Pro: mat) mất (Circ: loc: temp)
sớm,
Tam’s mother died (early) when she was young,
3 * * (Circ: loc: temp) sau đó ít năm (Ac) cha Tấm
cũng (Pro: mat) qua đời.
a few years later her father died too.
4 * * * (Car) Tấm (Pro: rel) ở (Attr) với dì ghẻ là mẹ
của Cám.
She (Tam) had to live with her stepmother
who was Cam’s mother.
5 * * * (Circ: loc: temp) Một hôm (Ac) mẹ Cám (Pro:
mat) đưa (Ben: rec) cho Tấm và Cám (Go) mỗi
đứa một cái giỏ,
One day Cam’s mother gave Tam and Cam each
a bamboo basket,
6 * * * (‘Ini’) (mẹ Cám) (Pro: mat) sai (‘Ac’) (Tấm và
Cám ) (Pro: mat) đi xúc (Go) tép,
and sent them to the rice field to catch
shrimps and fish,
7 * * (Ben: rec) đứa nào xúc được nhiều thì (Pro:
mat) được thưởng (Go) yếm đỏ.
She promised to give a red bra to the one who
managed to catch more shrimps and fish.
8 * * (Ac) Tấm vốn chăm chỉ lại sợ dì mắng nên
(‘Pro: mat?’) (Circ: man: qual) mải miết (Circ:
ext: temp) suốt buổi.
Tam, who was hard-working by nature and
was always scared of her stepmother, worked
restlessly (the whole day).

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

9 * (‘Ac’) (Tấm) (Pro: mat) xúc được (Go) đầy giỏ

cả tôm lẫn tép.
and caught a basket full of shrimps and fish.
10 * * Còn (Car) Cám vốn được mẹ nuông chiều,
(Attr) chỉ ham chơi
On the contrary, Cam, who was pampered by
her mother, was lazy
11 * nên (‘Ac’) (Cám ) chẳng (Pro: mat) xúc được
(Go) gì cả.
and (she) could not catch anything.

Figure 9.1. Persistence of Participants and Circumstances in Narrative

As Figure 9.1 shows, there are a number of reference chains running
through participants. Three of them are prominent: Tam, Cam, and Cam’s
mother. These are supposed to be the main characters of the tale. Their
transitivity roles are
Initiator: 1 (clause 6)
Actor: 7 (clauses 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 11)
Goal: 5 (clauses 5, 6, 7, 9, and 11)
Beneficiary: 2 (clause 5 and 7)
Carrier: 2 (clause 4 and 10)
Existent: 1 (clause 1)
Attribute: 2 (clause 4 and 10)
Taking (part of) one of these roles, Tam is found to occur in most
clauses (except clauses 10 and 11, Cam (except clauses 2, 3, 8 and 9), and
Cam’s mother (except clauses 2, 3, 7, 9 and 11).
In the analysis, there are seven circumstantial elements: four of them
function as Circumstance: location: temporal – Ngày xưa (Once upon a time)
in clause 1, sớm (literally, early (when she was young)) in clause 2, sau đó ít
năm (a few years later) in clause 3, and Một hôm (One day) in clause 5; one
as Circumstance: location: spatial – ở một gia đình kia (in a family) in clause
1; one as Circumstance: manner: quality – mải miết (restlessly) in clause 8,
and one as Circumstance: extent: temporal – suốt buổi (literally, throughout
session, (the whole day)). These circumstantial elements, however, do not

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participate in reference chains. The fact that reference chains do not run
through the circumstances suggests that circumstances have less ‘staying
power’ in discourse than participants. This constitutes one of the criteria for
distinguishing circumstances from participants in Vietnamese.

9.4. Cases of Ambiguity

It was pointed in Chapter 5, Section 5.3 and in the previous section that
participants of the process are largely inherent, whereas circumstances are
not. There are, however, some instances where a circumstantial element
seems to be inherent or the presence of a circumstance in the clause seems
to be obligatory. Consider the following examples:
(9.12)

Họ hát ở ngoài trời

they sing in out sky

Actor Process: material Circumstance: location: spatial

They sang in the open air.

(9.13)

Tôi mua hoa ở chợ

I buy flower in market

Actor Process: material Goal Circumstance: location: spatial

I bought the flowers in the market.

(9.14)

Long đổ gạo vào nồi

Long pour rice in pot

Actor Process: material Goal Circumstance: location: spatial

Long poured the rice into the pot.

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(9.15)

Long đặt chân lên bàn

Long put/place foot on table
Actor Process: material Goal Circumstance: location: spatial

Long put his feet on the table.

The presence of the Circumstances ở ngoài trời (in the open air) in (9.12)
and ở ngoài chợ (in the market) in (9.13) can be said to be optional. The actions
of hát (singing) and mua (buying) do not seem to require the expression of
spatial location. In contrast, the presence of the Circumstances vào nồi (into the
pot) in (9.14) and lên bàn (on the table) in (9.15) seems to be obligatory.
Indeed, these elements are almost as inherent in the clause as Long (Long) and
gạo (rice) in (9.14) and Long (Long) and chân (his feet) in (9.15). If this
observation is correct, it will permit two possible suggestions. First, vào nồi
(into the pot) and lên bàn (on the table) could be interpreted both as
circumstance and participant. They are circumstances in the sense that,
semantically, they refer to some spatial location and, grammatically, they can
be probed by asking the question – Đâu/Vào đâu? (Where?). They are
participants in the sense that their presence in the clause is as inherent or
obligatory as other participant roles. Further, like Actor (and other ‘active
participants’ – Senser, Sayer) and Goal (and other ‘affected participants’ –
Phenomenon, Receiver etc.), they can be made Subject (although this possibility
is very limited) in what would be referred to as ‘locative passive’ clause:
(9.16)

Nồi được Long đổ gạo vào

pot pass.ptcl Long pour rice in

The pot was poured rice into by Long

(9.17)

Bàn được Long đặt chân lên

table pass.ptcl Long put foot on

The table was put the feet on by Long

Secondly, there is no sharp distinction between participants and
circumstances in Vietnamese, a fact observed also for English by Halliday
(1994); Matthiessen (1995); and Halliday & Matthiessen (2004). In fact, the

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difference between the two in Vietnamese is only a matter of degree of

involvement in the process. Consider the following examples:
(9.18)

Tôi gửi thư cho mẹ tôi

I send letter to mother I
Actor Process: material Goal Beneficiary

I sent a letter to my mother.

(9.19)

Tôi gửi thư cho/đi Ðài tiếng nói Việt Nam

I send letter to/go station voice Vietnam
Actor Pro: mat Goal ? Beneficiary/Circumstance

I sent a letter to the Voice of Vietnam.

(9.20)

Tôi gửi thư đi Luân Đôn

I send letter go London
Actor Pro: material Goal Circumstance

I sent a letter to London.

In (9.18) Tôi (I) is Actor, thư (letter) Goal and mẹ tôi (my mother)
Beneficiary; and in (9.20) Tôi (I) is Actor, thư (letter) Goal, and đi Luân Đôn
(to London) Circumstance: direction: destination. There are both semantic
and grammatical distinctions between the Beneficiary cho mẹ tôi (to my
mother) in (9.18) and the Circumstance đi Luân Đôn (to London) in (9.20).
Semantically, while the former refers to a person/receiver or ‘one to whom
goods are given’ (Halliday, 1994), the latter refers to a place/receiver or the
location where the Goal is sent to. This is reflected in the fact that although
they both are realised as a prepositional phrase, each is realised by a
different preposition and can answer different questions: the Beneficiary in
(9.18) is realised (in part) by the preposition cho (to) and answers the
question Cho ai? (To whom?), whereas the Circumstance in (9.20) is realised
(in part) by the preposition đi (literally, go (to)) and can answer the question
Ði đâu? (Where?). Furthermore, clause (9.18) may have a paraphrase such as
(9.21) but a similar paraphrase such as (9.22) may appear to be
unacceptable for (9.20):

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(9.21)
Mẹ tôi được tôi gửi thư cho
mother I pass.ptcl I send letter to

My mother was sent a letter by me

(9.22) *
Luân Đôn được tôi gửi thư cho/đi
London pass.ptcl I send letter go

London was sent a letter to by me

In (9.19), however, the element cho/đi Đài Tiếng nói Việt Nam (to the
Voice of Vietnam) seems to be intermediate between the interpretations of
cho mẹ tôi (to my mother) in (9.18) and đi Luân Đôn (to London) in (9.20). It
is intermediate because it does not refer to a person or a location but to an
institution. Further, as shown in the clause, the prepositional phrase seems
to permit both the preposition cho (to/for) and đi (literally, go (to)). When
permitting cho, it has the characteristics of a beneficiary: it can answer the
question at (9.23)
(9.23)
Anh gửi thư cho ai?
you send letter to who

Who did you sent a/the letter?

and may have the paraphrase of (9.24)
(9.24)
Ðài Tiếng nói Việt Nam được tôi gửi thư cho
station voice Vietnam pass.ptcl I send letter to

The Voice of Vietnam was sent a letter by me.

However, when it permits đi (to), it has the characteristics of a
Circumstance: location: destination, and it can answer the question at (9.25)
(9.25)
Anh gửi thư đi đâu?
you send letter go where

Where did you send a/the letter?

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 Chapter 9 • CIRCUMSTANTIAL TRANSITIVITY IN VIETNAMESE

but may not have the paraphrase of (9.26)

(9.26) *

Ðài Tiếng nói Việt Nam được tôi gửi thư đi

station voice Vietnam pass.ptcl I send letter go

The Voice of Vietnam was sent a letter to by me

What the above discussion is intended to show is that there is
continuity between the categories of participant and circumstance. One
needs to be prepared to accept such a language fact and to provide for it in
one’s analysis and description (cf. Halliday in Kress, 1976; Halliday, 1994;
Jackson, 1991; Matthiessen 1995; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004).

