Statement of the problem and rationale for the study
Linguistics, the scientific study of language, is of all “the social sciences with the greatest interest in the phenomenon of meaning” (Lyons, 1981: 15) There have been different approaches to investigate meaning and the lexical approach is one of them When the meaning of a lexical item is stated through associations with other lexical items, the theory of lexical semantics is met This approach posits two different, though connected, aspects One aspect relates the linguistic element to the physical world of experience, the world of objects, entities, which is called reference While the other aspect, namely sense, relates to the relations holding between the linguistic elements themselves, particularly, sense or lexical relations
Sense relations among words have captured the interest of various brands of philosophers, cognitive psychologists, linguists, early childhood and second language educators, computer scientists, literary theorists, cognitive neuroscientists, psychoanalysts- investigators from just about any field whose interests involve words, meaning or the mind We can access a broad and detailed literature that approaches the topic from a variety of methodological and theoretical perspectives
Still, the core semantic relation of every knowledge organization system is hierarchy There are two kinds of hierarchic relations that should be distinguished: hyponymy (is-a relation) and meronymy (part-of relation)
In the way meronymy is currently applied in real life, especially by children, different kinds of meronymy are sometimes misleadingly summed up into one general part-whole relation and regarded as always transitive, which can make some types of entailments However, children are not often given a clear explanation about their entailment Moreover, there is no recent study on the entailment of meronymy in children’s English speaking; therefore; the analysis of these in general and in the context of Vietnam in particular is really necessary This study is a theoretical approach to some knowledge of meronymy in general and the transitivity of meronymy in particular to clarify some entailment of meronymy concerning transitivity of Vietnamese children.
Research questions
This final goal is specified in the following research questions:
1 What are the entailment of meronymy in Vietnamese 10-year-old children’s English speaking?
2 How do teachers respond to students’ entailment of meronymy?
Scope of the research
Due to the limited time and knowledge, it will be not wise to cover all aspects of meronymy like its relationship with other semantic relations, the benefits of transitive meronymy for the application of automatic semantic query expansion in information retrieval tasks, weighted meronymic relations, application fields in detail, etc Moreover, it is also impossible to discuss all the entailment of meronymy in children’s English speaking Conversely, my study just emphasizes on one aspect of meronymy- transitivity and some outstanding use related to this aspect of meronymy of 10- year- old children.
Organization of the thesis
Part A – Introduction comes to the general introduction including the rational, and the purposes of the present study
Part B – Development: this part comprises of three chapters:
Chapter 1: Theoretical Background and Literature review covers the overview of the literature in which relevant theoretical background and reviews of related studies concerning meronymy It reviews the research background and discusses the characteristics of meronymy, and then the transitivity of meronymy
Chapter 2 – Research Method continues with the research method including the participants of the study, the instrument, the methods and procedures of data collection and data analysis
Chapter 3 – Findings and Discussion demonstrates the findings accompanied by data analysis and discussion
Part C – Conclusion recapitulates the major findings of the study and then it discusses the limitations of the present study and puts forward some suggestions for the further study on meronymy.
LITERATURE REVIEW
MERONYMY
An interesting and crucial type of semantic relation, expressed in language,
“is the relation between the parts of things and the wholes which they comprise”
(Winston et al 1987:417) This semantic relation has been lexicalized in many languages and can be used appropriately in some contexts and not in others (Chaffin 1992:255) Moreover, meronymy or part-whole relations turn out not to be simple, probably because there is no single meronymic relation but there are several different ones and each having their own semantic properties instead
The nature of meronymy has been, and still, particularly controversial
Sometimes it is treated as fundamental, sometimes it is treated as a complex relation derived from other relations, and sometimes ignores altogether The present chapter is an attempt to present a complete picture, as much as possible, of meronymy in English by adopting the appropriate model that best explicates its nature, more specifically the transitive nature of meronymy
In terms of etymology, the term meronymy stems from the Greek “mero” which means “part” (The Oxford University Dictionary Illustrated, 1968: 1237)
The term meronymy is not part of the available traditional resources of semanticist
Perhaps this term was first used by Miller and Johnson- Laird (1976:242) while Winston et al (1987) recommended another term “partonymy” Although it can be named in different ways, the definition of meronymy is not new and it has long been regarded as one of the constitutive principles in the organization of the vocabulary of all languages
Meronymy is also defined as a structural sense/ semantic relation holding between lexical items denoting parts (meronyms) and that denoting their corresponding wholes (holonyms) Many linguistics supported this mentioned notion of meronymy such as Lyons (1977: 311-314), Eikmeyer& Reiser (1981:
134), Halliday (1985: 312), Grains & Redman (1986:29), Sa’eed (1997:70), Kearns (2000:131-133), Finch (2000: 169), Murphy (2003: 218) Cruse (1979, 1986, 2000) also defended the same conception “(X) is a meronymy of (Y) if and only if sentences of the form A (Y) has (X)s/ an (X) and An (X) is a part of (Y) are normal when the noun phrases interpreted generically” However, with this definition, Cruse digged up deeply extracting test-frames to pin down a cohesive core group of relations comprising an ideal, or central meronymic relation which is too restricted
The two- part test leaks two different frames The first one relates to irrelevant pairs while the other excludes relevant ones This contrast is compromised by the solution offered by Cruse in the following frame: “The parts of a (Y) includes the
As for Winston et all (1987), they demonstrated that it can express meronym relations using the word part or its derivation, including any of the following test- frames: (X) is a part of (Y), (Y) is partly (X), (X)s are parts of (Y)s, and so on
