NGHIÊN cứu về cụm từ ĐỒNG vị TRONG TIẾNG ANH – PHÂN TÍCH đối CHIẾU với TIẾNG VIỆT

Part 1 INTRODUCTION # $ In traditional English grammar, words and sentences morphology and syntax were considered as two basic grammatical elements that built up the grammar theory and m

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Declaration

I certify that all the material in this minor thesis which is not my own work has been identified and acknowledged, and that no material is included for which a degree has already been conferred upon me

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my great gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Nguy n Huy of Hanoi Junior Teacher Training College, for his enormously helpful advice, constant and tireless help and support throughout this thesis

I wish to acknowledge my gratitude to teachers at Hanoi National University – College

of Foreign Languages whose lectures on the area of grammar have enlightened the arguments

Hanoi, September, 2006 Ninh Ph ng Lan

Abstract

Basing on grammatical theories, especially functional ones, this study aims at describing the nature, the main characteristics of appositive phrases in English and then identifying classes into which these phrases are divided

The second aim of this study is trying to find out the similarities and the differences between appositive phrases in the two languages English and Vietnamese And from the findings, a further study about appositive phrases in both languages may be possible

After the theoretical part, an achievement test is done in order to investigate the ability

of acquiring English appositive phrases among Vietnamese high school students, so that some suggestions for research about the syllabus as well as course book design could be drawn out

to make language learners be able to learn English appositive phrases better

Part 2 - Development

1.2.2 Syntactic theory and structure 18

2.2.3.3 Non-restrictive and restrictive appositive phrases 24

2.2.5 Scale of strict non-restrictive appositive phrases 27

Appendix 3: Sample test on English appositive phrases in High School

course book

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Appendix 4: Table of test results

Part 1 INTRODUCTION

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In traditional English grammar, words and sentences (morphology and syntax) were considered as two basic grammatical elements that built up the grammar theory and most of studies about grammar were set around these two phenomena However, right from that time, there have also been new linguistic issues indicating the fact that there are other linguistic items lying between words and sentences, even overlapping these two items, or lying beyond sentences The need for studies about those phenomena has led to new schools of grammar with more reasonable concepts established According to these concepts, apart from words and sentences, phrases are also one of the most essential linguistic factors in the grammar of the English language

A phrase is a syntactic construction which typically contains more than one word, but which lacks the subject-predicate structure found in a clause (David Crystal – The Cambridge Encyclopeadia of the English Language, 1995) So, a phrase is just a group of words forming a grammatical unit which can appear in different places in a clause or a sentence and hold various functions one of which is apposition whose function indicates the relation between two or more phrases (appear in the same clause or sentence) of the same reference and the same grammatical status In fact, when studying English grammar, appositive phrases are not focused as much as the other phrases Moreover, they are sometimes mistaken to relative phrases which cause lots of difficulties to language learners A detail study about appositive phrases, therefore, may partially deal with those problems and suggest some ways of acquiring and applying the so-called English appositive phrases

Also, it is important to remember that some particularities could be recognized easily through analysis done with the target language (English) but the others that could not be touched upon if the research is done with the target language only, will be found out and clarified if a contrastive analysis (based on both target language and source one, which is Vietnamese in this case) is implemented It means a comparison between two languages is necessary throughout the study That is the reason for contrastive analysis trend of the study

Additionally, as this study focuses on the appositive function a phrase takes in a clause

or a sentence, functional grammar in contact with syntax may be the best choice to follow among plenty of schools of grammar With syntax and functional grammar, the construction, the specific functions that an appositive phrase takes and the relationship between it and other elements of a clause or a sentence could be put in a closer and a more detail view Therefore, functional grammar and syntax are the main stream of our study

With al the above mentioned, we have come to the decision of doing “A study of appositive phrases in English in comparison to Vietnamese”

to clarify structures and types of appositive phrases in English

Giving the description and characteristics of English appositive phrases and their equivalent realizations in Vietnamese to work out the similarities and differences between the two languages in terms of both theory and practice

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Due to the duration of time limit and the length as well as the references available, this thesis does research on English appositive phrases in sentences in contrast to Vietnamese equivalents and concentrates mainly on the materials and documents available to students at

High School (especially their textbooks and practice books) and also the errors those students may encounter in using English appositive phrases in writing

Due to the main aims of the study, a systemic contrastive analysis on the aspects of function of the two languages is carried out throughout the progress Also, the thesis makes use of the English language as the target language and the Vietnamese one as the source language (the base language) Besides, techniques on statistics, on systemic functional analysis and on error analysis are applied as well

In order to serve the targets stated before, a linguistic contrastive analysis is carried out mainly on the phrase level with the focus on Noun Phrases as well as on the sentence level The sources for the analysis are from materials and references written by linguists in English and in Vietnamese as well as some bilingual reference books available in Vietnam This will help to make clear both the similarities and the differences between two language systems (English and Vietnamese)

