Demonstratives as Sentence Final Particles and the Architecture of the Periphery in Vietnamese

Abstract

This paper analyzes Vietnamese demonstrative sentence-final particles (SFP) from the perspective of generative syntax. Such demonstratives as đây, kia, này, kìa, and đấy can be used at the end of a sentence to mark the psychological distance between the speaker and the proposition.

These SFPs can be divided into two groups: particles in Group I (namely đây and kia) are used to describe the relation between the speaker and the proposition while elements from Group II (i.e., này, kìa, and đấy) are employed to call for the addressee’s attention or to persuade the addressee to believe in the propositional content. đây này, kia kìa, and kia đấy are three cases of SFPs used in clusters.

From Generative Grammar and Cartography’s perspective, the sentential periphery can be split into three functional projections. The lowest functional projection, namely AttP, encodes the speaker’s commitment to the proposition, while attP encodes the addressee’s propositional attitude. The highest layer DiscP represents the speaker’s attitude towards the addressee. Particles from Group I are base-generated at the Head position of AttP, whereas Group II belongs to attP.