Croft & Cruse (2004) took the “construal and constraints” approach in which meronymy is regarded as a relation between contextually construed meanings or more precisely, by pre-meanings created by boundary construal This approach presents the following characterization of meronymy, “ If A is a meronym of B in a particular context then any member of the extension of A either maps onto a specific member of the extension of B of which it is construed as a part, or it stands potentially in a intrinsically construed relation of part to some actual or potential member of B” (Croft & Cruse, 2004: 160) From the viewpoint of this approach, the problem with meronymy originates from the fact that the part- whole relation does not hold between construed classes of elements, but between specific individuals belonging to those classes Furthermore, in the case of meronymy, unlike hyponymy, a part-whole relation between two entities is itself a construal, subject to a range of conventional and contextual constraints
It seems that every part has its own story, and all the above-mentioned notions are not false as each notion is valid to some extents It can be said that meronymy is the lexical relation between a lexical item denoting a part and that denoting the corresponding whole This will be considered as the working definition for this study Meronymy reflects the result of division of analysis of an entry into parts or components in that the relation between the whole and its component is called Meronomic relation
2 Characteristics of meronymy 2.1 The constant principle in the semantic relation of Meronymy
In order to construct a well-built meronymy, the principle of type consistency of Croft & Cruse (2004: 153) should be counted: “The relevant notion of type is difficult to pin down here One aspect is usually called ontological type
There’s no agreement on a basic ontology, but the sort of thing referred to by Jakendoff (1983), namely, THING, STATE, PROCESS, EVENT, TIME, PLACE, and so on seems relevant to parts” It means that the parts of a period of time should themselves be periods of time; the parts of an event should be sub-events
Meronymy is the semantic relation existing between a lexical item denoting a part and an item denoting the corresponding whole Therefore, the relationship among elements in Meronym is also in the same general type If one element in a meronymy denotes a cohesive physical object, then the other items in the set must too For instance, “weight” of a “body” does not figure among its parts In addition, if one item refers to geographical area, all the others must do (hence Westminster Abbey is not a part of London); if one item is abstract noun, the others must be as well (e.g “high” is impossible to be a part of “body”)
The rule of type consistency justifies the existence of numerous limited meronomies, instead of a single one, with universe as its origin and at the lower bounds some sort of subatomic particle or particles This phenomenon is also linked to boundary demarcation of ultimate wholes & part
The division of parts into segmental and systemic is another dimension of consistency illustrated by Croft & Cruse (2004:154) If a whole is divided into separable, spatially or perceptually cohesive parts, these will be referred to as segmental parts In such a division, items of a lexical hierarchy correspond to real- life objects which stand in a relation of segmental parts to the whole An alternative approach is a division into systemic parts, which “have a greater functional unity, a greater consistency of internal constitution, but they are spatially inter- penetrating” (Cruse, 1986) Divisions of this kind are not so easily perceptually accessible, but they are as valid as the former type Every good taxonomic hierarchy must keep a constant principle of hierarchy and avoid mixing them Thus a plant must be either divided into segmental parts, such as root, stem, leaves (further divisible into a leaf stalk or petiole, and a blade or lamina), flower, etc., or into systemic parts, such as the vascular tissue (mainly xylem and phloem), stele or vascular cylinder, cortex, stem cambium, epidermis, endodermis, photosynthetic tissue, and other specialized cellular systems
Cruse stated in his book (2000) that there are four properties of Meronymy Necessity: some parts are necessary for the wholes and some are optional: e.g an engine is a necessary part of a car; a moustache is an optional part of a male’s face
Integrality: some parts are more integral to their wholes than others: e.g handle as part of a door & the hand as part of an arm
CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
Language learning is one of the most fascinating aspects of human development, hence undoubtedly attracts much scientific attention Following are three central theoretical positions: the behaviorist, the innatist, and the interactionist views on language acquisition
The behaviorist position: Behaviorists believes that children learn language through imitation and habit formation According to them, the quality and quantity of the Language input to which the child is exposed have an influence on the child’s language development processes which include imitation and practice This view offers a partial understanding of how children learn simple aspects of language
However, the behaviorists failed to give a rational explanation for the more complex grammatical structures
The innatist position: Noam Chomsky views the ability to learn language as an innate one He claims “children are biologically programmed for language”
According to Chomsky, imitation and practice cannot build up language system successfully because children are often exposed to the language environment filled with confusing information or even insufficient language source Parental corrections are inconsistent with a focus on meaning Therefore, he claims that children have an innate ability called a language acquisition device at first or later on Universal Grammar to derive the rules of a language system themselves other than their mere imitation, practice, and reinforcement Universal Grammar is considered to consist of a set of principles which are common to all languages If the children are born with universal grammar, they just have to learn how the principles work in their mother tongue and in foreign languages that they are learning (Chomsky 1981) Chomsky’s ideas are supported by biological studies and the critical period hypothesis which suggests that the language acquisition in particular and biological functions in general only works perfectly only when it is timely stimulated in a certain period