The use of translationally equivalent structures of English and Vietnamese allow the differences and similarities of appositive phrases in the two languages to be detected so that some reasonable predictions can be extracted Moreover, a survey of the use of appositive phrases is in process with the help of 100 students from Nh©n ChÝnh High School and the application of statistic techniques to confirm the predictions

This study consists of three parts, excluding the appendixes and the references

Part one, Introduction, consists of the background for the study, the aims, the scope of the study and the method of study It also introduces a literature review about the history of the subject studied, different concepts about schools of grammar

Part two, Development, is the heart of the study which deals with appositive phrases in English and in Vietnamese under the influence of functional grammar, syntax and contrastive analysis This part is divided into three chapters coping with functional grammar (in Halliday’s theory) and syntax, appositive phrases in the two languages, and an investigation done on appositive phrases respectively

The last part is the conclusions as well as some suggestions for implementation achieved from all the discussion in the thesis

The appendixes show the exercises used in the survey done to compare appositive phrases in English and in Vietnamese

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Appositive phrases are not very important grammatical unit both in English and in Vietnamese However, linguists in general and grammarians in particular still pay much attention to this type of phrase, especially when study English Discussions about appositive

phrases can be found in Halliday’s An Introduction to Functional Grammar (1994) as he analyzes charateristics of nominal group Geoff Thompson in his Introducing Functional Grammar (1996) and Rodney Huddleston in Introduction to the Grammar of English (1995) also give valuable ideas about appositive phrases However, one of the most detailed discussion is that given by Quirk R., Greenbaum S., Leech G., Swartvik J in their two useful books A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, Longman (1987) and A Grammar

of Contemporary English, Longman (1987) In Vietnamese grammar, appositive phrases are not taken into appropriate consideration as in English There have not been any detailed analysis or discussion about this type of phrase though ideas for it can be seen in works written by

F Palmer in his book Grammar defined grammar, in the widest sense, as a complex set of relations that link the sounds of the language (or its written symbols) with the meanings, the messages they have to convey Then, he also stated another definition which described the grammar of a language is “a device that specifies the infinite set of well-formed sentences and assigns to each of them one or more structural descriptions.” This means that grammar tells us what are all possible sentences of a language and provides us with a description of those sentences Palmer continued with the statement that within linguistics, the term ‘grammar’ was understood as a technical tool to distinguish it from phonology - the study of sounds, and semantics - the study of meaning However, in modern concepts, the term ‘grammar’ is

understood in a broader meaning which enables the appearance of some degrees of phonology and semantics with the syntax as the centre concept Quirk et al shares this point of view when

he stated in A Grammar of Contemporary English (1987) that grammar is a complex set of rules specifying the combination that words make when forming larger units

Another definition is shown in the “Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics” (J C Richards, J Platt and H Platt, 1993) that “Grammar is a description of the structure of a language and the way in which linguistic units such as words and phrases are combined to produce sentences in the language It usually takes into account the meanings and functions these sentences have in the overall system of the language It may

or may not include the description of the sounds of a language.” With this definition, it is clear

to learn that the objects of grammar are not limited within words and sentences but include other linguistic units outside these two basic ones

Additionally, each school of grammar, in turns, develops more in defining this term Transformational Grammar though agrees with the above opinion, adds an idea that grammar itself is the one that describes the speaker’s knowledge of the language and looks at language

in relation to how it may be structured in speaker’s mind and which principles and parameters are available to the speaker in producing the language Meanwhile, in functional sense by Halliday, grammar is seen as the consistence of syntax and vocabulary, plus morphology if the language has word paradigms

Briefly, the term grammar is used in a number of different senses - the grammar of a language may be considered as a full description, which is variously delimited, of both structure and meaning of the sentences or of one of these two linguistic units of the language However, whatever grammar is understood, there is still an agreement that this term is used to indicate the syntax, the meaning (semantics), and phonology in which the first one is taken as the core of the grammar of a language

The following part is about some main schools of grammar, with their distinguished features, which are helpful in understanding what the core if grammar is They are traditional grammar, descriptive grammar, transformational - generative grammar and systemic - functional grammar

6.2.2.1 Traditional grammar:

Traditional grammar is the one developed from the earlier grammar of Latin or Greek, which were applied to some other languages inappropriately, as the background Dated back to the eighteenth century, grammarians invented the so-called normative rules (traditional grammar) and then reinforced them by their nineteenth- and even twentieth- centuries successors Along with the development of traditional grammar, scholars have summarized some major characteristics of this type of grammar which could be seen in Palmer’s useful book Grammar (1990)

