A PHILOLOGICAL STUDY OF THE VIETNAMESE GRAMMATICAL MARKER ĐANG*
Masaaki Shimizu
This study considers the grammaticalization process that produced the progressive marker đang in modern Vietnamese. The word đang originates from the Chinese 當 dāng, which means ‘be at.’ Frequently it is followed by 時 ‘time’ modified by a noun, pronoun or noun phrase, e.g., 當 [A] 之時 ‘at the time of/when [A],’ where A is a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase (Pulleyblank 1995). In Sino-Vietnamese Nôm texts published in the 15th century, Chinese dāng is translated as 當 đang/đương in five cases, as 侯 hầu ‘be about to’ in one case, and as 合 hợp ‘right’ in four cases. Meanwhile, in the Romanized texts of the 17th century, the element very often occurs in subordinate (adjunct) clauses, e.g., (a) đang NP (Time phrase); (b) đang khi NP+VP; and (c) khi (NP) đang VP. These patterns, compared with the usages of 當 in literary Sinitic in Vietnam, imply a sequence of developments: (Ch) 當 +NP+VP+(SUB)+NPtemp > (Ch) NP+ 當 +VP+(SUB)+NPtemp > (V) *NP+đang+VP+khi > (V) khi+NP+đang+VP. After that, the unit ‘đang+VP’ was reanalyzed to give rise to the progressive marker đang.
