A study of idioms about weather in english and vietnamese from a perspective of components

It is conducted with the hope of finding out the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese idioms about weather in terms of structural and semantic components.. However

HUNG YEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES - GRADUATION PAPER FIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS A STUDY OF IDIOMS ABOUT WEATHER IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE FROM A PERSPECTIVE OF COMPONENTS (NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ THÀNH NGỮ VỀ CHỦ ĐỀ THỜI TIẾT TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT TRÊN BÌNH DIỆN HỢP PHẦN) Supervisor: Do Phuc Huong, PhD Student: Pham Thu Hue Student number: 11317137 Hung Yen – 2021 HUNG YEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES - GRADUATION PAPER FIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS A STUDY OF IDIOMS ABOUT WEATHER IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE FROM A PERSPECTIVE OF COMPONENTS Student: Pham Thu Hue Student number: 11317137 Supervisor: Do Phuc Huong, PhD (ký tên) Hung Yen – 2021 i DECLARATION I, the undersigned, hereby certify that the study entitled “A study of idioms about weather in English and Vietnamese from a perspective of components” is the result of my own research and has not been submitted to any other universities or institutions Except where the reference is indicated, no other person‟s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis Signature Pham Thu Hue ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The thesis could not have been completed without the help and support from my supervisor, teachers and closest relatives First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Mrs Do Phuc Huong, my supervisor, who has patiently and constantly supported me through the stages of the study, and whose stimulating ideas, expertise, and suggestions have inspired me greatly through my growth as an academic researcher I am also grateful to all my teachers at the Faculty of Foreign Language in Hung Yen university of Technology and Education to give me an opportunity and the best conditions to this study Many thanks to my colleagues and many others whose support and help me to have this thesis accomplished Last but not least, I am greatly indebted to my family for their patience, endless love, and devotion Whatever choices I have made, they have always stood by me and believed in me I am immensely thankful for all the assistance they have given me It is the support of all of the above that has enabled the completion of this study, and for this I remain eternally grateful iii ABSTRACT Learning a foreign language is not simply to interpret and communicate but brings learners more than they can see Each language has its own particular features and values among which idioms mentionable Idiomatic expressions are undoubtedly encountered in almost every day conversations, newspapers, magazines, TVs or radios Idioms are used to express ideas in figurative styles They bring the vividness and richness to the speakers' speeches This is the reason why the more skillfully a person use idioms in his conversations, the more effectively he can establish his communicative relationship One more important thing is that the general present tendencies are towards idiomatic usage; therefore, knowing how to use idioms effectively in the right situations is becoming essential Therefore, this thesis aims at analyzing the structural and semantic components of idioms in English and Vietnamese It is conducted with the hope of finding out the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese idioms about weather in terms of structural and semantic components The findings of the study, to some extent, help the teachers and the learners have a better understanding of English and Vietnamese languages through the idioms Data used for analysis in this study are mainly collected from books and dictionaries Componential analysis, describing, comparing and contrasting, experimental research are regarded as the main methods used in the present study iv Contents DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale: 1.2 Aims of the study: 1.3 Research question: …………………………………………………………………… 1.4 Scope of the study: 1.5 Significance of the study: 1.6 Methodology: 1.6.1 Major Methods: 1.6.2 Data Collection Techniques: 1.6.3 Data Analysis Techniques: 1.7 Design of the study: CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Previous research: 2.1.1 Definitions of idioms: 2.1.3 Previous research works on idioms in Vietnamese: 2.2 Theoretical background: 2.2.1 Syntactic and Semantic Features of Idioms: 2.2.2 Classification of idioms: 12 2.2.3 Idioms and other language units: 15 2.3 Summary: 16 CHAPTER THE STUDY OF IDIOMS BY WEATHER IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE 17 3.1 Structural Components of Idioms by weather in English and Vietnamese: 17 3.1.1 Symmetrical idioms: 17 3.1.2 Similized idioms: 18 3.1.3 Non-symmetrical idioms: 19 v References: I CHAPTER CONCLUSION 21 4.1 Recapitulation: 21 4.2 Concluding remarks: 21 4.3 Limitations of the Study: 22 CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale: English is now an effective medium of international communication In Vietnam, English has long been considered as a tool of international communication, and together with its rising importance, the need of learning English is becoming more and more urgent It can't be denied that all foreign learners in general and Vietnamese learners in particular desire