the syntactic and lexical features of english and vietnamese newspaper headlines a contrastive analysis = phân tích đối chiếu các đặc điểm cú pháp và từ vựng của các tiêu đề bài báo tiếng anh và tiếng việt

1 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES PHẠM HỒNG PHƯỢNG THE SYNTACTIC AND LEXICAL FEATURES OF ENGLIS

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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

PHẠM HỒNG PHƯỢNG

THE SYNTACTIC AND LEXICAL FEATURES OF

ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE NEWSPAPER HEADLINES:

A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS

(Phân tích đối chiếu các đặc điểm cú pháp và từ vựng của các tiêu

đề bài báo Tiếng Anh và Tiếng Việt)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Linguistics

Code: 60.22.15

Hanoi, 2011

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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

PHẠM HỒNG PHƯỢNG

THE SYNTACTIC AND LEXICAL FEATURES OF

ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE NEWSPAPER HEADLINES:

A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS

(Phân tích đối chiếu các đặc điểm cú pháp và từ vựng của các tiêu

đề bài báo Tiếng Anh và Tiếng Việt)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Linguistics

Code: 60.22.15

Supervisor: Dr Nguyễn Huy Kỷ

Hanoi, 2011

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1: Frequency of structural headline types in the English and Vietnamese corpora Table 3.2: Frequency of sentential headline types in the English and Vietnamese corpora Table 3.3: Frequency of simple headline types in the English and Vietnamese corpora Table 3.4: Frequency of compound headline types in the English and Vietnamese corpora Table 3.5: Frequency of non-sentential headlines in the English and Vietnamese corpora Table 3.6: The Frequency of non-finite clauses in the English sample headlines

Table 3.7: Frequency of omission of subjects in English and Vietnamese non-finite clausal headlines

Table 3.8: Frequency of non-sentential headline types in English and Vietnamese corpora

Table 3.9: Frequency of nominal headline types in the English and Vietnamese corpora Table 3.10: Frequency of types of postmodifiers in Vietnamese nominal headlines

Table 3.11: Frequency of functional headlines types in English and Vietnamese corpora Table 3.12: Frequency of different parts of speech in English and Vietnamese headlines Table 3.13: Frequency of nouns in English and Vietnamese corpora

Table 3.14: Frequency of dynamic and static verbs in English and Vietnamese corpora Table 3.15: Frequency of active and passive voice in English and Vietnamese corpora Table 3.16: Frequency of verbs with different syllables in English and Vietnamese corpora Table 3.17: Frequency of the omission of verb 'be' in English corpus

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CANDIDATE‟S STATEMENT - i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS - ii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS - iii

LIST OF TABLES - iv

ABSTRACT - v

PART A: INTRODUCTION -

1 Rationale of the study -

2 Objectives of the study -

3 Research questions -

4 Scope of the study -

5 Methods of the study -

6 Design of the study -

PART B: DEVELOPMENT -

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 Literature review -

1.1.1 Language of headlines -

1.1.2 Complexity in headlines -

1.1.3 Typical features of headlines -

1.1.4 Contrastive analyses on headlines -

1.1.5 Studies on headlines in Vietnam -

1.2 Theoretical background -

1.2.1 Newspaper headlines -

1.2.1.1 Concepts of headlines -

1.2.1.2 Functions of headlines -

1.2.2 Syntactic and lexical features -

1.2.2.1 Syntactic features -

1.2.2.2 Lexical features -

CHAPTER 2: ANALYSIS ON COLLECTED NEWSPAPER HEADLINES -

2.1 Materials -

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2.2 Procedure -

2.3 Data analysis -

2.3.1 First level of analysis -

2.3.1.1 Structural headline types -

2.3.1.2 Functional headline types -

2.3.2 Second level of analysis -

2.3.2.1 Parts of speech in sample headlines -

2.3.2.2 Omissions in headlines -

2.4 Summary -

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND IMPLICATIONS -

3.1 Similar features of English and Vietnamese newspaper

headlines - 3.1.1 Syntactic similarities -

3.1.2 Lexical similarities -

3.2 Different features of English and Vietnamese newspaper headlines -

3.2.1 Syntactic differences -

3.2.2 Lexical differences -

3.3 Pedagogical implications -

3.3.1 Implications for teaching journalistic English -

3.3.2 Implications for teaching translation -

3.4 Summary -

PART C: CONCLUSION -

1 Recapitulation -

2 Limitations of the study -

3 Suggestions for further studies

-REFERENCES

-APPENDIX -

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I

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PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

It is undeniable that our country has been moving towards globalization and trade liberalization To be successful, we have opened to welcome foreign investment for many years and now we still need to continuously understand the political and economic situations of other countries In such a situation, information has played a vital role up to now Newspapers are one of the most popular means of transmitting information which has attracted a great number of readers

