Vietnamese Grammar - Lexical Categories - Demonstratives

Demonstratives

Vietnamese demonstratives (markers of deixis) all have the function of identifying a referent with respect to another contextual point or position. For example, the demonstrative này "this" as in the noun phrase người này "this person" indicates that the person referred to is relatively close to the speaker (in a context where this noun phrase is uttered by a speaker to an addressee) while the demonstrative đó "that" as in the noun phrase người đó "that person" indicates that the person referred to is further from the speaker.

The demonstratives have a basic three-term deictic system — proximal (close - "this, here"), medial (far - "that, there"), distal (very far - "yonder, over there") — plus an indefinite (or interrogative) term ("which, where"). In addition to their deictic function, different Vietnamese demonstratives can function variously as noun modifiers, as noun phrases (i.e., a (pro-) nominal function), or as adverbials.

Function	Proximal	Medial	Distal	Indefinite
Nominal	đây "here"	đấy "there"	–	đâu "where, wherever"
Nominal/Noun modifier	–	đó "there, that"	kia/kìa "over there, yonder" (bidirectional)	–
Noun modifier	này/nầy/nay/ni "this"	nấy/ấy "that"	nọ "yonder" (unidirectional - past)	nào "which(ever)"
Proportion	bây "to this extent"	bấy "to that extent, to such an extent"		bao "to what(ever) extent"
Manner	vầy "this way, thus"	vậy "that way, so"		sao "how(ever)"

The form này tends to be used in Northern Vietnamese while nầy is the Southern form and ni is the North-central and Central form. In North-central and Central Vietnamese, the form nớ is used instead of nọ, mô instead of nào and đâu, rủa instead of vậy, and rang instead of sao.

In Hanoi, the form thế or như thế "(like) so, (like) this way" is used instead of vầy. Other forms mentioned in Thompson (1965) are nay "this", nây "this (temporal)", nãy or nẫy "that (just past)", and nao "which".

The basic formal pattern of the demonstratives is that the initial consonant and ending vowel nucleus indicate their function and position in the deictic system. Some linguists have analyzed demonstratives as consisting of two (sub-syllabic) morphemes. Following this, the initial đ- indicates a nominal, n- a noun modifier, b- proportion, v-~s- manner, and the vowels -ây~-ay proximal/medial, -âu~-ao indefinite, and -o medial/distal. However, the form kia is analyzed as consisting of only one morpheme. Overlaid on these elements are tones, which indicate contrastive distances increasingly further from the contextual position: ngang tone (closest), huyền tone (further), sắc or nặng tone (even further). Thus, đấy is more remote than đây, kìa more remote than kia, vậy more remote than vầy. There is an idiomatic expression where demonstratives with an even increasing distance modify the noun ngày "day(time)":

ngày kia, ngày kìa, ngày kía, ngày kịa, ngày kĩa "on and on into the future"

Syntactically, the demonstratives đó and kia may function as either nouns or as noun modifiers:

người	đó	là	anh	nó
person	that	be	brother	3rd.sing.pronoun
subj noun phrase		verb	obj noun phrase
"That person is his brother."

đó	là	anh	nó
that	be	brother	3rd.sing.pronoun
subj noun phrase	verb	obj noun phrase
"That is his brother."

The nominals đây, đấy, and đâu are only used as nouns typically denoting a space or time and cannot function as noun modifiers. Although they usually refer to position situated in time/space, the nominal deictics can be used to metaphorically refer to people, as in:

đây	đi	chợ,	đấy	có	đi	không?
this	go	market,	that	affirmative	go	negative
"I'm going to the market, what about you?"

In the sentence above (which would translate more literally as "This is going to the market, is that going or not?"), proximal đây is used to refer (metaphorically) to the speaker (as "I") while medial đấy is used to refer to the addressee (as "you"). The demonstrative noun modifiers này, (n)ấy, nọ, and nào can only modify nouns and cannot stand alone as nouns.

When referring to time, the distal demonstratives kia and nọ differ in directionality. Kia specifies a point remote either in the past or the future while nọ specifies only a remote point in the past:

• ngày kia "some day to come, the other day"
• ngày nọ "the other day"

The proportion demonstratives (bây, bấy, bao) refer to the extent of measurement of time or space. They precede the words they modify, such as giờ "time", nhiêu "(to have) much/many", lâu "(to be) long, (take a) long time":

• bây giờ "now, this time"
• bấy giờ "then, that time"
• bao giờ "when, what time"
• bây nhiêu "this much/many"
• bấy nhiêu "that much/many"
• bao nhiêu "how much/many"
• bấy lâu "all that long period, for that length of time"
• bao lâu "how long"
• bao ngày "how many days"
• bao lớn "how big"
• bấy xa "that far"