Progression Markers in Vietnamese Narrative
Somsonge Burusphat
Mahidol University, Thailand
Abstract

This article aims to study the progression markers in six Vietnamese folktales. Progression markers refer to the grammatical devices that characterize any happenings that push the study forward. These markers highlight the temporal sequence of succeeding events, which form the backbone, or storyline of the Vietnamese folktales. They are roi ‘already’, xoan ‘finish’, doan ‘end, terminate’,thi ‘then’, ben ‘then, consequence’, and da ‘have experienced’. The paper begins with the structural description of these progression markers and proceeds to their discourse functions both on the narrative is past time or accomplished time, when these markers occur in past time, they indicate temporal succession and a cause-effect relationship of foregrounded events. In projected time as in quotations, the progression markers roi, xoan, doan, thi, ben, and da are compared with the progression markers l:w, set, cop, k:, c, da:j in Thai respectively to show that despite the morphological difference, at the level of discourse syntax, their discourse structure are quite common. 

section: Articles
section: Articles

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