Conventionally, it is believed that newspapers have more readers than any other

kind of written text According to Van Dijk (1986:156), "for most citizens, news is perhaps

the type of written discourse with which they are confronted most frequently" Reading

newspapers in English, in fact, has always been an interest of English learners Newspapers are everywhere but how to read in an easy way to understand is still a problem Moreover,

as teachers of English, how to teach students to translate, to write and to understand English press in an effective way is really a big question

In a newspaper, it is the headline that has the highest readership It is always the first thing that everyone notices when picking up a newspaper It serves as a guide for readers that helps decide whether to continue on reading the whole report or to skip onto another one Each headline summarizes the content of a story, and entices an audience into reading the article Newspaper headlines are particularly important for the way readers comprehend a news text, they are markers that monitor attention, perception and the reading process (Van Dijk, 1988)

Many students of English find that newspaper headlines are especially difficult to understand Obviously, it is not just a matter of vocabulary; even the style of writing is different from any other text they have met in their studies The language of headlines is special and has its own characteristics on the lexical, syntactic, and rhetorical levels for its brevity, attractiveness, and clarity (Danuta R., 1998) These language features pose a great challenge to foreign learners of English when they begin to read English newspapers

The key to ease the difficulty of this special genre lies on the comparison between foreign and native languages (Connor, 1996) Thereby, this study is conducted to investigate the similar and different features in the newspaper headlines of English and

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Vietnamese languages From the findings, I hope partly to guide Vietnamese learners and teachers of English towards the effective way of mastering English

2 Objectives of the study

In the light of Contrastive Analysis, this study attempts to contrast English and Vietnamese newspaper headlines, which concentrates on the following objectives:

 Studying the syntactic and lexical features of English and Vietnamese newspaper headlines;

 Contrastively comparing the newspaper headlines of the two languages syntactically and lexically to find the similarities and mainly differences between them;

 Drawing out the practical applications in English language teaching and translation

4 Scope of the study

Due to the limit in time and within the framework of an M.A thesis, it is impossible for a study to deal with all the features of language theory and practice in depth This study, therefore, only focuses on some syntactic and lexical features found in the newspapers headlines of English and Vietnamese to see how they are different

5 Methods of the study

In the thesis, the main methods used are description and contrastive comparison of the two languages in newspaper headlines including:

 Describing the syntactic and lexical features in the English and Vietnamese headlines

collected from The New York Times and Hà Nội Mới newspapers

 Contrastively comparing those features in English and Vietnamese newspaper headlines with concrete contrasting techniques, namely, analysis and statistics

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6 Design of the study

This thesis consists of three parts:

Part A is the introduction which shows the reasons why the topic is chosen, what

the study aims at as well as the scope of the study and some outlook on methodology

Part B consists of 3 chapters Chapter 1 discusses the review of related literature

and theoretical background of every matter mentioned in the title of the study Chapter 2 and 3 are the analysis of the headlines selected, the major findings and discussions with some implications for learning and teaching English

Part C is the conclusion which presents the recapitulation of the study, the

limitations of the study and some suggestions for further researches

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PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

In this Chapter, review of related literature and theoretical background including the syntactic and lexical features of English and Vietnamese headlines will be provided

1.1 Literature review

Headlines are obviously one of the striking features of modern newspapers Therefore it is not surprising that they have been studied quite extensively not only by journalists but also by linguists Some of the few existing linguistic studies of headlines will be reviewed below

1.1.3 Typical features of headlines

Mardh (1980) offers an exhaustive study of the characteristic features of the headlines of a range of English newspapers She identifies the following linguistic features

as typical of headlines in English newspapers: the omission of articles; the omission of verbs and of auxiliaries (the verb "to be" for example); nominalizations; the frequent use of complex noun phrases in subject position (in theme position); adverbial headlines, with the omission of both verb and subject; the use of short words ("bid" instead of "attempt"); the

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widespread use of puns, word play and alliteration; the importance of word order, with the most important items placed first, even, in some cases, a verb; and independent "wh"

constructions not linked to a main clause, for example: Why the French don't give a damn

Van Dijk (1988) analyzes a five-decker from the New York Times He sees the journalistic process as beginning with a headline and working through lead to body copy

He analyzes over 400 headlines in the Dutch press reporting the 1985 Tamil panic, an occasion of racial tensions between the Dutch and immigrant groups He finds that the authorities dominate first position in the headline, with active verbs When the disadvantaged Tamils are mentioned first, the verb tends to be passive