to master English as the native speakers; however, they usually face a lot of difficulties that prevent them from gaining successful conversations One of the reasons for these problems lies in the way people perceive and use idioms Idioms can be considered as an attractive and popular phenomenon of every language They are able to be used to indicate the speakers' intention more interestingly and more persuasively than individual words It is the reason why idioms, a special part of a language, seem to be the familiar elements which occur not only in daily conversations but also in literature works People are likely familiar with idioms which are used to express ideas in an attractive and figurative way Therefore, understanding the meanings of idiomatic expressions is essential and useful for English users Traditionally, the meanings of idioms are quite implicit, and they usually derive from unusual forms, stylistic devices and conventional knowledge From cognitive view, the meanings of idioms can be analyzable or at least motivated from its component parts Although idioms are not easy to comprehend, it is not necessary for learners to disregard idioms in studying languages because idioms are an unseparated element of a language and so common in daily use In the process of communication, we sometimes come cross some expressions that we can't understand although we can comprehend the meaning of their every single word It seems that the main reason why we cannot understand what these sentences are about lies in the low level of linguistic competence of idioms and the way we analyze the components of idioms Several linguists have given a lot of definitions about an idiom basing on its fixed characteristics For example, "An idiom is a fixed group of words with a special different meaning from the meaning of several words" (Dictionary of English Idioms, 1979) Sharing the same point of view, Hoàng Văn Hành (2002) considered an idiom as a fixed group of words which is firm in terms of structure, complete and figurative in terms of meaning, and is widely used in daily speaking In fact, there have been many studies on idioms containing such topics as food, weather, animals, colors, etc However, as a teacher of English, the need of improving my English idiom teaching and learning urges me to conduct the thesis entitled “A study of idioms about weather in English and Vietnamese from component perspective” to find out the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese in terms of idioms containing the words denoting weather from the component perspective 1.2 Aims of the study: The study is conducted to improve the English teaching and learning in general and idiom teaching and learning in particular The findings of the study, to some extent, help the teachers and the learners have a better understanding of English and Vietnamese languages through the idioms about weather In order to achieve the aim, the study is expected to reach the following objectives: - To uncover how the components of idioms about weather are organized structurally and semantically in English and Vietnamese; - To find out the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese idioms about weather in terms of structural and semantic components 1.3 Research Questions: The objectives of the study can be elaborated into the research questions as follows: How are the components of idioms by weather organized structurally and semantically in English and Vietnamese? What are the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese idioms by weather in terms of structural and semantic components? 1.4 Scope of the study: I myself have found idioms such an interesting English aspect that is chosen as the topic of the study Idioms in both English and Vietnamese have been investigated from several different points of view However, due to the limited time and knowledge, the author only focuses on English and Vietnamese idioms by weather from component perspective The idioms in the present study are collected from dictionaries, books available in English and Vietnamese 1.5 Significance of the study: Theoretically, the findings of the study, to some extent, prove that the components forming idioms can be analyzed from both structural and semantic perspectives The idioms about weather are quite popular in both English and Vietnamese; therefore, the investigation is highly reliable in terms of theoretical framework suggested Practically, with the purpose of making a study on the components of idioms by weather in English and Vietnamese, the study will be able to provide Vietnamese learners of English with better mastering how to apply this kind of idioms in sensible ways and how to understand the meanings of idioms thoroughly, effectively and naturally 1.6 Methodology: 1.6.1 Major Methods: Due to the main aims and objectives of the study, description, componential analysis, contrastive exploitation and experimental method would be mainly carried out throughout the process Also, the thesis makes use of the English language as the target and the Vietnamese one as the source language (the base language) 1.6.2 Data Collection Techniques: During the process of investigating materials from various sources, the structural and semantic components of idioms by weather in English and Vietnamese are described and analyzed Then, techniques such as comparison, transformation, and contrastive analysis are applied in a quick-minded and active way to find out a general picture about the idioms about weather in both languages Due to the results achieved, the author takes a careful