A study on subordinators in english and vietnamese

i DECLARATION I, Lê Thị Thu Hiền, state that this graduation paper is the result of my own study. The whole content in the study has not been submitted from any other studies. Lê Thị Thu Hiền Jan, 2013 ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Đặng Nguyên Giang, M.A for his valuable guidance, helpful advice, suggestions and encouragement in the process of writing my graduation paper. I am thankful to all of my teachers in the Foreign Language Department for their kindness and assistance during the process of the study. My sincere thanks also go to my friends who have given me useful advice and ideas. I greatly appreciate the support and encouragement from my family. iii ABSTRACT In this study, I used of the English as the source language and the Vietnamese language as the target one. The process can be divided into two stages: First, materials containing relevant information for the study such as grammar book, previous studies, information on the internet…in both languages will be collected, and the main characteristics of subordinators in English and Vietnamese are described. Then, techniques of analysis and statistics are applied to find out the positions, grammatical features and semantic implication of subordinators in both languages. Then, basing on the results from the stage 1, comparison and contrastive analysis are applied to find out the similarities and the differences between English and Vietnamese in terms of subordinators. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT………………………………………………….….……………………………iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv PART A: INTRODUCTION 1 1. Rationale 1 2. Aims and Objectives of the Study 2 3. Research Questions 2 4. Scope of the Study 2 5. Methodology 3 6. Materials Used 3 7. Design of the Study 3 PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5 1. Theoretical Background 5 1.1. What is Meant by “Subordination”? 5 1.2. What is Meant by “Subordinator”? 6 1.3. Subordinators in the Relationship with Other Connectors 8 1.3.1. Subordinators Versus Coordinators 8 1.3.2. Subordinators Versus Conjunctive Adverbs 9 2. Review of Previous Works 11 3. Summary 13 CHAPTER 2: SUBORDINATORS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE 14 1. Subordinators in English 14 1.1. Simple Subordinators 14 v 1.1.1 . Subordinators of Time clause 14 1.1.2. Subordinators of Cause and Effect 16 1.1.3. Subordinators of Concession 17 1.1.4. Subordinators of Condition 19 1.2. Compound Subordinators 21 1.2.1. Compound Subordinators Ending with that 21 1.2.2. Compound Subordinators Ending with Optional that 23 1.2.3. Compound Subordinators Ending with as 25 1.3. Correlative Subordinators 27 2. Subordinators in Vietnamese 29 2.1. Subordinators of Concession 29 2.2. Subordinators of Reason 31 2.3. Subordinators of Purpose 33 2.4. Subordinators of Condition 34 3. Summary 35 CHAPTER 3: SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE IN TERMS OF SUBORDINATORS 36 1. Features of Subordinators Found in Both languages 36 1.1. Positions of Simple Subordinators in Sentences 36 1.2. Semantic Implication of Subordination by Subordinators 37 2. Features of Subordinators Unique to English 39 3. Features of Subordinators Unique to Vietnamese 39 3.1. Subject Ellipsis 40 3.2. Forming Simple Subordinators into Correlative Subordinators 40 4. Summary 40 PART C: CONCLUSION 41 1. Recapitulation 41 vi 2. Conclusions 41 3. Implementations for language teaching and learning 42 4. Suggestions for further studies 43 REFERENCES 44 1 PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale It cannot be denied that the role of English in our lives has got much importance. It is used as the most common language for all parts of the world nowadays. Moreover, it is a means to link all cultures and bring a huge treasure of knowledge to human being, especially in science and technology. Awaring of the role of English in modern world, English has been taught for every educational level. In the recent years, the quality of teaching and learning has been improved a lot by some educational reform policies of Ministry of Education and Training. It is believed that the purpose of learning foreign language is to communicate successfully with foreigners. However, it seems difficult for people to be successful in communicating in any foreign languages if they do not understand clearly and exactly its grammar. In other words, understanding the grammar is the base of the success in using foreign language. However, English appears much different from Vietnamese in variety of aspects. This causes many difficulties for Vietnamese learners and teachers in teaching and learning this language. Subordinators are regarded as a kind of connectors that are used to connect different parts in sentences. Subordinators play a very important role in building successful sentences in particular and in writing English in general. However, it can be said that Vietnamese learners have many troubles in writing and translating English, especially using subordinators in sentences. To my best of my knowledge, this problem has not been found in any works on subordinators before. This is the reason why the author decides to make a minor study on this topic with the hope that this would give a small part to help teachers and learners to get the best result in teaching and learning English subordinators. 2 2. Aims and Objectives of the Study The study, as entitled, focus on subordinators in English and Vietnamese; therefore, the main aim of this study is to work out the similarities and the differences between English and Vietnamese in terms of subordinators. In order to achieve the aims, the study is expected to reach the following objectives: - to study how subordinators are organized structurally and semantically in English and Vietnamese; - to establish the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese in terms of subordinators. 3. Research Questions The objectives of the study can be elaborated into the following research questions: - How are English and Vietnamese subordinators organized structurally and semantically? - What are the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese in terms of subordinators? 4. Scope of the Study This study does focus on the subordinator (used to connect clauses in sentences) in English and Vietnamese. Due to the scope of the graduation paper as well as the limited knowledge of the author, we would like to pay attention to the following aspects: - Positions in sentences - Grammatical features - Semantic implication of subordination by subordinators. 