This thesis investigates into the syntax of wh-questions in Vietnamese, a language that has rarely been studied in the field of formal syntax.
Vietnamese has a relatively rich inventory of wh-elements, each of which carries distinctive syntax and semantics properties. Three syntactic tests, island conditions, intervention effects and indefinite wh construals are offered, and we observe that wh-nominals do not exhibit island violation effects nor intervention effects, and wh-phrases have indefinite uses under certain licensing environments. On the other hand, wh-adverbs are sensitive to locality constraints, and cannot be wh-indefinites.
The results suggest that wh-nominals in Vietnamese should be regarded as in-situ wh-variables that are unselectively bound by the Q-operator in CP, but wh-adverbs are compelled to undergo movement (i.e., QR) because they are inherently quantifiers. Meanwhile, Vietnamese wh-questions use a sentence-final particle to signify various semantic/pragmatic effects such as realis mood, strengthening/mitigation, as well as presupposition. This particle, nonetheless, has no correlation with syntactic locality effects because of its optional occurrence in wh-questions which contain island or intervention conditions. This finding poses a direct challenge to Bruening & Tran’s (2006) claim that (a) locality is violated in the absence of the sentence-final particle, and that (b) the particle serves as a key in determining whether unselective binding can work in Vietnamese wh-questions.
From a typological perspective, it is argued that Vietnamese and Chinese are grouped together as languages of the unselective binding type, whereas Japanese may be of the Agree type as proposed in Watanabe (2004a). The wh-typology is reshaped with respect to what kinds of syntactic features are involved in the wh-dependency, though the spirit does not go beyond previous studies.
This thesis also addresses the issue of “how-why alternations” in Vietnamese. It is shown that the wh-adjunct làm-sao (more often used in the southern dialect) displays such effect: When làm-sao has scope over a full clause, it is interpreted as causal; when it scopes over VP, only the instrumental reading is obtained. Such behavior substantiates Tsai’s (2008) theory as typological evidence.
Several differences between Vietnamese and Chinese wh-questions have also been presented in this thesis. Vietnamese has two types of “for-what”, one reason and the other purposive, each corresponding to a specific syntactic position. Considering polarity-wh construals, Vietnamese lacks bare-conditionals but possesses a special phrasal construction [one-wh-that] as a polarity-wh licensing condition.

Adger, David, and Gillian Ramchand. 2005. Merge and move: Wh-dependencies revisited. Linguistic Inquiry 36:161–193.
Aoun, Joseph. 1986. Generalized Binding. Dordrecht: Foris.
Aoun, Joseph, and Y.-H. Audrey Li. 1993a. Syntax of Scope. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Aoun, Joseph, and Y.-H. Audrey Li. 1993b. Wh-elements in-situ: Syntax or LF? Linguistic Inquiry 24:199–238.
Aoun, Joseph, and Y.-H. Audrey Li. 1993c. On some differences between Chinese and Japanese wh-elements. Linguistic Inquiry 24:365–372.
Baker, Carl L. 1970. Notes on the description of English questions: The role of an abstract question morpheme. Foundations of Language 6:197–219.
Baker, Mark, Kyle Johnson, and Ian Roberts. 1989. Passive arguments raised. Linguistic Inquiry 20:219–251.
Barss, Andrew, Ken Hale, Ellavina Perkins, and Margaret Speas. 1991. Logical Form and barriers in Navajo. In C.-T. James Huang and Robert May, eds., Logical Structure and Linguistic Structure, 5–47. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Beck, Sigrid. 1996. Quantified structures as barriers for LF movement. Natural Language Semantics 4:1–56.
Beck, Sigrid. 2006. Intervention effects follow from focus interpretation. Natural Language Semantics 14:1–56.
Beck, Sigrid, and Shin-Sook Kim. 1997. On wh- and operator scope in Korean. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 6:339–384.
Bergvall, Victoria. 1983. Wh-questions and island constraints in Kikuyu. In Jonathan Kaye et al., eds., Current Approaches to African linguistics 2, 245–260. Dordrecht: Foris.