contrastive analysis to find out the similarities and differences between English and 12 Although many linguists affirm that idioms have their own figurative and imaginary meanings, we shouldn‟t consider this as an absolute fact In Vietnamese, there are also some idioms which have literal sense coming from the meanings of their components They may be comparative idioms such as “nát tương” (as pasty as soy), “đen cột nhà cháy” (as black as a sweep) and “bám đỉa đói” (to stick like a limpet), whose imagery comes from the images compared with activities or properties Some Sino Vietnamese idioms such as “nhất cử lưỡng tiện” (to kill two birds with one stone), “bán tín bán nghi” (half doubtful) and “bách phát bách trúng” (to hit the mark one hundred times out of one hundred) also have literal sense basing on the meanings of their components 2.2.2 Classification of idioms: In both English and Vietnamese there exist many different ways of idiom classification among linguists who have based on different categories such as motivation, function, origin, meaning and kind, etc However, each language has its own characteristics and the idiom classification is also based on different points of view a) Classification of English idioms: Some authors have classified English idioms into topic groups and countries They have also listed the amount of idioms belonging to each topic or country Idioms by topic: - Animals: the birds and the bees - Buildings and construction: to drive someone up the wall - Character and appearance: as cold as ice - Children and babies: like a kid in a candy store - Clothes: at the drop of a hat - Colors: black and white - Death: at death‟s door 13 - Drinking and pubs: to turn water in to wine - Drugs: close but no cigar - Food: as cool as a cucumber - Law: to bring someone to book - Men and women: man in the street - Money: for my money - Music: to call the tune - Nature: as cold as a stone - Numbers: to feel like a million - Plants and flowers: to gild the lily Idioms by country: - American English: as mad as a wrongly shot hog - Australian English: to cut down the tall poppies - British English: by a long chalk - Canadian English: The Mountie always gets his man - Indian English: to the needful - Irish English: Even the dogs in the street know Basing on parts of speech, Jennifer Seidl – W McMordie (1988) gave eight groups of idioms as follows: Idiomatic pairs: - Pairs of adjectives: cut and dried - Pairs of nouns: wear and tear 14 - Pairs of adverbs: more or less - Pairs of verbs: hit and miss - Identical pairs: bit by bit b) Classification of Vietnamese idioms: According to Luong Van Dang [9], Vietnamese idioms (in “Thành ngữ tiếng Việt”) can be classified as follows: Idioms with three single words or more: e.g: Treo đầu dê, bán thịt chó (He cries wine and sells vinegar) Idioms with a single word and a compound word: e.g: Bé hạt tiêu (little body, great mind) Idioms with two compound words: e.g: Buôn gian bán lận (to cheat in commerce) Idioms as simple sentences: e.g: Châu chấu đá xe (David fights Goliath) Idioms with alliterations or compound words: e.g: Ăn bớt ăn xén (to take a stealthy rake off) Idioms with symmetrical comparisons: e.g: Đen mực (inky-black) Idioms with summary comparisons: e.g: Như cá gặp nước (feel like duck in water) However, the common structures of Vietnamese idioms are the structures which have two balanced members Idioms are also formed by joining rhymes (usually interior rhymes) such as “bóc ngắn cắn dài” (to live beyond one‟s means), “bé xé to” (to make mountains out of molehills), etc These structures not only make idioms easy to say and remember, but they also keep the fixation and unshakeable characteristics of idioms According to Nguyễn Công Đức (1995), Vietnamese idioms can be divided into two main groups: Idioms with symmetrical structures: 15 Symmetrical structures consist of two members which have the same forms and harmonious balanced contents (opposite or supplement of each other) These structures form a large number of idioms in general and idioms showing speaking activities in particular They are concretized by the following expressions: - AxAy (A: verb; x, y: combinative words) e.g: Ăn khơng nói có (to be dishonest) - BxBy (B: noun; x, y: combinative words) e.g: Mồm năm miệng mười (loud-mouthed) - CxCy (C: adjective; x, y: combinative words) e.g: Vụng ăn vụng nói (not good at speaking) - DxDy (D: numeral; x, y: combinative words) e.g: Nửa đùa nửa thật (half seriously) 2.2.3 Idioms and other language units: Words and groups of words including idioms make a vocabulary system of a language (A Dictionary of Vietnamese, Viện ngôn ngữ học 2004) It means that the vocabulary system of a language is very complex It consists of a lot of different linguistic units Therefore, distinguishing idioms from other linguistic units is necessary Several linguists ( Nguyễn Văn Mệnh 1972; Nguyễn Lực & Lương Văn Ðang 1978; Nguyễn Cơng Đức 1995; Hồng Văn Hành 2008; Nguyễn Văn Trào 2009; etc) have made attempts to distinguish idioms from some of other linguistic units such as collocations, proverbs, cliches and catchphrases, etc However, they in fact usually overlap to some extent In the present inquiry, idioms and some of other linguistic units are distinguished according to their structural realization, relationship among components, meaning, nominative function, syntactic function, and denotation Most of the linguists share the same point of view that an idiom is a fixed expression whose meaning is usually different from the meanings of the combination of its individual words According to