Vygotsky’s social development theory: Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky was a Soviet psychologist, the founder of a theory of human cultural and bio-social development commonly referred to as cultural-historical psychology, and leader of the Vygotsky Circle At the core of Vygotsky’s theory (also known as Cultural-Historical theory) is the idea that child development is the result of interactions between children and their social environment These interactions involve people—parents and teachers, playmates and schoolmates, brothers and sisters Vygotsky felt social learning precedes development He states, "Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological)"
Vygotsky also posited a concept of the Zone of Proximal Development, which is the distance between a student's ability to perform a task under adult guidance and/ or with peer collaboration and the student's ability solving the problem independently According to Vygotsky, learning occurred in this zone
Three points of view mentioned above have explained a different aspect of children’s language development in turn: the first one explains the routine aspects, the second deals with the acquisition of complex grammar, and the last one explains the way how children can relate form and meaning, how they interact, and how they use language properly
Of all these points of view, the social development theory has been adopted to shed light for the study Unlike other approaches, this emphasizes the role of social interaction between the developing child and linguistically knowledgeable adults, reinforcement and feedback in language acquisition These are the base and the light for the research when investigating children’s use during communication with each other Specifically, it asserts that much of a child's linguistic growth stems from modeling of and interaction with parents and other adults, who very frequently provide instructive correction
2 Teachers’ oral feedback in speaking 2.1 The definitions of feedback
In the context of teaching and learning languages, there are a large number of feedback definitions Littlewood (1981) and Lewis (2002) both equaled feedback with telling learners about their progress and showing them their errors in order to guide them to areas for improvement Different in words but similar in nature, Ur
(1996, p.242) proposed, “Feedback is information that is given to the learner about his or her performance of a learning task, usually with the objective of improving this performance.” It is clearly seen that these two definitions treated this terms under a broad point of view since they just indicated that learners are the ones to receive feedback without showing who are the ones to give it However, in Ferris
(1999), feedback was viewed as “any response a teacher may give his or her students” (cited in Do, 2009, p.16)
Obviously, the point that all the above-mentioned definitions have in common is the purpose of providing feedback, i.e for learner’s improvement Accordingly, there are two matters loomed Firstly, question of quality of feedback comes into considerable concern The second thing is the distinction between feedback and criticism as Robert (2003) proposed in his study: “Feedback should only ever be used as a basis for improvement It should not be mistaken for negative criticism and vice verse.” (p.12) Supporting Robert (2003)’s idea, Bound (2000) pointed out significant difference between feedback and criticism Whereas, “A good feedback is given without personal judgment or opinion, given based on the facts, always neutral and objective, constructive and focus on the future”, “criticism is personal, fault finding, very subjective, usually destructive, involve emotion, and past oriented” (p.7)
In another way, as opposed to feedback that is aimed to give sincere input to someone in order for him/ her to improve him/ herself, criticism is given for the negative purpose and in improper way In the nutshell, feedback provision can be among peers or between teachers and students; however, feedback concerned in this study is viewed in the notion of teaching-learning act between teachers and students
So far, the researcher could find various ways of categorizing feedback types Firstly, from the viewpoint of Brookhart (1998), feedback falls into four general types that are shown in this following chart:
Figure 1: Feedback Types classified by Brookhart (1998)
Use criteria- based phrase to describe the strengths and weaknesses of students’ work and get students to use the suggested strategies independently on future work
Tell students what to improve, how to correct their reasoning, and how to move forward in the learning process
Summarize students’ achievement and measure it with score or grade
Encourage and support students to make them feel good
Another way of classifying feedback that is shown in the graph below is found in Crane’s study (2006)
Apart from corrective and evaluate feedback shown clearly above, there are some other related names shown as the followings
Positive vs Negative/ Corrective feedback
As for Mc.Namara (1999) and Anyon (2001), positive feedback shows students that teachers are interested in what they say and at the same time encourage them In contrary, negative one expresses teachers’ displeasure, frustration or involves some kinds of punishment Corrective feedback, as it name tells, is used to correct students’ mistake
Direct/explicit vs Indirect/ implicit feedback
In Bitchener et al (2005), it was stated that direct or explicit feedback means that teachers identifies an error and provides the correct form, while indirect or implicit feedback refers to the situation when teachers point out an error without correct form provision
Verbal vs Non-verbal feedback
Simply inform the learner the accuracy of a response
Inform the learner that their response was incorrect with the knowledge of the correct or desired response
Correct and include relevant information about the context of the correct response is labeled explanatory
Explain the source of the incorrect response by comparison with common use
Provide related information designed to enhance and extend the learner’s knowledge acquisition
Figure 2: Feedback Types classified by Crane (2006)
In Long (1996), verbal feedback which is presented in a form that is spoken or capable of being spoken concerns not only phrases used but also tone of voice
Accordingly, non-verbal feedback refers to the one made in silence with cues like facial expressions For example, question mark can be shown in both teacher’s face and voice
T: (T turns face to the side a bit and frowns) go?
S: Oh Yes I went yesterday.(Adapted from Nguyen et al., 2003) Clearly enough, the formal one (“turn face to the side a bit and frowns) is non-verbal feedback whereas the later (“go” with rising tone) is oral Simply put, feedback which can be called oral must be in utterances
Basically, there are no distinctive differences among those types of feedback
However, to see clearly how teachers give feedback in this thesis, the researcher will use the viewpoint of Crane as the working classification which seems to be more detailed.