Bruening, Benjamin, and Thuan Tran. 2006. Wh-questions in Vietnamese. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 15:319–341.
Cable, Seth. 2007. The Grammar of Q: Q-Particles and the Nature of Wh-Fronting, As Revealed by the Wh-Questions of Tlingit. Doctoral dissertation, MIT.
Cao, Xuân Hạo. 2007. Tiếng Việt mấy vấn đề ngữ pháp, ngữ âm, ngữ nghĩa [Vietnamese: Some Problems on Grammar, Phonetics and Semantics]. Nhà xuất bản giáo dục Việt Nam [Vietnam’s education publisher].
Cheng, Lisa L.-S. 1991. On the Typology of Wh-Questions. Doctoral dissertation, MIT.
Cheng, Lisa L.-S. 2000. Moving just the feature. In Uli Lutz, Gereon Muller, and Arnim von Stechow, eds., Wh-Scope Marking, 77–99. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Cheng, Lisa L.-S., and C.-T. James Huang. 1996. Two types of donkey sentences. Natural Language Semantics 4:121–163.
Cheng, Lisa L.-S., and Johan Rooryck. 2000. Licensing wh-in-situ. Syntax 3:1–19.
Cheng, Lisa L.-S., and Johan Rooryck. 2002. Types of wh-in-situ. Unpublished manuscript, Universiteit Leiden.
Choe, Jae W. 1987. LF movement and pied-piping. Linguistic Inquiry 18:348–353.
Chomsky, Noam. 1977. On wh-movement. In Peter Culicover, Thomas Wasow, and Adrian Akmajian, eds., Formal Syntax, 71–132. New York: Academic Press.
Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris.
Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Chomsky, Noam. 2000. Minimalist inquiries: The framework. In Roger Martin, David Michaels and Juan Uriagereka, eds., Step by Step: Essays on Minimalism in Honor of Howard Lasnik, 89–155. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Chomsky, Noam. 2001. Derivation by phase. In Michael Kenstowicz, ed., Ken Hale: A life in language, 1–52. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Chomsky, Noam. 2004. Beyond explanatory adequacy. In Adriana Belletti, ed., Structures and Beyond, 104–131. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chomsky, Noam. 2006. On phases. In Robert Freidin, Carlos Otero, and Maria-Luisa Zubizaretta, eds., Foundational Issues in Linguistic Theory. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Chomsky, Noam, and Howard Lasnik. 1977. Filters and control. Linguistic Inquiry 8:425–504.
Cinque, Guglilmo. 1990. Types of Ā-dependencies. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Cole, Peter. 1982. Imbabura Quechua. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Cole, Peter, and Gabriella Hermon. 1994. Is there LF wh-movement? Linguistic Inquiry 25:239–262.
Cole, Peter, and Gabriella Hermon. 1998. The typology of wh-movement: wh-questions in Malay. Syntax 1:221–258.
Collins, Chris. 1991. Why and how come. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 15:31–45. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy.
den Dikken, Marcel. 2003. On the morphosyntax of wh-movement. In Cedric Boeckx and Kleanthes Grohmann, eds., Multiple Wh-Fronting, 77–98. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Denham, Kristin. 2000. Optional wh-movement in Babine-Witsuwit’en. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 18:199–251.
Diesing, Molly. 1992. Indefinites. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Duffield, Nigel. 1999. Final modals, adverbs and antisymmetry in Vietnamese. Revue québécoise de linguistique 27:92–129.
Duffield, Nigel. 2001. On certain head-final effects in Vietnamese. In Karine Megerdoomian and Leora Anne Bar-el, eds., Proceedings of WCCFL 20, 150–163. Somerville, Mass.: Cascadilla Press.
Duffield, Nigel. 2007. Aspects of Vietnamese clause structure: Separating tense from assertion. Linguistics 45:765–814.
