a contrastive analysis of nominal substitution in english and vietnamese conversation = phân tích đối chiếu phép thế danh từ trong ngôn bản hội thoại tiếng anh và tiếng việt

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUTIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES    TRẦN THỊ KHƯƠNG LIÊN A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF NOMINAL SU

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUTIES

FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES

  

TRẦN THỊ KHƯƠNG LIÊN

A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF NOMINAL

SUBSTITUTION IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

CONVERSATION

(Phân tích đối chiếu phép thế danh từ trong ngôn bản hội thoại

tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt)

MINOR PROGRAM THESIS

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

  

TRẦN THỊ KHƯƠNG LIÊN

A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF NOMINAL

SUBSTITUTION IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

CONVERSATION

( Phân tích đối chiếu phép thế danh từ trong ngôn bản hội thoại

tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt) MINOR PROGRAM THESIS

Field: English Linguistics

Code: 60.22.15

Supervisor: Nguyen Huyen Minh, M.A

Hanoi, 2011

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION………

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………

ABSTRACT………

TABLE OFCONTENTS………

ABBREVIATIONS………

PART A INTRODUCTION………

1 Rationale of the study………

2 Aims and objectives of the study………

2.1 Aims………

2.2.Objectives………

2.3 Research questions………

3 Scope of the study………

4 Methodology of the study………

5 Organization of the study………

PART B DEVELOPMENT………

Chapter 1 Theoretical Background………

1.1 The theories of discourse………

1.1.1 The concept of discourse………

1.1.2 Discourse and Sentence………

1.1.3 Discourse and Text………

1.1.4 Discourse analysis………

1.1.5 Spoken and Written Discourse………

1.2 The theories of conversation………

1.2.1 The concept of conversation………

1.2.2 Why is Conversation Analysis important………

1.3 Cohesion………

1.3.1 The concept of cohesion………

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ii iii

iv vii

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1.3.2 Coherence and cohesion………

1.3.3 Cohesion within the sentence and discourse………

1.4 Types of Cohesion………

1.5 Substitution………

1.5.1.The concept of substitution………

1.5.2.Substitution,Cohesionand Discourse………

1.6.ContrastiveAnalysis………

1.6.1 Definition………

1.6.2 Why using CA in this thesis?

1.7 Summary………

Chapter 2 A contrastive analysis of nominal substitution in English and Vietnamese conversation discourse………

2.1 General features of English and Vietnamese nominal structure………

2.2 Person pronouns………

2.2.1 Subjective and objective personal pronouns………

2.2.2 Possessive pronouns………

2.3 One………

2.3.1 One as a substitute for a nominal group head/ substitute one …………

2.3.2 One as a substitute for an indefinite nominal group/ indefinite one ……

2.4 The same………

2.4.1 Say the same………

2.4.2 Do the same………

2.4.3 Be the same………

PART C: CONCLUSION………

3.1 Concluding remarks………

3.2 The implication of the study for teaching and learning of English………

3.3 Limitation of the study………

3.4 Suggestions for further study………

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REFERENCES………

BOOKS FOR QUOTATIONS………

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Symbols and Abbreviations

C.A Contrastive Analysis

Table 1.1: Type of Cohesion

Table 1.2: Grammatical and Lexical Cohesion

Table 2: English personal pronouns

Table 3: The English third person pronouns and their Vietnamese equivalent Table 4: The English possessive pronouns and their Vietnamese equivalent Table 5: The substitute one/ones and their Vietnamese equivalents

Table 6: The indefinite one/some and its Vietnamese equivalents

Table 7: Do the same and the Vietnamese equivalent

Table 8: linking verb plus the same and their Vietnamese equivalents

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

The history of linguistics has seen the everlasting development of different approaches to linguistics and language teaching, each of which defines its own tasks, scopes and objectives Traditionally, linguists have been concerned with the phonological, lexical and syntactical features and studied sentences which are preferably taken out of context Besides, the focus of traditional practice of language teaching and learning has been on the analysis of single sentences, normally at the levels of phonology, vocabulary and grammar

Later, with the view that incomplete sentences can still make sense when occurring

in some particular context, according to (Cook 1989: ix) complete understanding of stretches

of language can only be obtained if they are considered “in their full textual, social and psychological context” linguists have shifted their attention from complete sentences to discourse

