Output file VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES POST – GRADUATE FACULTY ****** NGUYỄN THỊ THỦY TIÊN AN INVESTIGATION INTO IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS CONTAI[.]
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES POST – GRADUATE FACULTY ****** NGUYỄN THỊ THỦY TIÊN AN INVESTIGATION INTO IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS CONTAINING NUMBERS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE (NGHIÊN CỨU NHỮNG THÀNH NGỮ CÓ CÁC TỪ CHỈ SỐ TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT) M.A Minor Thesis Field : English Linguistics Field code : 60 22 15 Ha Noi – 2011 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES POST – GRADUATE FACULTY ****** NGUYỄN THỊ THỦY TIÊN AN INVESTIGATION INTO IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS CONTAINING NUMBERS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE (NGHIÊN CỨU NHỮNG THÀNH NGỮ CÓ CÁC TỪ CHỈ SỐ TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT) M.A Minor Thesis Field : English Linguistics Field code : 60 22 15 Supervisor: Dr Hà Cẩm Tâm Ha Noi – 2011 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS CANDIDATE’S STATEMENT………………………………………………………….i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……… …………………………………………………….ii ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………… ……….… iii TABLE OF CONTENTS…… … ………………… …… ……………………… …iv LIST OF TABLES…………….………………………………………… ……….…….vi PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale of the study………….…….………… ……………….…………… Aims of the study …………….…………… … ……….…………………………….2 Scope of the study…………………………………….………………… ….…………2 Methods of the study.……………….…… ………… ……………… … …………2 Design of the study…… …………………………….…………………….… ………3 PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 Meaning……………………………………………………………………………… 1.2 Senses ………………………… …………………………………………………… 1.3 Definition of idioms ……………………………… ………………………… …… 1.4 Characteristics of idioms ……………………………… ………………………… …8 1.5 Classification of idioms …………………………………………………… …………9 1.6 Idioms and proverbs.……………………………………….…………………………11 1.7 Idioms and collocations ………………………………… ………………………… 12 1.8 Idiom and 'dead' metaphor………………………………… ……………… ………13 v 1.9 Number in English and Vietnamese…………………… ………………………… 13 1.10 Review of previous studies on idioms.…….…….…… ………………………… 16 CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY 2.1 Research question….……………………… ……………………………………… 18 2.2 Data collection…….………………………………………………………….…… 18 2.3 Analytical framework…………………………………………………………………18 2.4 Data analysis.……….………………………………………………….……… …….20 2.4.1 Ideational, interpersonal and relational numerical idioms in English and Vietnamese … ………………………………………………………………………… 20 2.4.2 The frequency of appearance of numbers in English and Vietnamese idioms…………… .23 2.4.3 The connotative meanings of numbers in English and Vietnamese idioms.…………………………………………………………………………………… 28 PART C: CONCLUSION Major findings…………………………………… ………………………………… 33 Implications ……………………………………… ………………………………….33 Suggestions for further studies……………………… ……………… …………… 34 REFERENCES ………… ……………………………….………………………35 APPENDICES vi LIST OF TABLES Table Table Names of table Types of numerical idioms in English and Vietnamese by Page 20 Fernando’s model Table The frequency of appearance of numbers in English idioms 24 Table The frequency of appearance of numbers in Vietnamese idioms 26 Table The connotative meanings of numbers in English and 29 Vietnamese idioms by Spangler and Werner’s model PART A INTRODUCTION Rationale of the study English has been a very important international means of communication in almost fields of life such as economy, politics, culture and education English bridges people over the world together Consequently, the mastering of English has been the desire of modern people who wish to join the international community in order to broaden their knowledge, promote in their career and have wider net of relationship Having the desire of becoming a member of international community in many fields to develop aspects of life, Vietnam is clearly aware of the importance of English as an international communicative means Learning and teaching English have been drawing a lot of attention of the whole Vietnam society English has been an official and compulsory subject in education curriculum Vietnamese people wish to have a good command of English so that they can have the key to the open world The mastering of English is not an easy matter because it requires a large number of linguistic issues such as grammar and pronunciation to have effective communicative activities Among these issues, vocabulary plays a vital role due to its meaning creating In fact, teaching and learning vocabulary are always emphasized In vocabulary teaching and learning, idiom is an issue with which English learners and teachers are concerned because idioms are frequently used to make conversations more natural, interesting and concise in daily communicative activities Thus, the