Static spatial relations in Vietnamese : a case-study of Vietnamese and German-Vietnamese bilingual speakers

Abstract

The aim of this paper is a semantic and typological case-study of static spatial reference in Vietnamese. This includes reviewing already presented theories for the description of Vietnamese spatial language and the representation of the encoding of spatial relations in Vietnamese. Data from Vietnamese speakers (L1) grown up in Germany were analysed and the paper presents a rapid observation of selected Vietnamese static spatial relations. Methodologically, one widely known elicitation tool, the topological relations picture series (TRPS) for the study of topological relations were used. The analyzation allows reassuring that the expression of spatial concepts is not universal, but rather language-specific. This means that there is no semantic universality when encoding space. As a result, the paper visualizes how the encoding of specific spatial situations and especially the semantic scope differs considerably in a European language like German and the Southeastasian Vietnamese.