TÊN CÁC TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC VIỆT NAM: ĐẶC ĐIỂM CẤU TRÚC VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA

Abstract

In the context of institutional reform and the expansion of higher education in Vietnam, the names of universities are playing an increasingly important role in governance, communication, and international integration. This article approaches the names of Vietnamese universities as a linguistic object with institutional characteristics, surveying 205 university names from official sources to clarify the structural and semantic features of this type of noun phrase. The results show that Vietnamese university names have a relatively stable structure, with the common model being "central element + post-modifier 1", in which the post-modifier elements are organized through a listing mechanism. In terms of semantics, the semantic distinction between names lies not in the central position of the noun phrase but in the elements belonging to post-modifier 1, with two major semantic groups: academic designation and spatial-social designation. These findings reveal distinctive features of noun phrases used as names of universities in Vietnam.