Current Issues in Vietnamese Linguistics: An Introduction

This Special Issue of Languages, part of the ISVL (International Symposium on Vietnamese Linguistics) series, presents revised papers from the 4th and 5th ISVL workshops, hosted by National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University in 2024 and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice in 2025. Earlier workshops were held at the Harvard-Yenching Institute (2021), Konan University/Vietnam National University, Hanoi (2022), and Konan University (2023), with related volumes published in Phan et al. (2022), Duffield and Phan (2024), and Phan and Duffield (2025). The aim here is modest: to present focused case studies that shed light on specific aspects of Vietnamese grammar and its history. The contributions cover topics including inheritance and contact, reduplication, clause structure, reference and binding, and the semantics–pragmatics of particles. This is not intended as a comprehensive survey, but rather as a concise set of results that together point toward the next stage of ISVL research.