In common with coherence, cohesion takes an active role in building up discourse, in general, and of course, conversation as a genre of discourse, in particular Truly, Halliday and Hasan (1976) make a detailed classification of the cohesive devices in English These authors distinguish between grammatical and lexical cohesion According to them, grammatical cohesion embraces four different devices: reference, ellipsis, substitution and lexical In Vietnam, it seems that all the issues related to substitution especially Nominal substitution in conversation are still in limited exploration It is easy to find that substitution

in Vietnamese is still a concept which has been needed receive much Vietnamese researchers‟ exploration Searching for the study of substitution, we only can see in Tran Ngoc Them‟s work (1985), more recently, Diep Quang Ban‟s (1998) These authors‟ effort seems to be made to give a very general and basic concept of substitution as well as types of

it in Vietnamese Thus, we might wonder whether substitution, and within the minor thesis, nominal substitution actually works in Vietnamese conversation Furthermore, in recent years, reference, ellipsis, and lexical have been closely studied in contrastive with Vietnamese, within the framework of minor thesis a careful and profound study of English and Vietnamese nominal substitution is, theoretically speaking, equally important and necessary

Because of the above mentioned reasons, my final thesis entitled: “Contrastive analysis of nominal substitution in English and Vietnamese conversation” I do hope that this

study will be useful for learners when investigating conversation in English as well as in Vietnamese to support for successful communication

2 Aims and objective of the study

- providing teachers of English with useful materials about the knowledge of Ns

2.2 Objectives

To achieve these aims, the research tries to:

- re- examine some aspects of English substitution and nominal substitution in detail so as

to establish the descriptive framework for a contrastive analysis

- investigate all the possible linguistics means of nominal substitution in Vietnamese conversation discourse and at the same time find out possible similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese nominal substitution

- give some suggestions to apply to the teaching and learning of English

3 Scope of the study

Since this study examines nominal substitution as a cohesive device, only substitution across sentences is taken into account Because of the limited time and knowledge, this study is

only focused on some domains as follows:

- Only nominal substitution in English and its equivalent expressions in Vietnamese conversation are investigated

- I will take into consideration many cases of nominal substitution so the data used for illustration exemplification are taken from various sources

- I am going to deal with nominal substitution occured in the written transcription of this conversation, not in a tape – recorded conversation

4 Methodology of the study

Since the main purpose of the study is to contrast nominal substitution in English conversation and Vietnamese conversation, the result of which will be exploited for language learning and teaching, CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS (C.A.) is used as the major method of the study I will take English language as the base language and Vietnamese as the comparative language

Besides, systemization and generalization are also used as sub-methods to support C.A method Thus, in the comparative analysis of examples in both English and Vietnamese, translation is the main technique given to highlight the similarities (or differences) in the nominal substitution in the two languages During the process of comparison, there may arise cases where some nominal substitution occurs only in Vietnamese, but can hardly be found in English discourse To deal with these cases, I shall give out literal translation of the examples for the sake of highlighting the similarities (or differences) in the nominal substitution in the two languages For C.A to be effective and persuasive, I mainly take notice of two levels of translation: semantic and pragmatic

The illustrating material in the thesis is authentic examples They are taken from a wide variety of sources in English and Vietnamese: modern novels, modern short stories as well as data sources from ebook and so on Some examples are drawn from grammar books

in English and Vietnamese

Last but not least, discussions with my supervisor and colleagues, personal teaching experience are also the great contribution to the study

5 Organization of the study

As for the design of the study, it is composed of three main parts as follows:

Part A is Introduction, which presents the rationale, the aims, the scope, and the methods of

the study as well as the organization of the study Part B is the DEVELOPMENT, which consists of two chapters Chapter 1 shows the theoretical background of basic and necessary notions that are related to nominal substitution and conversation discourse These issues are made clear on the basis of the generalization of different linguists' viewpoints In Chapter 2 which is the focus of my study I conduct my contrastive analysis of nominal substitution in English and Vietnamese conversation in order to provide learners with the competence in

understanding and using effectively the language of conversation Part C the Conclusion

represents the review of the study with concluding remarks and suggestions for further study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1.1 The theories of discourse

1.1.1 The concept of discourse

It does not seem rational to use the term „sentence‟ in communication The analysis

on sentence had been focused until the beginning of 1950s by linguistics But in 1952, a famous linguist Zellig Harris, one of the earliest discourse analysts, published an article

entitled “Discourse Analysis” in Language Magazine He stated a new opinion expressing

that the most complete unit of language is discourse, not a sentence Obviously, it is impossible to make the language in use exist in isolation from its users and the context in which it is being used if you want to achieve successful communication Therefore, the concept of discourse has been paid considerable attention to by several linguists since 1952

