SENTENCE-FINAL MODAL PARTICLES IN SOUTHWESTERN VIETNAMESE

Abstract

Drawing on conversational fieldwork, we collected 3,000 dialogue pairs from  the conversations among Vietnamese speakers in the Southwestern provinces of Vietnam. From these data, the study identified 19 sentence-final modal particles occurring in 2,100 adjacency pairs. Based on their lexical characteristics, these particles are classified into two groups: particles belonging to the national variety of Vietnamese (eight particles: cái, đi, đó, đấy, nhé, nào, thôi, and với) and dialectal particles (eleven particles: coi, nghe, nha, đó nha, nghen, hen, heng, nhen, ha, nè, and chớ). To illuminate the distinctive features of Southwestern Vietnamese communicative culture manifested through this lexical layer, the paper offers an in-depth analysis and interpretation of each modal particle, with particular attention to those in the dialectal group. In addition, the study proposes criteria for the identification of modal particles and discusses their communicative functions.