effective use of idioms is a necessary requirement for any language learners who have desire to master it Numbers which are very common in our daily life and have certain cultural characteristics also appear in idioms Idiomatic expressions containing numbers bring about interesting diverse meanings to our utterances and writings Moreover, personally, I myself am extremely interested in idiomatic expressions containing numbers In daily life of Vietnamese and English, I see that numbers have certain significance People admire some numbers and vice versa All of those are factors that give me the inspirations to choose this topic 2 Aims of the study The study is to explore the role of numbers in creating the meanings of idioms in English and Vietnamese Based on that, a brief comparison between idioms in English and Vietnamese is carried out to find out the similarities and differences in the contribution of numbers to their meanings In summary, this study is aimed at: To explore the roles of numbers in the meanings of idioms in English and Vietnamese To find out the similarities and differences in the contribution of numbers to the meanings of idioms in English and Vietnamese In order to achieve these aims, the following question should be answered: What are senses numbers contribute to the meanings of idioms in English and Vietnamese? Scope of the study Because of the limitation of time, material resources, my knowledge and academic ability, this study is only focused on the senses of numbers contribute to the meanings of idioms Specific speaking, the study is focused on revealing what types of English and Vietnamese idioms numbers appear in and their connotative meanings in these idioms That is the foundation for a brief comparison between the contribution of numbers to the meanings of idioms in English and Vietnamese Methods of the study In order to achieve those above-mentioned aims, the study employs both quantitative and qualitative methods By virtue of quantitative method, data have been collected from, literary works, books of idioms and semantics and newspapers, websites and dictionaries in both English and Vietnamese The qualitative method is adopted to interpret the collected data 3 Design of the study The study is consisted of three parts: The first part is Part A “INTRODUCTION” This part provides a brief account of issues which are rationale, aims, scope, methods, and design of the study The second part is Part B “DEVELOPMENT” This part is consisted of two chapters Chapter 1, theoretical background, provides the theoretical information about meanings, sense, idioms, brief information about numbers in English and Vietnamese and the review of previous studies on idioms Chapter is concerned with research question, data collection, analysis framework, data analysis The last part, Part C, “CONCLUSION”, summaries the major findings of the study, provides implications and suggestions for further studies 4 PART B DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND This chapter has provided the theoretical framework for the following analysis of numerical idioms in the main chapter In this chapter, theoretical background is consisted of matters related to meaning; senses; idioms (the definition, the classification, the characteristics; the distinguishing between idioms and proverbs, idioms and collocations, idioms and dead metaphors); brief introductions about numbers in English and Vietnamese and the brief review of previous researches about idioms 1.1 Meaning Lyons (1997:1) said, “Semantics is generally defined as the study of meaning, and this is the definition which we shall initially adopt” Thus core issue in the field of semantics is the meaning In Understanding English Semantics by Dr Nguyen Hoa (2004), the definition of meaning is explained as follow: “According to C.K Ogden and I.A Richards (1923) in “The meaning of meaning”, a number of meanings can be associated with this term”: An intrinsic property The other words annexed to a word in a dictionary The connotation of a word The place of anything in a system That to which the user of symbol ought to be referring That to which the interpreter of a symbol - refers - believes himself to be referring - believes the user to be referring In terms of meaning classification, Hoa, Nguyen (2004: 51-54) divided meaning into seven types with different functions in communication In this study the writer concerns only connotative meaning because the study is aimed at revealing the significance of numbers in numerical idioms Specific speaking, because numbers can be lucky or unlucky numbers in daily life, the study has the desire to explore the role of numbers in creating positive, negative, and neutral meanings for idioms to assess whether they are lucky numbers in idioms or not Spangler and Werner (1989:50) states that one can have three main attitudes: positive (favourable), neutral (impartial), or negative (unfavourable) They provide the following example of a table containing