The most straightforward definition of discourse is the one often found in textbooks for

students of linguistics: “Language above the sentence” (Cameron 2001: 10)

According to Cook (1989: 6) discourse is “stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified and purposeful" In his point of view, the kind of language, language has been used

to communicate something and is felt to be coherent (and may, or may not, happen to correspond to a correct sentence or a series of correct sentences) – language in use, for communication is called discourse Discourse can be anything from a conversation to a great

novel or a lengthy legal case Cook (1989:10) also argues that “What matters is not its conformity to rules, but the fact that it communicates and is recognized by its receivers as coherent" Discourse is supposed to be meaningful and thus to be used to communicate with

one person in a way that another person does not have the necessary knowledge to make

sense of The study of discourseis often referred to as discourse analysis

1.1.2 Discourse and Sentence

It is obvious that we have two different kinds of language as potential objects for study The sentence is abstracted in order to teach a language or literacy, or to study how the rules of language work according to Cook (1989) Sharing the same idea with Cook, Brown

& Yule (1983) state that the sentence is just a grammatical unit and it is quite abstract because it has no producers and no receivers – that is to say, it can exist independently of

any speaker of that language It is most often used in the teaching and learning of a language and also in explaining how the rules of a language work

Discourse, on the contrary, is the language in use, for communication In addition, it has been used to communicate something and felt to be coherent and cohesive Conversely, though sentence and discourse are different, they are not mutually exclusive Discourse may

be composed of one or more well-formed grammatical sentences But of course, it may also

be composed of incomplete sentences That is the language we often find in notices, signs, notes etc Over the years, linguists have continuously discussed to find out what the largest unit is Today, it has been largely agreed that in terms of size discourse is the largest unit in communication and that the sentence is only part of it In grammar, the internal construction

of the sentence, according to Carthy (1993), has always been the central point, but in discourse the sentence plays the role of a constructor This is because the sentence grammar means a lot to discourse, especially to word order, cohesion, and tense and aspect Thus in this study, for the purpose of my discussions of nominal substitution in conversation, the

sentence will be seen as a grammatical unit which can be exploited for illustration

1.1.3 Discourse and Text

So far there have been many ways of viewing the language beyond the limit of the sentence Regardless of the agreement on the concept of discourse, linguists hold different

views about the distinction between two most notable terms Discourse and Text For some

linguists, the term discourse has been tried to set apart from the term text They argue that

discourse is language in action, while a text is the written record of that interaction Crystal

(1992), for instance, maintains that text should be reserved only for writing and discourse for speech He also proposes that discourse is “a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence", whereas a text is “a piece of naturally occurring spoken, written or signed discourse identified for purposes of analysis" Brown and Yule (1983:3), cited in Nunan (1993: 6), also argue that text is “the representation of discourse and the

verbal record of a communicative act"

Whereas, for some linguists these two terms seem to be used almost interchangeably That is to say when we use discourse we refer to both discourse and text and vice versa Text

or discourse is an instance of language in use, this means that no text occurs without a context Halliday and Hasans (1976), for example, use “text” to refer to “discourse”, they

regarded text as a semantic unit characterized by cohesion

Briefly, discourse is a general term to refer to all acts of verbal communication, whereas a text is simply a verbal record of the whole communicative process (that is

discourse) in which many situational factors are involved; it can be both written and spoken, and there will be no limit on the size of a text Thus, text is a purely linguistic, formal object,

while discourse has both linguistic and non-linguistic properties

1.1.4 Discourse analysis

Discourse analysis is concerned with the study of the relationship between language and the contexts in which it is used To be more specific, it examined how stretches of language, considered in their full textual, social and psychological context, become meaningful and unified for their users It is a rapidly expanding field, providing insights into problems of processes of language use and language learning, and is therefore of great

importance to language teachers

Zellig Harris, an American linguist, was the first person who recognized discourse as one main object of study in linguistics Harris (1952) was interested in the distribution of linguistic elements and the links between the text and its social situation This idea was then developed by Dell Hymes (1964), who provided a sociological perspective with the study of speech in social setting The linguistic philosophers such as Austin (1962), Searle (1969) and Grice (1975) also made great impact in the study of language and social action, which is reflected in speech act theory and the formulation of conversational maxims and the appearance of pragmatics It was in 1973 that discourse analysis was dealt with perfectly and concretely in M.A.K Halliday‟s functional approach to language Halliday's linguistic model emphasizes the social function of language and the thematic and informational structure of speech and writing His approach is completely influential in British discourse analysis, of

which some famous linguists are Sinclair and Coulhard (1975)