Fiengo, Robert, C.-T. James Huang, Howard Lasnik, and Tanya Reinhart. 1988. The syntax of wh-in-situ. In Hagit Borer, ed., Proceedings of WCCFL 7, 81–98. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI Publications.
Hagstrom, Paul. 1998. Decomposing Questions. Doctoral dissertation, MIT.
Hagstrom, Paul. 2004. Particle movement in Sinhala and Japanese. In Veneeta Dayal and Anoop Mahajan, eds., Clause Structure in South Asian Languages, 227-252. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Haspelmath, Martin. 1997. Indefinite Pronouns. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Heim, Irene. 1982. The Semantics of Definite and Indefinite Noun Phrases. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Higginbotham, James. 1993. Interrogatives. In Kenneth Hale and Samuel Keyser, eds., The View from Building 20, 195–228. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Huang, C.-T. James. 1982a. Move wh in a language without wh movement. The Linguistic Review 1:369–416.
Huang, C.-T. James. 1982b. Logical Relations in Chinese and the Theory of Grammar. Doctoral dissertation, MIT.
Huang, C.-T. James, Y.-H. Audrey Li, and Yafei Li. 2009. The Syntax of Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ito, Junko. 1986. Head movement at LF and PF. In Nobuko Hasegawa and Yoshi Kitagawa, eds., University of Massachusetts occasional papers in linguistics 11, 109–138. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, Department of Linguistics.
Jayaseelan, K. A. 2001. Questions and question-word incorporating quantifiers in Malayalam. Syntax 4:63–93.
Katz, Jerrold, and Paul Postal. 1964. An Integrated Theory of Linguistic Descriptions. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Kim, Soo-Won. 1991. Chain Scope and Quantification Structure. Doctoral dissertation, Brandies University.
Kishimoto, Hideki. 2005. Wh-in-situ and movement in Sinhala questions. Natural Langauge and Linguistic Theory 23:1–51.
Kuroda, S.-Y. 1965. Generative Grammatical Studies in the Japanese Language. Doctoral dissertation, MIT.
Ladusaw, William. 1980. Polarity Sensitivity as Inherent Scope Relations. New York: Garland.
Lasnik, Howard, and Mamoru Saito. 1984. On the nature of proper government. Linguistic Inquiry 15:235–289.
Lasnik, Howard, and Mamoru Saito. 1992. Move α. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Li, Boya. 2006. Chinese Final Particles and the Syntax of the Periphery. Doctoral dissertation, Universiteit Leiden.
Li, Y.-H. Audrey. 1992. Indefinite wh in Mandarin Chinese. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 1:125–155.
Lin, Jo-wang. 1998. On existential polarity wh-phrases. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 7:219–255.
Longobardi, Giuseppe. 1991. In defense of the correspondence hypothesis: Islands effects and parasitic gap constructions in Logical Form. In C.-T. James Huang and Robert May, eds., Logical Structure and Linguistic Structure, 149–196. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Madhavan, P. 1988. Quantifier structure in Malayalam. In CIEFL working papers in linguistics 5, 21–27. Hyderabad: Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages.
May, Robert. 1985. Logical Form. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Nishigauchi, Taisuke. 1990. Quantification in the Theory of Grammar. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Nguyen, Tuong Hung. 2004. The Structure of the Vietnamese Noun Phrase. Doctoral dissertation, Boston University.
Pesetsky, David. 1982. Path and Categories. Doctoral dissertation, MIT.
Pesetsky, David. 1987. Wh-in-situ: Movement and unselective binding. In Eric Reuland and Alice ter Meulen, eds., The Representation of (In)definiteness, 98–129. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Pesetsky, David. 2000. Phrasal Movement and Its Kin. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Pesetsky, David, and Esther Torrego. 2004. Tense, case, and the nature of syntactic categories. In Jaqueline Guéron and Jaqueline Lecarme, eds., The Syntax of Time, 495–538. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Pesetsky, David, and Esther Torrego. 2007. The syntax of valuation and the interpretability of features. In Simin Karimi, Vida Samiian and Wendy Wilkins, eds., Phrasal and Clausal Architecture, 262–294. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Reinhart, Tanya. 1991. Elliptic conjunctions. In Asa Kasher, ed., The Chomskyan Turn, 360–384. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Reinhart, Tanya. 1998. Wh-in-situ in the framework of the minimalist program. Natural Language Semantics 6:29–56.