Greenbaum (1974) and others, collocations can be understood as sequences of lexical items which habitually co-occur in a language so that the occurrence of one item can often predict the presence of the other (cited in Nguyễn Văn Trào 2009) It means that the components of the collocations can form syntactic units 16 Collocations are also regarded as “fixed groups of words having been used for a long time and their meanings come from the meanings of their components” (Viện ngôn ngữ học, 2004: 810) and “Collocations, or recurrent word combinations” (Benson, 1989), are loosely fixed, regularly repeated, and come readily to mind Collocations can be understood as sequences of lexical items which habitually co-occur in a language so that the occurrence of one item can often predict the presence of the other (Greenbaum, 1974) 2.3 Summary: The chapter has presented theoretical background that is employed for conducting the whole graduation thesis along with the review of literature with certain previous works on idioms both in English and in Vietnamese Idioms in both English and Vietnamese are described in terms of structural and semantic components It seems that Vietnamese idioms from cognitive view have not been adequately investigated Most scholars in Vietnam pay attention to the forms and meanings of idioms from traditional view These studies are initial investigations on the specific aspects of idioms In addition, this chapter also focused on distinguishing idioms with other language units so that we can easily identify idioms As far as I am concerned, there have been no studies investigating the structural and semantic components of idioms by weather in both English and Vietnamese in a fully systematical way 17 CHAPTER THE STUDY OF IDIOMS BY WEATHER IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE This chapter presents the study of idioms by weather in both English and Vietnamese about the structural and semantic components 3.1 Structural Components of Idioms by weather in English and Vietnamese: Structural Components of Idioms by weather in English and Vietnamese involves symmetrical idioms, similized idioms and non-symmetrical idioms 3.1.1 Symmetrical idioms: a) Realization: A symmetrical idiom always contains two parts having opposite meanings and together forming the idiomatic meaning, is stated by Nguyễn Công Đức (1995) Symmetrical idioms are also called „idiomatic pairs‟ which are established due to the pairs of adjectives, nouns, adverbs, verbs, etc (Seidl & Mc Mordie 1988) In the present study, a symmetrical idiom by weather is generally regarded as one which has two opposite component parts (A and B), for example, “rain or shine” (can guess anything happen or not) And these two parts are usually parallel According to Hoàng Văn Hành (2008), the most typical feature of a symmetrical idiom is the symmetry of the component parts forming an idiom The symmetry can be created by meanings or words The idiom “Mau nắng, vắng mưa” is an example The first part “mau” is opposite to the second one “vắng”, and “nắng” is opposite to “mưa” b) Structural Components: In English, symmetrical idioms containing weather usually have three components, one of which is a connector Some may contain more than three components, but one of their constituents must be a connector The connectors are used to combine two symmetrical parts of the idioms This is specified in the following forms: - A or B 18 Let‟s have a look at the idiom “rain or shine” (can guess anything happen or not) “Rain” as A is opposite to “shine” as B, and they are both nouns - A and B “Rain cats and dogs” is an idiom containing weather, it means rain heavily The connector “and” are used to combine two symmetrical parts A (as well as B) can be a clause or sentence In general, the first part (A) of the symmetrical idiom in English can be a noun The two parts of these idioms usually belong to the same types of linguistic units; hence, the second one (B) usually corresponds with the first one A and B are completely symmetrical whether they contain one or more component parts The connector of these idioms can be “or”, “and” or comma In Vietnamese, most symmetrical idioms have four components which are divided into two opposite parts (each contains two constituents) The symmetry of these idioms is established due to semantic and syntactic properties of the components belonging to the two parts (Nguyễn Cơng Ðức (1995), Hồng Văn Hành (2008)) In other words, the first part is opposite to the second one in terms of both syllables and meanings For example, the idiom “Vàng mây gió, đỏ mây mưa” has two symmetrical parts “Vàng mây” is opposite to “đỏ mây” (the clouds turn to yellow, the wind will blow and the clouds turn to red, it will rain) Structurally, it is realized that a similized idiom is similar to an ordinary comparison; however, they differ from each other in some ways An ordinary comparison refers to two things belonging to the same category to show the degree of their similarity or difference On the contrary, a similized idiom involves one thing which is put in the same line with another of a different category to emphasize or exaggerate certain properties It is called idiomatic comparison which is used to make the language more vivid 3.1.2 Similized idioms: a) Realization: Similized idioms are fixed groups of words coming from comparisons and having the figurative meanings (Hoàng Văn Hành (2008: 101)) For example, “Mây kéo lên ngàn mưa trút”, etc 19 Structurally, it is realized that a similized idiom is similar to an ordinary comparison; however, they differ from each other