Firstly, many traditional grammar books have taken for granted that all languages have the same grammar, and usually it was assumed that this was identical with Latin grammar Thus, traditional grammar is said to be prescriptive, logical - which are major features of Latin grammar - rather than descriptive Secondly, traditional grammar not only concerns with correctness but also prescribes the rules of correctness in the sense of absolute and unchanging term In other words, it is the rules that tell language users how they ought to speak and write These rules have been drilled into generations of learners and made them learn in order to become standard language users Thirdly, traditional grammar considers written language as primary (in Greek, grammar means to write) and spoken language is only

a rather poor version of the written one Finally, there is a belief of the source of traditional grammar (normative rules) that what were used to be required in language still ought to be required, the older form being tactically accepted as “better” So, it forces languages into Latin framework, assuming that Latin provides a universal frame into which all languages fit However, since the very first time of traditional grammar, there appeared some paradoxical point of views, especially when comparing English grammar and traditional one (which was based on Latin grammar) It is obvious that English is different from Latin in the way of using language, forming vocabulary, ordering language units in a sentence Therefore, there is no reason for English to follow the Latin rules, particularly in terms of grammar

Beside general theory, traditional grammar also introduces some specific concepts of linguistic items such as words, nouns, phrases, sentences Some of them are probably unintelligible to most people though they may have some dim recollection of them from their

schooldays Others would be more familiar to everyone as they are widely being used in many school textbooks today

Words, for example, are often not defined properly though other grammatical elements

in terms of it are identified rather clearly In traditional grammar, words are clearly identified

by the spaces between them, sentences are simply composed of words and parts of speech are just classes of words As the result, the function of syntax if to state what words can be combined with others to form sentences and in what order According to this type of grammar, eight parts of speech are identified (nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections) while, however, there are serious objections to this classification

It is clear that these parts are defined notionally and are extremely vague Moreover, the number of the parts of speech seems to be quite arbitrary

Toward other elements of grammar, traditional grammar sometimes give definitions of sentences and clauses which show that they consist of words while, at the same time, words could be grouped into units smaller than clauses and sentences For this, most linguists call phrases There are many types of phrase among which Noun Phrase is the most typical one It may take the position of the subject or the predicate in a clause or a sentence It may be the head one, but sometimes it is like a repetition or a replacement That is the land for the seed of appositive phrases to grow

6.2.2.2 Descriptive grammar (Immediate Constituent Grammar/ Structural Grammar):

According to David Crystal, descriptive grammar is an approach that describes the grammatical constructions that are used in a language, without making any evaluative judgements about their standing in society In other words, it describes how a language is actually spoken or written, and does not state or prescribe how it ought to be spoken or written This type of grammar is very common in linguistics where it takes the role of a standard practice to investigate a ‘corpus’ of spoken and written materials, and to describe in detail the patterns they contain

Rooted in American linguists’ history study about the language of the Indian in North America, this type of grammar was most developed under strong influence of Bloomfield and Fries’ theory on Behaviourism from 1930s to 1950s which described language in a technical process Therefore, descriptive grammar only focuses on the yes/no answers given by the

native speakers about the target language and leaves aside different meanings and functions of the described units which may perform variously in different contexts This approach also does not identify the location and density of the linguistic units

Additionally, this type of grammar only bases on the syntagmatic relation, the identical and different performances of linear relationship to analyze the language items However, such

a relationship can only be used if a border between language items is already identified on a linear chain - the condition that is not always fulfilled

In terms of syntax, descriptive grammar does not go further than the edge of dividing sentences up into immediate constituents (ICs analysis) which can also be divided into smaller ICs themselves like the following example:

S: type of sentence structure NP: type of nominal structure

VP: type of verbal structure V: type of verb

Det.: type of determiner adv: type of adverb

adj: type of adjective Nmod: noun modifier Nhead: head noun

However, this work is not easy because with the same sentence there may be at least two ways of dividing into ICs of which the best one is very difficult to decide or may be none

of the ways is suitable Furthermore, this type of analyzing language is not properly helpful not only in explaining cases of language items which are different in form but similar in meaning and visa versa but also in indicating types and actual sources of the ICs Additionally, this type of grammar does not tell language users how to form other new sentences which have not been attested in some corpus of data

In short, though descriptive grammar has distributed undoubtful achievements to linguistics such as the requirements of objectivity and proceduralization in studying a language as well as some new concepts which are widely accepted as ICs and ICs analysis, its

trend of using only linear relationship, ICs analysis and excluding the meanings and functions

of linguistic items has prevented descriptive grammar from analyzing and explaining deep structures/phenomena of the language studied Therefore, descriptive grammar may be taken

in the very first stage of researching a language, not the main threat throughout the whole process

6.2.2.3 Transformational generative grammar:

Transformational Generative Grammar is a theory of grammar which was proposed by the American linguist Noam Chomsky in 1957 and then developed by him and other linguists