9.5. Types of Circumstance

9.5.1. General Remarks
As already mentioned in Chapter 5, Section 5.2 and Section 9.2 above,
circumstances are one of the three experiential components identified in the
grammar of the clause. They do not represent a part of the make-up of a
state of affairs but rather are attendant to its ‘core’ (McGregor, 1992) or
‘nuclear TRANSITIVITY’ (Matthiessen, 1995). Their main function is to set the
scene for a process (cf. Downing, 1990; Bell, 1991; McGregor, 1992; Fries,
1981, 1995a, 1995b); that is, they explain in a general way where, when,
how, why etc., a process takes place. As with English and other languages,
the circumstantial region in Vietnamese covers a number of simultaneous
choices, which, typically, may ‘occur freely in all types of process and with
essentially the same significance whenever they occur’ (Halliday 1994: 149-
50, see also Eggins 1994: 237; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004: 259-60). There
are, of course, some choices which may be more likely to occur with one
type of process than with another. Circumstances of location or, to be more
specific, Circumstances of direction are found to occur more frequently with
material processes of motion than with other types of process;
Circumstances of manner, particularly those of the degree or intensification
type, with mental processes; and Circumstances of matter, with verbal
processes and certain mental ones (see Sections 6.2.2.2, 7.2.2.3, and 7.4.2.6).
In contrast, there are some circumstantial choices whose occurrence with a
particular process type seems to be less likely. To give but an example, the
occurrence of a Circumstance of manner in a relational intensive ascriptive
process in Vietnamese seems to be fairly unusual (see Section 8.2.2). Thus, it
is possible that an increasingly delicate transitivity analysis will yield an

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increasingly specific classification of processes and circumstances taking us

to the n-th degree of delicacy, where each selection expression is
instantiated by a specific verb. In fact, much of Hasan (1987) has attempted
to translate this ‘the grammarian’s dream’ into reality. However, to
undertake such a delicate analysis is to embark on a long, technical, and
complex enterprise, which cannot be pursued in a work of this scope (for
more detail, see Hasan, 1987: 184-211). What I will do next is to look briefly
at some of the current systemic functional views on classifying
circumstances.
Within systemic functional theory to date, there are at least three
different perspectives on how circumstances should be classified.
Proponents of the first view hold that ‘circumstantials do not constitute a
class of ideational (experiential) functions within the clause’ (McGregor,
1992: 139); therefore, they should be classified according to the ‘logical
relationships of enhancement, elaboration and extension’ (McGregor, 1992:
142). They argue that within the clause ‘there is no need for both
circumstantial roles and logical relationships, and the latter can replace the
former completely’ (McGregor, 1992: 142). In a somewhat similar approach,
proponents of the second view maintain that circumstantial elements ‘can
be grouped according to the logico-semantic motifs that run through the
grammar’ (Matthiessen, 1995: 332); that is, they can be classified according
to the logico-semantic relationships of expansion and projection (see
Matthiessen, 1995: 332-344). In contrast with the first and the second views,
the third perspective sees circumstances mainly as one of the three
experiential components of the clause and suggests that they should be
classified according to their semantic as well as lexicogrammatical criteria;
i.e., according to their definition as well as recognition criteria (Halliday,
1994; Bell, 1991; Eggins, 1994; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004). In the
description of ‘circumstantial TRANSITIVITY’ in Vietnamese, I shall adopt the
third position. The reasons are various. First, the logico-semantics system of
expansion and projection is concerned more with inter-clausal relationships
(i.e., with the relationships between clauses) than with intra-clausal ones
(cf. Halliday, 1994: 216). Secondly, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, a
number of circumstantial types are often specifiable by reference to process:
Circumstance of direction is specifiable by reference to material process,
Circumstance of matter by reference to verbal process and so on. Thirdly,
certain Circumstance seems to be inherently involved in the process and
their relation cannot be explained in terms of logico-semantics (see
examples 9.14 and 9.15 in Section 9.3). Fourthly, in languages which have
system of tense such as Russian, English etc., many circumstances are
specified by reference to time realised as tense, which are experiential. Thus,
I went to London last year is normal in English but I went to London next
year is odd.

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The primary options or choices of circumstance that need to be

recognised in the system of circumstantial TRANSITIVITY in Vietnamese are
represented in Figure 9.2:
extent
location
manner
cause
circumstance accompaniment
matter
role
stance
Figure 9.2. Circumstantial TRANSITIVITY in Vietnamese: Primary Choices
The network shows a set of eight primary choices for Circumstances.
These are (i) extent (ext), (ii) location (loc), (iii) manner (man), (iv) cause
(cse), (v) accompaniment (accomp), (vi) matter (matr), (vii) role (role),
and (viii) stance (stance). In the sections that follow, I shall attempt to
examine each of these choices in some detail.
9.5.2. Extent
As with English, Circumstantials of extent in Vietnamese form a
two-term set which may be referred to as spatial extent (ext: spa) and
temporal extent (ext: temp). Spatial extent refers to expressions of
distance in space. They may be probed by asking Bao nhiêu/Bao xa? (How
far?) or Bao nhiêu + đơn vị đo lường và không gian/thời gian (How many +
spatial/temporal measure units?); e.g., mét (metre), ki lô mét/cây số
(kilometre), insơ (inch) and so on. This contrasts with expressions of
(measure units of) capacity which function as Phenomenon/Range in
behavioural process such as bát/chén (bowls) in Nó ăn ba bát cơm (He ate
three bowls of rice), ca/cốc (cups) in Nó uống hai ca nước (He drank two
cups of water), li (glasses) in Nó uống hai li rượu đắt tiền (He drank two
glasses of expensive spirit), etc. Temporal extent refers to expressions of
duration in time (including frequency). They answer the question Bao nhiêu
lâu? (How long?) or Bao nhiêu lần? (How often?). In Vietnamese both spatial
extent and temporal extent are realised as a nominal group with a
numerative or quantifier (either definite or indefinite) always preceding the
head noun. Below are some examples:

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Spatial extent
(9.27)

Họ đi bộ hai mươi cây số

they walk twenty kilometre
Actor Process: material Circumstance: extent: spatial

They walked twenty kilometres.

(9.28) [CD]

Mẹ đi một quãng đường xa

mother go one distance road far
Actor Pro: material Circumstance: extent: spatial

Far off has mother egret flown.

Temporal extent
(9.29)

Tôi làm việc ở đó năm năm

I work in there five year
Actor Pro: material Circ: location: spatial Circ: extent: temporal

I worked there for five years.

(9.30) [TDP]
Gyưng mỗi ngày hai lần đút thức ăn vào miệng người chết.
Gyung inserted food into the dead person’s mouth twice a day.

Gyưng mỗi ngày hai lần

Gyung each day two time
Actor Circumstance: extent: temporal

đút thức ăn vào miệng người chết

insert food into mouth person dead
Pro: material Goal Circumstance: location: spatial

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9.5.3. Location
Like extent, Circumstantials of location form a two-term set which may
also be referred to as spatial location (loc: spa) and temporal location
(loc: temp). These subtypes of Location differ from their Extent counterparts
in a number of respects.
(i) Spatial location refers to a place. It typically answers the question
– đâu/– chỗ nào? (Where?). It may be a concrete location such as Xã bên (In
the next village) in (9.31) or an abstract one such as Trong trí nhớ của tôi (In
my memory) in (9.32). It may also be a definite location such as ở cơ quan
(at the office) in (9.33) or an indefinite one such as xa (far) in (9.34).
Lexicogrammatically, it may be realised as a place nominal such as Xã bên
(In the next village) in (9.31) or as a prepositional phrase such as those in
(9.32) - (9.34). Examples:
(9.31) [NKT]
Xã bên lúa tốt
village next rice good
Circustance: location: spatial Carrier Attribute

In the next village the rice is growing well.

(9.32)
Trong trí nhớ của tôi ông ấy là một người tốt
in memory of I he be one person good
Circumstance: location: spatial Carrier Pro: rel Attribute

In my memory, he was a good man.

(9.33)
Tôi học ở nhà
I study in/at home
Actor Process: material Circ: location: spatial

I study at home.
(9.34)
Cậu đã đi quá xa
you asp.ptcl go too far
Actor Pro: material Circ: location: spatial

You’ve gone too far.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

Spatial location can be classified into what I would refer to as spatial

location of position (pos) such as those in (9.31) to (9.34) and spatial
location of direction (dir). The latter refers to the various kinds of
movement in space and can be classified into spatial direction of (i) source
(srce), (ii) destination (dest), and (iii) path (pth). Spatial direction of
source refers to a movement from a source. It answers the question Từ đâu?
(Where from?) and is typically realised as a prepositional phrase such as Từ
trên gò cao (From the high hillock) in (9.35).
(9.35) [TDP]

Từ trên gò cao ông già đi xuống

from above hillock high man old go down
Circumstance: spatial: source Actor Process: material

From the high hillock, the old man came down.

Spatial direction of destination refers to a movement to a destination
or location. It typically answers the question Ðến đâu? (Where to?).
Lexicogrammatically, it may be realised as a prepositional phrase such as
đến trường (to the school) in (9.36) or as a place nominal such as Hà Nội
(Hanoi) in (9.37).
(9.36)

Con đi bộ đến trường

I walk arrive school
Actor Process: material Circ: spatial: destination

I walked to the school.

(9.37) [LNM]

Chúng tôi về Hà Nội

we return Hanoi
Actor Process: material Circ: spatial: destination

We returned to Hanoi.
Spatial direction of path refers to a movement along a path. It
generally answers the question – đâu? (Where?) and is typically realised as a
prepositional phrase with prepositions such as dọc theo (along), ngang qua
(across) as dọc theo con đường làng (along the village road) in (9.38).

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 Chapter 9 • CIRCUMSTANTIAL TRANSITIVITY IN VIETNAMESE

(9.38)

Họ dạo bước dọc theo con đường làng

they walk along gen.cl road village
Actor Process: material Circumstance: spatial: path

They walked along the village road.

(ii) Temporal location refers to time. It serves to place the action or
event at a point or period of time, and it generally answers the question Bao
giờ/Khi nào? (When/What time?). It may be realised as an adverbial phrase
such as Bây giờ (Now) in (9.39), a prepositional phrase such as Khoảng sáu
tháng sau (About six months later) in (9.40), or as a temporal nominal such
as Hồi chống Mĩ (literally, period against America (During the war against the
Americans)) in (9.41).
(9.39) [NC]

Bây giờ thì tuổi già đã đến

now ptcl age old asp.ptcl come
Circ: loc: temp Actor Process: material

Now old age has come.

(9.40) [QT]

Khoảng sáu tháng sau ông luật sư gặp Khoa

about six month after Mr lawyer meet Khoa

Circumstance: location: temporal Actor Pro: mat Goal

About six months later the lawyer met Khoa.

(9.41) [LNM]

Hồi chống Mĩ bác là sư trưởng

period against America uncle be division head

Circ: location: temporal Token Pro: rel Value

During the war against the American he was head of a division.

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Temporal location may be further classified into what may be referred

to as temporal location of (i) position (pos) such as those in (9.39) - (9.41),
(ii) retrospective (retros), and (iii) prospective (pros). Retrospective
temporal location refers to the orientation of time into the past. It answers
the question Kể từ/Từ khi nào? (Since when?) and is typically realised as a
prepositional phrase with prepositions such as từ (from), kể từ (since). By
contrast, prospective temporal location refers to the orientation of time into
the future. It answers the question Ðến bao giờ/Ðến khi nào? (Until when?)
and is typically realised as a prepositional phrase with prepositions such as
đến (till), đến tận (until). Examples of retrospective and prospective
temporal location are provided below in (9.42) and (9.43) respectively:
(9.42) [TDP]

Từ đó lòng cô day dứt

since that heart she worry
Circ: temporal: retrospective Carrier Attribute

Since then she has been worried (about him).

(9.43) [TDP]

Họ đi bộ từ sáng đến tối

they walk from morning till dark
Actor Pro: mat Circ: temporal: retrospective Circ: temp: pros

They walked from morning till night.