RELATED STUDIES
Historically, part-whole or meronymy relations have played an important role in linguistic, philosophy and psychology mainly because a clear understanding of part- whole relations requires a deep interaction of logic, semantics and pragmatics as they provide tools needed for our understanding of the world The part-whole relation has been considered a fundamental ontological relation since the atomists Plato, Aristotle and the Scholastics They are the first to give a systematic characterization of parts and wholes However, most of the investigations of part- whole relations have been made since the beginning of the 20 th century
The logical/ philosophical studies of meronymy were concerned with formal theories of parts, wholes and their relation in the context of formal ontology This school of thought advocates a single, universal and transitive part-of relation used for modeling various domains such as time and space Simon (1986) criticized this standard extensional view and proposed a more adequate account that offers an axiomatic representation of the part-of relation as a strict partial-ordering relation
The axioms considered were: existence (if A is a part of B then both A and B exist), axymmetry (if A is a part of B then B is not a part of A), supplementary (if A is a part of B then B has a part C disjoint of A), and transitivity (if A is a part of B and
B is a part of C then A is a part of C) In 1991, Simon (1991) added two more axioms: extensionality (objects with the same parts are identical) and existence of mere logical sum (for any number of objects there exists a whole that consists exactly of those objects)
Linguistics researchers focused on different part-whole relations and their role as semantic primitives Winston, Chaffin and Hermann (1987) determined six types of part-whole relation and proposed three relation elements (functional, homogeneous and separable) to further classify these types This classification was used in the article of Morton E Winston, Roger Chaffin (Trenton State College) and Douglas Herrmann (Hamilton College) in Cognitive Science number 11 in
1987 They explained the ordinary English-speakers’ use of the term “part of” and its cognates Meronymic relations ore further distinguished from other inclusion relations This taxonomy is then used to explain cases of opponent intransitivity in metrological syllogisms, and standard form syllogisms whose premises express different inclusion relations The data suggest that intransitivity arises due to equivocations between different types of semantic relations
Recently, meronymy has got more attention when there have been more researches related to meronymy in a specified language For example, in 2000, Harriet E Manelis Klein at Montclair State University wrote the article “Meronymy or Part-whole relations on indigenous languages of lowland South America” in which he provided examples of how these part-whole relations were expressed in eighteen languages, belonging to eleven families, all of which were found in the geo- political areas of Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela and Peru Dr Misbah M D Al-Sulaimaan & Amal Y Muhammed conducted the research “Meronymy in Arabic- A semantic study” which dealt with data set taken from Arabic to test hypotheses concerning the nature of meronymy in English
The previous studies are good reference to see the nature of meronymy and meronymy in different languages However, in these researches, the data was not taken from real conversations but just examples related to meronymy were analyzed In this study, the researcher would like to investigate meronymy and its transitivity in real life, especially in Vietnam but not on theory
The early studies of classroom language shared a number of common assumptions, drawn from work in sociolinguistics For example, sociolinguists hold that differences in oral communication reflect social variables, such as gender, ethnicity, social class, and age When children enter school, their mode of oral communication has been influenced by these factors; they also already work within a communication system, which consists of language structure (sound structure, inflection, syntax), content (meaning), and use (purposes of communication, appropriate forms of communication) Knowledge about meaning, language functions (pragmatics), discourse genres, and more complex syntax continue to develop during schooling and into adulthood (Scott, 1995)
Continuity between language use in school and at home is also an issue in children’s development of classroom communicative competence Most of the research on emergent literacy has been conducted with children from print-rich homes that identify with the dominant, school-oriented culture, where parent-child interactions provide experiences similar to classroom interactions Through these experiences, children are motivated to learn about literacy events, functions, artifacts, forms (e.g., sound and letter names), and conventions before they learn to read and write (Morrow, 1993; van Kleeck, 1990, 1995, 1998; van Kleeck &
Schuele, 1987; Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998) And, just as formal schooling facilitates students’ acquisition of academic information, early parent-child communication typically involves information exchange (see, e.g., Cherry, 1979;
Ervin-Tripp, 1977)- though while teachers typically evaluate students’ responses, parents do not often do so (Cherry, 1978)
Thus, some children enter school knowing how to use language for a variety of school-like purposes They have expectations about classrooms But not all students know the rules of the game, and some have difficulty learning how to participate appropriately These children may also have less experience with a variety of literacy functions and forms Since participation in school activities (such as reading aloud, question-and-answer exchanges with teachers, or evaluation of discourse contributions) determines access to learning, educational failure may result for students who lack or have difficulty acquiring classroom communicative competence
Other difficulties may result from differences in communicative patterns among students and teachers who come from different cultural backgrounds During the past decade, as waves of immigration altered classroom demographics and special education programs received greater emphasis, diversity among learners has dominated sociolinguistic research in the United States Studies focused on
Second-language (L2) acquisition and its impact on literacy learning (e.g., August & Hakuta, 1997 [online document], 1998 [online document]; Gutierrez- Clellen, 1998)
African American dialect differences and effects of variations on reading, writing, and classroom participation (e.g., Delpit, 1988, 1992; Scott & Rogers, 1996; Seymour, Bland-Stewart, & Green, 1998; Seymour & Roeper, 1999;
Promoting literacy learning in children and youth with atypical language development, including L2 learners (e.g., Palincsar & Klenk, 1992, 1993;
Palincsar, Parecki, & McPhail, 1995; Ruiz, 1995; Wallach & Butler, 1994)
To minimize the possibility of mistaking differences in discourse styles and dialect use for cognitive and linguistic problems, teachers and other education professionals need to pool their expertise The research suggests that students’ development as competent learners and communicators requires that educators understand discourse and dialect differences and the social and cultural practices that children from culturally and linguistically diverse groups bring to school.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
THE CONTEXT OF THE STUDY