A transformational generative grammar tries to show, with a system of rules, the knowledge of

a language whose native speakers use in forming grammatical sentences and looks at the language in relation to how it may be structured in speaker’s mind, and which principles and parameters are available to the speakers when producing the language This theory is, without question, the most influential theory of linguistics in general and grammar in particular since the theory of descriptive grammar, which developed before it, could not help to describe all aspects of a language

Although Chomsky first introduced this important theory to the world in his Syntactic Structures, however, the ideas had been appeared in his The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory which was not published until 1975 The theory was, undoubtedly, revolution in linguistic perception and methodology to all other scholars In fact, it is designed to distinguish between the grammatical sentences and the ungrammatical ones

Chomsky has developed his ideas over the years but all of the changes are based on the same background which was known as universal grammar – a theory which claims to account for the grammatical competence of every adult no matter what language he or she speaks (This means that there is a set of principles which apply to all languages and also a set of parameters that can vary from one language to another, but only within certain limits) According to Jack

C Richards, John Platt and Heidi Platt, Chomsky has made changes in his theory and finally stated four main parts that make up Aspect Model or Standard Theory as follows:

a The base component, which produces or generates basic syntactic structures into sentences called deep structures

b The transformational component, which changes or transforms these basic structures into sentences called surface structures

c The phonological component, which gives sentences a phonetic representation so that they can be pronounced

d The semantic component, which deals with the meaning of sentences

These four components form a kind of relationship as shown in a diagram as below:

At first, Chomsky believed that only base component affected the semantic interpretation Then, in Chomsky and others’ late works, there is a fact that both transformational and phonological components also have some effect on the semantic interpretation (A Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, 1993)

In base component, Chomsky distinguishes between “discovery procedure” and

“evaluation procedure” and points out these two processes must be equally implemented when analyzing a language so that the competition of the deep structure could be assured

Toward transformational component, Chomsky introduces two new concepts: competence and performance He defined competence as a person’s internalized grammar of

a language or the ability to create and understand sentences, including those have never ever been heard before In other words, competence is the ideal speaker-hearer’s knowledge of a language Whereas, performance is defined as a person’s actual use of language With this theory, it is quite clear stating that speakers are creative They may produce and understand new sentences or sentences that they have never ever encountered before in their life all the time Hence, studying transformation generative grammar is studying the linguistic competence and linguistic performance

Chomsky also suggested a solid relationship between deep structures and surface structures He stated that people were born with a highly restricted set of principles of language (deep structure) - this explains why children can learn a language so quickly And the task of linguists is to establish such principles Though deep structure is rather similar in every language user, the actual sentences uttered are not the same Each person has his/ her own way of expressing what he/she is thinking (surface structure) Thus, the link between deep structure and surface structure is formed and called “transformations” A deep structure can be transformational rules

In conclusion, Chomsky’s Transformational Generative Grammar is a great revolution

in comparison to descriptive/structural grammar It has solved the problems of syntax and meaning - the one that descriptive/structural grammar had not solved before This type of grammar also brought a new look on linguistic components and their relationship as well as partly explained that people’s ability of learning and using language was an inborn capacity However, there are undoubtedly some drawbacks found in this type of grammar The first thing is that Chomsky and others of Transformational Generative Grammar have paid a lot of attention to the psychological aspect of language and a little to the sociological aspects of language Therefore, this grammar fails to explain why people use different sentences in different contexts in order to express the same idea or opinion Secondly, it is the language competence that suggests the speaker’s ability of producing and understanding new sentences while in fact, people often fail in coping with unfamiliar sentences or structures

6.2.2.4 Systemic - Functional Grammar:

Systemic Functional Grammar is developed on the background of a theory about the systemic linguistics which owes many ideas to the Prague Club (1926-1953) This is an approach to grammatical analysis which based on a series of systems Each system, in turn, is

a set of options one must choose at each relevant point in the production of utterance Systemic linguistics, then, is developed by Halliday and is defined as an approach that sees language in a social context The theory behind this approach is functional rather than formal and it considers language as a resource used for communication, not as a set of rules (Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, Jack C Richards, J Platt and H Platt, 1993) In this way, the scope of systemic linguistics is wider than that of many other

linguistic theories such as Transformational Generative Grammar This theory also points out that phonology and lexicogrammar (words and grammatical structures) are closely related to meaning and can not be analyzed without reference to it An essential concept of the theory is that each time language is used, no matter in what situation, the user is making constant choices expressed by intonation, words, structures, etc.