Traditionally, language teaching has concentrated on pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary, and while these remain the basis of foreign language knowledge, discourse analysis can draw attention to the skills needed to put this knowledge into action and to

achieve successful communication

1.1.5 Spoken and Written Discourse

Discourse can be classified into two kinds, namely: Oral Discourse or Spoken

Discourse and Written Discourse The terms spoken discourse has been used to refer to the

spoken text such as conversations, interview, lessons, lectures and so on The problems

involved with the notion of spoken discourse as the “verbal record” of a communicative act

(analysts tend to record it, and then turn it into written transcriptions) are rather complicated These are problems of how to represent all the suprasegmental features (intonation and rhythm) and paralinguistic features By oral discourse, the speaker tends to seek for intonation and rhythm so as to convey some intended message to the hearer Therefore, if these features are not represented in written transcriptions, the speaker‟s intention will not be obtained In order to solve this problem, most analysts are likely to use the conventions of the written language to present the written transcription of the spoken discourse For instance, a question mark is used in representation of a question It would be very simple to treat a tape-recording as a representation of this act However, there are many other things that can hardly be regarded as pertaining to text such as noise, laughter

Written discourse, on the other hand, is formed by written text (written language)

concerning with stories, newspapers, articles, letters, and the like Spoken discourse and written discourse are two different notions as the first refers to spoken language and the latter to written language Following Brown & Yule (1983), we will consider the difference between oral and written language in terms of manner of production They notice that the speaker has to control and process the production of communication under circumstances which, are, probably, more demanding He has monitor what it is that he has just said while

he is producing his utterance, and determining whether it matches what he wants to say and the responses he means to make With written language, the writer on the other hand, does not cope with the problems associated with spoken language The writer can look over what

he has already written Additionally, he may pause between each word wherever he would like to and take his time in choosing a particular word or phrase to suit his needs

In sum, these two types of discourse above can be distinguished according to the type

of situation Oral discourse is concerning face-to-face situation while a recorded transmission situation involves in the written discourse As mentioned above, in this study spoken discourse (conversation) takes the form of written transcription Written transcriptions and written language are absolutely not like In order to make the data used in this thesis as close as possible to the original discourse, I seek to provide adequate representations

1.2 The theories of conversation

1.2.1 The concept of conversation

So far in this study we have looked at discourse in general Our attempt is made to look specifically at a typical kind of spoken language as conversation According to Cook

(1989), the term conversation is widely used, in a non-technical sense, and people seem

capable of distinguishing it from other kinds of talk They mean, broadly speaking, that the talk is less formal Discourse analysts, indeed, are rather vague about what they mean by

“conversation” too, and some seem to use the term to describe any kind of oral interaction

We shall define the term as follows A conversation is defined as “talk between two or more people in which thoughts, feelings and ideas are expressed, questions are asked and answered, or news and information are exchanged” (Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary,

2000) Clearly, it is communication by two or more people, or by one's self and conversational communication also the most basic and widespread means of conducting human affairs Conversation, as we have seen here, involves far more than knowledge of the language system and the factors creating coherence in one-way discourse; it involves the gaining, holding, and yielding of turns, the negotiation of meaning and direction, the shifting

of topic, the signaling and identification of turn type, the use of voice quality, face and body For a successful conversation, the partners must achieve a workable balance of contributions A successful conversation includes mutually interesting connections between the speakers or things that the speakers know For this to happen, those engaging in conversation must find a topic on which they both can relate in some sense

To sum up, conversation is notoriously difficult to understand and analyze and it can

seem almost contradiction in terms However, with the focus of discourse analysis and especially in this study the focus of conversation, a typical form of spoken discourse, we will try to attempts to investigate the factors creating coherence as well as cohesive devices and nominal substitution in here In terms of conversational data, we use the transcript of the conversation (a systematic way of coding the words) as our sources

1.2.2 Why is Conversation Analysis important?

Conversation analysis (commonly abbreviated as CA) is the study of talk in

interaction (both verbal and non-verbal in situations of everyday life) CA which is sometimes regarded as distinct from discourse analysis (Levinson 1983: 286) cited in Cook

1990 The question Why is Conversation Analysis (CA) potentially very important when

analyzing cohesive devices in conversation? The answer will be attempted to describe based

on data from conversation taken from various resources in giving clear explanation the most grammatical function of substitute words within a nominal group Regarding the way nominal substitution is expressed, it calls for more work to be done in terms of linking a conversation analytic framework with issues and concerns in cohesion analysis