3 5. Methodology Due to the main aims and objectives of the study, describing, analyzing, contrasting, and comparing would be mainly carried our throughout the process. Also, the study makes use of English as the source language and the Vietnamese language as the target one. The process can be divided into four stages. Stage 1: A theoretical framework suggested by Quirk and Greenbaum (1973) is applied in the present study. Stage 2: Materials containing relevant information for the study such as grammar books, previous studies, information on the internet, etc in both languages will be collected, and the main characteristics of subordinators in English and Vietnamese are described and analyzed. Stage 3: After collecting data, techniques of description and analysis are applied to find out the positions, grammatical features and semantic implication of subordinators in both languages. Stage 4: Basing on the results from the stage 3, comparison and contrastive analysis are applied to find out the similarities and the differences between English and Vietnamese in terms of subordinators. 6. Materials Used In this study, the author uses the following materials: - Monolingual English and Vietnamese books - Bilingual English – Vietnamese books - Information on internet - Dictionaries 7. Design of the Study The study consists of three parts, excluding the references. Part A, introduction, consists of the rational, the aims and objectives, research questions, the scope, the method and the design of the study. 4 Part B, development, is the main part of the study. This part is divided into 3 chapters: Chapter 1: Literature review, Chapter 2: Subordinators in English and Vietnamese, and Chapter 3: The similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese in terms of subordinators. Part C, the last past, is the conclusion. This part consists of recapitulation, conclusions, implication for teaching and learning English subordinators and suggestions for further studies. [...]... Conrad and Leech (1999) partly discuss about subordination and subordinators The authors also compare between subordinators and coordinators Furthermore, they give out some signals of subordination, and positions of subordinators in sentences Cobuild (2003) gives a definition of subordinators, and compares between coordinating conjunctions and subordinating conjunctions The writer shows specific subordinators. .. show that subordinators differ in important ways from other clause links Subordinators are like coordinators, but 7 they are different from linking adverbial, because subordinators occur in a fixed position at the front of their clause Oshima and Hogue (1998) claim that subordinators are words and phrases that signal subordinate clause, introduce dependent subordinate clauses and signal the relationship... between the subordinate clause and the main clause Another source shows that subordinators are applied to a grammatical distinct, close class of words whose primary role is to mark a clause as subordinate In Vietnam, subordinators are considered as particles of empty words and sentences that show the subordinated relationship Like English, they are means of connecting main element and subordinate element... to express opinion or making judgments 1.2.3 Compound Subordinators Ending with as As far as, as long as, as soon as, so long as are the most popular compound subordinators ending with as Nevertheless, they are belonged to different groups The first group includes as long as and so long as As long as and so long as express precondition that is agreed In general, they mark a typical situation must be... characteristics of subordinators in the two languages, the similarities and difference between the two languages in terms of subordinators 14 CHAPTER 2: SUBORDINATORS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE 1 Subordinators in English In English, subordinators are very useful means of forming sentences With the role of clause connectors, subordinators always stand at the beginning of subordinate clause Of a sentence is... including time clause E.g As the politician was speaking to a large crowd at a rally, he fainted from the heat exhaustion (The politician fainted in the middle of his speech) 1.1.2 Subordinators of Cause and Effect Subordinators of cause and effect are also popular in English due to the semantic implication they show Because, since, and as are three most popular 17 subordinators express reason We can... (Val Alexander, ‘The secrets of Jin-shei’ 2004) Therefore, except that is a subordinator indicating for the fact Except thatclause is separated with main clause by a comma, usually stands after main clause 1.2.2 Compound Subordinators Ending with Optional that Compound subordinators ending with optional that include provided (that) and supposing (that), considering (that) In these subordinators, provided... (that) and supposing (that) can be used in conditional sentence, and considering (that) used for showing that one opinion about something is affected by a particular fact Supposing (that) and provided (that) are normally used in conditional sentences In other words, they used to talk about an imaginary situation E.g Supposing (that) you won the lottery, what would you do with that money? Provided (that),... = what if no one had been there? However, the use of supposing and what if (usually in spoken languages) is used for possible situation in the future What if is more direct We can find many words and phrases having the same meaning as supposing (that) and provided (that) such as assuming that, conceding that, granted that, in case that, on the occasion that, with the condition that… What about considering... (1973) partly present subordination formal indicators of subordination, subordinators Subordinators, according to the authors, can be divided into three types: simple subordinators, compound subordinators and correlative subordinators Oshima and Hogue (1998) consider subordinator is one of three tools to connect clauses They also list out the popular subordinators that are usually used in connecting clauses . and analyzed. Stage 3: After collecting data, techniques of description and analysis are applied to find out the positions, grammatical features and semantic implication of subordinators in. of aspects. This causes many difficulties for Vietnamese learners and teachers in teaching and learning this language. Subordinators are regarded as a kind of connectors that are used to connect. how subordinators are organized structurally and semantically in English and Vietnamese; - to establish the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese in terms of subordinators.