9.5.4. Manner
Manner specifies the way the process is performed by some participant.
This type of circumstance comprises three main sub-categories:
Circumstantial manner of (i) means (me), (ii) quality (qual), and (iii)
comparison (com).
(i) Means refers to the means whereby a process takes place (cf.
Halliday 1994). It is typically realised as a prepositional phrase with
prepositions such as bằng (with/in), qua/thông qua (by, by means of) etc. It
answers the question Bằng cái gì? (What with) or Qua/Thông qua cái gì? (By
what means?). Characteristic of a Circumstantial manner of means is its
objectivity; that is, it does not represent the speaker’s assessment of how
something happened but offers verifiable observation of the means by
which an action or event occurred. It is therefore not gradable. It would be

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impossible to add, for example, hơn (more) or kém (less) to bằng xe Von-ga
đen (by a black Volga). (cf. Quirk et al., 1985; Jackson, 1991). Below are some
examples of Circumstantial of means:
(9.44) [LNM]

Chú phải đi bằng xe von-ga đen

junior must go by vehicle Volga black
Actor Process: material Circumstance: manner: means

You should go by a black Volga.(1)

(9.45)

Cuộc tranh chấp được giải quyết thông qua đối thoại
gen.cl dispute pass.ptcl settle through talk
Goal Process: material Circ: manner: means

The dispute was solved through negotiation.

(ii) Quality refers to how the process takes place. It generally answers
the question Như thế nào? (How?). It may be expressed either as a nominal
group such as giọng nói lạnh (literally, voice very cold (in a very cold voice))
in (9.46) or as an adverbial group such as thắm thiết vô cùng (very deeply) in
(9.47). Examples:
(9.46) [LNM]

Bác Luân giọng rất lạnh nói: “ . . .”

uncle Luan voice very cold say
Sayer Circ: manner: quality Pro: verbal

In a very cold voice Uncle Luan said: “...”

(9.47) [CD]
Anh thương em thắm thiết vô cùng
brother love junior deep very
Senser Pro: mental Phenomenon Circ: manner: quality

I love you so deeply.

(1) Volga is the name of a Russian-manufactured car.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

Characteristic of a Circumstantial manner of quality is its subjectivity;

that is, unlike a Circumstantial manner of means, it represents the speaker’s
assessment of the way an action or event happens or is undertaken. It is
therefore gradable; i.e., there can be degrees of quality such as hơi/khí (a
bit/a little) in hơi nghiêm nghị or khí nghiêm nghị (a bit seriously), khá
(rather) in khá nghiêm nghị (rather seriously), rất (very) in rất nghiêm nghị
(very seriously), hơn (more) in nghiêm nghi hơn (more seriously) and so on.
The category of quality in Vietnamese also includes a sub-type which is
concerned with specifying the involvement of one or more participants in
the process from the point of view of the relationship between participants
and occurrences of the process (cf. Matthiessen, 1995). This subtype of
quality, however, seems to accept only positive/negative degree and is
always expressed by adverbs such as cả (all), từng (each), riêng (separately),
chung (together/jointly) etc. Examples:
(9.48) [LNM] positive
Tôi ngồi chung xe với các bác
I sit jointly car with pl.mrkr uncle
Actor Pro: mat Circ: man: quality Circ: accompaniment

I sat in the same car with them.

(9.49) negative
Chúng tôi nấu riêng
we cook separate
Actor Process: material Circumstance: manner: quality

We cooked separately.
(iii) Comparison, unlike quality, does not represent the manner of the
performance of the process directly. Rather, it specifies the manner of the
process by comparing it to the way it is performed by another entity and this
other entity’s manner (cf. Matthiessen, 1995). In Vietnamese, a
Circumstantial manner of comparison is typically realised as a prepositional
phrase with prepositions such as như/giống như (like) and their
antonymous expressions such as không giống / cóc giống /không giống
như / cóc giống như (unlike). Examples:
(9.50) [ThN]
Nam thực như hổ
male food like tiger
Actor Process: material Circumstance: manner: comparison

A man should eat like a tiger.

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 Chapter 9 • CIRCUMSTANTIAL TRANSITIVITY IN VIETNAMESE

(9.51) [ThN]

Chạy như vịt

run like duck
Process: material Circumstance: manner: comparison

Run like a duck.

9.5.5. Cause
Cause is, in fact, a highly generalised notion. It does not refer simply to
‘a circumstance of CONTINGENCY which expresses objectively identifiable
cause or motive of an action or event’ (contra. Jackson, 1991: 128). Neither
does it refer only to ‘a deep-rooted cause or an immediate cause, or a reason
which causes the event mentioned in the sentence nucleus’ (contra. Diệp
Quang Ban, 1987: 178; UBKHXH, 1983). Rather, it is a notion which has an
important circumstantial role with a number of choices expressing various
kinds of cause: (i) reason (rsn), (ii) purpose (purp), (iii) behalf (behf), (iv)
condition (cond), and (v) concession (conc).
(i) Reason refers to the reason for which the process takes place. It is a
cause that precedes the performance of a process (cf. Matthiessen, 1995). In
Vietnamese, this type of circumstance is typically realised as a prepositional
phrase with prepositions such as vì/bởi vì (because/because of), do (due to),
nhờ/nhờ có (thanks to) etc. It answers the questions Tại sao? (Why?), Vì ai?
(because of who?), Vì cái gì? (Because of what?). Examples:
(9.52) [TN]

Người đẹp vì lụa

people beautiful because silk
Carrier Attribute Circumstance: cause: reason

People look smart because of their silk (clothes).

(9.53) [TN]

Lúa tốt vì phân

rice good because manure
Carrier Attribute Circumstance: cause: reason

Rice grows well because of (applying) manure.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

In some instances, a Circumstantial cause of reason may occur without

a preposition. For example:
(9.54)
Cô ấy nghỉ ốm
she rest ill
Actor Process: material Circumstance: cause: reason

She didn’t go to work (because she’s) ill.

(ii) Purpose represents the purpose for which an action or event takes
place (cf. Halliday, 1994; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004). It is a reason
formulated in terms of an intended outcome (cf. Jackson, 1991), or a cause
that follows the performance of a process (Matthiessen, 1995). It is realised
as a prepositional phrase with prepositions such as cho/để cho (for) and by
what may be referred to as ‘a prepositional verbal phrase’ (i.e., by a
preposition + verbal phrase) with prepositions or preposition complexes
such as để (for/in order to/so that), nhằm/với/vì mục đích (in order to/ for
the purpose of/ in an attempt to) etc. Examples:
(9.55)
Họ đang chuẩn bị cho bữa sáng
they asp.ptcl for breakfast
Actor Process: material Circumstance: purpose

They are preparing for breakfast.

(9.56) [THu]
Ta đã làm gì cho tổ quốc thân yêu?
we asp.ptcl do what for country lovely
Actor Process: material Goal Circumstance: purpose

What have we done for our lovely country?

Like reason, a Circumstantial of purpose may also occur without a
preposition. For example:
(9.57)
Tôi đi chơi
I go play
Actor Process: material Circumstance: cause: manner

I go somewhere to relax.

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(iii) Behalf represents the entity, usually a human being, on whose

behalf or for whose sake the performance of a process is undertaken. It is
typically realised as a prepositional phrase with prepositions and
preposition complexes such as vì/cho (for), vì lợi ích của (in the interest
of/for the sake of), thay mặt cho (on behalf of). It answers the questions Vì
ai? (For who?) and Thay mặt cho ai? (On whose behalf?). Examples:
(9.58) [VNDQM]

Vì nhân dân quên mình

for people forget self

Circumstance: cause: behalf Process: mental Phenomenon

For the sake of the people we forget our own selves.

(9.59) [NMC]

Tôi nói thêm cho cu Hoài

I say more for gen.cl Hoai

Sayer Process: verbal Circ Circumstance: cause: behalf

I said something more on Hoai’s behalf.

(9.60)

Thay mặt cả lớp chúng em xin cám ơn cô giáo

on behalf of all class we beg thank teacher

Circumstance: cause: behalf Sayer Pro: verbal Target

On behalf of the class, we thank you (the teacher) very much.

(iv) Condition specifies the condition under which the performance of
a process takes place. It generally answers the question Trong điều kiện
nào? (In/Under what condition?) and is typically realised as a prepositional
phrase such as Trong trường hợp (In case of) in (9.61). However, in some
instances it may occur without a preposition such as Trường hợp (In case of).
Examples:

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(9.61) (+ preposition)

Trong trường hợp này tôi sẽ không trả lời anh ta

in case this I asp.ptcl not answer he
Circ: cause: condition Sa Pro:vrb Rec

In this case, I will not answer him.

(9.62) (- preposition)

Trường hợp mưa to thì đừng đến

case rain big ptcl not come

Circumstance: cause: condition Process: material

In case of heavy rain, please do not come.

(v) Concession represents what Matthiessen (1995: 341) refers to as
‘frustrated cause’; i.e., something that might have led to the non-occurrence
of the process but did not. In other words, concession specifies a condition
that may have obtained but has no effect on the result achieved (cf. Quirk et
al., 1985; see also Jackson, 1991). In Vietnamese, this circumstantial element
is typically realised as a prepositional phrase with prepositions such as bất
kể/bất chấp (in spite of/despite), dù/mặc dù (though/although). For
example:
(9.63)

Bất kể mưa to gió lớn anh ấy vẫn đến

despite rain big wind big he still come
Circumstance: cause: concession Actor Circ Pro: material

Despite heavy rain and strong wind he still came.

It should be noted here that among the different types of circumstance
in Vietnamese, the semantic relations involved in most of the subtypes of
cause seem to be inter-clausal rather than intra-clausal ones. This is
reflected in the fact that the meanings of reason, purpose, condition, and
concession in Vietnamese are often found to be realised as a clause rather
than as a prepositional phrase. Examples:

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(9.64) reason

Họ không đến vì trời mưa to

they not come because sky rain big

They did not come because it rained hard.

(9.65) purpose

Tôi nói to để mọi người nghe thấy

I speak loud so that everyone hear

I spoke loudly so that everyone could hear me.

(9.66) condition

Cá này nếu rán thì ngon

fish this if fry ptcl delicious

This fish would be delicious if fried.

(9.67) concession

Mặc dù trời mưa anh ấy vẫn đến chỗ chúng tôi

although sky rain he still come place we

Although it rained, he came to our place.

These issues, however, are not pursued here as they belong to the
realm of clause complex rather than to the realm of the simple clause.
9.5.6. Accompaniment
Accompaniment represents the meanings và (and), hoặc (or), không
(not). It generally answers the questions Với ai nữa/Với cái gì nữa? (With
who/what else?) and is expressed by prepositional phrases with
prepositions and preposition complexes such as với (with), thay cho/thay vì
(instead of) không có/không cần/không đưa theo/không mang theo
(without), bên cạnh/ngoài ...ra (besides) etc. Examples:

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(9.68)

Mình sẽ đi ra ga với cậu

self asp.ptcl go out station with you

Actor Pro: mat Circ: spa: dest Circ: accompaniment

I’ll go to the station with you.

(9.69)

Cô ấy đến không mang theo chồng

she come not carry husband

Actor Process: material Circumstance: accompaniment

She came without her husband.

Circumstance of accompaniment may be classified into three subtypes:
(i) participant-oriented accompaniment, (ii) non-participant-oriented
accompaniment, and (iii) process-oriented accompaniment. In the first
subtype both the entity having the function of participant such as Mình (I)
and the entity realising part of a Circumstance of accompaniment such as
cậu (you) in (9.68) are realised by the same type of nominal:
animate/human. This subtype of Circumstance of accompaniment is
participant-oriented in the sense that the entity realising part of it and the
one having the function of participant can be conjoined as a single element
as the following:
(9.68a)

Mình và cậu sẽ đi ra ga
self and you asp.ptcl go out station
Actor Pro: mat Circ: space: destination

You and I will go to the station.

