A Semantic Exploration of Directional Events in Vietnamese
Abstract
This study explores the semantic properties of directional events in Vietnamese through the analysis of approximately 500 sentences extracted from the miscellaneous genres, language, and texts in Vietnamese. Grounded in Halliday’s (2014) systemic functional grammar framework, the analysis examines the interplay between verbs and circumstances in predicates when expressing directional events.
I purport to provide a comprehensive description of how directional events are constructed in Vietnamese by utilizing authentic language data. I thus address the complexity of directional event semantics by exploring diverse perspectives on event classification and ideological constructions.
Given the challenges of analyzing a non-inflected language such as Vietnamese, the research advocates applying Halliday’s framework to enhance coherence in analyzing directional events. The results offer valuable insights into the semantic aspects of directional events in Vietnamese, benefiting linguists, anthropologists, language educators, and researchers interested in the broader implications of directional events cross-linguistically.
Keywords: Directional events, Semantic properties, Event classification, Predicate, linguistics anthropology