Basing on this point of view, S.C Dik proposed his functional grammar (FG) which functions as the background for later study on this school Dik argues that FG is about the organization of natural languages and it is based on functional notion about such languages

He also discusses some super-theoretical principles such as constituent ordering; predicate model of FG Dik also displays clause models, underlying clause structures and expression rules in FG Another functional grammarian, Van Valin, however, focuses on functional relationships He argues that syntax could be divided into two types of relation: relational syntax (pointing out the relationship exists among core elements of the sentence) and unrelational syntax (showing the hierarchical arrangement of phrases, clauses and sentences) There are, according to Van Valin, three functional relations in FG: semantic functional relation, pragmatic functional relation and syntactic functional relation

subject-Different from the others, Halliday has established his own Functional Grammar, which then makes new revolution in linguistics as well as in grammatical notion and built up a so-called Hallidain school of grammar which then will be discussed further in the next part

In brief, in accordance with each period of the development of linguistics in general and grammar in particular, there is a typical school of grammar which functions as the influential theory guiding linguists and grammarians in their studies That is the traditional grammar with a set of prescriptive rules, the descriptive school with its only focus on the physical structure of language, or transformational generative one which takes care of both structures and meanings but only spycholinguistically, and then functional grammar which ahs solved almost problems raised from the previous schools both spycholinguistically and sociolinguistically And though different in ways of approaching grammar, all the schools meet at the aim of describing grammar’s components with all their internal relationships as well as external ones with other linguistic items outside grammar From the above analysis,

Halliday’s functional grammar with its revolution theory (analyzing language in its social context) is performing itself as the most dominant means of studying languages

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Functional Grammar (FG) - a new but dominant school of grammar, as stated before, is based on the traditional functional linguistics This theory of grammar is based on the background that FG looks at how language works in terms of the functional relationships in its constituent parts, and the system of choices which language users make whenever language is used and has been rapidly developed recently by Halliday an many other scholars

From systemic theory of language, which serves as scale and categories of grammar, Halliday develops into his own functional grammar and makes it the most influential approach recently Concerning with this type of grammar, Halliday does not state a concrete definition

of the term directly but splits the term into smaller parts and explains each of those parts respectively He clarifies that it is “functional grammar” because the conceptual framework on which it is based is a functional rather than a formal one; and that it is functional in three distinct although closely related senses: in its interpretation 'of text', 'of system', and 'of the elements of linguistic structures' (An Introduction to Functional Grammar Halliday, 1994)

First, FG is functional in the sense that it is designed to account for how the language

is used According to Halliday, everything that is said or written unfolds in some context of use Moreover, through centuries of using language as a tool to express every need that human had or desired to have in life, they regularly shaped language in a system that could best satisfy those needs It means that language had been set functionally with respect to human’s needs Therefore, functional grammar can be said to be "essentially a 'natural' grammar, in the sense that everything in it can be explained, ultimately, be reference to how language is used" (An Introduction to Functional Grammar Halliday, 1994)

Then, in functional traditional linguistics, semantics, grammar and phonology are the terms used for levels (strata) of a language while in formal linguistics, those terms are semantics, syntax and phonology However, in the terminology of linguistics, syntax is just

one part of grammar because grammar consists of syntax and vocabulary, plus morphology if the language has word paradigms Therefore, in order to make explicit whether syntax and vocabulary are parts of the same level in the code of linguistics, it is necessary to refer to that level as “lexicogrammar” or “grammar” in short

There is another reason for not using the term “syntax” instead of “grammar” in functional grammar The term “syntax” has a long history of existence which began from ancient Greece This word suggests that a language is interpreted as a system of forms to which meanings are then attached in a particular direction as from morphology syntax meaning In functional grammar, on the other hand, the direction is reserved “A language is interpreted as a system of meanings, accompanied by forms through which the meanings can

be realized.” (An Introduction to Functional Grammar Halliday, 1994)

Following from Halliday (1973) and other linguists give idea that all languages are organized around two main kinds of meaning whose fundamental components are functional ones called “metafunctions” in the terminology as follows:

“- The ideational (reflective) function: organizes the speaker’s or writer’s experience

of the real or imaginary world

- The interpersonal (active) function: indicates, establishes, or maintains social relationships between people

- Combining with these two main functions is another one that Halliday calls “textual function” which creates written or spoken texts which cohere within themselves and which fit the particular situation in which they are used.” (A Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, J.C Richards, J Platt and H Platt, 1993)

- Moreover, in later work on clauses (1995), Halliday gives an idea of the forth function - logical function - which constructs the logical relations in the text

Surely, a text is a semantic unit, not a grammatical one but the meanings are realized through wordings - grammar This means that the relationship of grammar to semantics is very natural, not arbitrary And without a theory of wordings (a grammar), there is no way of making explicit one’s interpretation of the meaning of the text as well as no way to identify where semantics or grammar begins and ends That is the reason for the development of functional grammar to be pushed in the direction of semantics