Mouillaud and Tetu (as cited in Develotte & Rechniewski 2000), analyzing Le Monde, suggest the following features as typical of headlines: the suppression of spatial and particularly temporal markers; the use of the present tense of verbs (where they are used) as opposed to or in place of any other tenses; the replacement of verbs by nominalizations; the suppression of declarative verbs and the disappearance of signs of speech (quotation marks; personal pronouns)

1.1.4 Contrastive analyses on headlines

Kniffka's (in Bell, 1991) detailed comparison of leads and headlines finds a high level of structural correspondence between the two The subeditor tends to reproduce the syntactic patterns of the lead in the headline Kniffka finds that the presence of active or passive voice in the lead is carried over to the headline According to Kniffka, headline structures appear to be very regular across languages He confirms his analysis of both German and American English news texts, finding their leads and headlines structurally identical The regularity is so consistent that he concludes there is a shared international grammar of lead and headline writing

Scollon (2000), in his study of five days of three editions of the same newspaper in its Chinese and English editions, argues that the English headlines, following on general western journalistic practice put the main point right in the headline in what has also been called a deductive rhetorical mode The Chinese editions, on the other hand, use the headlines to establish the setting but do not provide any further information about the content of the talks, which is the inductive ordering of the topics elsewhere found in contrast between Chinese and English language news stories In other words, the major

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difference lies in whether the headline focuses directly on the central topic found within the body of the story or the setting

1.1.5 Studies on headlines in Vietnam

In Vietnam, newspaper headlines are investigated by some authors who have different concerns Ánh (2003) finds out some discourse features of headlines and articles

in English containing syntactic features, cohesive devices, collocations, phrasal verbs and idioms The syntactic features in her research include the selection of verbs, passive structures, and the use of non-finites, implicit expression of opinions, modality and word order She concludes that headline writers often omit definite and indefinite articles, the verb „to be‟, auxiliary verbs and titles before proper names; they widely use punctuation, visual images and simple tenses instead of progressive and perfect forms to state the topic

of the article and to attract a large number of readers Bích (2009) study on English – Vietnamese translation of electronic news headlines also gives some distinctive grammatical characteristics of English news headlines with dominance of phrases, statements, expansion of present simple tense, and frequent omission of words such as the verb „be‟ and articles

Concerning English and Vietnamese translation, Trang (2008) carries out a study on translating English newspaper headlines into Vietnamese newspaper headlines on Dantri online newspaper She analyzes the language structures of English and Vietnamese headlines in order to find whether they are equivalent between the two languages In English, syntactically she concentrates on verbal, nominal, adverbial, simple, compound and complex headlines In Vietnamese, her focus is on one-word, phrasal and sentence headlines However, her aim is at translation Therefore, more studies on comparing the characteristics of English and Vietnamese news headlines are necessary This study intends

to investigate the application of syntactic and lexical features in English and Vietnamese newspaper headlines in order to uncover to what extent the two languages are compatible

in these domains

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1.2 Theoretical background

1.2.1 Newspaper headlines

1.2.1.1 Concept of headlines

Mc Arthur (1992:464) proposed that the word headline is “probably from the

headline on a sailing ship, a rope which held a sail tight to a spar or ran along the upper edge of a flag to strengthen it”

From the original literal meaning, headline is defined as a heading, usually in large, heavy type, at the top of an article in a newspaper, magazine or other publications indicating the subject of the article The following definition is quoted in English language

dictionary as “headline is the title of a newspaper story, printed in large letters at the top

of the story, especially in the front pages” (Sinclair, 1998:389)

As for Gimmer (1997:497), headline is a “head of newspaper story or article

printed in large type and devised to summarize the story or article that follows”

Danuta‟s (1998: 121) opinion about a headline is that it is a unique type of text It has a range of functions that specifically dictate its shape, content, and structure and it operates within a range of restrictions that limited the freedom of the writer In other words, headline should encapsulate the story in minimum words, attract readers to the story

According to Ungerer (2000:48), "a headline describes the essence of a

complicated news story in a few words It informs quickly and accurately and arouses the reader's curiosity"

In brief, headline is the title given to a news item or an article It is a condensed form of writing It is in fact a part of a whole The specific functional and linguistic traits

of the headline provide sufficient ground for isolating and analyzing it in a specific “genre”

of journalism

1.2.1.2 Functions of headlines

According to Danuta R (1998), a headline serves the following functions: It gets the reader's attention; summarizes or tells about the article; helps organize the news on the page and indicates the relative importance of a story Therefore, “the reader can skim the headlines and have an outline of the news of the day, and some ideas of its relative impact and importance.” (Danuta R.,1998:14)

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Danuta R says that headline plays conflicting roles which is carrying information and attracting readers‟ attention For carrying information, the headline should deliver some details on what happened, who was involved, where it happened, what the circumstances were which is simplified into what, who, where, how However, to what extent headlines perform what-where-who-how function depends on the certain circumstances