In the second subtype, the entity having the function of participant
such as Hắn (He) and the entity realising part of a Circumstance of
accompaniment such as một chiếc ô đen (a black umbrella) in Hắn đến với
một chiếc ô đen (He came with a black umbrella) are realised by a different

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 Chapter 9 • CIRCUMSTANTIAL TRANSITIVITY IN VIETNAMESE

type of nominal: one – Hắn (He) – is realised by an animate/human nominal

and the other – một chiếc ô đen (a black umbrella) – by an inanimate one.
This subtype of Circumstance of accompaniment is non-participant-oriented
in the sense that the entity realising part of the Circumstance of
accompaniment and the entity having the function of participant cannot be
conjoined as a single participant. Thus, it would be bizarre in Vietnamese to
say, for example:

(9.70) *
Hắn và chiếc ô đen đến
he and gen.cl umbrella black come

He and a black umbrella came

In the third subtype, the entity realising part of a Circumstance of
accompaniment is realised by an abstract nominal which is usually derived
from a verb, e.g., tiếng cười (a laughter), nụ cười (a smile), cú sút (a shot) etc.
It is the characteristic of this type of nominal that the circumstantial
element is treated as process-oriented accompaniment or as equivalent to
an ‘accompanying process’ (Halliday 1994: 156) and Halliday & Matthiessen
(2004: 272-3). Thus, the clause
(9.71)
Hắn đến với tiếng cười quen thuộc
he come with gen.cl laughter familiar
Actor Pro: material Circumstance: accompaniment

He came with his characteristic (familiar) laughter.

can be interpreted as ‘He came and laughed simultaneously in his
characteristic way’.
9.5.7. Matter
Matter specifies the subject matter or topic. It is typically realised as a
prepositional phrase with prepositions such as về (about/of), liên quan tới /
liên quan đến (concerning / with regard to / regarding). It generally answers
the question Với cái gì? (What about?). Characteristic of a Circumstantial of
matter is that there is always a strong collocation of this type of
circumstance with verbal processes and certain mental ones (see Chapter 7,
Section 7.4.2.6). Examples:

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(9.72) [HÐQ]

Để tôi kể về chuyện tôi

let I tell about story I

Sayer Process: verbal Circumstance: matter

Let me tell (you) about my story.

(9.73) [NTH]

Ðối với tiếng Việt, nếu bỏ định ngữ đi ...

with regard to Vietnamese if drop attribute go/out

Circumstance: matter Pro: mat Goal

With regard to Vietnamese, if the attribute (of a noun) is omitted ...

(9.74) [NHTh]

Tôi nghĩ về sự đơn giản của ngôn từ

I think about gen.cl simple of word

Senser Pro: ment Circumstance: matter

I thought about the simplicity of words.

9.5.8. Role
Role refers to the role or capacity in which a participant is involved in
the process (cf. Matthiessen, 1995). In terms of logico-semantics, a
Circumstantial of role can be said to elaborate the nature of participant. As
with English, role in Vietnamese construes two basic meanings, which
borrowing Halliday’s (1994) terminology, I shall refer to as guise (gse) or
depictive and product (prod) or resultative respectively. Guise is a status
relation and as such construes a meaning close to that construed by
relational attributive process. Compare:

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(9.75)

Cô ấy là một giáo viên

she be one teacher

Carrier Proces: relational Attribute

She is a teacher.
with
(9.76)

Cô ấy làm giáo viên

she work teacher

Actor Process: material Circumstance: role: guise

She works as a teacher.

In (9.75) the status of Cô ấy (She) is expressed attributively while in
(9.76) it is expressed circumstantially. Guise usually answers the questions
Như là ai/Như là cái gì? (Who as/What as?), Với tư cách gì/Với danh nghĩa gì?
(In what capacity/In what name?). It is expressed by prepositions and
preposition complexes such as như/như là (as), với tư cách là/với danh nghĩa
là (in the capacity of/in the name of), dưới hình thức/dưới chiêu bài (in the
form of/under the pretext of) etc. Examples:
(9.77) [NMC]

Tôi đi với danh nghĩa là đại diện uỷ ban huyện

I go with name be representative committee district

Actor Pro: mat Circumstance: role: guise

I came in the name of the district people’s committee.

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(9.78)

Mình đến đây như một người bạn

self come here like one friend

Actor Pro: mat Circ: location Circumstance: role: guise

I come here as a friend.

Product represents the meaning of trở thành (becoming). It generally
answers the question Thành cái gì? (What into?). It is realised as a
prepositional phrase with the usual preposition thành (into). For example:
(9.79)

Cắt quả táo thành hai phần bằng nhau

cut gen.cl apple become two part equal

Pro: mat Goal Circumstance: role: product

Cut the apple into two equal parts.

9.5.9. Stance
Stance refers to the semiotic angle on a process (Matthiessen, 1995). It
provides the point of reference for the process in the clause (cf. Jackson,
1991). It is usually realised by prepositions and preposition complexes such
as với (for), theo (according to/in someone’s opinion), theo/từ quan điểm
của (in the opinion of/from the point of view of), dưới con mắt của (in the
eye of) etc. It generally answers the questions Theo ai/cái gì/Theo quan
điểm của ai? (According to who/what/ In whose opinion?), (Ðối) Với ai/Với
cái gì? (For who/what? With respect to who/what?). Examples:
(9.80) [NTH]

Theo hai tác giả trên, chủ đề là tiếng ...

according to two author above theme be word

Circumstance: stance Token Pro: rel Value

According to these scholars, theme is the element (which ...)

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 Chapter 9 • CIRCUMSTANTIAL TRANSITIVITY IN VIETNAMESE

(9.81) [XD]

Với tôi tất cả đều vô nghĩa

for I all together meaningless

Circ: stance Carrier Circumstance Attribute

For me, everything is meaningless.

When answering the question Theo ai/cái gì/Theo quan điểm của ai?
(According to who/what/In whose opinion?), a Circumstantial of stance
actually construes the meaning of saying in a verbal clause complex or
sensing in a mental clause complex. A Circumstantial of stance such as Theo
hai tác giả trên (According to these scholars) in clause (9.80) is just one
other way of expressing a projecting verbal process such as Hai tác giả trên
nói (These scholars say) in the clause complex:
(9.82)

Hai tác giả trên nói: “Chủ đề là tiếng ...”

two author above say theme be word

Sayer Pro: verbal Token Pro: rel Value

These scholars say: “Theme is the element (which...)”

Similarly, a Circumstantial of stance such as Theo quan điểm của tôi (In
my opinion) in
(9.83)

Theo quan của tôi cô ấy là một giáo tốt

điểm viên

according to opinion of I she be one teacher good

Circ: stance Car Pro: rel Attribute

In my opinion, she is a good teacher.

can be treated as equivalent to a projecting mental process such as Tôi
nghĩ (I think) in the clause complex:

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

(9.84)

Tôi nghĩ cô ấy là một giáo viên tốt

I think she be one teacher good
Senser Pro: ment Carrier Pro: rel Attribute

I think she is a good teacher.

In some instances, a Circumstantial of stance in Vietnamese may also
be realised as a nominal group. This nominal element may be in co-
referential relation with Subject or Complement in the clause. By way of
illustration, let me provide some examples and analyse them in terms of
both TRANSITIVITY and MOOD.
(9.85)

Tôi thì tôi đầu hàng

I ptcl I surrender
Circumstance: stance Actor Process: material
Adjunct Subject Predicator

As for me, I surrender.

(9.86) [DQB]

Vịt còn hai con

duck remain two gen.cl
Circ: stance Process: existential Existent
Adjunct Predicator Complement

As for ducks, there are two left.

(9.87) [NKT]

Thằng ấy thì tôi phải tống cổ nó

guy that ptcl I must push he
Circ: stance Actor Pro: mat Goal
Adjunct Subject Predicator Complement

As for that guy, I must turn him (out).

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 Chapter 9 • CIRCUMSTANTIAL TRANSITIVITY IN VIETNAMESE

As can be seen, the circumstantial elements in the above examples are

related co-referentially to the Subject in (9.85) or to the Complement in
(9.86) and (9.87). The co-referentiality is achieved either by means of
reprising as Tôi (I) and tôi (I) in (9.85) or by means of pro-forming as Vịt
(duck) and con (generic classifier) in (9.86) and Thằng ấy (literally, that guy)
and nó (him) in (9.87). Mention was made in Chapter 2, Section 2.3.2.4 that
these elements have been treated differently by different scholars studying
Vietnamese. Some (e.g., Trương Văn Chình & Nguyễn Hiến Lê, 1963) would
hold that they have the function of expose du sujet or topic, others (e.g., Lưu
Vân Lăng, 1992b; Nguyễn Thượng Hùng, 1994) would maintain that Tôi (I) in
(9.85) has the function of khởi đề (i.e., a type of non-topical themes which
occurs in sentence-initial position) and Vịt (duck) in (9.86) and Thằng ấy
(that guy) have the function of bổ đề (complement theme), while still others
(e.g., Phan Thiều, 1988) would treat Tôi (I) in (9.85) as a kind of reprised
subject and Vịt (duck) in (9.86) and Thằng ấy (that guy) in (9.87) as bổ ngữ
đảo (inverted complement). Without going into a detailed discussion of the
pros and cons of these treatments, I treat these elements in this study as
having the function of a Circumstance of stance, since they all construe an
angle on the process, serving as the point of reference for the process in the
clause. This of course does not prevent their analysis as a Theme from the
point of view of the textual grammar of the clause. However, a detailed
discussion of this aspect of their analysis goes beyond the scope of the
present study.

