And so, a heart that had dedicated its life to science, to training and inspiring its students, has ceased to beat. The man who carried that heart – Professor Nguyen Tai Can – has departed this world, leaving behind a void in academia. And in our hearts, amidst the sorrow and regret of his passing, we feel a profound sense of separation. The crane has soared to the heavens.
"Devoting oneself wholeheartedly to one path" for science.
For ten years as head of the department, and even after leaving that position, the ambition to organize, build, and develop the field always motivated him.
The awareness and desire for internationalization that we are talking about every day and striving to achieve today, the Professor, along with his colleagues and associates, implemented through very specific, practical, and quiet actions from that day (he was very averse to, if not hated, ostentatious displays).
The curriculum and teaching materials were referenced and updated from abroad through Soviet universities. We sought out suitable specialists to bring into the department or selected individuals to send abroad for training in new fields that the world needed, and that the country and the academic field required… to open courses and specializations such as: Applied Linguistics, Mathematical Linguistics, Statistical Linguistics, Neurolinguistics, Experimental Phonetics, Logic, Translation… We had people to conduct research and organize teaching, precisely during that prosperous period, while the country was still mired in hardship from war and bombing.
"That's just how it is," my teacher often said to his students who had become his colleagues. I understood that this was the principle of "teaching without weariness" that Confucius had taught long ago.
Professor Nguyen Tai Can giving a talk in his hometown (Nghe An) in early 2009.
Having spent a lifetime teaching at the university and being one of the leading experts in linguistics in Vietnam, Professor has directly trained numerous undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate students in Linguistics, Vietnamese Linguistics, and Sino-Vietnamese Studies.
Just considering the generations of teachers currently working in the Linguistics Department, from the Professor downwards, there are already five generations living together under one roof.
Although he retired a long time ago, Professor still closely follows scientific activities in the department and the university, and continues to participate or teach directly when possible.
Professor's research areas are very broad: from contemporary grammar to historical phonology and the history of the Vietnamese language, from Sino-Vietnamese pronunciation to issues of Sino-Vietnamese script studies, from authorial and literary language to literary language, textual studies, and classical poetry…
Not to mention research papers in scientific journals and anthologies both domestically and internationally, just counting books alone, perhaps the first to come would be books like:
Vietnamese Grammar: Words – Compound Words – Phrases (1975), Noun Class in Modern Vietnamese (1975), Grammatika Vietnamskogo Jazuka (Vietnamese Grammar – written with N. Stankevich and Bystrov), Origins and Formation of Sino-Vietnamese Reading (1979), Some Issues on Nom Script (1985), History of Vietnamese Phonetics (1995), Influence of Chinese Literature of the Ly and Tran Dynasties (through the poetry of Nguyen Trung Ngan) (1998), Understanding the Technique of Recursive Rhyme in Thieu Tri's poem Vu Trung Son Thuy (1998), Some Evidence on Language, Writing and Culture (2001), then the research book on the collection Thu Da Lu Hoai Ngam by Dinh Nhat Than (2008), two major research works on The Tale of Kieu: Documents on The Tale of Kieu: The Duy Minh Thi Edition 1872 (2002), Documents on The Tale of Kieu: From the Duy Minh Thi Edition to the Kieu Oanh Edition Mau (2004)…
A few things about three of those books.
The book "Vietnamese Grammar: Sounds – Compound Words – Phrases" has two most valuable contributions: proposing the application of the concept of "sound" corresponding to the concept of morphemes to Vietnamese grammar, and describing the structure of Vietnamese noun phrases.
The proposal to apply and clarify the grammatical value of "language" marked a pivotal shift, bringing about profound changes in the understanding of Vietnamese linguists in general when describing the Vietnamese language, making the description of contemporary Vietnamese structure more accurate and true to its original nature.
Furthermore, the Vietnamese noun phrase structure described in this work (applying the positional description method) has contributed significantly to improving and changing the classification of word classes, a very important aspect of grammatical research and description.
While many people may have produced significant research results, few have research results that impact and change the perceptions of an entire research community. Nguyen Tai Can achieved that.
Also in this work, for various reasons, to avoid major disruptions, the Professor's new idea about the central element (main element) of a noun phrase was presented beginning on page 216 (1975 edition) under the name "two elements T1 and T2 in the central part," which the renowned linguist Cao Xuan Hao and others in research on this issue have recently mentioned and highly praised.
At point c. on page 216, there are a few points presented, though gently, even somewhat "subtle," but they truly represent a thought in contemporary grammatical analysis of the relevant issue.
The book "History of Vietnamese Phonetics" can be said to be, to date, the most comprehensive and systematic study of the history of Vietnamese phonetics. Its special feature lies in the fact that the origins and interactions between Vietnamese and related languages, between Vietnamese and Chinese, and the influence of Chinese on Vietnamese and other minority languages in Vietnam have been analyzed consistently and rationally within their overall context, leading to a more comprehensive understanding and presentation of the issue.
It is precisely because of this that, in the textbook, with a dense collection of data, specifically and meticulously verified, the origins and evolution of sounds belonging to the initial consonant, medial consonant, vowel, final consonant, and tone systems of the Vietnamese language, the stages of Vietnamese phonetics from the Proto-Viet-Chut period (corresponding to the familiar term Proto-Viet-Muong) through the period of division into two branches, Poong-Chut and Viet-Muong, then from a common Viet-Muong to the separate Nguon, Muong, and Viet, from early Vietnamese to modern Vietnamese… become much easier to visualize.
The book "The Origin and Formation Process of Sino-Vietnamese Reading," first published in 1979 and revised and supplemented in 2000, is the first work in Vietnam to systematically and fundamentally research this issue.
Besides other scientific values that many researchers have mentioned and introduced, what I particularly want to add is that, unlike the works of B. Karlgren (1915), H. Maspero (1912), T. Mineya (1972), Vuong Luc (1958), Ly Vinh (1952), J. Hashimoto (1984), and SA Starostin (1989), this work reconstructs and identifies the system of 8 vowels in the Tieyun system (coincidentally, in 1992, WH Baxter also reconstructed the system of 8 vowels); and at the same time studies the evolutionary process through different stages of the consonant system and the rhyme system of Chinese from the Tieyun period to the period of formation of the Sino-Vietnamese reading method.
The process of evolution and transformation through the stages over those three centuries cannot be said to have been absent, yet both H. Maspero and SA Starostin overlooked it. H. Maspero only presented the Chinese phonetic system at two points in time: the time of the Iron Rhyme System, and then immediately moved on to the system at the time of the formation of the Sino-Vietnamese pronunciation. One of the differences and advantages of the work "The Origin and Formation Process of Sino-Vietnamese Pronunciation" compared to H. Maspero's work lies precisely in this.
At this point, while discussing Professor's books and research, I would like to reiterate this: in all of those studies, he never used a single penny of the state-funded scientific research budget…
Among those books, a collection of works was awarded the Ho Chi Minh Prize while the Professor was not in Hanoi; his colleagues and students voluntarily submitted their nominations and requested consideration.