Besides, according to Danuta R (1998), headlines have a persuasive function when they are to attract readers‟ attention However, they are also written to influence readers

1.2.2 Syntactic and lexical features

As mentioned before, this study considers lexical and syntactic features in English and Vietnamese newspaper headlines in order to see how they are different Below is a brief description of syntactic and lexical features All the examples are the headlines taken from the corpus with denoted dates

1.2.2.1 Syntactic features

According to Maggie (1998), „syntax‟ means „sentence construction‟: How words

group together to make phrases and sentences More generally, it refers to the study of the interrelationships between all elements of sentence structure, and of the rules governing the arrangements of sentences in sequences It allows various possibilities to be exploited for effective linguistic communication

In Ban‟s (2009:32) opinion, syntax is a division of grammar which studies the ways

to combine the elements of language conventionally from „words‟ upwards, and two internal levels of syntax are at phrases and sentences

In order to get an overall picture of the structure of English and Vietnamese headlines, a description of syntactic features of headlines including structural and functional headline types of the two languages will be introduced in the following sections

a Structural headline types

Below are the basic types of headlines in terms of their structures: sentential and non-sentential headlines

 Sentential headlines

Sentential headlines are all headlines that have a regular sentence structure, i.e all

headlines with a subject and a finite verb phrase which is characterized as a phrase "in

which the first or only word is a finite verb, the rest of the verb phrase (if any) consisting of

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non-finite verbs" (Quirk, 1985:149) As far as sentence structure is concerned, there are

two main types of sentence: simple and multiple sentences (Crystal, 2006:216) The most natural sentence structure is the simple sentence: it is the first kind which children learn to speak, and it remains by far the most common sentence in the spoken language of people

of all ages In written work, simple sentences can be very effective for grabbing a reader's attention or for summing up an argument as they are simply understandable

 Simple sentences

As Leech (2006:104) explains, a simple sentence consists of just one independent clause Consistent with this rule, when a simple sentence is further analyzed, there is just one subject and one finite verb phrase These are the main elements but several others (e.g adverbials), which are obligatory, can be present in addition to the subject and verb Quirk 1985: 204) distinguishes seven clause types The following table illustrates these types with the examples from the corpora:

1 S-V Shanghai bicycle culture

Mực khô trở thành nỗi lo (Aug 29th 2011)

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 Multiple sentences

Multiple sentences are described by Crystal (2006:226) as sentences with two or more clauses that are linked either by coordination or by subordination According to the type of the linking words, these constructions are classified as compound sentences and complex sentences

- Compound sentences:

As Biber (1999:227) points out, "there are three major coordinators in English- and,

or and but" These coordinators do not only link clauses, but also words or phrases

Sometimes, no coordinator is present and clauses are linked by a comma For example:

Eng: Europe Stews on Greece, and Markets Sweat Out the Wait (Aug 28th 2011)

Viet: Giá hàng hóa tăng hàng loạt nhưng sẽ không có biến động lớn (Aug 29th 2011)

(Goods price increases at mass but there will not be a great fluctuation)

As it was already said, compound sentences contain two or more clauses, and the important thing is that all clauses in such a sentence are at the same level In other words,

they can stand on their own independently, which is not true for complex sentences

- Complex sentences

Individual clauses of a complex sentence are linked by subordinators, such as since,

although or when, etc and can be further classified as the main clause and one or more

subordinate clauses For example:

Eng: DNA tests say Lindbergh fathered three children in Germany (Aug 26th 2011)

Viet: Cha mẹ làm gì khi trẻ biếng ăn? (Aug 26th 2011)

(What will parents do when children do not have good appetite?)

The first clause is a subordinate one and the second is the main in the English example and vice versa in the Vietnamese one

The subordinate clauses are always dependent upon the main clause and cannot stand

as a sentence on their own (Crystal, 2006:226) As Quirk (1985:283) says, the dependent

or subordinate clauses function as an element of a sentence Leech (2006:17-18) further explains that we can classify them on the basis of their functions within the main clause as nominal, adverbial, comparative or relative Sometimes the subordinate clauses do not

contain a finite verb phrase (non-finite clauses- e.g Teen helps fight human trafficking –

Aug.27th 2011) or they lack a verb completely (verbless clauses- e.g If possible, nominate

them!- Aug.27th 2011)

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It is necessary to consider the non-sentential units as they are characteristic for the language of newspaper headlines and they form a great deal of the materials analyzed for the purpose of this paper