9.6. Concluding Remarks

In this chapter, an attempt was made to examine circumstantial
TRANSITIVITY in Vietnamese. I began the chapter by raising three questions
for exploration. In answer, I examined the notion of circumstance and made
a contrastive analysis between circumstances and participants to find out
the features distinguishing one category from the other. Then I devoted a
large portion of the chapter to identify and examine the eight types of
Circumstantial functions in the clause: extent, location, manner, cause,
accompaniment, matter, role, and stance. During the exploration, I also
attempted to look at more delicate subtypes of these in certain cases, as
shown in the system network of circumstantial TRANSITIVITY in Vietnamese
below:

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

spatial
extent
temporal
position
spatial source
direction destination
location path
position
temporal retrospective
introspective
means
manner quality
comparison

reason
circumstance purpose
cause behalf
condition
concession
participant-oriented
accompaniment non-participant-oriented
process-oriented
matter
guise
role
product
stance

Figure 9.3. Circumstantial TRANSITIVITY in Vietnamese:

a More Delicate System Network

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

CHAPTER 10
CONCLUSION

10.1. Synopsis
A grammarian’s work, like a woman’s work, is never finished: the
reason is basically the same. A woman’s work will remain unfinished
because life is complex and ongoing: there will always be some more to do.
A grammarian’s work will remain unfinished because language is complex
and multifaceted. As Firth (1957a) pointed out, in linguistics the biggest
abstraction we make is ‘language’: within this one word we encapsulate all
its varieties, all its design features and of course all of its meaning potential!
Seen from this perspective, what this study has accomplished is only a
minute fragment: I have concentrated on only one small segment: the
experiential aspect of the Vietnamese clause. Therefore, it would be more
appropriate at this stage to retrace my steps – to give a synopsis of what
I have done so as to place my work within its academic context and to point
out some of its possible achievements – and, if possible, to make some
suggestions for future research.
My academic inheritance is cross-cultural: on the one hand, I have tried
to take into account the linguistic scholarship of Vietnam, and on the other
hand, I have tried to learn and use the British model of systemic functional
linguistics to throw light on the Vietnamese language. I began my journey
to the experiential region of the Vietnamese clause by setting the
foundation, both historical and theoretical, for it in Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4.
Chapter 1 was an introduction proper to the monograph in which I
presented a sketch of Vietnam, the language and its people; the aims and
the scope of the study; the data and descriptive strategies; and the glosses
and symbols.
I began my exploratory journey to the experiential world of the
Vietnamese clause with Chapter 2. In this chapter, I attempted a selective
review of Vietnamese grammar from the middle of the 19th century up to

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 Chapter 10 • CONCLUSION

the present time. I focused mainly on how scholars studying Vietnamese

from different linguistic traditions conceptualised the nature of language
and what methodological approaches underlay their descriptive works. For
the purpose of the review the Vietnamese linguistic scholarship was divided
into three stages: (i) the proto-grammatics of Vietnamese, (ii) the
transitional stage, and (iii) the functional study of Vietnamese. These stages
were described and reviewed critically to establish both the achievements in
the study of Vietnamese grammar, particularly in the fields of morphology
and syntax, and the needs that were as yet unmet. It was pointed out in
Section 2.4 that most of the reviewed approaches to Vietnamese grammar
seemed to have created four gaps: (i) that the clause which is one of the
most important grammatical categories in any language as seen from the
point of view of the systemic functional model was not explicitly recognised
as a descriptive unit; (ii) that most Vietnamese scholarship viewed language
as a set of rules, rather than a resource for making meaning; (iii) that
meaning – the heart of any linguistic study, as Whorf (1956), Firth (1957a,
1957b), Halliday (1978, 1985b, 1990, 1993, and elsewhere) have insisted –
was not properly considered; and (iv) that the social aspect of language was
almost ignored. These gaps of the traditional and non-systemic approaches
to Vietnamese grammar have provided part of the justification for the
present study.
In my study, I have attempted to provide a grammar of the experiential
aspect of the Vietnamese clause which links systematically the form of the
language to the meaning potential of the language with reference to this
particular function. At the same time, I attempted to meet the challenge
posed by the lack of balance between form and function, evident in many of
the grammars discussed in Chapter 2. In this account, both definition and
recognition play an equally important part: definition tells us what the
category is about, what general meaning it construes and recognition tells
us what formal resources have been drawn on in making those meanings.
To the extent that I have succeeded in presenting an account of the
Vietnamese process types and the functions that the selection of a process
type entails or allows, to that extent my work has demonstrated the
integrity of the notion of clause in the language. And to the extent that the
only justification for using language is its ability to construe meanings and
that meanings are construed grammatically, to that extent the account
presented in this study is capable of being used to throw light on the social
aspects of Vietnamese both as system and as use.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

In Chapter 3, I presented an overview of systemic functional theory as

developed by Halliday and other systemicists. The focus was on certain
fundamental concepts, which help explain how the term ‘functional’ is
interpreted in the systemic functional model, and on some functional
concepts relevant to the writing of grammar. In keeping with the systemic
functional approach, I have argued that certain aspects of the theoretical
framework for the description of a language are ‘universal’, in the sense that
they define the specificities of a human language: those concepts furnish a
window on the nature of human language as such. In applying this view to
the study of Vietnamese, I have perhaps provided a justification for moving
away from eclectic approaches, especially those that do not integrate the
theoretical notions of the many approaches which are put together. My work
has attempted to show how within the scope of a particular conception of
language, a fragment of the lexicogrammar of that language might prove
informative.

In Chapter 4, I explored the notion of clause in Vietnamese. In an

attempt to answer the question ‘What is a clause and why is it important?’, I
proposed to discuss the centrality of the clause in general lexicogrammatical
description. Then taking the English unit clause as a point of reference, an
attempt was made to offer some criteria for identifying the Vietnamese
clause and distinguishing it from non-clausal units. The discussion has
strongly suggested that ‘clauses, rather than sentences, are the basic units of
syntax’ (Lyons, 1995: 235) – a position that has been taken by the systemic
functional linguists since the early 1960s as can be seen in the writings of
Halliday (1967a, 1967b, 1967d, 1968, 1970, 1973, 1978, 1981, 1982 and
elsewhere); Berry (1975, 1977, 1992); Halliday and Hasan (1976, 1985);
Halliday and Martin (1981, 1993); Matthiessen (1988a, 1988b, 1995); Martin
(1992, 1996a) and many others. Amazingly, even today, there are still
linguists who continue to offer the grammar of the ‘sentence’.

Chapters 5 through 9 constituted the body of the thesis. Chapter 5 was

an introduction to the basic notions in experiential grammar. I introduced
some of the most essential notions related to the description and analysis of
the experiential grammar in Vietnamese. Based on the model of experience
as developed by Halliday (1985, 1994), Halliday & Matthiessen (2004), an
attempt was made to model different regions of TRANSITIVITY and
different process options for exploration in Chapters 6 through 9.

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 Chapter 10 • CONCLUSION

Chapters 6 through 9 were the journey to the system of VOICE and the
region of nuclear TRANSITIVITY in Vietnamese. The exploration of the
system of VOICE suggested that like English and many other languages,
Vietnamese displays both perspectives on voice: the ergative and the
transitive. These alternative models are important for understanding the
nature of the Vietnamese clause. As Halliday (1994: 169) aptly observes with
reference to English, ‘by interpreting processes ergatively as well as
transitively we are able to understand many features of (...) grammar which
otherwise remain arbitrary and obscure’. Having offered a systemic
functional interpretation of the system of VOICE in Vietnamese, I turned to
examine in some depth the different process options (types of process):
doing processes – a super-ordinate category for material processes and
behavioural processes; projecting processes – a super-ordinate category for
mental processes and verbal processes; and being processes – a super-
ordinate category for relational processes and existential processes. Three
major research questions on which Chapters 6 through 9 bear are (1) “What
process options may be hypothesised for the grammar of Vietnamese?”, (2)
“What are the features that distinguish one process option from the others
in the system of TRANSITIVITY in Vietnamese?”, and (3) “What options are
available in the environment of each of the process types in the system of
TRANSITIVITY in Vietnamese?” Throughout the chapters, an attempt was
made to establish both definition and recognition criteria for each of these
process options and to describe them in some degrees of delicacy. It is clear
from the description that each of the process options has a number of
features which makes it distinct as a separate grammatical category. There
are, however, borderline cases or ‘cross-overs’ (Matthiessen, 1995: 269) of
one process option and the others. This strongly confirms Halliday’s (1996:
16) claim that ‘grammars are indeterminate’ or fuzzy; and it is my view that
any attempt to establish a line of demarcation between these categories
would end up in a failure.

The journey to the system of TRANSITIVITY in Vietnamese ended with

Chapter 9 where the region of circumstantial TRANSITIVITY in Vietnamese
was explored. The focus was on examining the notion of circumstance,
making distinctions between circumstances and participants, and describing
the different options available in the system of circumstantial TRANSITIVITY
in the Vietnamese clause.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

10.2. Future Research

It appears obvious from the descriptions in Chapters 6 to 9 that like
English and other languages of the world, the process options postulated as
relevant to the Vietnamese clause are extremely complex domains. In my
description, I was able to examine only some of the most basic choices.
Therefore, a great deal of work should be done in order to explore more
delicate choices and to push towards lexical delicacy for all process options.

This monograph has been concerned with the experiential grammar

that is construed at the rank of clause in Vietnamese. There is one other
important aspect of experiential grammar that has been left unaccounted:
the experiential grammar construed at group rank such as nominal group,
verbal group etc. Such an investigation is a matter for future research.

In the systemic functional model, the representation of the clause of a

language is not seen as having a single strand of meaning but a number of
strands of meaning which are fused together in the process of realisation to
produce a single wording (cf. Halliday 1970, 1978, 1994; Halliday &
Matthiessen, 2004 and elsewhere). This suggests that in order to have a
comprehensive functional grammar of Vietnamese, enquiry into the logical,
interpersonal, and textual meanings and their lexicogrammatical
realisations is needed. These aspects of the grammar of Vietnamese are also
matters for future research.

It is here that I end my journey to the experiential region of the

Vietnamese clause. Obviously, much more work is needed in order to have a
comprehensive systemic functional grammar of Vietnamese. It is, however,
positively hoped this kind of work will be produced some day by some more
capable and more devoted Vietnamese grammarian(s) in the near future.

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 APPENDIX

APPENDIX 1
SOURCES OF DATA FOR ILLUSTRATION

BN = Bảo Ninh. (1994). Khắc dấu mạn thuyền. (Trong) Truyện ngắn
chọn lọc 1992-1994. Hà Nội: QÐND.
CD = Ca dao
CXH = Cao Xuân Hạo. (1991/2004). Tiếng Việt: Sơ thảo ngữ pháp chức
năng. Quyển 1. Hà Nội: KHXH.
DC = Dân ca
DQB = Diệp Quang Ban. (1987). Câu đơn tiếng Việt. Hà Nội: NXBGD.
ÐB = Ðức Ban. (1993). Miếu làng. (Trong) Truyện ngắn hay 1993.
Hà Nội: Văn học (Tuần báo Văn nghệ).
ÐL = Ðoàn Lê. (1993). Ðất xóm chùa. (Trong) Truyện ngắn hay 1993.
Hà Nội: Văn học (Tuần báo văn nghệ).
ÐQL&VT = Ðỗ Quang Lưu &Vân Thanh. (1985). Truyện đọc cấp I. Tập bốn.
Hà Nội: NXBGD.
HD = Hồng Dân (1994). Chiều Vô danh. (Trong) Truyện ngắn chọn lọc
1992-1994. Hà Nội: QÐND.
HÐQ = Hoàng Ðình Quang. (1994). Những người thọ nạn. (Trong) Truyện
ngắn chọn lọc 1992-1994. Hà Nội: QÐND.
HS = Hồng Sơn. (1993). Mặt lạ. Văn nghệ quân đội, số tháng 7.
LNM = Lê Ngọc Minh. (1993). Ði bầu thành hoàng. (Trong) Truyện ngắn
hay 1993. Hà Nội: Văn học (Tuần báo văn nghệ).
NB = Nguyễn Bản. (1995). Tầm tã mưa ơi. (Trong) Những truyện ngắn
hay. Hà Nội: CAND.
NC = Nam Cao. (1994). Truyện ngắn chọn lọc. Hà Nội: Văn học.