The study was conducted at Amslink English centre which is founded and operated by a group of students who graduated from English specialized class of Hanoi Amsterdam High School and spent time learning, training and graduated with Master degrees in European countries Based on the knowledge and experience gained from studying, researching and teaching at Hanoi Amsterdam and a number of universities specializing in foreign languages in Vietnam as well as in many other countries in the world and working for multi-national corporations in the field of education, the founders of Amslink wish to develop the idea of creating a friendly and high quality English-teaching environment for Vietnamese kids and teenagers
The centre is providing both basic and intensive English courses with the aim to improve Vietnamese students’ English proficiency in the most effective way It is wished to equip the students with best skill sets to prepare for their future international academic, especially Grammar to provide students with the comprehensive and in-depth knowledge about English Proficiency in Grammar skill would provide the students a strong base for applying other communicative skills, especially when the students do not have a ready environment to practice their language skill on a daily basis In the courses, students are exposed to a variety of grammatical structures, thousands of vocabulary words in context
However, there is a very important and unique point that makes the courses of the center completely different from most of secondary schools and centers in Hanoi It is the combination of Grammar classes with Communicative classes that will provide students a strong base for mastering English for academic purposes and to work in high standard international environment
All the students in this study are studying at schools in Hanoi According to the National Foreign Languages 2020 Project presentation of Dr Nguyen Ngoc Hung at Vietnam Engineering Education Conference, the main method that Vietnamese teachers at school often use to teach students is the Grammar- Translation one and the objective of the education programs is good results in the English exams, which are almost always in the form of written tests In addition, Dr
Nguyen Ngoc Hung also presented that students have to learn in very large crowded classes (45/50 students/ class) in limited time and this is not a favorable condition for learning a foreign language like English Besides, in most Vietnamese schools, students are not provided with modern learning facilities that are very helpful for teaching and learning English such as videos, tapes and so on The shortage of these facilities much reduces the effectiveness of the learning process
After school, the children go to Amslink to have extra English lessons
Amslink’s classrooms are equipped with the vivid visual media to support teachers in organizing activities such as computer, internet, headphone, projector, flashcard, books, and air-conditioner In addition, the classes are very colorful, vivid and inspiring, which helps the students feel convenient and interested in studying
Especially, the size of the classes here is ideal for practicing speaking: only 3- 12 students in each class
Moreover, during time studying at Amslink, the teacher and students have a good chance to talk to or listen to native speakers of English and they have time to live, work and study in a native English environment Most of the teachers in Amslink are well aware of the important role of the ability to communicate in English and the teachers have done much to improve the method of teaching communicating and help the students to overcome the difficulties.
PARTICIPANTS
This study investigates discussion in English classroom in three classes of Vietnamese learners at the age of ten (5A, 5C and 5F) for 8 months Class 5A has
10 students, class 5B has 12 students and class 5F includes 11 students It means that there are 33 students in total participating in this research
All of the students were born and are now living in Hanoi In term of time length of learning, they have all spent at least 2 years taking part in EFL courses In term of competence, they have generally covered most basic grammatical categories and developed basic skill in reading, speaking, listening and writing In general, the whole group is homogeneous in its age, cultural experience, and knowledge of both the mother tongue and foreign language
The focus of this study on the students at the age of 10 years old is explained by the belief that the most appropriate and productive time to help the students recognize, identify, differentiate and master subtle uses of meronymy is at this stage, when the students already have a relatively adequate amount of vocabulary and grammar to carry out various types of communicating According to PhD Michelle Anthony, increased interaction with words and text expands a child’s vocabulary greatly in these years, often by more than 3,000 words a year, but sometimes as much as double that amount! Because of increased metalinguistic skills, children this age more fully understand double meaning (e.g., run for office, run a race), and can apply verbal humor (e.g., “Is your refrigerator running? You’d better go catch it!”) By age 10, many children are able to identify aspects of theme in both reading and conversation, as long as the ideas are not too abstract Children can also apply thinking skills to language and literacy by forming connections between past, present, and future endeavors, asking questions about them, and creating ideas and opinions that they can effectively share with others Moreover, at this level, the students’ errors are the most clearly exposed and therefore immediate correction is needed.
METHODOLOGY
In this research, the data was collected using observation, supported by video recording, as the main instrument over an entire semester The researcher, as the assistant to native teachers, observed three classes in the centre (5A, 5C and 5F)
Each class had one lessons a week, each lesson lasted 2 hours and thirty minutes It took 8 months (from November 2013 to June 2014) to collect data through participant observation The number of the lessons in total observed is about 96, equivalent to 240-hour observation
During the lessons, the researcher tried to note down everything that is important while participating and observing The participation observation gave the researcher a good opportunity to participate in the subjects’ activities It is distinctive because the researcher approached subjects in their own environment rather than having them come to the researcher Generally speaking, the researcher engaged in participant observation tries to learn what life is like for an “insider” while remaining, inevitably, an “outsider”
Then, thanks to the cameras equipped in each classroom, the researcher could watch all the activities in any lesson again to triangulate the information, which means that the researcher did not have to rely totally on the memory and on the personal discipline to write down and expand the observations as soon and as completely as possible Therefore, the quality of the data is really reliable
2 Data analysis methods The data was attained from the observation of children’s speaking Both statistic and interpretive methods were employed to analyze the data
Data is collected statistically monthly by and then, in statistic analysis, the data from observations were mathematically counted to see the frequency of each entailment of meronymy in Vietnamese children’s English speaking
In connection with the interpretive analysis of entailment of meronymy in Vietnamese children’s English speaking, there are two main bases about meronymy which can be used as the coding scheme to generate different sets of explanations for the apparent failures of transitivity based on viewpoint of Croft and Cruse (2004:153) as following:
1) The constant principle in the semantic relation of meronymy
2) Four properties of meronymy: Necessity/ Integrality/ Discreteness/
With regard to teachers’ feedback, the types of feedback based on feedback types classified by Crane (2006) and how teachers give feedback to each entailment of meronymy in Vietnamese children’s English speaking in real situations are investigated carefully.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
THE FREQUENCY OF ENTAILMENT OF MERONYMY
After 240-hour observation in 8 months double-checked by recording, 39 conversations which include the entailment of meronymy are collected and taken as the data to be analyzed
Among these 39 conversations, there are 38 cases (97,37%) making use because of breaking the constant principle of meronymy Into more detail, the failures of transitivity arise in 3 cases, accounting for 7,89%, when there is no constancy in types of meronymy or when different types of meronymy are combined in standard form syllogisms There are 35 cases, accounting for 92,11%, when there is no constancy in using sense relations or when meronymic relations are combined with other semantic relations
The second reason for the failures of transitivity which is the lack of properties of meronymy occupies just one case, equivalent to 2,63% There are four properties of meronymy, however, the case just falls on the last one- Motivation: parts have an identifiable function of their own with respect to their wholes
In general, the lack of properties of meronymy is just 2,63% with one case of motivation missing Breaking the constant principle of meronymy appears the most in 38 cases in which the combination of more than one semantic relation (35 cases) overwhelms the combination of more than one type of meronymy (3 cases)
1 The constant principle in the semantic relation of meronymy 1.1 The combination of more than one type of meronymy
According to the classification of Winston, there are six types of meronymy, however,, in this research, there are only three types of meronymy used which are Member-Collection (2 times), Component-Object(3 times) and Place-Area (1 time)
When different types of meronymic relations are combined in the same argument, as in the following example, the “part of” relation is not transitive and the inference is not valid because it breaks the rule of constancy of meronymy (Croft & Cruse)
A relation is considered as transitive if the following holds true:
1) Concept X is related to another concept Y in a relation R
2) Y is also related to a third concept Z in the same relation R
3) X also relates to Z via the same relation R
Thus here is a three-level relation X Y Z (with as a fixed type of relation), that allows to “skip” one level, as the relation holds also true for X Z
This works for example in the relation-chain “vehicles automobiles racing cars” (with indicating a kind-of relation) In query expansion for information retrieval, expansions along transitive relation chains may include several levels (though it might not always be appropriate), for intransitive relations only a directly related concept can be used for expansion
In Class 5A at 19:01 on Wednesday 14 th in May 2014, when teacher divided the class into four groups and each group had their own task, there was an argument happened between two groups:
Student 1: Lan Thanh, could you help us this sentence? Is it correct?
Student 2: Of course Let me see
Students 3: No, no see Lan Thanh
Student 1: I asking Lan Thanh, not you Not touch in
Student 3: Lan Thanh in my group One her nail also our group Lan Thanh, not help them We have our tasks Focus
It can be seen more clearly how this sort of equivocation works by using a specialized part term in the above conservation to make it clear which meronymic relation is expressed in each premise
(1a) Thanh’s nails are parts of her fingers (Component-Object) (1b) Her fingers are parts of her hands (Component-Object) (1c) Her hands are parts of her body (Component-Object) (1d) She is a part of the group (Member-Collection)
(1e) Thanh’s nails are parts of the group The falsehood in this example is due to an equivocation on “part of” between (1a) (1b) (1c) and (1d) “Part of” in (1a) (1b) (1c) are understood as a component- object relation in which parts cannot be disconnected, in principle, from the whole to which they are connected In the mean time, (1d) can be regarded as a member- collection relation in which parts can be disconnected, in principle, from the whole to which they are connected and dissimilar to each other and to the whole to which they belong The failure of transitivity in (1e) is due to the mixing of these two types of meronymy, so that the conclusion (1e) is false (as well as strange), since Thanh’s nails are neither components nor parts of the group
It might be then supposed that equivocation produces strangeness and invalidity in all cases But consider the following conversation in the lesson of class 5A at 18:46 Wednesday 20 th November 2013 when a student from another class asked to borrow a chair from the class 5A; however; one student of class 5A objected:
Student 1: I want borrow a chair teacher?
Student 2: No My class, my chair No borrow
Student 1: The chair is of the centre, not you
Teacher: Well, dear There are so many available chairs in our class
This situation has two combinations:
(2a) I am a member of this class (Member-Collection) (2b) This chair is a part of the class (Component-Object)
(3a) The chair is part of the class (Component-Object) (3b) The class is part of the centre (Place-Area)
(3c) The chair is part of the centre
(3) would seem to be parallel to (1), yet there seems to be nothing strange nor obviously false with the conclusion expressed in (3c) The apparent falsehood of (3c) suggests that two different meronymic relations are involved, a component- object relation in (3a) and a place-area relation in (3b) While chairs are often functional parts or components of classes, the class is merely a place within the centre, not a component of the centre Since “part of” in (3a) is component-object, while in (3b) it is member-collection, our analysis would appear to predict that (3c) should be invalid and sound strange-but it does not seem to
The solution to this lies in the vagueness of the term “part.” The surface lexical features of English are not the best guide to the differences among these semantic relations (Wierzbicka, 1984) The term “part” is used to express a variety of quite distinct semantic relations The vagueness and generality of the term “part” makes it very easy for speakers of English to slip back and forth between types of meronymic relationships and this semantic slippage is responsible for many cases in which meronymy appears to be intransitive
“Part” is only the most general of a large number of English terms which can be used to express various kinds of meronymic relations We have made use of some of these in naming types of meronymic relations Parts of integral objects tend to be called “components”; collections and groups have “members”; masses are measured into “portions”; activities and processes have “features”; areas can be divided into “places” and so forth There are at least 40 such part terms, narrower in scope than “part” but with a wide range of application
The reason (3c) is acceptable is that it is possible to regard the chair as “part”
(in the member-collection sense), of the centre (3) thus differs from (1) in that the chair, in this context, can accept a sense of “part” (the member- collection sense) which the regular feature of a living person cannot By itself, (3c) sounds perfectly acceptable, while (1c) sounds strange at best