 Non-sentential headlines

The structure of such headlines is lower than a regular sentence; they are constructed in an irregular way Crystal (2006) calls such structures minor sentences Although independent sentences are the main building blocks of texts or conversation, non-sentential structures are also frequent Non-sentential headlines can be divided accordingly whether they do or do not contain a verb phrase Structures with a verb phrase are non-finite clauses (with the exception of verbless clauses), whereas structures without a verb phrase are just phrases, which will be further described respectively

 Non-finite clauses:

According to Biber (1999:259, 262), non-finite clauses are usually dependent clauses, i.e they appear in a sentence together with a main clause In some circumstances, however, dependent clauses can be used separately

Leech (2006:71) describes these clauses as clauses which have a non-finite verb

phrase and subdivides them into three categories: infinitive clauses (e.g Bank of America

to Cut 3,500 Jobs - Aug.28th 2011), -ing clauses (e.g Finding Planets Around Other

Stars - Aug.28th 2011), and ed clauses (e.g One Killed in Israeli Port City - Aug.28th

2011) All three types have a varied range of syntactic roles, which means that they can stand on positions of different clause elements, such as subject, direct object, or complement Moreover, apart from the three above mentioned types, Biber (1999:261) describes the fourth type of non-finite clauses- so called verbless clauses For these

clauses, he says, ellipsis of the verb „be‟ and the subject is typical (Factory Growth Fastest

in 20 Years - Aug.26th 2011)

 Phrases:

″A phrase may consist of a single word or a group of words″ (Biber, 1999:38) In

other words, phrases are built up from words and they usually consist of a head and modifiers which are not necessarily present Under the head we understand a word in the

phrase ″around which the other components cluster and which dictates concord and other

kinds of congruence with the rest of the sentence outside the phrase″ (Quirk, 1985:1238)

The head is essential for categorizing phrases The phrase types are following: noun

- Noun phrases

Noun phrases have a noun as the head which can be preceded by determiners and accompanied by modifiers- either premodifiers or postmodiefiers (Biber, 1999:41-42) Sometimes an adjective can be the head of a noun phrase Mardh, who devoted her time to the analysis of headlines, denotes the headlines consisting of a noun phrase and not containing a verb as nominal In order to examine syntactic variation within the noun phrases across the two languages, the structural types of nominal headlines were analyzed according to unmodification, premodification, postmodification and pre -post modification

+ Unmodification: Structures in which the head of noun phrase is not modified by

any other item are referred to as unmodified structures (Quirk, 1985)

+ Premodification: A premodifier is a modifier that precedes the word it modifies

(Quirk, 1985)

Ex: Artificial Sweeteners (Aug 26th 2011)

+ Postmodification: A postmodifier is a modifier or quantifier that follows the

constituent it modifies (Quirk, 1985)

Ex: The Future of Data Storage (Aug 29th 2011)

+ Pre-post Modifications: Structures which have both pre- and post-modifiers are

referred to as pre-post modified headlines, e.g

Ex: Weekly prompts from a mentor (Aug 29th 2011)

b Functional headline types

Analyzing headline types by function, they can be divided into four functional types: statements, questions, directives, and exclamations (Mardh, 1980; Quirk, 1985; McLoughlin, 2000)

 Statements

In Quirk(1985:803)'s words, "statements are primarily used to convey

information" It means that their primary purpose is to inform about something They

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should always include a subject which usually precedes a verb In other words, they have a

declarative structure - "a structure which declares or makes something known" (Crystal,

2006:218) A statement headline describes a state of affairs, actions, feelings or belief For example:

Eng: Iran jails US hikers for 8 years (Aug 26th 2011)

Viet: 10 cá nhân được nhận giải thưởng Tôn Đức Thắng (Aug 27th 2011)

(10 people receive Tôn Đức Thắng prize)

 Questions

In the common core, questions are usually used when speakers need some information they lack, and they expect an answer provided by their listeners Questions in speech may be indicated by placing the operator in front of the subject and by initial wh-

word (Ex: Where is Gadhafi’s money now?- (Aug 29th 2011)) A common structure of a

question, it means a verb-subject structure (Ex: Is Samsung aiming to snap up HP’s PC

business? (Aug 27th 2011)), is called interrogative Also, a rising intonation may be a characteristic feature of questions In writing, a question mark has such a function It may

convert any structure into a question (Ex: Anne Hathaway, future rap star? (Aug 29th

2011)) And on the other hand, as Leech (2006:106) points out, not all clauses with the

interrogative structure must necessarily be questions, ex “Will you turn down the radio?”

is interrogative in structure but a command in function A question headline is addressed to

a reader or listener and asks for an expression of fact, opinion, belief, etc For example:

Eng: Music‟s best kept secret? (Aug 28th 2011)

Viet: Công cụ thị trường nào cho lãi suất? (Aug 27th 2011)

(Which market tool is for interest?)