1.3 Cohesion

1.3.1 The concept of cohesion

The concept of cohesion is closely connected with discourse Cohesion, a property of any successful text, is also present in spoken language It is defined as the grammatical and

lexical relationship between different elements of a text Lexical cohesion is realized through lexical cohesive devices such as, reiteration, synonymy, antonym, etc and grammatical cohesion is realized through grammatical cohesive devices like reference, ellipsis and

substitution (Halliday & Hassan, 1976) However, according to Quirk et al (1985) the grammatical cohesive devices are included two general categories of expansion (coordination and subordination) and reduction (ellipsis and pro-form substitution) Moreover, he makes a clear explanation of each category, following that, Pro-form substitution is the substitution of certain items in a sentence for other items or constructions for the purpose of reduction and economy Besides, Ellipsis, semantically related to substitution, but grammatically distinct, can be interpreted as substitution without a

substitute or zero substitution (Halliday & Hassan, 1976:92) For example:

1) Do you have any matches? - I can give you one [Substitution]

2) Have you seen the film? - Yes, I have [Ellipsis]

Halliday and Hasan (1976:4) also define cohesion in a similar way: “The concept of cohesion is a semantic one; it refers to relations of meaning that exist within the text, and that define it as a text.” They also point out that cohesion often occurs where the interpretation of some elements in the discourse is dependent on that of another To summarize, cohesion refers to the linguistic elements that make a discourse semantically coherent; or as Nguyen Hoa (2000: 23) indicated “cohesion refers to the formal relationship that causes texts to cohere or stick together” He holds the view that speakers relate their utterances to previous ones through the use of cohesive relations; a cohesive tie is established Cohesive ties then enter into cohesive chains, which run throughout a text, revealing how different parts of a text are related to each other

1.3.2 Coherence and cohesion

In this section we shall treat cohesion and coherence as two distinct concepts In fact the use of term „cohesion‟ may be preferable because both „cohesion‟ and „coherence‟ have the function of binding the discourse/text together by creating sequences of meaning Therefore an awareness of cohesion and coherence in all texts especially in conversation

discourse is a very important skill for learners to develop Basically, cohesion refers to the formal relationship that causes text to cohere or stick together (Nguyen Hoa: 2000) It is indicated by grammatical, logical and lexical relationships found among or between the sentences of a text The problems can be treated comprehensively in the book by Halliday

and Hasan (1976) as: “A text has texture and this is what distinguishes it from something that is not a text ………the texture is provided by cohesive relation” Coherence, in contrast,

refers to the type of semantic or rhetorical relationships that underline texts That is to say coherence is concerned with the sequencing of the configuration of the concepts and relation

of the textual world which underlies and is realized by the surface text (cohesion) In other word, coherence can obtain on the basis of relevance, the co-operative principle, the common shared background between participants in a speech event, and how discourse is structured in general, conversation in particular, as well

However, what I have discussed so far should not distort the fact that coherence and cohesion do have relation to each other to some extent In this minor thesis, I do support the view that cohesion is a guide to coherence and that is part of coherence in reading and writing, and indeed in spoken language too More in detail, cohesion is the realization of coherence, and coherence is something created by the readers in the act of reading the text The two categories represent the interrelated aspects that make a text or discourse coherent and different from random ones In short, coherence is embodied by a system of cohesive devices and cohesion is mainly used to ensure coherence

1.3.3 Cohesion within the sentence and discourse

Halliday and Hasan (1976) stressed that since cohesive relations are not concerned with structure, they may be found just as well within a sentence as between sentences Let us consider the following example:

Mary promised to send a picture of the children, but she hasn‟t done

They make it clear that done in the second clause and send a picture of the children in the

first equals, and it is quite irrelevant to this whether the two are in the same sentence or not This reference relation occurs in the sentence just in the same way as it is often found in

discourse It is the semantic relation between done and send a picture of children that

provides cohesion

But what can account for the fact that cohesion within the sentence attracts less attention, as compared with that between sentences? According to Halliday & Hasan (1976), this is because the cohesive strength of grammatical structure is so great that always make the sentence hang together The effect of cohesion in discourse is more outstanding and the meaning is more obvious than that within the sentence And also for these reasons, in my study I deal only with nominal substitution as a cohesive device at the discourse level (conversation)

1.4 Types of Cohesion

According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), the classification of cohesion is based on the linguistic form The type of cohesion depends either on semantic relation in the linguistic system or on lexico-grammatical relations In other words, the cohesive relation can be interpreted as being either lexicogrammatical in nature or semantic It can be made clearer in

the following description:

Nature of cohesive relation Type of cohesion

Table 1.1: Type of Cohesion (Source: Haliday and Hasan, 1976:304)

Consequently, we can refer to grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion as follows:

Grammatical cohesion Lexical cohesion Reference

In short, grammatical cohesion, as defined by Carthy (1993: 34), is the surface marking of semantic links between clauses and sentences in written discourse, and between utterances and turns in speech It is subdivided into the following types: reference, ellipsis, substitution and conjunction (Halliday & Hasan 1976) Whereas, lexical cohesion was first advanced in terms of collocation by Firth (1957) and later developed by Halliday (1961, 1966) Lexical cohesion occurs when two words in a discourse are semantically related in some way Halliday and Hasan (1976) classify lexical cohesion into two main categories: reiteration and collocation Evidently, these two kinds of cohesion work together to contribute to the creation of discourse Within the scope of minor thesis, this study is only focused on the findings of linguistics means used for nominal substitution in English conversation and the equivalent linguistics means used for nominal substitution in Vietnamese conversation

1.5 Substitution

1.5.1 The concept of substitution

The notion of substitution has traditionally been considered as a formal feature within the sentence However then, since linguists have shifted their attention from complete sentences to discourse, the notion of textuality has been seriously investigated, substitution has been taken into consideration across sentences as a cohesive device Those influential

linguists who take the above –sentence approach to substitution are Quirk et al (1972) and Halliday & Hasan (1976) Substitution, the device as Quirk et al (1972) defines for

abbreviating and avoiding repetition Across sentences, substitution seems to be optional, and for stylistic reasons Within sentences, it is sometimes obligatory Most of the substitutes

or PRO-FORMS within sentences are also used across sentences In the view of Halliday and Hasan (1976: 32), substitution is a relation within the text on the lexico-grammatical level A substitute is a sort of counter which is used in place of the repetition of a particular item

Obviously, it is all agreed that substitution is a way of avoiding repetition Within the scope of my study the view of substitution as a grammatical relation in the work done by Halliday & Hasan (1976) on substitution will be taken as the theoretical framework for the contrastive analysis

1.5.2 Substitution, Cohesion and Discourse

As previously mentioned, cohesion at the discourse level occurs when the interpretation of some element is dependent on that of another Truly, cohesion helps a sequence of sentences hang together in the view of Halliday & Hasan (1976) creating a surface and semantic relation between different parts of the discourse It could be understood that substitution across sentences does have a cohesive function and in so doing create textuality since a substitute word almost cannot be interpreted when taken out of context In other word, the addressee needs to have recourse to the previous utterance with regard to look for effective interpretation

Together with cohesive devices such as ellipsis, reference, repetition etc., substitution

in general and nominal substitution in specific works to make discourse also conversation discourse in this study rich in cohesive functions as well as cohesive devices

1.6 Contrastive Analysis

1.6.1 Definition

Learning a second language or foreign one is different from acquiring the first language When studying a foreign language, learners often have a tendency of transferring the formal features of their source language to their target language That is why Robert Lado

in his book Linguistics across cultures in 1957 stated that “Individuals tend to transfer their forms and meanings and their distribution of forms and meanings of their native language and culture to the foreign language and culture‖ So far a lot of linguists have studied

contrastive analysis to give the brief description of what it is, which helps learners of foreign languages find out the way to investigate the similarities as well as the differences between two languages We can understand that Contrastive Analysis means the comparison of two languages by paying attention to differences and similarities between languages being

compared To be more specific, we concern the definition by James (1980:3) “ C.A is a linguistic enterprise aimed at producing inverted (i.e contrastive, not comparative) two- valued typologies ( a C.A is always concerned with a pair of languages), and founded on the assumption that languages can be compared‖ Noticeably, contrastive analysis is not merely

related to not only foreign language teaching and learning but it can also make useful

contributions to translation theory, linguistics typology, the study of language universals and the description of particular languages

In fact, foreign language learners often have difficulties in studying language and using it They always get confused when they distinguish the differences as well as the similarities between the source language (L1) and the target one (L2) Therefore, language learners cannot use the language effectively To sum up, contrastive analysis plays a vital role in the development of teaching and learning foreign languages especially teaching and learning conversation in the target language comparing with the source language