the same characteristics of a woman described in three different ways depending on the attitude the writer has (i.e words with positive, neutral and negative connotation): Positive lady pleasingly plump jolly, entertaining highlights her assets confident, friendly brilliant, clever Neutral woman overweight a sense of humor wears makeup outgoing intelligent Negative dame fat silly, dizzy paints her face domineering know-it-all Leech (1974:23) defines that “connotative meaning is the communicative value of an expression according to what is referred to, exceeds the above contents that are purely conceptual” Keith Alan, (2001:147) states “the connotations that arise from encyclopedic knowledge about its denotation and also from experiences, beliefs, and prejudices about the contexts in which the expression is typically used.” For example, the word BOY has the connotation „STRONG‟ – positive meaning and LION the connotation „CRUEL‟ – negative meaning Siregar (2005) claims that there are two kinds of meaning in semantics: Linguistic meaning and Speaker meaning Linguistic meaning is determined by the meaning of its constituents and their grammatical relations For example: - Be careful of a sharp bend in the road 6 - Please don‟t bend this paper Speaker meaning is what a speaker means in producing an utterance It consists of literal meaning and non-literal meaning Literal meaning does not make hearers have difficulty understanding what the speaker means However, we mean something different from what our words mean by speaking non-literally In that case, it is called non-literal meaning Using idioms is a way of using non-literal meaning because the meaning of an idiomatic expression cannot be predicted either lexically or grammatically This study is concerned with idioms so non-literal meaning is focused on 1.2 Sense According to Hoa, Nguyen (2004), sense is a philosophical term for meaning Sense is the realization of meaning in speech Sense relationship is also an important of the study of language because a word does not only have meaning but also contribute to the meaning of a larger unit, a phrase, a clause, a sentence For example, the senses of the word “library” in the two sentences are different: - He has a quite large library ( a collection of books) - The library is at the end of this street ( a building where books are kept and organized) According to Palmer (1976), sense “relates to the complex system of relationships between linguistic elements themselves (mostly the words)” Hoa, Nguyen (2004) suggests that there are two kinds of sense relation They are substitutional and combinational which correspond to the two Saussurean terms of paradigmatic and syntagmatic Substitutional relations exist between members of the same grammatical category and syntagmatic relations hold between items of different grammatical categories For example: The book car pen was bought yesterday - Substitutional relation is the relation among “book, car, pen” They can replace each other and belong to word class “noun” Grammatical relation is the relation among “ the, book, was, bought, yesterday” which are different grammatical categories 7 1.3 Definitions of idioms In English, there are a large number of idioms often used in daily communicative activities Thus, idioms have been a concern of any English learners because they can not understand idioms by inferring from the literal meanings of words, which leads to difficulty in communicating in both spoken language and the written form People often talk about idioms during the process of learning English, so what is idiom in English? According to Cruse (1986: 37), an idiom is an “expression whose meaning cannot be inferred from the meanings of its parts when they are not parts of idioms” Cruse (1986: 37–38) claims that an idiom must have two compulsory features: „Lexically complex‟ showing that each idiom has to be consisted of more than one lexical constituent and „semantically simplex‟ that is „a single minimal semantic constituent‟ As a result, a nonidiomatic expression can be divided into several semantic constituents For example, the meaning of the expression „at the eleventh hour‟ can not be deducted from the meanings of any its constituent or from its structure The expression means that something happens when it is almost too late, or at the last possible moment Fernando (1996) shares the same view of the definition of idioms At the same time, he has a broad view when considering idioms as multi-word expressions whose meanings are not derived from the meanings of their constituents or their syntactic structures or consist the meaning of one of its constituents while the other constituent denotes a concept which it does not denote in other linguistic contexts Idioms even accept restricted variation such as literal idioms „on the contrary, a happy new year‟ Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary provides the definitions of “idiom” as “a group of words whose meaning is different