 Directives

Directives are all sentences that have the imperative structure, i.e sentences with

no subject usually and with a verb in its base form (ex Send your image to iReport! (Aug

29th 2011)) Their function is to "instruct someone to do something" (Crystal, 2006:219)

Usually directives are very simple sentences with the function to urge somebody to do or not to do something, and therefore it is not necessary to consider tense, modality or aspect

of the verb (Biber, 1999:254) Directive sentence, according to Hạo (1991), is the sentence that has illocutionary value, affects second person, and requires this person to make a unilateral or a co-operating action Directive sentence is also a mean to order, request, or

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require someone to do something When using directive sentence, the speaker expects that the hearer will obey

A directive headline expresses a request or advice:

Eng: Put these question marks by the hardware (Aug 29th 2011)

Viet: Hãy bỏ cơ chế Xin - Cho(Aug 29th 2011)

(Leave off ask-give mechanism!)

 Exclamations

As Crystal (2006:219) says, exclamations usually show impression and are often

just minor sentences, such as Gosh!, or Oh dear! However, their structure can be that of a

major sentence as well with the first element being how or what followed by a subject and

a verb Sometimes their form is reduced and no verb is present

An exclamation headline shows the writer‟s or speaker‟s feelings:

Ex: Đừng làm mình bị tụt hậu! (Aug 29th 2011)

(Don‟t make us lag behind!)

1.2.2.2 Lexical features

Lexicology, in its most general sense, is synonymous with vocabulary; and, in its technical sense, it deals with the analysis of words (Quirk, 1985) Under lexicology, the individual words such as nouns, verbs, articles, adjectives, adverbs, numerals, conjunctions, pronouns and prepositions will be analyzed in both English and Vietnamese headlines in order to determine the frequency of their occurrence Below is a short description of nouns and verbs which are considered the most important parts of speech

a Nouns

A noun is a word which (a) can occur as the subject or object of a verb or the object

of a preposition, (b) can be modified by an adjective, and (c) can be used with determiners Nouns typically refer to people, animals, places, things, or abstractions (Murphy, 1997) For example:

Eng: Don Lemon‟s new marriage dilemma.(Aug.29th 2011)

Viet: Một trường phổ thông trong căn hộ nhỏ (Aug.27th 2011)

(A secondary school in a small flat)

The distinct features of nouns used in headlines are the frequent appearance of the proper nouns, the acronyms, and the abbreviations (Baddock, 1988) These features were

 Acronyms and abbreviations

Acronyms are words derived from the initials of several words This process is widely used in shortening extremely long words or word groups in science, technology and other special fields (Fromkin & Rodman, 1999) For example:

Eng: C.I.A Demands Cuts in Book About 9/11 and Terror Fight (Aug 26th 2011)

Viet: TP HCM sẽ kiểm soát chặt tình trạng nghệ sĩ trang phục phản cảm (August

26th 2011) (HCM city will tightly control the state of artists with anti-emotion clothes)

Abbreviation is a reduced version of a word, phrase, or sentence It is also called clipping (Crystal, 1992):

Ex: Japan Govt to Nationalize Regional Bank (Aug 28th 2011)

b Verbs

Verb is an important lexical category, and the one which is seemingly universal Verb categories will be analyzed in both English and Vietnamese headlines to see differences and similarities across the two languages

 Voice

Voice is the form of the verb, which shows the relation between the action and its subject In English and Vietnamese, there are two voices: the active and the passive If the subject performs the action, then the verb form is in the active voice If the subject receives the action, then the verb form is in passive voice (Fallahi, 1991; Ban, 2009) For example:

Eng: Three arrested in American‟s kidnapping in Pakistan (Aug.29th 2011)

Viet: Gần 200 ảnh được trưng bày (Aug.29th 2011)

(Nearly 200 photos are displayed)

Voice will be considered in this study to examine the frequency of its occurrence in the headlines of the two languages

 Dynamic and static verbs

According to their lexical meanings, verbs can be divided into dynamic and static verbs A type of verbs which typically occurs in the progressive form and in the

He shares the same opinion with Quirk (1985) about these two types of verbs For example:

Dynamic verb: Eng: South Koreans leave N.Korean resort (Aug.29th 2011)

Viet: Thượng nghị sĩ Mỹ Jim Webb thăm TP Hồ Chí Minh

(American Senator Jim Webb visits Hồ Chí Minh city) (Aug.29th 2011)

Static verb: Eng: Libya does not need UN peace keepers (Aug.29th 2011)

Viet: Cần chủ động bình ổn giá thực phẩm (Aug.29th 2011)

(Need to actively stabilize food price)

