Cognate objects in Vietnamese transitive verbs

It is commonly assimed that a verb with a cognate object is basically intransitive. This paper argues that in Vietnamese, there are two types of cognate objects: one is comprised of direct cognate objects, the other of indirect cognate objects. The two types occupy two different positions in transitive verbs and behave differently from one another. The positiong of indirect cognate objects coorectly predicts that (i) in a ditransitive verb, a cognate object cannot occur if there are already two regular objects; (ii) Vietnamese cognate objects can occur with unaccusative verbs and behave differently with unergative verbs. The paper provides new evidence for the claim that cognate objects are arguments, and shows that cognate objects can also be indirect objects.