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

NCH = Nguyễn Công Hoan. (1957,1958). Truyện ngắn chọn lọc. Hà Nội:
Văn học.
ND = Nguyễn Du. (1975). Truyện Kiều. Hà Nội: Văn học.
NÐC = Nguyễn Ðổng Chi. (1993). Kho tàng truyện cổ tích Việt Nam. Tập 1,
2, 3, 4, 5. TP Hồ Chí Minh: Văn nghệ.
NÐT = Nguyễn Ðức Thọ. (1993). Ốc mượn hồn. (Trong) Truyện ngắn hay
1993. Hà Nội: Văn học (Tuần báo văn nghệ).
NHT = Nguyễn Huy Tưởng. (1960). Truyện anh Lục. Hà Nội: Văn học.
NHTh = Nguyễn Huy Thiệp. (1993). Thương nhớ đồng quê. (Trong) Truyện
ngắn hay 1993. Hà Nội: Văn học (Tuần báo văn nghệ).
NKT = Nguyễn Kim Thản. (1977). Ðộng từ trong tiếng Việt. Hà Nội: KHXH.
NM = Nguyễn Một. (1996). Tha hương. Văn nghệ trẻ, số 18. 25/7/96.
NMC = Nguyễn Minh Chính. (1993). Mẹ chồng tôi. (Trong) Truyện ngắn
hay 1993. Hà Nội: Văn học (Tuần báo văn nghệ).
NNA = Nguyễn Nhật Ánh. (1994). Hoa học trò.
NTH = Nguyễn Thượng Hùng. (1994). Ðối chiếu phần đề câu tiếng Anh với
phần đề câu tiếng Việt. Luận án phó tiến sĩ. Trung tâm KHXH & NV.
NTHD = Nguyễn Trần Hồng Diễm. (1994). Hoa học trò.
NTT = Nguyễn Thế Tường. (1994). Hồi ức của một binh nhì. (Trong)
Truyện ngắn chọn lọc 1992-1994. Hà Nội: QÐND.
NTTH = Nguyễn Thị Thu Huệ. (1993). Giai Nhân. (Trong) Truyện ngắn hay
1993. Hà Nội: Văn học (Tuần báo văn nghệ).
NVH = Nguyễn Việt Hà. (1995). Sếp và tôi. (Trong) Những truyện ngắn
hay. Hà Nội: CAND.
PK = Phương Khánh. (1996). Hưu nhưng chưa nghỉ. Báo Người Hà Nội,
số 21(467). 1/6/96.
QH = Quế Hương. (1995). Bức tranh thiếu nữ áo lục. (Trong) Những
truyện ngắn hay. Hà Nội: CAND.
QL = Quách Liêu. (1995). Hái lá cầu may. (Trong) Hoa học trò xuân
Ất hợi.

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 APPENDIX

QT = Quý Thể. (1993). Quả tim người tử tội. (Trong) Truyện ngắn hay
1993. Hà Nội: Văn học (Tuần báo văn nghệ).
QTa = Quý Tâm. (1994). Vũ điệu có chú giải. (Trong) Truyện ngắn chọn
lọc 1992 - 1994. Hà Nội: QÐND.
TÐ = Tản Ðà. Cảm thu, tiễn thu.
TÐK = Trần Ðăng Khoa. (1994). Hoa học trò.
TDP = Trần Duy Phiên. (1995). Ngõ đạo miền hoang dã. (Trong) Những
truyện ngắn hay. Hà Nội: CAND.
TH = Tô Hoài (1995). Tuyển tập Tô Hoài. Hà Nội: Văn học.
ThN = Thành ngữ
THu = Tố Hữu
TMT = Trần Mạnh Thường. (Chọn lọc) (1995). Truyện cười Việt Nam chọn
lọc. Hà Nội: Văn hoá thông tin.
TN = Tục ngữ
TVH = Tô Vĩnh Hà. (1995). Hoàng hôn biển. (Trong) Những truyện ngắn
hay. Hà Nội: CAND.
VK = Văn Ký. Bài ca hy vọng.
VNDQM = Vì nhân dân quên mình (a Vietnamese song)
XD = Xuân Diệu. (1994). Thơ tình Xuân Diệu. Hà Nội: NXBGD.
YB = Y Ban. (1994). Bây giờ con hiểu. (Trong) Truyện ngắn chọn lọc
1992 - 1994. Hà Nội: QÐND.

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HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

APPENDIX 2
KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS

The abbreviations of terminology used throughout the

study are:

Ac = Actor
Accomp = Accompaniment
Adjct = Adjunct
adv = adverb
Ag = Agent
Alt = Alterative
Asger = Assigner
asp.ptcl = aspectual particle
Attor = Attributor
Attr = Attribute
Beh = Behaver/Behavioural
Behf = Behalf
Ben = Beneficiary
Car = Carrier
Circ = Circumstance
Cli = Client
cog = cognitive/cognition
Com = Comparison
Compl = Complement
Conc = Concession
Cond = Condition
Crvge = Coverage
Cse = Cause
Deic = Deictic
desir = desiderative/desideration
Dest = Destination
Dir = Direction

– 350 –
 APPENDIX

Dom = Domain
Dur = Duration
eff = effective
em = emotive/emotion
Existl = Existential
Existt = Existent
Ext = Extent
Fin = Finite
gen.cl = generic classifier
Go = Goal
Id = Identified
IFG = Introduction to Functional Grammar
Ini = Initiator
int = intensive
Inter = Internal State
intsn = intensification
Ir = Identifier
Loc = Location
m.ptcl = modal particle
Macrophen = Macrophenomenon
Man = Manner
mat = material
Matr = matter
Me = Means
Med = Medium
ment = mental
Metaphen = Metaphenomenon
mid = middle
n.gr = nominal group
pass.ptcl = passive particle
p.ph = prepositional phrase
Part = Participant
per = perceptive/perception
Phen = Phenomenon
pl.mrkr = plural marker
Pos = Position
Pred = Predicator
Pro = Process
Pro: beh = Process: behavioural

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HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

Pro: existl = Process: existential

Pro: mat = Process: material
Pro: ment = Process: mental
Pro: rel = Process: relational
Pro: vrb = Process: verbal
Pros = Prospective
Psed = Possessed
Psor = Possessor
ptcl = particle
Purp = Purpose
q.ptcl = question particle
Qual = Quality
Ra = Range
Rec = Receiver/Recipient
rel = relational
Retros = Retrospective
Rh = Rheme
Rsn = Reason
Sa = Sayer
Sen = Senser
SFL = systemic functional linguistics
sg.mrkr = singular marker
Spa = Spatial
Srce = Source
Subj = Subject
Temp = Temporal
Tgt = Target
Th = Theme
Th: inter = Theme: interpersonal
Th: text = Theme: textual
Th: top = Theme: topical
Thg = Thing
Tk = Token
v (main) = main verb
v (pass) = passive verb
v = verb
Vl = Value
vrb = verbal
Vrbge = Verbiage

– 352 –
 APPENDIX

APPENDIX 3
TABLE OF SYMBOLS AND NOTATIONAL
CONVENTIONS

| . . . . . indicates phrase/group boundary

|| . . . . . indicates clause boundary
||| . . . . . indicates clause complex boundary
[ ] . . . . indicates embedded phrase
[[ ]] . . . . indicates embedded clause
* . . . . . indicates ungrammatical or unacceptable clause
+ . . . . . indicates that the occurrence of an item is obligatory
± . . . . . indicates that the occurrence of an item may or
may not be obligatory
Ì . . . . . indicates realised by
^ . . . . . indicates sequenced structure . . . e.g., Actor^Process^Goal
? . . . . . indicates that the form or the example is doubtful
e.g., ? Mũ này của Quân (This hat is Quan’s.)

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

INDEX OF PROPER NAMES

Alexander de Rhode, 24 Fawcett, 7, 72, 106, 112, 116, 128, 234, 235,
António Barbosa, 24 236, 237, 327, 329, 330, 331, 332, 334,
337, 341, 342
Aubaret, 25, 326
Firth, 20, 75, 76, 79, 80, 118, 322, 323, 331,
Bell, 128, 176, 222, 246, 289, 297, 298, 326
344
Berry, 72, 80, 106, 324, 327, 329, 331, 337,
Fries, 31, 42, 45, 53, 72, 74, 98, 101, 102, 107,
341, 342
108, 110, 118, 297, 327, 328, 330, 331,
Berry, Butler, Fawcett & Huang, 72 332, 337
Bouchet, 26, 27, 28, 138, 327 Gak, 64, 332
Bùi Ðức Tịnh, 327 Gaspar do Amarol, 24
Butler, 72, 78, 80, 106, 115, 327, 329, 331, Halliday, 7, 10, 12, 17, 18, 20, 31, 42, 64, 65,
341, 342 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82,
Bystrov et al., 54, 55, 57, 59, 94 83, 84, 87, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 95, 96, 98,
Cao Văn Luận, 46 100, 101, 102, 103, 106, 107, 108, 109,
110, 111, 112, 113, 116, 117, 118, 121,
Cao Xuân Hạo, 4, 48, 49, 51, 53, 58, 61, 62, 63, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 128, 129, 134,
64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 89, 95, 96, 135, 136, 137, 150, 151, 153, 156, 157,
101, 327, 347 159, 161, 166, 170, 173, 174, 176, 179,
Chomsky, 89, 328 184, 185, 189, 192, 194, 201, 206, 213,
Cordier, 23, 138, 328 214, 216, 222, 225, 234, 236, 237, 240,
243, 246, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 263,
Daněs, 64
270, 274, 275, 278, 288, 289, 290, 294,
Đào Duy Anh, 24, 328 295, 297, 298, 304, 308, 313, 314, 323,
Davidse, 75, 80, 112, 134, 135, 243, 246, 328, 324, 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 330, 331,
329 332, 333, 334, 335, 336, 337, 338, 339,
Davies & Ravelli, 72 340, 341, 342
Diệp Quang Ban, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 71, 94, 95, Halliday & Hasan, 72, 75, 76, 93, 103
102, 138, 147, 231, 278, 307, 329, 339, 347 Halliday & Martin, 72, 81
Dik, 61, 64, 116, 119, 120, 156, 157, 329 Harris, 42, 336, 345
Đinh Văn Đức, 26 Hasan, 9, 10, 31, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 79, 81, 82,
83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 92, 98, 99, 103, 106,
Đoàn Thiện Thuật, 24 107, 108, 110, 118, 124, 171, 177, 183,
Dowty, 118, 330 288, 290, 298, 324, 327, 328, 329, 330,
Dương Thanh Bình, 14, 30, 32, 41, 42, 45, 330 332, 335, 336, 337, 341, 344
Hasan & Fries, 108
Eggins, 101, 106, 110, 128, 151, 153, 159,
166, 176, 183, 189, 190, 206, 222, 225, Hasan & Perrett, 72, 73, 74, 84, 88, 92, 98
240, 244, 253, 256, 275, 297, 298, 330 Hasan, Cloran & Butt, 72
Emeneau, 33, 34, 35, 36, 40, 51, 52, 138, 330, Hjelmslev, 79
338 Hồ Lê, 49, 51, 52, 66, 69, 70, 338