 Syllables of verbs in headlines

In headlines, monosyllabic verbs are used frequently as substitutes for longer, more colloquial expressions The analysis of verbs according to their syllables in the English and Vietnamese corpora was done in order to investigate their similarities and differences in the two languages in this respect

c Omissions in headlines

Omission is one of the major features of newspaper headlines (Bell, 1991) Turner

(1972: 72) says: "Determiners and the verb 'to be' are almost universally omitted in

headlines" For the sake of brevity and saving space, most closed words and some open

words in headlines are often omitted or reduced to a minimum in headlines For example:

Eng: Under 40, blindsided by breast cancer (Aug.28th 2011)

Viet: Luật doanh nghiệp đang “hành” doanh nghiệp? (Aug.29th 2011)

(Enterprise law is “disturbing” enterprises?)

As can be seen from the above examples, the verb "are" in the English headline and

"có phải" in the Vietnamese one are omitted

In the sample headlines, an investigation is made in order to find out the frequency

of omission of words across and within the two languages

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To sum up, this Chapter dealt with some previous studies on newspaper headlines

as well as a syntactically and lexically theoretical description of English and Vietnamese headline features The syntactic characteristics include headline types by structure and by function, and the lexical ones concern parts of speech mainly with nouns and verbs and omissions as typical of headline language The next Chapter is a detailed analysis on the newspaper headlines collected in a four-day corpus

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CHAPER 2 ANALYSIS ON COLLECTED NEWSPAPER HEADLINES

The previous chapter has reviewed some related literature and established the framework of the theoretical background from which the syntactic and lexical characteristics of headlines have been covered The information regarding the materials, procedure and data analysis of the study will be presented in this chapter

headlines are from the website http://nytimes.com and the Vietnamese ones are from

http://hanoimoi.com.vn

The headlines issued during a four-day period from August 26th to August 29th, 2011 The number of English and Vietnamese headlines arrived at a total of 227 and 232 from the two sources respectively The headlines taken for analysis belong to various fields such

as economics, culture, politics, science, technology, health, travel, sports, etc which are updated every day in the two newspapers

2.2 Procedure

This research is directed towards studying the syntactic and lexical features of English and Vietnamese corpora in such a way that by a systematic comparison, the differences and similarities between the sample headlines of the two languages will be identified

At the start, the investigation began with the description of the basic units of analysis

in the English headline structures and continued with the analysis of the Vietnamese headlines In doing so, for the analysis of the structure of English headlines, the grammatical framework provided mainly by Quirk (1985), Biber (1999), and Crystal (2006) was chosen, and for the analysis of Vietnamese headlines, the grammar provided by Hạo (1991), Ban (2009), and Hòa (2009) was used to inform the study

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In the following step, the researcher synthesized all the syntactic and lexical features analyzed previously and did statistical computations on the percentage for each typical feature of English and Vietnamese news headlines in order to give out the differences and similarities

2.3 Data analysis

The analysis of data was conducted in two stages In both stages, a detailed analysis

of the corpus of 227 English and 232 Vietnamese headlines at lexical and syntactic levels was done to see the similar and different characteristics between the two languages

2.3.1 First level of analysis

The first level included the analysis of the syntactic features of the headlines across and within the two languages As for the syntactic features, the following two major areas were studied in the headlines: Structural headline types and functional headline types 2.3.1.1 Structural headline types

All headlines in the corpora were divided into two major groups according to their structure: Sentential (those with a regular sentence structure - major sentences) and non-sentential headlines (those with an irregular sentence structure) The first group consisted

of all headlines that contain a subject and a predicate The second one included the headlines without a predicate, often just with a non-finite verb phrase or in the form of a phrase The frequency of the different types of headlines in terms of their structure is shown in Table 3.1

Table 3.1 Frequency of structural headline types in the English and Vietnamese corpora

The table shows that the proportion of sentential headlines is comparatively higher

in the English headlines (70.5%) than in the Vietnamese ones (58.2%) and the number of English non-sentential headlines (29.5%) is lower than that of Vietnamese ones (41.8%)

As can be noticed in the table, sentential headlines tend to be used much more than sentential ones in English

non-a Sentential headlines

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All headlines with a finite verb phrase and which are not dominated by a noun phrase post-modified by a finite clause are classified as sentential The frequency of the sentential headline types in the English and Vietnamese corpora is presented in Table 3.2

Table 3.2 Frequency of sentential headline types in the English and Vietnamese corpora

 Headlines are simple sentences:

119 English headlines were classified as those with the simple sentence structure in which there were three headlines consisting of a dependent clause with a finite verb phrase

