Trinity in Unity: Asking What, How and Why with Sao in Vietnamese

Abstract

Sao in Modern Vietnamese is primarily interpreted as either ‘how’ or ‘why’. We argue it is first and foremost a what-element. Sao’s omnipresence in adverbial formatives is attributable to the tendency for how and why to be morpho-syntactically built upon what in the language. This supports Tsai’s (1999b) unselective binding of nominal wh-phrases and a wh-adverb/wh-nominal ¹ distinction. We further tease apart various sao-related wh-constituents in syntactic- interpretative terms before offering a critique of three accounts on strategies for licensing Vietnamese wh-questions and on the status of vậy and thế² as binding licensers.

在現代越南語中，疑問詞 sao 主要是跟「如何／怎麼」和「為什麼」的表達有關聯。這篇文章提出sao起初是作為名詞用，表示「什麼」，而sao出現在「如何／怎麼」和「為什麼」中是因為「如何／怎麼」和「為什麼」在構詞句法上是由「什麼」延伸而來。此分析支持了蔡維天（1999b 及其後著作）對疑問詞組提出的無擇約束理論以及跨語言上疑問副詞和疑問名詞的區別。此外，這篇文章以句法及釋義的角度將和sao相關的疑問成分拆解分析，並且以輕動詞來解釋非 “什麼” 的疑問語意是如何產生的。同時，本文也回顧了學者對認可（license）越南語疑問句的策略以及對越南語助詞 thế/vậy 作爲無擇約束認可語（licenser）的討論，並提出不同的看法。