Pham Thi Kieu Ly. La grammatisation du vietnamien (1615-1919): histoire des grammaires et de l'écriture romanisée du vietnamien

Université Sorbonne Paris Cité, 2018. — 639 p.This research focuses on the “grammatization” of Vietnamese language. We have studied grammatical works, composed in Latin and then in French, by missionaries of various congregations, colonial administrators and Vietnamese grammarians between 1651 and 1919. The objective was to show first how the model of Latin grammar operates in this grammatography, focusing on the specificities of the Vietnamese language, as identified by the missionaries. We have then reviewed the grammars written in Latin and French in order to highlight the effects of the transition from the Latin to the French model in the description of the language and in particular the evolution of the conception of the parts of the discourse in the grammatical works throughout the period under consideration.This thesis focuses on the development of Vietnamese Romanized writing (quốc ngữ) and the history of the linguistic conceptions that underlie it, as well. We have tried to understand the logic that the pioneer Jesuit missionaries to Vietnam had used to transcribe the language and to explain their choice of spellings to record Vietnamese. We trace the stages of creation of this script and the evolution of spelling. Furthermore, the study of the manuscripts written in Romanized Vietnamese allows us to study the changes in the consonant system of Vietnamese from the Seventeenth Century to the early Twentieth Century. We also show the religious, political and cultural factors that have influenced all that history. The study of the relationship between the Jesuits (from 1615 onwards) and French missionaries (from 1663 onwards) highlights the changing role of the Romanized writing from a means of learning for foreign priests to a means of communication between missionaries and native priests. Finally, we examine the role played by debates on writing systems and the choices they have led to, in terms of the language policy pursued by the French colonial administration. Quốc ngữ was introduced into elementary education in 1861 and then promoted to the status of official writing, replacing Chinese characters after the abolition of the mandarin recruitment exams in 1919.