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In this paper we attempt to study the diminutive word con 'offspring' in Vietnamese based on the grammaticalization and phonological cycle involving the diminutive words in Min dialects. The original meaning of con is 'offspring' (con trai 'sons', con gai 'daughters'); then its use was generalized to cover the young of an animal (heo con ' a little pig', bo con 'a calf', ca con 'a small fish' ) and then it was further expanded to cover some small-sized plants (con rati 'a tender shoot'). From the above meanings, con continued to expand its use as a diminutive word to refer to small-sized things, the relatives, and finally it becomes a noun-marker. Along the way, some diminutive words marked by con also picked up attitudinal meanings such as liking or disliking. Phonetically, con just has the first two stages. The affix can be reduced to [oη] or [η] just like its counterpart in some of Min dialects. For example, in southern and middle Vietnam, when people say Nhin con heo con kia de thuong chua kia 'Look! The little pig is so cute,' the noun marker (prefix) is often reduced from [koη] to [oη] or [η]. Through concrete examples of Vietnamese con, we would demonstrate preliminarily that the notion of grammaticalization cycle with some modification can be applied in the description of the changes that took place in the evolution of the diminutive marker con in Vietnamese [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]