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 INDEX

Hoàng Trọng Phiến, 54, 58, 59, 71, 94, 95, Morris, 47, 64, 342
251, 338 Nguyễn Đình Hoà, 41, 130, 147
Hoàng Tuệ et al., 52, 58 Nguyễn Đức Dương, 50
Hoàng Văn Vân, 14, 33, 36, 41, 49, 70, 101, Nguyễn Giang, 28, 29, 343
102, 103, 118, 129, 134, 136, 173, 179,
Nguyễn Hữu Quỳnh, 14, 24, 343
189, 201, 225, 238, 246, 338
Nguyễn Kim Thản, 14, 26, 41, 42, 45, 46, 47,
Honey, 33, 36, 52, 338
49, 50, 53, 54, 58, 59, 130, 138, 139, 140,
Hồng Giao, 45, 46, 338 141, 147, 231, 343, 347
Huddleston, 116, 153, 154, 156, 338, 339 Nguyễn Lân, 57, 343
Jackson, 37, 118, 290, 297, 305, 307, 308, 310, Nguyễn Minh Thuyết, 58, 343
316, 332, 339
Nguyễn Tài Cẩn, 24, 51, 52, 53, 54, 327, 329,
Labov, 339 343
Lê Cận & Phan Thiều, 53, 339 Nguyễn Văn Liễn, 23, 344
Lê Văn Lý, 41, 42, 52, 339 Phạm Tất Đắc, 344
Lê Văn Quán, 24, 339 Phan Thiều, 58, 319, 339, 344
Leech, 87, 118, 339, 344 Pike & Pike, 116
Lekomcev, Mxitarjan, & Glebova, 49 Quirk et al., 153, 189, 305, 310
Leon, 25, 339 Robins, 16, 22, 29, 153, 344
Li & Thompson, 65, 229, 275, 278 Rose, 112, 344
Lock, 106, 339 Saussure, 47, 60, 63, 78, 79, 89, 229, 345
Lưu Vân Lăng, 26, 49, 50, 51, 52, 56, 57, 58, Shore, 18, 19, 83, 106, 107, 112, 116, 117,
59, 60, 61, 69, 319, 340, 343, 344 120, 121, 124, 128, 173, 174, 176, 206,
Lyons, 28, 156, 229, 230, 231, 238, 240, 246, 216, 253, 254, 345
324, 329, 334, 339, 340 Solncev, 49, 52, 57, 345
Malinowski, 75, 337, 340 Tarvainen, 116, 345
Marckwardt & Walcoh, 42 Thompson, 14, 23, 24, 25, 28, 33, 37, 38, 39,
Martin, 72, 106, 112, 120, 124, 128, 176, 324, 40, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54, 58, 65, 68, 71, 94,
332, 338, 340, 341 95, 139, 251, 338, 339, 343, 345
Matthiessen, 10, 16, 18, 20, 65, 72, 74, 77, 80, Trần Ngọc Thêm, 50, 345
87, 90, 91, 93, 94, 96, 100, 101, 102, 103, Trần Trọng Kim et al., 30, 31, 32, 45, 52, 54,
106, 107, 108, 109, 112, 113, 115, 116, 94, 138
117, 118, 121, 124, 128, 129, 134, 135,
Trương Văn Chình & Nguyễn Hiến Lê, 28, 42,
136, 150, 151, 152, 156, 157, 159, 166,
43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 54, 58, 71, 94, 138, 251,
170, 173, 174, 176, 181, 187, 189, 201,
319, 343, 345
204, 206, 207, 208, 211, 213, 219, 222,
225, 237, 238, 240, 243, 244, 249, 253, Trương Vĩnh Ký, 25, 138, 345, 346
255, 270, 274, 275, 284, 289, 290, 294, Trương Vĩnh Tống, 25, 346
297, 298, 306, 307, 308, 310, 313, 314, UBKHXH, 14, 53, 56, 58, 59, 60, 95, 231, 251,
316, 324, 325, 326, 332, 336, 341, 342 275, 290, 307, 346
Matthiessen & Bateman, 72 Vatlot, 25, 346
Matthiessen & Nesbitt, 107, 118 Ventola, 72, 341, 346
McGregor, 116, 297, 298, 342 Vũ Thế Ngọc, 24, 346
Morley, 112, 342 Whorf, 323, 346

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Accompaniment, 8, 311, 350 Carrier, 75, 103, 136, 137, 190, 191, 195, 200,
Act, 335 201, 217, 235, 239, 240, 241, 242, 244,
activation, 74 245, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 258,
Actor, 20, 21, 80, 83, 92, 93, 98, 99, 129, 130, 259, 260, 261, 262, 265, 266, 267, 271,
131, 133, 134, 136, 137, 142, 143, 144, 292, 301, 304, 307, 315, 317, 318, 350
145, 150, 151, 154, 155, 156, 158, 159, causative, 243, 244, 245, 247, 248
160, 161, 162, 173, 177, 178, 182, 183, Cause, 8, 232, 307, 350
186, 193, 195, 196, 201, 203, 278, 279, chữ Hán, 24, 25, 346
280, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 292, 293, chữ quốc ngữ, 24, 25, 51
294, 295, 300, 301, 302, 303, 304, 305, Circumstance, 5, 6, 7, 8, 21, 92, 98, 99, 111,
306, 308, 310, 312, 313, 315, 316, 318, 113, 114, 115, 130, 131, 169, 170, 171,
350, 353 181, 184, 185, 201, 211, 212, 213, 215,
Adjunct, 20, 92, 93, 100, 101, 142, 143, 144, 216, 218, 219, 220, 227, 248, 276, 285,
145, 288, 318, 350 286, 287, 288, 289, 291, 292, 293, 294,
adverbial group, 92, 286, 305 295, 296, 297, 298, 300, 301, 302, 303,
agency, 137, 243, 278, 282 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 312, 313,
Agent, 83, 135, 136, 137, 144, 145, 150, 151, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 319, 350
153, 154, 155, 156, 158, 159, 160, 161, circumstantial process, 258, 266
162, 163, 164, 177, 178, 181, 182, 186, clause, 12, 16, 17, 19, 21, 37, 38, 45, 53, 55,
193, 195, 203, 217, 235, 279, 280, 350 57, 70, 71, 75, 78, 79, 82, 83, 87, 89, 90,
alterative process, 249, 250 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101,
ambiguity, 35, 270, 272, 273, 274 102, 103, 104, 106, 108, 110, 111, 112,
ascriptive, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 244, 113, 115, 116, 117, 118, 123, 124, 128,
245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 251, 253, 254, 129, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 137, 138,
255, 258, 259, 261, 262, 266, 267, 268, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147,
270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 297 149, 151, 152, 153, 154, 156, 157, 159,
Assigner, 137, 244, 245, 350 160, 161, 163, 164, 167, 168, 169, 171,
Attribute, 75, 103, 117, 188, 190, 191, 195, 173, 177, 178, 179, 180, 184, 185, 186,
200, 201, 217, 239, 240, 241, 242, 244, 187, 189, 190, 191, 193, 194, 196, 197,
245, 246, 248, 249, 250, 252, 253, 258, 199, 204, 214, 216, 217, 219, 220, 221,
259, 260, 261, 262, 265, 266, 267, 271, 222, 224, 226, 234, 237, 239, 240, 241,
292, 301, 304, 307, 315, 317, 318, 350 243, 246, 247, 248, 249, 251, 253, 254,
Attributor, 137, 244, 350 255, 256, 257, 258, 262, 265, 266, 267,
Behalf, 309, 350 268, 271, 272, 273, 276, 277, 279, 280,
Behaver, 136, 137, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 281, 282, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289,
173, 183, 350 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 295, 296, 297,
behavioural process, 136, 164, 167, 171, 186, 298, 310, 311, 313, 316, 317, 318, 319,
299 322, 323, 324, 325, 326, 353
clause complex, 21, 214, 282, 317
being process, 124
Client, 6, 160, 161, 163, 164, 350
Beneficiary, 20, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 210, cognate object, 153, 214
212, 226, 284, 285, 288, 289, 292, 295, cognition, 187, 197, 199, 350
350 command, 92, 194, 196

– 356 –
 INDEX

Comparison, 306, 330, 339, 350 255, 263, 278, 290, 293, 294, 295, 297, 298,
Complement, 20, 92, 100, 101, 103, 109, 110, 307, 310
111, 142, 143, 144, 145, 163, 164, 201, field, 9, 16, 18, 19, 77, 85, 86, 87, 91, 93, 121,
203, 257, 288, 318, 319, 329, 350 270, 290, 291
Concession, 310, 350 field of discourse, 76
Condition, 309, 350 Given, 93, 142, 143
constituency, 78, 80, 96 Goal, 20, 80, 83, 92, 93, 99, 129, 130, 131,
constituent, 37, 38, 39, 78, 96, 142, 143 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 142, 143, 144,
construal, 74, 145 145, 151, 152, 156, 158, 159, 160, 161,
context, 16, 20, 27, 31, 35, 36, 37, 39, 64, 69, 162, 163, 164, 167, 173, 177, 178, 182,
71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 78, 84, 85, 86, 87, 184, 185, 186, 193, 196, 203, 219, 279,
88, 89, 91, 92, 103, 107, 150, 177, 184, 280, 285, 286, 287, 288, 289, 292, 293,
229, 255, 271, 289, 322 294, 295, 300, 303, 305, 308, 314, 316,
context of culture, 75, 76 318, 351, 353
context of situation, 76, 107 goods-&-services, 86, 112, 174, 210
co-verb of direction, 129, 130 grammatical category, 26, 31, 104, 107, 164,
definiteness, 246, 254 184, 210, 221, 225, 229, 325
Delicacy, 5, 83, 84 graphological system, 77
desideration, 197, 199, 202, 203, 350 Guise, 314, 315
desirable, 146, 147, 149 Identified, 137, 239, 240, 253, 255, 256, 351
destination, 70, 295, 296, 302, 312, 320 Identifier, 137, 239, 240, 253, 255, 256, 351
domain, 66, 86, 87, 151, 155, 156, 159, 171, Identifying, 5, 6, 7, 8, 126, 129, 136, 137, 165,
176, 178, 213, 248, 252 175, 176, 205, 207, 223, 225, 238, 239,
domain-specified process, 274 243, 253, 262, 268, 274, 275, 329
Domain-specified Process, 7 imperative, 56, 82, 86, 94, 100, 103, 196, 226
elaborating, 153, 252 indefiniteness, 246, 254
ellipsis, 20, 288 indicative, 17, 56, 82, 83, 100, 101, 110, 191,
emotion, 248, 351 192, 194, 195, 196
entry point, 81, 82, 156, 158, 160, 172, 174, information focus, 87
208, 222, 234, 235, 236 inherent role, 116, 118, 129, 167
ergativity, 135, 222 Initiator, 137, 292, 351
état de langue, 47, 63 instantiation, 75, 107, 243, 246, 253
exchange, 76, 85, 86, 91, 93, 108, 109, 110, intensive, 75, 237, 238, 243, 245, 246, 247, 248,
206 249, 251, 253, 254, 255, 257, 258, 262, 263,
Existent, 136, 137, 276, 277, 279, 280, 282, 265, 266, 271, 274, 283, 297, 351
286, 292, 318, 351 intensive ascriptive process, 238, 248, 249,
existential process, 136, 275, 276, 278, 279, 251, 253, 274, 297
282, 283 intensive identifying process, 238, 274
expansion, 24, 39, 87, 98, 100, 298 intensive process, 243, 265
experiential meaning, 16, 106, 113, 125, 240, interpersonal metafunction, 86, 92
255, 257, 286, 287 interpersonal metaphor, 201
experiential metafunction, 97, 121 language internal strata, 77, 78, 79
extending, 129, 153, 252 language-specific, 107, 108, 111
extension, 135, 153, 170, 171, 298 language-universal, 107, 108
Extent, 8, 299, 301, 351 langue, 25, 47, 64, 89
fact, 24, 26, 27, 28, 33, 36, 45, 48, 57, 58, 59, 60, lexical field, 85
69, 74, 76, 86, 87, 88, 92, 98, 100, 108, 110, lexicogrammar, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 79, 83, 84,
111, 116, 122, 133, 139, 145, 149, 151, 152, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 93, 96, 98, 99, 151,
153, 157, 160, 166, 167, 171, 177, 181, 183, 238, 239, 279, 324
184, 185, 186, 187, 190, 191, 192, 197, 207, Location, 8, 91, 301, 351
209, 213, 214, 216, 225, 240, 243, 249, 254, logical metafunction, 97