Reinhart, Tanya. 2003. The theta system—an overview. Theoretical Linguistics 28: 229–290.
Reinhart, Tanya. 2006. Interface Strategies. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Richards, Norvin 1997. What Moves Where When in Which Language? Doctoral dissertation, MIT.
Richards, Norvin. 2000. An island effect in Japanese. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 9:187–205.
Rizzi, Luigi. 1990. Relativized Minimality. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Rizzi, Luigi. 1997. The fine structure of the left periphery. In Liliane Haegeman, ed., Elements of Grammar, 281–337. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Ross, John. 1983. Inner islands. In Proceedings of Tenth Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 258–265.
Ross, John. 1967. Constraints on Variables in Syntax. Doctoral dissertation, MIT.
Simpson, Andrew. 2000. Wh-Movement and the Theory of Feature-Checking. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Simpson, Andrew. 2001. Focus, presupposition and light predicate raising in east and southeast Asia. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 10:89–128.
Soare, Gabriela. 2007. A cross-linguistic typology of question formation and the antisymmetry hypothesis. Generative Grammar in Geneva 5:107–131.
Stepanov, Arthur, and W.-T. Dylan Tsai. 2008. Cartography and licensing of wh-adjuncts: A cross-linguistic perspective. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 26:589–638.
Tancredi, Christopher. 1990. Not only even, but even only. Unpublished manuscript, MIT.
Trinh, Tue. 2005. Aspects of Clause Structure in Vietnamese. Master’s thesis, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Tsai, W.-T. Dylan. 1994a. On Economizing the Theory of A-Bar Dependencies. Doctoral dissertation, MIT.
Tsai, W.-T. Dylan. 1994b. On nominal islands and LF extraction in Chinese. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 12:121–175.
Tsai, W.-T. Dylan.. 1997. On the absence of island effects. Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies New Series 27:125–149.
Tsai, W.-T. Dylan. 1999a. On lexical courtesy. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 8:39–73.
Tsai, W.-T. Dylan. 1999b. The hows of why and the whys of how. In Francesca Del Gobbo and Hidehito Hoshi, eds., UCI working papers in linguistics 5, 155–184. Irvine: University of California, Department of Linguistics.
Tsai, W.-T. Dylan. 2008. Left periphery and how-why alternations. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 17:83–115.
von Stechow, Arnim. 1996. Against LF pied-piping. Natural Language Semantics 4:57–110.
Wanatabe, Akira. 1992a. Subjacency and S-structure movement of wh-in-situ. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 1:255–291.
Watanabe, Akira. 1992b. Wh-in-situ, subjacency, and chain formation. MIT occational papers in linguistics 2. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, MITWPL.
Watanabe, Akira. 2002. Loss of overt wh-movement in Old Japanese. In David Lightfoot, ed., Syntactic Effects of Morphological Change, 179–195. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Watanabe, Akira. 2004a. Parametrization of quantificational determiners and head-internal relatives. Language and Linguistics 5:59–97.
Watanabe, Akira. 2004b. Indeterminates and determiners. In Aniko Csimarz, Youngjoo Lee, and Mary Ann Walter, eds., Proceedings of the Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics, 390–405. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, MITWPL.
Watanabe, Akira. 2006. The pied-piper feature. In Lisa L.-S. Cheng and Norbert Corver, eds., Wh-Movement: Moving On, 47–70. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Yang, Barry C.-Y. 2008. Intervention Effects and the Covert Component of Grammar. Doctoral dissertation, National Tsing Hua University.
Zavitnevich-Beaulac, Olga. 2005. On wh-movement and the nature of wh-phrases – case re-examined. SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics 2:75–100.