SEMANTIC FEATURES OF MONOSYLLABIC SINO-VIETNAMESE LEXEMES

Abstract

Entering the Vietnamese language via various channels and at different periods of time, experiencing several levels of Vietnamization under the impact of Vietnam socio-economic settings, Sino loans in the Vietnamese language not only abound in number but also are diverse in quality. Among those, Sino-Vietnamese words assume the central role. Thanks to SinoVietnamese pronunciation built upon Sino phonetic systems of the Tang Dynasty, Sino words were brought into Vietnamese in a relatively systematic manner and therefore were Vietnamized under certain rules. This provides them with unique and distinctive features in terms of borrowings. This paper focuses on considering such typical features of Sino-Vietnamese words as reflected in the meanings of Sino-Vietnamese monosyllabic lexemes, which is also the reason why we term them ‘typical features’ - the features which do not coincide with those found by previous research, as borrowings in general, and Sino-Vietnamese monosyllabic words in particular, have been extensively studied so far.