The headlines “When Children Fly Alone” (Aug.26th 2011) is just a conditional clause without a main clause, yet functioning independently in the form of a headline In the Vietnamese corpus, headlines by simple sentences dominated with 80% Dependent

clauses with a finite verb phrase were also found such as the headline “Việc cần làm

ngay!” (What need to be done right now!) (Aug.26th 2011) Table 3.3 presents the frequency of simple headline types in the English and Vietnamese corpora

Table 3.3 Frequency of simple headline types in the English and Vietnamese corpora

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Concerning the clause types as noticed in the table, the most frequent type in both English and Vietnamese corpora was SVO The probable reason for favoring this type could be the fact that it describes in the best suitable way "who did what" The subject is almost always present The only exceptions are headlines with imperative structure, as imperatives "are characterized by the lack of subject" (Biber,1999:219) The other structures, namely SV, SVC, SVOA appeared with relatively equal occurrences in the samples SVOA structure was more frequently used in the English headlines (7.5%) than that in the Vietnamese ones (only 2.8%) Specially, the structure SVOO was rarely found

in both languages In many cases, optional adverbials appear together with the obligatory elements to add more information to the headlines

 Headlines are multiple sentences:

There were 41 English headlines and only 27 Vietnamese ones identified as the

headlines with a regular multiple sentence structure Among the analyzed headlines, there were not many compound ones The frequency of using those headlines is shown in Table

Undoubtedly each language has its own syntactic principles which are considered to

be standard, but there are seemingly a lot of syntactic sub-standards in headlines, both in English and Vietnamese That is the case of non-sentential headlines Those with the irregular structure are quite an often phenomenon in newspapers All the non-sentential headlines in the study were divided into two basic groups: The headlines which contain a

non-finite verb form at the position of the predicate (e.g Dead bodies found in house

(Aug.29th 2011)); and the headlines which consist of just a phrase (without any verb form

 Non-finite clausal headlines:

In the analysis, out of 67 English non-sentential headlines as shown in Table 3.1 from which 28 headlines were identified as headlines with non-finite predicate

Table 3.6 of the frequency of non-finite clauses in the English sample headlines shows that the headlines with a past participle form of verb, a present subject, and an omitted

auxiliary verb were used most frequently (Ex: Syrian Demonstrators attacked (Aug.27th

2011)) which accounted for 60.7 % of the total English headlines These headlines usually

refer to the events happened in the past Besides, using V-infinitive with „to‟ after subject

to denote future actions or events and using V-ing form with or without subject are less frequent with 17.9% and 21.4% in turn

Table 3.6: The Frequency of non-finite clauses in the English sample headlines

Type of non-finite clause No %

In contrast, there were 64 with a non-finite verb form in a total of 97 Vietnamese

non-sentential headlines All these headlines compose of a non-finite verb form with

omitted subject and can be modified by an adverb (Ex: Lặng lẽ tiếp sức cho trẻ thiệt thòi –

Silently give strength to the unfavorable children (Aug.27th 2011)) However, there are few verbs modified by an adverb in the Vietnamese sample with only 2 occurrences A

relatively high number of non-finite clauses are preceded by modal verbs such as “cần xử

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lý nghiêm những người cố tình tụ tập, gây rối trật tự công cộng” (It‟s necessary to seriously deal with the people intending to gather and disturb the peace of public (Aug.27th

2011)) in which „cần‟ is a modal verb

In the non-finite headlines found in the corpora, there were many cases with omitted subjects, which can be a specific feature in headlines to make them shorter and more interesting Table 3.7 illustrates the frequency of omission of subjects in the corpora

Table 3.7 Frequency of omission of subjects in English and Vietnamese non-finite clausal

 Verbless clausal headlines:

There were 9 verbless clauses in the English sample which accounted for 13.4% in a total of 67 non-sentential ones All these headlines appeared with the ellipsis of the linking

verb „be‟ like the clause “Open courses nearly free” (Aug.27th 2011) which would be a

complete one when inserting „are‟ between the subject „Open courses‟ and its complement

„nearly free‟ In the Vietnamese corpus, there were some cases with the equivalent structure such as “Lãi suất cho vay VND vẫn cao” (“VND loan interest still high”)

(Aug.28th 2011) However, for some Vietnamese authors like Diệp Quang Ban, Nguyễn

Chí Hòa who have studied Vietnamese grammar for many years, this structure is considered to be sentential Therefore, this type was classified as simple sentence in the

Vietnamese corpus

 Phrasal headlines:

Considering the information presented in Table 3.8 below, most English and Vietnamese headlines analyzed as phrases were noun phrases which accounted for 96.7 % and 84.8% respectively in the two languages The adjective phrasal headlines can be found

in the Vietnamese corpora which did not occur in the English ones However, this does not