In terms of rank, Halliday follows the systemic functional grammar and defines that English grammar, or English lexicogrammar is full system, has five-unit rank scale: sentence clause group/phrase word morpheme The importance of this rank-based theory is that it allows a unit of a particular rank to realize a functional element of the rank immediately above: a group will serve to realize an element of group structure, for example Additionally, this theory allows for a rank-shift in more complex structures It means that a unit can function as part of another of equal or lower rank or each unit is a multifunctional one However, among these five units of grammar, Halliday, as well as other linguists of his theory, considers ‘clause’ as the central/ the heart of functional grammar Therefore, five units can be reclassified into; above-clause clause below-clause and much attention will be given to the clauses with discussions on the internal characteristics, the functions of clauses, the differences between clause complex and sentence, the relationships between clauses or between clauses and elements below them, the expansion of clause

Towards phrases in functional grammar, Halliday puts them into the same rank with groups but states that groups and phrases are different from each other in the sense that group

is the expansion of a word while phrase is a contraction of a clause Though they start from opposite ends, the two achieve roughly the same status on the rank scale as units that lie somewhere between the rank of a clause and that of a word Therefore, phrases can be treated

in a similar way as groups that are divided into: nominal group, verbal group, adverbial group, conjunction group, preposition group and prepositional phrase among which the nominal and verbal groups take much of his care with detailed discussions on their functional elements

In short, Halliday’s functional grammar has properly covered main issues of linguistics

on the whole as well as grammar in particular His functional grammar is built up on the back ground of systemic functional linguistics and put in the communicative approach, thus, it somehow brings language users to the nature of language and of learning or using a language that is to satisfy the needs of ‘communication’; and looks at language in a rather complete way

- view language, study language as the language really is Halliday has also solved linguistic issues that raised from previous schools of grammar It has answered the question about the sociological aspects of language, explained the reasons why language users could or could not cope with unfamiliar sentences or structures when they use language, etc Halliday and other

functional grammarians also propose the level of grammatical units with clauses as the core of all and others are put around this heart of grammar However, in describing and explaining groups and phrases, Halliday has not given a clear cut with specific criteria to identify these two terms perfectly As the result, the two terms overlap each other and that causes a lot of misunderstanding among not only grammarians but also language users

In Vietnam, FG is not a traditional as well as the most influential school of grammar like traditional grammar in the past and transformational generative grammar recently However, since FG rooted in Vietnamese grammatical life, it has been discussed among grammarians like ! " # $ 7 # 2 1 and has proved its outstanding characteristics in comparison to other schools of grammar in Vietnam and created its own distinguish features

Moreover, while Halliday and other functional grammarians in the world consider clauses as the core of grammar, Vietnamese ones - especially 8 take sentences

as the heart of FG Under the influence of Benveniste’s point of view (1961) that “sentence is the basic unit of utterance, and of text”, Vietnamese functional grammarians prove that in terms of discourse, sentences are the smallest units which can be used n communication but in terms of syntax, they are the largest units containing all possible grammatical relationships As the result, sentences can be defined as “the largest unit of grammatical organization within which parts of speech and grammatical classes are said to function” (Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, J.C Richards, J Platt and H Platt, 1993)

Conclusively, Vietnamese FG agrees with English FG in basic theoretical background,

in technical terms and in major progress of study, but by choosing sentences as the heart among grammatical units, Vietnamese FG has made itself rather different from that of English

arranged to show connections of meanings within the sentence The term syntax is then developed by Maggie Tallerman as sentence construction (how words group together to make phrases and sentences) and as a part of grammar Maggie also added that syntax “is also used

to mean the study of the syntactic properties of languages; in this sense it's used in the same way as we use "stylistics" to mean the study of literary style” (1998) In fact, the former definition is accepted more popularly than the second one

In English, as well as in other languages, the arrangement of words (syntax) is a vital factor on determining the meaning of a sentence However, as Van Valin et al stated, not only syntax but also morphology take part in the process of determine the meaning of a sentence The roles of syntax or morphology are minor or major depend on which language is analyzed This means that the cross-linguistic study of syntax cannot be carried out without paying any attention to morphology and the functional overlap between two terms syntax and morphology which can be summarized in only one word “morphosyntax”

As stated, syntax has come through a long development with different notions which were based on different backgrounds According to Van Valin et al., the current work in syntax - both theoretical and descriptive - now is carried out under a certain linguistic background whose goals are describing, explaining linguistic phenomena and understanding the cognitive basis of language These goals exist in an interaction that the former is the condition or the supporter for the latter The first linguistic background comes from Chomsky’s theory of universal grammar (syntactocentric view of language) He considers syntax as the central aspect of language, the phonological and semantic aspects are derivative of and secondary to syntactic structures Thus, language appears as an abstract object whose structures are to be studied independently mainly in terms of psycholinguistics Therefore, issues raised in three goals of linguistic study has not been solved in Chomsky’s theory This means that there needs to be a more appropriate approach to this situation - systemic functional linguistics, the theory that makes up the so-called communicative-and-cognitive point of view In this theory, the status of syntax, as Van Valin et al state, "…is an issue with respect to which theories within this perspective differ."