TEACHERS’ FEEDBACK
1 The frequency of teachers’ feedback to entailment of meronymy
The answers to the question of the frequency of teachers’ using feedback to children’s use related to meronymy are illustrated in the figure below
Figure 4 illustrates teachers’ reaction to children’s speaking related to meronymy The teachers in most cases ignored the students’ use in concern with meronymy (92,11%) There are 13 circumstances which are related to the lessons without receiving feedback from teacher: the first circumstance is when the teacher asked the students to introduce their family, the second is when teacher asked the students to talk about their class and school, and the last one is when teacher organize a game of people description in the class The other 23 cases are not relevant to the content of the lesson, which may be the reason for teachers’ ignorance They are just the conversations among students or between students and teachers
On the other hand, among 39 conversations in which the students used meronymy, there are only three times, accounting for 7,89%, the teacher chose to provide simple explanations which facilitated students’ understanding All of them go outside the content of lessons
Recognizably, this overwhelming percentage shows that the teacher often pay very little attention to the use related to meronymy and children are not consistently corrected for linguistic errors and would therefore not receive evidence that a particular semantic interpretation they can assign is unavailable The indispensable role of teachers’ feedback can be shown in the fact that teachers’ feedback reflects to students what and how they perform, showing them their strong points to strengthen as well as the weak points to improve Noticeably, when teachers don’t respond, the defective language might serve as an input model and acquired by other students in the class In short, students, when doing without teachers’ feedback, run a high risk of losing their ways
Hattie and Kimberley (2007) asserted in their review, “feedback is one of the most powerful influences on learning and achievement.” Moreover, each type of feedback is suitable for its own situations and they will have their own advantages if being used in right ways
However, the teachers’ using feedback to children’s use related to meronymy just appeared in three conversations: the conversation (1) in Class 5C at 18:46 on Tuesday 10 th September in 2013
Student: In my class in school have a friend, he is “trầm cảm”
Assistant: It is “depression” in English
Native teacher: How do you know, dear?
Student: He never talk anything, always silent
Native teacher: He does not want to talk, sometimes because he is tired or he is busy to do something He can have many reasons to keep silent, dear If you do not ask him, you cannot jump to the conclusion like that and the conversation (2) in class 5C at 16:04 on Sunday 22st September in 2013
Do you smell something? Kinh khung eo
Dốt quá! Là terrible Huh, you are a dog Nose dog
Come on, dear It is not polite and not true to say like that He is your friend, not a dog You should say sorry to your friend and the conversation (3) in Class 5F - 14:06 Sunday 9th March 2014
Student: Teacher, Kiet stop study here, right?
Teacher: No, he doesn’t Why do you think so?
Teacher: He can have many reasons for being absent May be he is so busy with his midterm test in the school
Based on the classification of Crane, there are five types of feedback:
Confirmative/ Corrective/ Explanatory/ Diagnostic/ Elaborative In these cases, conversation (1) and conversation (3) use the same type of feedback Both of the teacher used explicit explanatory to correct students’ use and include relevant information about the context of the correct response For example, in conversation
(1), the teacher explained: “He does not want to talk, sometimes because he is tired or he is busy to do something He can have many reasons to keep silent, dear” and the teacher in conversation (3) said “He can have many reasons for being absent
May be he is so busy with his midterm test in the school” The teachers’ answers seem to be helpful and more persuasive when they give the appropriate explanation
On the contrary, the teacher in conversation (2) just informed the learner that his response was incorrect with knowledge of the correct or desired response “It is not polite and not true to say like that He is your friend, not a dog” Therefore, the teacher’s feedback seem to be hard to satisfy students
In short, most of time children’s making entailment result of meronymy is the combination of meronymy and attribution, which is made by part of understanding meronymic relations that derives from the fact that meronymy is easily confused with other semantic relations However, children are not always given the direction or correction from the adult
Meronymy is a semantic relation between an object corresponding to a
“part” and to its corresponding “whole” If an entity X is the meronym of another entity Y, then sentences of the form “Xs are parts of Y” or “Y has Xs” are valid when noun phrases X and Y are interpreted generically Recently, several research efforts geared towards automatically identifying meronymy patterns from texts have been proposed However, the long- standing challenge of resolving pattern ambiguity has not yet been adequately addressed Pattern ambiguity arises when an expression encodes meronymy only when it occurs within specific contexts
The study was conducted as an attempt to prove that entailment of meronymy of 10-year-old Vietnamese children are rather popular and worthy getting much more attention from adults andaddress some pattern ambiguity issues when using meronymy of 10-year-old Vietnamese children in the context of the English class in Amslink centre There are generally two types for the entailment of meronymy in children’s English speaking The first type is breaking the constant principle in the semantic relation of meronymy with two kinds of breaking (1) The combination of more than one meronymic relation (2) Non-meronymic relations
The second reason is the lack of one of properties of meronymy in which the results show one kind which is the lack of the last property- Motivation or called the notion of functional domain Of these three types, there is no new type of use as comparison with other previous studies, however, the percentage of each type was counted on to show that the first type is the most popular to cause the entailment of meronymy, which can be used as the guide for adults to understand the basis of use to have their own way to explain for children
To summarize, the findings of this study provide an insight into a semantic relation- meronymy in a specific context- meronymy in 10-year-old Vietnamese children’s English speaking These are believed to serve for further studies on the solutions to the entailment that apply in certain special cases that have been used to illustrate the entailment in the literature, and then move on to present more general solution that applies in all cases, a solution that exploits children’s knowledge of the semantics of downward entailing expressions
Due to various constrains and scope of the study, the present research displays certain limitations First, the small target population (33 students and 3 teachers) might have affected the results of the findings and implications of the study The results of the study would have been more persuasive if the research had involved more participants
OBSERVATION DATA
Student: My family has 4 person: father, mother, I and my mother us have a baby in stomach
Teacher: Great! A boy or a girl?