from the meanings of the individual words” In Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, idiom is defined as “a group of words in a fixed order that have a particular meaning that is different from the meanings of each word understood on its own” Idiom, a colorful way of using English, is used in informal and formal, spoken and written languages to bring about stronger meaning than non-idiomatic phrases in an impressive way by conveying both ideas and implying the attitude of the language user such as disapproval, admiration or humor For instance, “look daggers at someone” is more interesting than “look angrily at someone” although they express the same meaning 8 Palmer (1990) defines idioms as group of words whose meaning can not be inferred from the meanings of separate words Semantically, an idiom is a language unit like a word However, grammatically, an idiom does not function like a word Idioms are grammatically restricted A word can be added suffix or prefix or its form can be changed For instance, the idiom “take a hand” in past simple is “took a hand” However, it can not be changed into “take hands”, “hand” does not accept plural form “s” In Vietnamese dictionary by Vietnam Linguistics Institute (1997), idioms are defined as commonly used fixed expressions whose meanings can not be simply inferred from the meanings of constituents In Vietnamese, this is the definition “thành ngữ tập hợp cố định quen dùng mà nghĩa khơng thể giải thích cách đơn giản nghĩa từ tạo nên nó” In Vietnamese, most of the idioms are incomplete meaningful groups of words so they can not stand alone Idiom often appears in a sentence as a part so as to contribute to the complete meaning of the sentence such as “Cái mặt búng sữa mà bày đặt bàn bạc chuyện yêu đương” In Vietnamese, idioms are frequently used in proverbs, literature, and fork songs 1.4 Characteristics of idioms According to Nunberg, Sag & Wasow‟s (1994, p 492-93), six characteristics of idioms are as follow: • Conventionality: The meanings of idioms can not be deducted from “knowledge of the independent conventions that determine the use of their constituents when they appear in isolation from one another” • Formal inflexibility: The numbers of syntactic frames in which idioms appear are limited Thus, idioms are syntactically restricted • Figuration: The meanings of idioms are non-literal, or figurative thanks to the involvement of idioms in metaphors (take the bull by the horns, time as a substance, time as a path, love as war, and up is more), metonymies (lend a hand, count heads), hyperboles (not worth the paper it‟s printed on) • Proverbiality: Idioms are used to illustrate familiar situations of social life The situations are similar to folksy, familiar images (climbing walls, chewing the fat, spilling beans) 9 • Informality: Idioms have a tendency to appear in colloquial speech • Affect: Evaluative or affective stances can be inferred from the use of idioms 1.5 Classification of idioms Based on the scalar categorization, Fernando (1996: 35) divides idioms into three types: Pure idioms, semi-idioms and literal idioms Pure idioms: They are multi-word expressions whose meanings are not derived from the meanings of their constituents or their syntactic structures For example, idiom “shoot the breeze” has the meaning which is not related to the meaning of the words “shoot” and “breeze” Semi-idioms: “A semi-idiom has one or more literal constituents and at least one with a non-literal subsense, usually special to that co-occurrence relation and no other.” In other words, the meaning of a semi-idiom consists of the meaning of one of its constituents while the other constituent denotes a concept which it does not denote in other linguistic context For example, the meaning of greenhouse includes the literal meaning of “house” but not the meaning of “green” A greenhouse is not a house of green color, but a house for growing plants However, when “green” co-occurs with other words like “window, door, trees, pencil…”, it is an adjective denoting color and modifying these nouns Literal idioms: “They are …less semantically complex than pure and semi-idioms” They accept restricted variation For instance, some literal idioms are such as “on the contrary, a happy new year…” Based on the Halliday (1985), Fernando (1996: 72) suggests the functional categorization of idioms which divides idioms into ideational idioms, interpersonal idioms and relational idioms Ideational idioms: They “either signify message content, experiential phenomena including the sensory, the affective, and the evaluative or they characterize the nature of message, for example, as being specific or non-specific” For example, mess about with expresses an action or have blood on one‟s hands demonstrate an event 10 Message content: Actions : Tear down, wear different hats Events : Have blood on one‟s hands, turning point Situations : Be in a pickle, be up a gum tree People and thing : A red herring, a man about town Attributes : Matter – of – fact, lily-white Evaluations : Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, a watched pot never boils Emotions : Tear one‟s hair, lose one‟s heart Characterizing the message: Specific information : What I am saying is, my guess is Non-specific information : And so on, kind of Interpersonal idioms: The kind of idioms has interactional function or “characterize the nature of the message” such as say no more and as a matter of fact Interactional strategies are concerned with: Greetings and farewells : See you later, bye for now Directives : Never mind, say no more Agreement : Say no more, that‟s true „ Feelers‟, eliciting opinions : How you feel?, what you think? Rejections : I wasn‟t born yesterday, you‟re joking Characterizing the message involves: Newsworthiness: Guess what!, what you know? Sincerity : As a matter of fact, believe you me Calls for brevity : Get to the point, cut the cackle Uncertainty : Mind you, I daresay Relational idioms: They make the discourse have coherence Thus, they can be “grouped with conjunctions” such as and, but, because as having a textual function They can also be divided into : Integrative information: Adversative : On the contrary, far from Comparison : On the other hand, on the other Causal : So that when, no wonder 11 Concessive : At the same time Addition : What is more, in addition to Sequencing or chaining information Sequencing meta-discoursal information : In the first place, last but not least Sequencing temporal information : One day, up to now 1.6 Idioms and proverbs It is essential to distinguish idioms and proverbs because language users tend to find it difficult to make differences In Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary, a proverb is defined as “a well-known phrase or sentence that gives advice or says something that is generally true, for example „Waste not, want not‟” In Cambridge Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary, a proverb is “a short sentence, etc., usually known by many people, stating something commonly experienced or giving advice” Another definition by Vu Ngoc Phan (2000: 39) is that a proverb as “a complete saying expressing one idea of comment, experience, morality, justice or criticism” Proverbs and idioms have many in common so there have been books introducing the collection of both proverbs and idioms Firstly, both idioms and proverbs are the product of human‟s thought cultures and the life experience and are orally exchanged from generation to generation as the matter of fact or the truth without any doubt Secondly, they have fixedness showing that any changes such as constituent substitution or word order may lead to the change in meaning Another similarity is the use of metaphor to have nonliteral or figurative meaning Thus, their meaning must be understood in metaphorical way without being based on the literal meanings of compositional words Despite those aforementioned similarities, both proverb and idiom has their typical characteristics The first difference is grammatical structure Whereas an idiom is an equivalent unit to a word or a phrase as parts of sentence, a proverb is a complete sentence or a phrase expressing a full idea The second one is the function A proverb is “a wellknown phrase or sentence that gives advice” and expresses “one idea of comment, experience, morality, justice or criticism” As a result, it has perceptive function, aesthetic function and educational function For instance, the proverb “Money makes the mare go” 12 expresses a comment about the negative aspect of money Its perspective function helps people realize the harmful power of money controlling things immorally Educational function advises people not to be blinded by the power of money and to avoid its bad affects Besides, its aesthetic function is making people be aware of abstract message through a lovely, exaggerative, figurative way On the contrary, idioms have no the three functions because of not demonstrating judgments, giving advice or stating general truth about life For example, the idiom “be on cloud nine” expresses the happiness of a person when a wonderful thing happens but it provides no educational lessons or life experiences In summary, the differences in structures and functions make proverbs and idioms distinguishable 1.7 Idioms and collocations Idiom and collocation have both similarity and difference Howard Jackson (1990: 256) regards collocation as “a lexical relationship of mutual expectancy, the presence of a particular lexical item gives the rise to the greater chance likelihood that other lexical items belonging to the same area of meaning will also occur.” Mc Carthy (1996: 16) regards collocation as corruption-occurrence between words Besides, Chistra Fernando (1996:27) views collocation as the company words keep In terms of difference, the meaning of an idiom can not literally derive from the meanings of its constituent; however, the meaning of a collocation is the combination of the