In terms of structures, syntax focuses on two main sub objects: clause structures and phrase structures (sentence structures are also taken into consideration, but not much) Each

structure of clause/phrase is then splitted into different layers with specific constituent(s) and displayed in a tree-diagram In both clause and phrase structures, there is always a part called the head (the nuclear) element which makes the structures different from each other

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The term phrase is widely used in linguistic community but rarely a concrete definition about it can be found in a grammar book In most dictionaries and researches, phrases are defined in a rather similar way The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language, for example, defines phrases as “syntactic construction which typically contains more than one word, but which lacks the subject-predicate structure usually found in a clause” (p.222) while the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics gives another definition that “Phrase is a group of words which form a grammatical unit A phrase does not contain a finite verb and does not have a subject-predicate structure.” For example:

My brother is a teacher of English She is now in the front garden

From these two definitions above, it can be drawn out that a phrase may not always consist of only one word, it may be one-word-phrase in cases of basic phrase (for example: She is beautiful.); and there is no subject-predicate structure exists in a phrase, which includes the excluding of a finite verb, because this will make a phrase become a clause or a sentence With these characteristics, the former definition seems to be the most reasonable and the most complete one between the two, therefore, this definition will be taken along this thesis

Phrases are usually classified according to their head or central element and named after that element In fact, though each school of grammar gives different names to each type

of phrases, they all agree that there are five major types which are Noun phrases, Verb phrases, Adjective phrases, Preposition phrase and Adverb phrases Among these types of phrases, Noun phrase is one of the most important types due to its functions in a clause and a sentence, for example:

The little pretty woman standing in the office is a talented lawyer

subject post modification object

And it is noun phrases that, according to Quirk et al., make up the so-called appositive phrases, or in other words, appositive phrases are part of Noun phrases

David Crystal in his The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language defines a noun phrase (nominal group) as a phrase with a noun - which is a word class with a naming function, typically showing contrast of countability and number, and capable of acting as subject or object of a clause - as head Almost agree with the idea given by Crystal, the authors

of the Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics only add the pronoun in the position of the head in a NP For example:

She is a pretty woman in black (1)

In (1), She is a pronoun functions as the subject of the sentence; a pretty woman in black is a complex NP functions as the object of the sentence

In English, a NP may consists of only one word or it may be long and complex Therefore, NPs in English are divided into basic NPs - the ones that usually consists of premodifier and head noun, and complex NPs - the ones made up from the head, the premodification and the post modification and are the main source of appositive phrases Then, according to Quirk et al., complex NPs are in turn divided into restrictive and non-restrictive ones due to type of modification a complex NP has If the head of a NP can be viewed as a member of a class which can be linguistically identified only through the modification that has been supplied, that phrase is restrictive If the head of a NP can be viewed as unique or as member of a class that has been independently identified and the modification only functions as additional information supplier, then the phrase is a non-restrictive Besides, NPs can also be classified into temporary and permanent groups, progressive and non-progressive, generic and specific and so on though the first solution seems to be the most common one

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Being usually mistaken to relative structures but appositive structures (phrases and clauses) is an independent part in grammar Basing on noun phrases but appositive phrases have their own principles in terms of structures, functions and meanings

The definition, that is the largest in range, about apposition is given in Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics that “When two words, phrases, or clauses in a sentence have the same reference, they are said to be in apposition." (J.C Richards, J Platt, H Platt, 1993) Narrow down the scope, David Crystal in his The Encyclopedia of the English Language states that apposition is “a series of nouns or noun phrases with the same meaning and grammatical status.” Quirk et at explains more clearly that “Apposition is primarily, and typically, a relation between noun phrases.” The above definitions focus mainly on the sources and the meanings of apposition while in the Wikipedia (a free encyclopedia), an idea about the position of apposition makes the face of this grammatical item clear “an appositive is defined as a noun phrase that generally follows, but occasionally precedes, another noun phrase renames or describes it.”

From all of the definitions given above, it can be understood that phrases are in apposition when they are noun phrases and identical in reference This means that alternatively, the reference of one must be included in the reference of the other For example:

Anna, my next door neighbour, has been in hospital for months (1)

A policeman, John Mc Lane, is waiting for me at the police station (2)

In (1), Anna and my next door neighbour are co-referential and similar to each other In (2), A policeman and John Mc Lane refer to the same person Therefore, it can be said that the relationship denoted by apposition is analogous to a copular relationship

In terms of the scope of apposition, Quirk et al limits it into noun phrases This sounds very reasonable, however, in the book A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (1985), Quirk also indicated that linguistic units like verb phrases (infinitive phrases and -ing phrases) could also be appositives as follows:

“This last appeal, to come and visit him, was never sent." (3)

