Esquisses de typologie grammaticale : application au thai, Vietnamien, Japonais

Abstract EN

In his introduction, the author recalls the principles of linguistic typology as exposed by Sapir, Greenberg, Uspenskij ; he criticizes Liem’s contrastive presentation of Thai and Vietnamese at the clause level; he sums up Lehmann’s finding of an order-law linking verbal bases to modality in the OV and VO groups of languages ; he outlines the methodological orientation which inspires the present typology sketches : as far as possible, comparison ought to be based on whole grammatical systems, instead of being based on arbitrarily isolated patterns.

In the sections of chapter Nr.

II, III, IV, one finds grammatical abstracts containing identical instances from Tha'i, Vietnamese, and Japanese.

As a conclusion, the author attempts to present a non-trivial register of typical points which come out of the comparison between the three languages involved.

He particularly lays stress on the relationship which links together emphasis, inversion, and nominalisation.