literal meanings of its separate words Moreover, collocations are not as restricted as idioms in terms of word substitution Whereas, word substitution can make an idiom lose its idiomatic meaning and no longer be an idiom, a collocation accepts that despite the change in its meaning but remains as another collocation There are some examples such collocations „catch a bus/ a train, strong/ weak/ black/ white/ hot coffee, a cold/an icy/a chill/a biting etc wind‟ Despite the differences, Fernando Chistra (1996: 36) suggests that both idioms and collocations “show a habitual co-occurrence of words” These combinations of words are widely acknowledged naturally and can be recognized without difficulty such as idioms „spill the beans, foot the bill‟ and collocations „heavy/torrential rain, heavy /traffic/rain/snow‟ 13 1.8 Idiom and 'dead' metaphor Cruse (1986) suggests that idioms and dead metaphor should be distinguished While a metaphor, a kind of hidden comparison is an expression referring to one particular thing or object which is different from the thing or the object literally described in this expression, a dead metaphor is a metaphor in which words lose direct meanings and have only figurative meanings In Hoa, Nguyen (2004), the word „ponder‟ originally meant „weigh‟, but now it has the meaning „ consider thoughtfully‟ Thus, idioms and dead metaphors are interpreted in the same way As far as syntax is concerned, both dead metaphors and idioms are fixed A dead metaphor will no longer be a dead metaphor if its syntactic structure is changed 1.9 Numbers in English and Vietnamese This part is aimed at providing brief introduction about numbers, their functions in daily life and cultural roles Based on that, the relationship between numbers and the meanings of idioms containing numbers in English and Vietnamese can be established and made clearer 1.9.1 Numbers in English Because the study is concerned with only idioms containing cardinal numbers and ordinal numbers, only cardinal and ordinal numbers are taken consideration into According to Graham Flegg (2002) in the book “Numbers: Their history and meaning”, cardinal numbers are the basic numbers used for counting such as one, two or nine Ordinal numbers are used for indicating order The majority of ordinal numbers are formed by affixing the -th suffix onto the cardinal number such as tenth and eighth except for the irregular cases such as first (1st), second (2nd), third (3rd), and fifth (5th) Numbers are a part of language They are frequently used in daily activities such as counting, arranging orders, making measurements or giving assessment As the 14 relationship between language and culture is inseparable, numerical words play a role in human cultural communication In English culture, there are certain numbers considered as lucky numbers in human psychology In “Handbook of international research in mathematics education”, by Lyn D English, Maria Giuseppina Bartolini Bussi (2008), the world is made of three parts involving the land, the sea and the sky; nature is consisted of three parts which are animals, plants and minerals; the spirit, the flesh and the soul compose a human Thus, number “three” appears in quite a lot of sayings like „the third time is the charm‟, „number three is always fortunate‟ and „all good things go by threes‟ “Three‟ is seen as a perfect number in the eyes of Pythagoras, an ancient Greek philosopher because he suggests that everything can be divided into numbers and the best number choice is the number „three‟ symbolizing three stages of a process including the beginning, the middle and the completion According to Sin-wai Chan and David E Polland ( 2001) in “ An encyclopedia of translation : Chinese- English, English – Chinese”, there is another lucky number which is “seven” because seven refers to the planets such as Sun, Moon, Venus, Jupiter, Mercy, Mars, and Saturn that are accompanied with the God Furthermore, according to Christian religion, it took the God seven days to create the world Consequently, in the western religion, there are seven virtues consisting trust, hope, tenacity, prudent, control, fair, and benevolence and seven sins including gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, pride, lust, and envy On the contrary, the number „two‟ is considered as an unlucky number or as source of evil so the meanings of English numerical idioms containing „two‟ are often something not good such as two by four and two bits Besides, thirteen is also the first avoided number in western culture due to its unlucky meaning That dated back to the old story from Holy Bible that Jesus was betrayed by his thirteenth follower while having the last dinner with the other twelve followers Here are brief introduction about cultural significance in Bible in the book “Numbers in the Bible: God‟s Design in Biblical Numerology” by Robert Johnston (1999): In Bible, the number “1” is the symbol of unity As a cardinal number it denotes unity; as an ordinal it