In (3), to come and visit him and This last appeal are appositives but they are not of the same source The first one is a noun phrase while the second is indefinite non-restrictive verb phrase It is obvious that this fact could be mentioned as a topic for other discussions but in this document, due to the time and length limited, only appositive phrases in form of noun phrases are taken into account and analyzed according to Quirk’s point of view

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Analyzing (1), the appositive phrase my next door neighbour may be compared with a non-restrictive post modification in a particular non-restrictive relative phrase:

Anna, who is my next door neighbour, has been in hospital for months (4)

Some grammarians consider the noun phrase my next door neighbour in (1) as a reduction of the relative clause in (4) and come to the idea of including non-restrictive relative clauses among appositives This consideration is motivated:

“(a) by the frequent possibility of expanding a second appositive into a relative clause;

(b) by the loose attachment of the non-restrictive relative clause to the sentence; and

(c) by the requirement for co-reference between the wh-word in the clause and an antecedent noun phrase.” (A comprehensive grammar of the English language, Quirk et al, 1985)

However, (1) and (4) differ from each other in which in (1) there is no relative pronoun functioning as an element or constituent in the phrase and (1) involves the linking of units of the same rank while in (4) there is a relative pronoun that functions as an element/constituent

of the clause and the units in (4) are not of the same rank

Considering the following examples:

She objected to the fact that a reply had not been sent earlier (5) restrictive appositive Paper is the thing that is used in writing (6) restrictive relative

It is clear to see that appositive phrases/ clauses are different from relative ones because:

"- the particle that is not an element in the clause structure (functioning as subject, object, etc,

as it must in a relative clause) but a conjunction, as in the case in nominal that-clauses generally;

- the non-restrictive appositive clause has the same introductory item as the restrictive,

- the head of the noun phrase must be a general abstract noun such as fact, idea, proposition, reply, remark, answer” (A contemporary grammar of the English language, Quirk et al, 1985)

2.2.3 Types of appositive phrases:

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/)-Like other linguistic units, appositives are classified in different ways due to different considerations Generally, there are three types of appositives which have been divided into six small types as follows:

2.2.3.1 Full and partial appositives:

The term apposition is used so variously among grammarians that they have proposed some criteria to restrict cases in which apposition is used to describe a linguistic unit Such criteria, according to Quirk et al, are:

"- the appositives can be omitted without affecting the acceptability of the sentence

- the appositives fulfill the same syntactic function in the resultant sentences

- it can be assumed that there is no difference between the original sentence and either of the resultant sentences.” (A Contemporary Grammar of the English Language, 1985)

Apposition that meets all these three criteria is called full apposition Consider the following examples:

A student, John Johnson, is now in the headmaster’s office (a)

A student is now in the headmaster’s office (a1)

John Johnson is now in the headmaster’s office (a2)

The apposition in (a) fulfils all three criteria required for a full apposition:

- The resultant sentences are acceptable

- Both noun phrases are subject of their own resultant sentences

- Because a student and John Johnson are co-referential in (a), it can be assumed that there is

no difference between the original sentence and either of the resultant sentences in extra linguistic reference The reference of the two sentences is the same Therefore, (a) is a full apposition

However, it is not always that all three criteria of a full apposition are satisfied There are cases in which one or more criteria are not complete, such as:

A new engineer has been sent to our company, a lovely Asian man (b)

A new engineer has been sent to our company (b1)

Has been sent to our company, a lovely Asian man (b2)

It is true that both noun phrases have the same reference And the omission of the second appositive does not affect the first resultant sentence while that of the first appositive

results in n unacceptable resultant sentence Moreover, the position of the second appositive makes it different form the first appositive in terms of syntactic function and makes it unacceptable unless the position is initial This is the case in which the first and second criteria are not met, thus, the apposition in this case is called partial apposition

In short, whenever all of the three criteria are fulfilled, the apposition is full; and if even only one criterion is not met, the apposition is only partial

2.2.3.2 Strict and weak appositive phrases:

This kind of classifying apposition is based on the syntactic class to which the appositives belong Once the appositives are of the same general syntactic class, they are strict apposition, for instance:

Journalist, his only job in life, has brought him chances of travelling around the world

2.2.3.3 Non-restrictive and restrictive appositive phrases:

Appositive phrases may be restrictive or non-restrictive and since these are two opposite terms, the analyzing of one term can lead to the understanding about the other

According to Quirk et al., appositives in non-restrictive are in separate information units This fact is indicated in speech by the inclusion in separate tone units, and in writing by the separation by commas or heavier punctuation Otherwise, the appositives are in restrictive apposition For example:

Anna, the next door neighbour, has been in the hospital for a week (a)

Anna the next door neighbour has been in the hospital for a week (Anna the next door neighbour is not Anna in the same office with us) (b)

In (a), the two appositives distribute independent information with separate roles Anna plays the role of a defined expression while the next door neighbour is the definer or has the defining role The defining role is reflected in the fact that the second appositive is marked by