Problem of Defining a Basic Structural Unit in the Vietnamese Language

This study is dedicated to the analysis of the basic structural unit in Vietnamese – the syllabem (tiếng). In general linguistics, ‘word’ and ‘morpheme’ are typically considered as such units, but in Vietnamese, a ‘syllable’ plays a more significant role than ‘word’, as it belongs to syllabic isolating languages. The syllable exists simultaneously at the phonological, morphological, and lexical levels. Therefore, to distinguish it as a unit at a particular level, terms such as syllabeme and syllabomorpheme are used in this work. The focus of this study is on the structural features of syllabomorphemes, thus, a sociological survey was conducted among native speakers of Vietnamese to investigate their perception of different linguistic units. The paper also discusses such issues as the relationship between syllables and words, words and phrases, and presents a hierarchical system of structural and segmental linguistic units in Vietnamese. Keywords: Vietnamese, syllable, syllabomorpheme, structural unit, word