in some ways An ordinary comparison refers to two things belonging to the same category to show the degree of their similarity or difference On the contrary, a similized idiom involves one thing which is put in the same line with another of a different category to emphasize or exaggerate certain properties It is called idiomatic comparison which is used to make the language more vivid In the present study, similized idioms are regarded as fixed groups of words which are formed by their specific comparative means such as “as…as”, “like”, “as”, etc in English (Seidl & McMordie (1988)) and “như”, “bằng”, “tày”, “chẳng”, etc in Vietnamese (Hoàng Văn Hành (2008)) b) Structural Components: In English, a similized idiom is singled out by its specific structure of comparison The idiom “A face like thunder” (very angry) is an example “A face” as A is regarded as the topic of comparison and “thunder” as B being the noun phrase compared In Vietnamese, a similized idiom is also singled out by its specific structure of comparison (Hoàng Văn Hành (1976), Nguyễn Công Ðức (1995)) The idiom “Mây kéo lên ngàn mưa trút” is an example “Mưa” as A is regarded as the topic of comparison and “trút” as B being the verb compared “Như” (sometimes replaced by “bằng”, “tày”, “chẳng”, etc) is a connector used to combine A and B 3.1.3 Non-symmetrical idioms: a) Realization: Non-symmetrical idioms not have two symmetrical component parts and their idiomatic meanings are formed in a figurative way (Hoàng Văn Hành 2008: 77) Indeed, the idioms whose structural components are different from those of symmetrical and similized idioms are regarded as non-symmetrical ones In other words, a non-symmetrical idiom does not contain two symmetrical parts, or it is not formed by its specific comparative means such as “as…as”, “like”, “as”, etc in English and “như”, “bằng”, “tày”, “chẳng”, etc in Vietnamese b) Structure Components: 20 Non-symmetrical idioms are quite common in English Let‟s have a look at the idiom “save money for a rainy day” (keep money for your future) This idiom does not have two symmetrical parts as well as comparative means The structure of the idiom is a solid combination of three components (save money, a and rainy day) Therefore, it is regarded as a nonsymmetrical idiom The forms of these idioms are classified under three general headings: phrase, clause and sentence 21 CHAPTER CONCLUSION 4.1 Recapitulation: In order to obtain the study‟s aims, the author firstly presents some theoretical backgrounds to support the research All the linguists share the same point of view that idioms plays a crucial role in facilitating language production in order to speak naturally like native speakers In addition, some previous studies of collocations have been briefly reviewed Basing on the theoretical background and the data collection, an investigation into structural and semantic components of both English and Vietnamese idioms by weather has been conducted to give a detailed description of those idioms In the main part of the study, the researcher collects several English idioms containing weather Idioms by weather are analyzed both in structural and semantic components After having a comparative analysis of English and Vietnamese idioms by weather, a several similar and different ways of expression have been pointed out to help suggest some possible implications for teaching English idioms 4.2 Concluding remarks: The study is expected to reach the following objectives: (i) to uncover how the components of idioms by weather are organized structurally and semantically in English and Vietnamese; (ii) to find out the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese idioms by weather in terms of structural and semantic components In terms of structural components of idioms by weather, our investigation reveals that symmetrical idioms by weather, similized idioms by weather and non-symmetrical idioms by weather are available in both English and Vietnamese The biggest difference between English and Vietnamese in terms of structural components lies in the distribution of idiom types In terms of semantic components, in the total of groups of semantic fields categorized in the collected corpus in both languages: transparent, 22 semitransparent, semi-opaque and opaque and the association between the literal reading and the idiomatic meaning 4.3 Limitations of the Study: In spite of the fact that we have tried our best to search for necessary materials, there could leave the possibility that the following shortcomings cannot be avoidable Firstly, this paper could not cover all constructions as well as meanings of idioms by weather under discussion due to the limitation of time, lack of relevant materials relating to this topic in both English and Vietnamese Secondly, the deficiency in the origin of idioms by weather is the factor affecting the semantic mechanism of these idioms In this thesis, we have confined ourselves to the study of a humble part of structual and semantic components of English and Vietnamese idioms by weather to find out their similarities and differences between them As a result, many other aspects need to be studied in further researches For example, the research of the idioms by weather may be carried out in terms of pragmatic features in English and Vietnamese Idioms are language units functioning as words They can form sentences and have their own meaning colors The roles of idioms in forming sentences in English and Vietnamese have not been investigated in a systematic way We hope 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