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 HOÀNG VĂN VÂN • An Experiential Grammar of the Vietnamese Clause

major clause, 103, 124 participant, 112, 113, 114, 115, 117, 123, 129,
Manner, 8, 304, 329, 351 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 145, 151,
marked, 38, 65, 69, 101, 102, 142, 143, 145, 152, 158, 159, 176, 177, 183, 205, 207,
149, 154, 183, 242, 246, 268, 272, 282 208, 209, 211, 213, 214, 218, 220, 240,
material effective process, 150 249, 254, 262, 263, 265, 268, 276, 284,
material process, 87, 99, 128, 129, 132, 133, 285, 286, 288, 294, 297, 304, 312, 314,
134, 136, 137, 150, 151, 164, 166, 167, 320
179, 183, 184, 186, 189, 210, 225, 226, passive voice, 138, 139, 143, 145, 146
227, 243, 278, 279, 282, 298 perception, 187, 198, 351
Matter, 7, 8, 215, 313 Phenomenon, 6, 20, 109, 110, 137, 167, 169,
Means, 304, 351 170, 173, 176, 177, 178, 180, 181, 182,
Medium, 21, 83, 117, 135, 136, 137, 144, 145, 184, 185, 186, 190, 198, 199, 202, 203,
150, 151, 153, 154, 155, 156, 158, 159, 204, 216, 286, 294, 299, 305, 309, 351
160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 168, 177, 178, phoneme, 24, 48, 50, 51, 79
180, 181, 182, 186, 193, 201, 203, 208, phonology, 24, 41, 48, 50, 73, 77, 78, 79, 91,
278, 279, 280, 351 95, 109
mental process, 136, 137, 166, 171, 176, 177, Place, 21, 342
179, 181, 183, 184, 186, 187, 188, 189, polar, 28, 74, 82, 110
194, 197, 198, 199, 200, 202, 205, 209, position, 16, 22, 37, 39, 40, 43, 45, 51, 53, 56,
216, 221, 225, 226, 227, 317 59, 69, 95, 111, 113, 139, 161, 162, 163,
message, 79, 91, 92, 93, 96, 98, 101, 118 171, 234, 269, 270, 277, 298, 302, 304,
metafunctional resonance, 73, 84, 91, 93 319, 320, 324
metaphor, 201 possessor, 268
metatheory, 107, 108 Predicate, 232, 233
minor clause, 103 prepositional phrase, 79, 92, 159, 251, 259, 266,
modality, 85, 201, 203, 281 268, 286, 295, 296, 301, 302, 303, 304, 306,
mode, 76, 85, 87, 91, 93, 109, 112, 139, 192, 307, 308, 309, 310, 313, 316, 351
193, 198, 199, 200, 202, 217, 237, 238, process type, 121, 122, 123, 124, 141, 166,
239, 241, 242, 244, 245, 268 173, 216, 236, 284, 297, 323
mode of discourse, 87 product, 16, 314, 316, 320
modulation, 85, 281 projection, 87, 100, 186, 187, 189, 192, 193,
mood, 26, 85, 86, 91, 92, 93, 101, 103, 191 194, 197, 200, 202, 214, 216, 217, 298
morpheme, 24, 37, 39, 47, 49, 50, 51, 61, 71, proposal, 194, 196, 200, 203, 208, 217, 218
78, 79, 83, 91, 172 proposition, 27, 32, 58, 66, 94, 194, 196, 200,
New, 32, 93, 142, 143, 326, 327, 328, 329, 202, 208, 217, 218, 289
330, 331, 332, 334, 335, 336, 337, 339, Purpose, 232, 308, 352
340, 342, 343, 345, 346 Qualifier, 79, 103, 190
new information, 142 Quality, 305, 352
nominal group, 20, 79, 103, 110, 111, 152, 159, quoting, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 199, 200,
170, 183, 186, 197, 245, 246, 251, 259, 276, 208, 217
277, 286, 299, 305, 318, 326, 351 Range, 6, 150, 152, 153, 154, 155, 159, 160,
non-inherent role, 167 177, 178, 180, 284, 299, 352
non-polar, 82 rank scale, 78, 79
offer, 17, 27, 45, 46, 52, 53, 104, 137, 194, rankshift, 79
195, 285, 288, 289, 324 realization, 117
option, 81, 82, 123, 124, 125, 167, 221, 222, Reason, 307, 352
243, 274, 282, 325 Receiver, 7, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213,
paradigmatic, 12, 79, 80 214, 215, 218, 294, 352
para-material, 172 Recipient, 6, 160, 161, 163, 285, 352
para-verbal, 172 reference chains, 290, 292, 293
parole, 56, 64, 89 referent, 256

– 358 –
 INDEX

register, 50, 107 156, 158, 160, 164, 174, 184, 187, 194,
relational process, 189, 225, 226, 227, 228, 197, 205, 207, 208, 222, 225, 229, 234,
229, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 262, 270, 235, 237, 238, 245, 248, 274, 282, 283,
274, 276, 283 285, 298, 299, 319, 323, 324, 325
reporting, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 199, 200, system of transitivity, 87, 121, 124
202, 208, 217, 285 system of wording, 85
representation, 17, 81, 91, 93, 112, 326 systemic functional linguistics, 16, 17, 71, 72,
Rheme, 20, 66, 67, 68, 69, 92, 93, 101, 102, 73, 75, 76, 78, 80, 84, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90,
103, 142, 143, 144, 145, 352 106, 107, 109, 112, 116, 118, 153, 156,
Role, 8, 314 322, 352
Sayer, 7, 136, 137, 183, 207, 208, 209, 210, tagged, 82, 83
211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, Target, 7, 136, 137, 208, 211, 212, 213, 218,
219, 220, 294, 305, 309, 314, 317, 352 219, 309, 352
semantics, 52, 66, 71, 73, 74, 77, 78, 79, 84, taxis, 189, 191, 193, 196, 214
85, 87, 88, 89, 91, 93, 94, 95, 119, 128, Temporal, 299, 300, 303, 304, 352
298, 314 tenor, 76, 85, 86, 91, 93
Senser, 6, 20, 109, 110, 136, 137, 176, 177, tenor of discourse, 76
178, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 188, textual metafunction, 87, 92, 98, 290
189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, Theme, 20, 66, 67, 68, 69, 92, 93, 101, 102,
198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 209, 103, 142, 143, 144, 145, 317, 319, 327,
216, 249, 286, 294, 305, 314, 318, 352 328, 330, 331, 332, 333, 337, 352
Source, 34, 35, 44, 48, 64, 81, 83, 85, 117, 119, Thing, 79, 103, 190, 277, 352
120, 121, 123, 235, 236, 352 Token, 7, 137, 217, 244, 245, 255, 256, 257,
Stance, 8, 316 258, 262, 263, 264, 268, 269, 270, 271,
strata, 47, 73, 77, 78, 84, 88 303, 316, 317, 352
stratification, 90, 91, 95, 102, 104 tone group, 79, 91, 93
structure, 23, 25, 29, 31, 33, 37, 39, 42, 44, 46, transitive model, 134, 136, 177
47, 48, 49, 52, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 61, 62, transitivity, 12, 18, 85, 87, 91, 103, 112, 116,
63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 73, 75, 76, 77, 118, 120, 121, 122, 125, 126, 135, 136,
78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 87, 92, 94, 96, 98, 152, 158, 164, 174, 183, 207, 222, 225,
99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 107, 110, 111, 114, 237, 258, 265, 275, 283, 292, 297
116, 118, 135, 138, 139, 140, 141, 145, undesirable, 146, 147, 149
146, 156, 167, 173, 177, 186, 207, 251,
unit, 18, 33, 47, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56,
271, 279, 282, 353
61, 63, 74, 78, 79, 80, 83, 90, 91, 92, 93,
Subject, 20, 83, 92, 93, 100, 101, 103, 109, 94, 95, 96, 98, 104, 187, 223, 224, 323,
110, 142, 143, 144, 145, 152, 160, 163, 324
164, 167, 201, 203, 210, 257, 258, 288,
univariate structure, 80
294, 318, 319, 327, 328, 330, 332, 337,
unmarked, 91, 101, 102, 142, 143, 144, 145,
339, 352
248
syllable, 24, 43, 49, 50, 51, 79
unmarked theme, 66, 142
syntagm, 55, 78, 80, 94, 97, 100, 101, 102, Value, 7, 217, 244, 245, 255, 256, 257, 258,
103, 177, 178, 229, 234 262, 263, 264, 268, 269, 270, 271, 303,
syntagmatic, 12, 79, 80 316, 317, 352
system, 12, 16, 20, 23, 24, 25, 37, 47, 48, 49, verbal group, 92, 110, 111, 113, 141, 146,
55, 62, 64, 71, 72, 75, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81, 286, 326
82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 90, 95, 98, 101, Verbiage, 7, 207, 208, 210, 212, 213, 214, 218,
103, 106, 107, 110, 112, 115, 116, 118, 219, 352
120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 134, Voice, 5, 6, 11, 134, 137, 138, 141, 147, 295,
135, 136, 141, 142, 143, 147, 149, 150, 296, 297

– 359 –
 Chịu trách nhiệm xuất bản:
Chủ tịch Hội đồng Thành viên kiêm Tổng Giám đốc NGÔ TRẦN ÁI
Tổng biên tập kiêm Phó Tổng Giám đốc NGUYỄN QUÝ THAO

Tổ chức bản thảo và chịu trách nhiệm nội dung:

Phó Tổng biên tập PHAN XUÂN THÀNH
Giám đốc Công ty CP Dịch vụ XBGD Hà Nội PHAN KẾ THÁI

Biên tập nội dung và sửa bản in:

TRẦN THỊ KHÁNH – TRẦN THU HÀ – LÊ THỊ HUỆ

Trình bày bìa và thiết kế sách:

NGUYỄN THANH LONG

Công ty cổ phần Dịch vụ xuất bản Giáo dục Hà Nội –

Nhà xuất bản Giáo dục Việt Nam giữ quyền công bố tác phẩm

AN EXPERIENTIAL GRAMMAR OF THE VIETNAMESE CLAUSE

Mã số: ........................
Số ĐK KHXB: ...............................
In 500 cuốn, khổ 16 × 24cm, tại ............................................................
Số in: ........................... In xong và nộp lưu chiểu tháng 10 năm 2012.

– 360 –