denotes primacy It can be inferred that in English culture, that number can be seen a number with positive meaning or neutral meaning 15 Number „two‟ can be considered as an unlucky number or as source of evil so the meanings of English numerical idioms containing „two‟ are often something not good such as two by four and two bits In English, number “3” is considered as a lucky number and people often use it to divide things into three parts In the West, four represents the physical world, as the elements (Fire, Water, Air, Earth), the seasons and as the cardinal points (North, South, East, and West) It can be seen as a significant number Five is four plus one (4+1) We have had hitherto the three persons of the Godhead, and their manifestation in creation Now we have a further revelation of a People called out from mankind, redeemed and saved, to walk with God from earth to heaven Hence, Redemption follows creation Inasmuch as in consequence of the fall of man creation came under the curse and was "made subject to vanity," therefore man and creation must be redeemed Thus we have: Father Creation Son Redemption Spirit These are the five great mysteries, and five is therefore the number of GRACE Six is man's number, because God created man on the sixth day It often symbolizes imperfection, because it falls short of the perfect number seven So it can be concluded that in English culture, “6” is not considered as a lucky number Seven represents the number of perfection because God rested on the seventh day and it is the symbol of virtue, and self-sacrifice It is believed in some western cultures, that the seventh son of a seventh son has the power of healing and that the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter has the gift of interpreting dreams In Christianity, eight represents rebirth or resurrection It can be considered neither lucky number nor unlucky number In Christianity, there are nine choirs of angels, nine gifts of the Holy Spirit, and nine; as in times 3, as it refers to the Holy Trinity Thus, “9” can be seen as a lucky number 16 1.9.2 Numbers in Vietnamese In daily life, we can see that numbers are usually used in Vietnamese daily activities such as talking about age, sizes of shirts and shoes In addition, they bring about certain cultural colors According to Mingtan (2002) in “How to attract Asian women”, there are unlucky numbers such as three and four It can be seen that number „three‟ is not lucky number in Vietnamese culture When people get married or start going out to something important, they avoid the date having „three‟ In addition to, the number „ four‟ represent many things such as natural phenomenon ( four directions : East, West, South, North; weather : Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter ), social phenomenon ( job : solider, farmer, cadre, business man ; art : music – chess – poetry ), human being ( moral, citizen‟s responsibilities ) However, it can be seen as unlucky number because it is related to „death‟ People often say „birth, age, illness, death‟ For example, people not want this number „four‟ appearing in their number plates On the contrary, in the book “ Viet Nam Culture” by Bobbie Kalman ( 2002) and the book “ The little Sai Gon cook book : Vietnamese Cuisine and Culture in Southern” by Ann Le, Julie Fay (2006) , Vietnamese consider numbers „six, eight, nine‟ are lucky numbers : The number „six‟ represents luckiness, happiness and material benefits; the number „ eight‟ symbolizes achievements and becoming rich ; the number „ nine‟ represents power 1.10 Review of previous studies on idioms Studies on idioms have been paid a lot of attention by many researchers Thus, it can be said that the collection of idioms researches is not small In Viet Nam, there have been studies on English and Vietnamese idioms The research “Idiomatic expressions containing the word „dog‟ in English and Vietnamese” by Tu, Dao Thanh ( 2007) was aimed at studying idiomatic expressions containing the word „dog‟ in English and compare with those in Vietnamese to establish their similarities and difference and show the specific features of English and Vietnamese cultures about dog The study found out that in English culture, dog was the symbol of night, darkness and afterworlds – the world of death whereas in Vietnamese culture, dog was one of the pure Vietnamese relics to protect houses as well as the spiritual life of the Vietnamese At the 17 same time, the study also explored that in both English and Vietnamese, idiomatic meanings of the phrases and sentences containing “dog” had more negative meanings than positive ones However, there were some differences In English, many idiomatic expressions containing “dog” expressed more good personal characteristics or high status of people and the convenient conditions and good luck but these idiomatic meanings were hardly seen in Vietnamese Another study is “An investigation into the English words and idioms denoting happiness.” Lam, Nguyen Thi Van (2002) The purpose of the study was to find out the answers to the research question “What are the grammatical features and semantic structures of „happy‟ and other words and idioms denoting happiness?” The study found out that „happy‟ was an adjective to denote „happiness‟ It was a neutral, generic term It was descriptively synonymous with „glad, pleased, delighted, elated‟; nearly synonymous with „cheerful, gay, merry, exultant, gleeful, jubilant‟, and antonymous with „unhappy, sad‟ In terms of words and idioms denoting happiness, there were adjectives denoting happiness, nouns denoting happiness, and verbs denoting happiness and idioms denoting happiness Their grammatical features depended on the sub-classes they belonged Tải FULL (45 trang): https://bit.ly/40xWujk to Dự phòng: fb.com/TaiHo123doc.net Gap identified here is in Vietnamese, there seems to be the shortage of numerical idiom researches Thus this study on idiomatic expression containing numbers in English and Vietnamese was carried out to find out the contribution of numbers to the meanings of idioms in English and Vietnamese 18 CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY This chapter focuses on the discussion and analysis of the collected data to explore the contributions of numbers to the meanings of idioms in English and Vietnamese In other words, numbers contribute to what types of idioms (ideational, interpersonal and relational), contribute what types of connotative meanings (positive, neutral, negative) to the overall meanings of idioms Moreover, a brief comparison between English and Vietnamese numerical idioms will be carried out to reveal similarities and differences between the roles of numbers in non-literal meanings of idioms of two languages 2.1 Research question In order to the above aims, the study tries to find out the answers to the following question: What are senses numbers contribute to the meanings of idioms in English and Vietnamese? 2.2 Data collection Tải FULL (45 trang): https://bit.ly/40xWujk Dự phòng: fb.com/TaiHo123doc.net This study is about idioms so idioms are collected from many sources such as books on semantics and idioms, newspapers, websites, dictionaries and literal works Popular idioms containing lucky and unlucky numbers in English and Vietnamese were collected 157 idioms were collected There are 72 English numerical idioms and 85 Vietnamese numerical idioms 2.3 Analytical Framework The analysis of data is based on the following theoretical framework by Fernando (1996) introduced in the literature review Thus, the part will provide the brief summary of this theory 19 Fernando (1996) divides idioms into ideational idioms, interpersonal idioms and relational idioms in order to explore the meanings of idioms and their functions Based on that, it can be inferred what the roles of the numbers appearing in idioms are There are three types of idioms: - Ideational idioms: They are idioms expressing message contents such as actions, events, situations, people and thing, attributes, evaluations and emotions or characterizing the message such as showing specific or nonspecific information For example, the idiom “have blood on one‟s hand” is an idiom to describe an event which is „someone must be responsible for someone's death or is guilty of causing someone's death‟ because an event is that something important happens (Oxford Advanced Dictionary Online) Another example, the idiom „be in a pickle‟ is an idiom to describe a situation The idiomatic meaning is being in a difficult situation - Interpersonal idioms: They are idioms performing interactional strategies such as greetings and farewells, directives, agreements, „ feelers‟, eliciting opinions, rejections or characterizing newsworthiness, sincerity, calls the message by expressing for brevity, uncertainty For example, the idiom „bye for now‟ is a farewell Another example is „say no more‟ that means „I agree; I will it; I concede, no need to continue talking‟ Thus it is used to express agreement - Relational idioms: Relational idioms provide integrative information such as addition or comparison, adversative, causal, concessive and supply sequencing meta-discoursal information and sequencing temporal information For example, „in addition to‟ means „furthermore, besides, moreover‟ Thus, it is an idiom that denotes „addition‟ Another example is „in the first place‟ that is an idiom to denote „the beginning‟ It has the function of pointing out the order of information mentioned Thus, it is called an idiom of sequencing meta-discousal information In order to explore the contribution of numbers to the connotative meanings of idioms in English and Vietnamese, the study also takes the theoretical view of connotative meanings by Spangler and Werner (1989) There are three types of attitudes when a word or a phrase is used Thus, the meanings of numbers in idioms in English and Vietnamese are analyzed and divided into three types: Positive meaning (expressing favorable attitude), 6814212