A Corpus-Based Study of Inanimate Classifiers in Vietnamese
A Corpus-based Study of Inanimate Classifiers in Vietnamese By Hai Thi Thanh Tran A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Manitoba in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Linguistics University of Manitoba Winnipeg Copyright © 2021 by Hai Thi Thanh Tran Abstract Key words: Vietnamese, classifiers, variation, discourse analysis, corpus-based study. This dissertation investigates inanimate classifiers in Vietnamese to identify classifier use patterns across genres, in spoken and written discourse as well as among different age groups. The study works on three corpora namely the Vietnamese Narrative Corpus consisting of 141 folktales, the Vietnamese Online Newspaper Corpus containing 140 contemporary online newspaper articles, and the Vietnamese Spoken Corpus including 22 talk show episodes with the total duration of 14 hours. As a large-scale discourse analysis study of frequency, distribution and function of attested inanimate classifiers, it attends closely to the use of cái (inanimate), double classifiers, and other frequent classifiers in the Vietnamese corpora. The study found that the classifier frequency in spoken Vietnamese is far higher than in written language. In Vietnamese, a classifier is required for classified nouns, but not for non- classified nouns (Emeneau 1951; Nguyen 1957). However, cái (inanimate) frequently appears with non-classified nouns functioning as emphatics in the spoken corpus, but not in the written corpora. I argue that this may lead to the higher classifier frequency in spoken Vietnamese than in written language. Interestingly, there is a decline in classifier frequency among younger speakers compared to older speakers.
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