Student: I do not know I do not care I do not like it You know, baby neighbor always crying I hate it
Teacher: Who is the one you love most in your family?
Student 1: Yes, no one love me My mother, father shout me often
Student 2: Me too Me too No one love me too
They just love my brother Never shout him
Student 3: Only my mum My father always work
My father go home, don’t want talk to me Only mother love me
Student 1: My teacher at school is not good I am not understand anything
Student 2: My teacher is very good I always has score high
Student 3: My teacher is ugly She always punish me Like my parents at home
Student 4: My class is best in Hanoi A my friend has highest in Olympic in Hanoi
Student 5: Your friend is a doctor in the future
Student 6: Doctor? No, must a science like Mr.Ngo Bao Chau
Student 7: You not know what What is science?
Your friend must live in America in the future
Student 8: Mr Ngo Bao Chau learn in my school
Thuc Nghiem school, you know
Student 9: Oh, your school is sure very good
Student 10: You are sure good too
Student: In my class in school have a friend, he is
Assistant: It is “depression” in English
Native teacher: How do you know, dear?
Student: He never talk anything, always silent
Native teacher: He does not want to talk, sometimes because he is tired or he is busy to do something He can have many reason to keep silent, dear If you do not ask him, you cannot jump to the conclusion like that
Student 1: Do you smell something? Kinh khung eo
Student 2: Dốt quá! Là terrible Huh, you are a dog
Teacher: Come on, dear It is not polite and not true to say like that He is your friend, not a dog You should say sorry to your friend
Student 1: I want borrow a chair teacher?
Student 2: No My class, my chair No borrow
Student 1: The chair is of the centre, not you
Teacher: Well, dear There are so many available chairs in our class
Student 1: I want borrow a chair teacher?
Student 2: No My class, my chair No borrow
Student 1: The chair is of the centre, not you
Teacher: Well, dear There are so many available chairs in our class
Student 1: Teacher, Tung take my pen
Teacher: Tung, her pencil right?
Student 2: How I know No name here, teacher I just know it on my table It is of class, not she So I can use
Teacher: Now, come on Give it back to her, dear
Student 1: Là lá la Tung love Thanh, Thanh love Tung
Student 1: They doing exercise together You see?
Student: Teacher, Đức Anh break this of the centre (pointed to the handle of the door of the class)
Teacher: This is called the handle
Student: Yes, he broke the handle of the centre, teacher
Student: Teacher, Kiet stop study here, right?
Teacher: No, he doesn’t Why do you think so?
Teacher: He can have many reasons for being absent May be he is so busy with his midterm test in the school
23 Class 14: 52 Sunday Student 1: Nguyen is very bad English
Student 1: His score is “3” again Three “3” Very bad
Student 1: Teacher, Minh is so lazy, He
Student 1: No? Today you do not do your homework again You never do your homework
Student 2: Lie Two times is not never
Student 1: Teacher, Minh Anh is copy my exercise
Student 1: So why do you looking at my book?
Teacher: Come on, please focus on your exercises
Student: Teacher, you know that centre is not good
Student: There are many students in our centre But
Teacher: Maybe, you might say that
Teacher: Now, the whole class, you will describe one person in our class, then the class will guess his or her name Ok?
Student 1: This is a girl She is in white now She is very rich Her mobile phone is very, very “xịn” expensive You know, she lives in Royal City
Royal City is very rich
Student 2: This is a boy He not careful His writing is very ugly
Student 1: Hey, near my house have a Miss “Tây” very beautiful
April 2014 Student 2: Miss Tây cơ á
Student 1: Yes, her hair are yellow
Student 2: Uh, Tây must have hair yellow, blue eyes and very tall
Student 1: Lan Thanh, could you help us this sentence? Is it correct?
Student 2: Of course Let me see Students 3: No, no see Lan Thanh
Student 1: I asking Lan Thanh, not you Not touch in
Student 3: Lan Thanh in my group One her nail also our group Lan Thanh, not help them We have our tasks Focus
Student 1: Where are Lan Thanh study?
Student 2: She is studying in Thuc Nghiem school
Student 1: She must very good speaking English Student 2: Sure Our group will win with her
Student 3: Sure We too have Kiet He learn at Doan Thi Diem, you know Doan Thi Diem too good
Student 4: Yes, we have Thuc Nghiem, Doan Thi Diem and I am in Vinschool, I am good too
Student 5: Sure I know that group Minh Anh in Tu Liem school Not good
Student 6: And Phuong in a private school They are not good at English We will sure win
Student 1: I see your mother take you class Your mother is beautiful
Student 2: Yes The nose my mother is so high
When I grow, I will like my mother My nose is also grow high
Student 1: I don’t think so You should looking at the mirror
Student 1: Last weekend, I meet Bao Thy You know Bao Thy, she is beautiful I am her fan
Student 2: I do not like her Stars is very kiêu ngạo
Student 3: Sure And she is not beautiful really All stars are use cosmetic and surgery