1 Definition of the concept, however, has presented difficulties. For a recent discussion of some of the problems and reference to the positions of several linguists, see George Hincha, ‘Endocentric vs. exocentric constructions’, Lingua 10.267-74 (1961).

2 Language 172, 194-5 (New York, 1933).

3 The nature of this morphologic structure is discussed in my article ‘The problem of the word in Vietnamese’, Word 19.39-52 (1963). For detailed descriptions of the language see Lê vǎn Lý, Le parler viêtnamien (Paris, 1948); M. B. Emeneau, Studies in Vietnamese (Annamese) grammar (UCPL 8; Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1951); L. Cadière, Syntaxe de la langue viêtnamienne (Publications de l'Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient 42; Paris, 1958); and my book A Vietnamese grammar (Seattle, in press).

4 A systematic theory of IC analysis is presented in Rulon S. Wells, ‘Immediate constituents’, Lg. 23.81-117 (1947); the terms used here are based on his. The term ‘partner’ is adopted from Charles F. Hockett, ‘Two models of grammatical description’, Word 10.210-31 (1954); and the concept of the nuclear model is related to but different from Wells's model. In the present paper the term is often shortened to ‘model’ for convenience, but no confusion need arise, since only the nuclear model is under consideration here.

The nuclear model may be defined somewhat more rigorously as that IC which has an identical counterpart occurring in other sentences in the position of its whole constitute, and (in this new position) with the same partner as in the original context and the same syntactic relation between the partners.

On nucleus-satellite relations, so implicit in most or all analyses of linguistic material, see Richard S. Pittman, ‘Nuclear structures in linguistics’, Lg. 24.287-92 (1948), which studies various criteria for judgments about the relative rank of elements. A special technique for determining IC hierarchy is proposed in Seymour Chatman, ‘Immediate constituents and expansion analysis’, Word 11.377-85 (1955).

5 Vietnamese examples are cited in phonemic transcription. The phonemes are—nonsyllabics: fortis /p t c k ?/, lenis /f w t' 1 s j x g h/, nasal /m n ɲ ŋ/; syllabics: front /i e ε a/, back rounded /u o ɔ/, back unrounded /y ə Λ/, low /α/; tones (written last in the syllable): high rising /'/, high rising laryngealized /~/, mid-high trailing (unmarked), mid-low dropping /ˆ/, low dropping tense or laryngealized /ˇ/, low trailing /ˋ/; stresses (written first in the syllable): heavy /╹/, medium (unmarked), weak /°/ intonations (here written only after final syllable in each pause group): decreasing /,/, fading /./, sustaining /?/, increasing /!/.

Some explanatory notes are in order. /?p ?t/ represent preglottalized imploded [b d]; /w/ includes initial spirant [v] and postinitial and postvocalic high back rounded semivowels; /j/ includes initial spirant [z] and postvocalic high-front unrounded semivowels; /g/ includes initial [γ], [g] after syllable ending in [ŋ], and postvocalic high back unrounded semivowels; /h/ includes initial voiceless anticipations of vowels and semivowels, and postvocalic centralized prolongations (schwa semivowels). /Λ/ has a central allophone.

Among the tonal contours, dropping refers to an abrupt fall, trailing to a slower fall. Intonations reflect differences in stress contour; except for decreasing intonation, which accompanies most syllables, and a few cases of medial increasing intonation, the intonations appear only at pause-group end. In the type of syntactic analysis under study, intonations and stresses are always the earliest elements isolated in sentences; their functions need not be discussed here.

Vietnamese phonemic structure is considered in more detail in my article ‘Pattern fringe and the evaluation of phonological analyses’, Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Linguists 94-100 (The Hague, 1964). The syntactic feature discussed here was described in a paper ‘Endocentricity in Vietnamese syntax’ prepared for specialists in Southeast Asian linguistics, which I presented at the Conference on Linguistic Problems of the Indo-Pacific Area in London in January 1965. The papers from that conference are now scheduled to be published by Lingua in a special volume (in press). For a different approach to the analysis of the syntax see P. J. Honey, ‘Word classes in Vietnamese’, BSOAS 18.534-44 (1956).

In the English glosses items enclosed in square brackets are added to clarify the meaning; those in parentheses either are superfluous in English but translate elements of the Vietnamese text, or make clearer the general scope of a Vietnamese form.

This study reflects my concern with Vietnamese structure over a considerable period, beginning with field research in Viet Nam during the years 1951-53—work supported at various times by Yale University, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Ford Foundation, and the University of Washington. My present understanding of the syntax developed during the preparation of A Vietnamese grammar pursuant to a contract with the U.S. Office of Education, Department of Health, Education and Welfare. The examples in the paper are from northern speech (roughly the area of Hanoi), but the structural formulations, I believe, represent the standard language as a whole.

6 Some Vietnamese speakers might say that 1.2 is a possible opening line for this story. That would of course change the analysis of the sentence at this level but it would not measurably affect the further levels and would have no theoretical implications.

7 As the analysis of the sentence progresses, elements are sometimes glossed differently in order to give a clearer notion of their basic meaning or of their functioning in the context at hand.

8 This term refers to the fair or cyclical market day which takes place at regular intervals at a particular market.

9 It might at first appear that such cases would be better analyzed as containing a single head which in turn has two constituent heads. But model analysis makes clear that the two (or more) models function at the same level as the nonmodel: any one of them occurs in the same context without the nonmodel, but not generally all of them.

10 Double quotes enclose word-for-word glosses. Where several English words are necessary to translate a Vietnamese word they are connected by hyphens.