Vietnamese empty words of Chinese origin in Thien Nam ngu luc

Abstract

This paper deals with Vietnamese empty words of Chinese origin used  in Thien Nam ngu luc in the 17^th Century. Followings are what we ha ve found:

-  There are 50 Vietnamese empty words of Chinese origin including 7 emty  words of  ancient Sino-Viet, 9 empty  words  of  Vietnamized Sino- Viet and 34 empty words of Sino-Viet.

-  With regards to their positions and grammatical functions, these empty words can take a place in the noun phrases, verbal phrases and adjective phrases; or act as connectors between sentence components or between sentences. 

-  From the development aspect, we have highlighted the evolution of these empty words from the 17^th century until present.