Regular polysemy of nouns in Vietnamese

Abstract

This is a study of the phenomenon of regular polysemy of nouns in Vietnamese. It consists of four chapters. Chapter I is devoted to the discussion of the . Vietnamese classifier system, its 'basic construction' and variations, and types. In Chapter II we discuss Vietnamese quantifiers (which 1 are divided into two groups) . In both chapters, we give a sizable number of examples, in acceptable as well as unacceptable forms, in order to show the syntactic and semantic constraints imposed by classifiers and quantifiers on regular polysemy of nouns in Vietnamese. Chapter III, the main part of this study, is divided into twenty sections, each representing one polysemy type. For each type, we present _ the semantic description which is believed to capture the relation of the alleged polysemes. Chapter IV is included as an illustration of how classifiers interact with regular polysemy: the negative answer to the question 'Is there polysemy of Vietnamese nominalisations?' makes our point clear.