1 Introduction

Semantics is a discipline that studies the content of natural language, originating from the late 19th century French linguist Michel Breyar's "Exploration of Semantics". Modern semantics originated in the 1920s, expanding its research focus to artificial language and integrating with information technology and artificial intelligence. Semantics is divided into schools of thought such as structure, form, generation, function, and cognition. Vietnamese linguistics emerged relatively late as an independent discipline, with early research involving semantic commentary and annotation. Since the 1960s, Vietnamese scholars have begun to systematically study semantic issues. Vietnamese is a language without any formal changes, with rich and complex semantic expressions. This article aims to provide an overview of the current status of Vietnamese semantic studies, review major research achievements, clarify theoretical foundations and disciplinary interactions, and propose research directions and semantic phenomena.

2. Research on Word Meaning

Introduced the development process of Vietnamese semantic research, especially in the field of semantic research. Since the 1960s, Vietnamese vocabulary textbooks have emerged, covering relationships such as word meaning structure, synonyms, antonyms, and polysemy. In terms of semantic structure, Vietnamese linguists believe that the meanings of monosyllabic and polysemous words can be broken down into smaller components, and the meanings of polysemous words gradually shift from their original referents to other related or unrelated referents. This phenomenon is called semantic transfer. The components of idioms are the same as phrases, but their function as language units is the same as words. Huang Wenxing studied the changes and transformations in the original and extended meanings contained in idioms. The unique meaning of a monosyllabic word or each meaning of a polysemous word can be further decomposed into a semantic element, which is the smallest unit of meaning that constitutes the meaning of a word. In terms of semantic relationships, Vietnamese lexicology research mainly focuses on synonymous and antonym relationships. Synonyms are usually only identical in a specific sense, and it is impossible for two polysemous words to have identical meanings. Antonyms refer to words that have opposite meanings within the same category. Semantic field is a collection of language units (vocabulary) with meaningful associations, and Vietnamese linguists have conducted research on specific semantic fields. The study of Vietnamese word meanings is gradually moving towards structural semantics, focusing on describing word meaning structures based on specific semantic components and semantic relationships. The study of diachronic semantics faces the difficulty of a lack of corpus, and can only focus on reliable data from modern times. The representative work of historical semantics is Li Guangtian's "The Semantic Evolution of Vietnamese Vocabulary from 1945 to 2005". There have also been some achievements in the study of grammaticalization phenomena of several Vietnamese words, but overall it is only in the initial stage of development.

Research on the Meaning of Three Sentences and Discourse Meaning

Since the end of the 20th century, the Vietnamese linguistic community has begun to pay attention to the study of sentence meaning, surpassing the traditional linguistic view that only focuses on word meaning combinations. Vietnamese scholars have begun to pay attention to the true meaning of sentences and their dominant role in structure, which has been positively influenced by the research results of global semantics. The research areas include theories of semantic roles, predicate argument structures, conceptual metafunctions, modal value concepts, functional sentence perspectives, information structure theory, and speech act theory. The Vietnamese academic community has made significant achievements in sentence conceptual meaning, modal meaning, thematic meaning, and linguistic meaning, such as Gao Chunhao's "Preliminary Compilation of Vietnamese Functional Grammar" and other works. Research not only focuses on the direct meaning of sentences, but also involves implicit meaning, which refers to the meaning presented in a specific context and interpreted through pragmatics theory. These studies have opened up new directions for further research on the mechanism of Vietnamese sentence generation and its related factors, integrating basic linguistic theories with new ideas and methods from global linguistics.

4 Semantic Research and Theoretical Perspectives on the Essence of Meaning

Discussed the development of Vietnamese semantics in the late 1980s to early 1990s and its theoretical views on the essence of meaning. Vietnamese scholars have proposed three influential views on semantic essence based on word meaning research: Du Youzhu believes that meaning is related to the referent, Li Guangtian regards meaning as a material phenomenon in the brain, and Ruan Shanjia regards semantics as a manifestation of relationships. These viewpoints reflect ontology and relational theory in world semantics. The study of Vietnamese semantics needs to draw on Western theories and combine them with the characteristics of Vietnamese language to contribute to the research of Vietnamese linguistics.

Application oriented research in semantics

The study of Vietnamese semantics is shifting from lexical meaning to sentence meaning, although lexical research is still ongoing, especially in dictionary compilation. The study of the semantic components of Huangpi provides a theoretical basis for the Vietnamese Dictionary, while the research on Vietnamese synonyms and antonyms is reflected in multiple dictionaries. With the development of technology, the application research of semantics in the fields of artificial intelligence and language processing has made progress, such as the construction of the Vietnamese version of the word network, although the project results have not been widely promoted. Interdisciplinary semantic application research is a future trend, full of hope and challenges.

6 Prospects for Vietnamese Semantic Studies Research

The study of Vietnamese semantics needs to strengthen the research on meaning content, clarify the essence of language meaning, and promote accurate description of Vietnamese meaning. Semantics theory can reveal cognitive issues, provide a foundation for social application research, and improve the efficiency of dictionary compilation and translation. Under the development of artificial intelligence technology, semantic research can assist in the application of technology in the digital age. The research on Vietnamese word meanings needs to strengthen the analysis from a historical perspective and systematically study the phenomena and patterns of word meaning changes. The study of sentence meaning needs to strengthen the research on grammatical means such as component order and function words, and explore their impact on sentence meaning. Interdisciplinary research can interpret Vietnamese thinking patterns, understand cultural characteristics, and serve Vietnamese language and cultural studies. Semantics can explore the thinking patterns of Vietnamese people when using sentence structures, analyze worldview, classification methods, and expression rationality. By using traditional methods and new theoretical approaches, we can fill the gap in semantic research. We can study social ideas through idioms, proverbs, etc., national history through the study of product names, place names, etc., and cultural symbols through the study of underlying cultural ideas. Comparative studies of Vietnamese can uncover the content of social life, historical processes, and cultural sedimentation, providing a profound understanding for semantic research.

7 Conclusion

The study of Vietnamese semantics has revealed the meaning structure of Vietnamese and formed an independent branch of linguistics. Future research directions include: 1) exploring the essence of language meaning and providing theoretical foundations for social applications; 2) Conduct in-depth research on historical lexicology, lexical semantics, and syntactic semantics, and analyze the specific forms and meanings of Vietnamese expression; 3) Applying semantics to interdisciplinary research to interpret the thinking patterns and cultural characteristics of Vietnamese people. Vietnamese semantic learning is a complex but promising field that holds significant importance in exploring the essence of Vietnamese language.