VERB RAISING, COVERT MODALS AND FLIP-FLOP CONSTRUCTIONS IN VIETNAMESE: A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE*
Trần Phan, Wei-Tien Dylan Tsai
This paper pursues the issues surrounding Vietnamese flip-flop sentences in terms of verb raising and covert modals from a comparative point of view. We show that verb movement in flip-flop constructions is found in both matrix and embedded environments where the presence of modality is attested. Evidence is presented to show the bi-clausal nature of the so-called “flip alternative” construction, as well as the rightward nature of V-to-M adjunction. We also draw cross-linguistic support from Thai data to substantiate our syntactic analyses on empirical grounds.