1.6.2 Why use C.A in this thesis?

As I have explained above, C.A plays very key role in exploring similarities and differences between the source language and the target language, which is very important in learning languages, especially in learning a foreign language like English As far as we have seen, English and Vietnamese are different languages in terms of type and nature, so beside similarities there are lots of differences between them in all aspects It is C.A that can help learners find out those differences so that they can bridge the gap between Vietnamese and English, leading to the successful process of mastering English That is why C.A is used as the major study method in this study to analyze nominal substitution in English and its equivalent expressions in Vietnamese conversation And of course, the result of the investigation is intended to be applied to the teaching and learning of English

1.7 Summary

In conclusion, I have gone over all the fundamental notions of discourse, cohesion, substitution as well as subtypes of substitution and nominal substitution as the core for discussion All theoretical background in this study has been drawn on the work by Halliday

& Hasan (1976), Halliday (1985), wherever suitable, Quirk et al (1972) Discourse is

viewed as the language above the sentence level – the language put to communication It is classified into spoken discourse and written discourse, both of which are taken consideration

in this study The term discourse is distinguished clearly with the term sentence and text

Apart from this, the notion and its role of discourse analysis also conversation analysis has been paid carefully attention All above, a close study of cohesion, some types of cohesion and nominal substitution is provided with clearly explanation in this chapter I do hope that these preparations could make up a broad way to reach the objectives set in this thesis

CHAPTER 2

A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF NOMINAL SUBSTITUTION IN

ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE CONVERSATION

In this chapter, I shall consider different forms of English nominal substitution, and at the same time their Vietnamese equivalents will be carefully studied and provided The work done by Halliday & Hasan (1976) will be adopted as the main theoretical framework, but

that which is done by Quirk et al (1972) has been also shared whenever necessary The

following items in English on the whole may occur as nominal substitutes:

2.1 General Features of English and Vietnamese Nominal Structure

Since nominal substitution takes places mainly in the environment of a nominal group, it is essential to revise the English and Vietnamese nominal structure before considering nominal substitution With regards to the English structure of nominal groups, the reader is referred in particular to many well-known linguists such as Halliday & Hasan

(1976), Quirk et al (1972), Downing & Locke (1995) and Chalker (1984)

For Halliday & Hasan (1976), the logical structure of the nominal group in its full form consists of three components: the Head, the Premodifier which optionally precedes the Head and the Postmodifier which optionally follows the Head:

Premodifier / Head / postmodifier: e.g Those five beautiful shiny Jonathan / apples

/ sitting on the chair

Similarly, Quirk et al (1972) as well as Chalker (1984) use the terms

Premodification, Head and Postmodification to refer to three parts of the structure:

Premodification / Head / Postmodification: e.g The latest / problem / for the

government

Downing & Locke (1995) also state that a noun group structure has three parts; through the terms they use for these components are not quite the same as the ones mentioned above:

Prehead / Head / Posthead: e.g The / machine / which broken down is working

again now

Accordingly, we might reach to the conclusion that the standard structure of the English nominal group has a maximum of three components: one Head and two optional modifiers Though central in the group, the Head which may be a common noun, a pronoun

or a proper noun can be substituted or even omitted It follows that the case where the Head

is substituted will be the subject of my study

Besides the logical structure, Halliday & Hasan (1976) also introduce the experiential structure of the nominal group They point out that the structure might functionally be composed of six elements: The Deictic (usually a determiner expressing identity), the Numerative (a numeral or other quantifier expressing quantity), the Epithet (an adjective expressing a property), the Classifier (a common noun or a proper noun expressing a subclass), the Qualifier (a relative clause or prepositional phrase) and what they call Thing The relationship between the logical and experiential structure can be illustrated as follows:

roadside Logical

Experiential

structures Deictic Numerative Epithet Classifier Thing Qualifier

Classes determiner numeral adjective noun noun [prepositional

group] With reference to the Vietnamese nominal structure, the two models of the structure provided by two influential Vietnamese linguists, namely Diep Quang Ban (1996) and Nguyen Tai Can (1996) have been looked at Diep Quang Ban (1996) states that the structure of the Vietnamese nominal group is composed of three components: the Head, the Premodifier and the Postmodifier The presence of the last two is optional:

Premodifier / Head / Postmodifier: e.g Tất cả những cái / chủ trương / chính xác đó

The head is said to be either a noun or a noun phrase which normally consists of a

noun as a classifier combined with another noun, a verb or an adjective ( e.g cái nhà, cây tre, con mèo, người thợ, niềm vui, cuộc họp, vẻ đẹp) It is clear that the combination always

expresses a single entity

The Premodifier may functionally be divided into three parts: Universal Qualifier (từ

chỉ tổng lượng e.g tất cả, hết thảy, tất thảy, cả thảy etc.), Numerative (từ chỉ số lượng or số

từ), and Indexical Word CÁI (từ chỉ xuất CÁI) Its structure is realized diagrammatically as follows:

The Postmodifier may functionally consists of two elements: Qualifiers (định tố) and

Demonstrative (từ chỉ định e.g này, nọ, kia, ấy, đấy, đó):

Nguyen Tai Can (1996) also shared this functional view He holds the view that the two nouns, the classifier and the one following it, are equally important Therefore, he points out that in this case the Head is a combination of Head 1 and Head 2:

Premodifier

Head

Postmodifier

Một đoàn sinh viên khoa văn

Furthermore, Nguyen Tai Can points out that the combination of Head 1 and Head 2 might give rise to three variants:

Head 1 / Head 2: con / chim (này)

/ Head 2: / chim (này) (without Head 1)

Head 1 / : con / (này) (without Head 2)

The fact that Head 1 as a Classifier and take place of the whole Head is of great importance

as it lays the foundations of nominal substitution in Vietnamese Thus, since it serves for my purpose of study, Can‟s view of the Head of the nominal structure will be adopted

Briefly, the structure of the Vietnamese nominal group taken in this study can be outlined as follows:

Premodifier ( phần đầu)

Head ( phần trung tâm)

Postmodifier ( phần cuối) Universal

Qualifier

(từ chỉ tổng

lượng)

Numerative (số từ)

Indexical word CÁI

Head 1 (trung tâm 1)

Head 2 (trung tâm 2)

Qualifier (định tố)

Demonstrative (từ chỉ định)

2.2 Personal Pronouns

2.2.1 Subjective Personal Pronouns and Objective Personal Pronouns

For Quirk et al (1972) and also for other grammarians, personal pronouns of

English are classified into two sets of forms: subjective personal pronouns and objective personal pronouns This classification is based on the role each personal form plays in the

sentence: either as the subject or as the object The former includes I, You, We, He, She, It, They, and the latter consists of me, you, us, him, her, it, them

In addition, together with two categories of number: singular and plural, personal pronouns are traditionally further classified into three categories of person, namely first

person (I/me, singular and we/us, plural), second person (You/ you, the name form for both singular and plural), and third person (He/She/It, singular and they/them, plural)

Subjective personal pronouns

Objective personal pronouns

He She

It

him her

it

Table 2: English personal pronouns

As can be seen from mentioned-above personal pronouns, the third person pronouns obviously carry cohesive force as any use of them always requires the listener or reader to look backwards (i.e anaphoric) in order to retrieve what has gone before Thus, the third person pronouns are seen as one of the main cohesive devices used for the creation of discourse Further more, my study centres around only common substitute words as cohesive devices in conversation discourse and because it is not a study of personal pronouns, I am going to work on only on the third person ones

In the set of the third person forms, he/him and she/her are used to substitute for persons while it/it for things They/them replace both persons and things Let us consider the following examples:

[2:1] The policeman twirled his club and took a step or two

"I'll be on my way Hope your friend comes around all right Going to call time on him

sharp?

"I should say not!" said the other "I'll give him half an hour at least If Jimmy is alive on

earth he'll be here by that time So long, officer."

"Good-night, sir," said the policeman, passing on along his beat, trying doors as he went

(HEO, AFY, 1994:2)

Viên cảnh sát quay bước về phía câu lạc bộ và bước thêm một hai bước

“ hy vọng người bạn của ông sẽ tới Ông có nói thời gian cụ thể với ông ấy chưa?

“ Tôi sẽ chờ ông ấy ít nhất nửa giờ Nếu Jimmy còn sống, ông ấy sẽ

có mặt ở đây không thể muộn hơn

[2:2] ‗But have you got the robber‘s description?‘ asked Stuart

‗In the first place, he is no robber at all,‘ returned Ralph, positively

‗What! a fellow who makes off with fifty-five thousand pounds, no robber?‘

‗No.‘

‗Perhaps he‘s a manufacturer, then.‘

‗The Daily Telegraph says that he is a gentleman.‘ (CMM: 1996:125)

“Nhưng mà anh có nhận dạng được tên trộm không?‖ Stuart hỏi

―Ban đầu hắn ta không hẳn là một tên trộm‘ Ralph đáp lại với thái độ tích cực

‗Sao cơ? Một kẻ chuồn đi với 55 nghìn bảng Anh không phải là một tên trộm sao?

„ ‘

[2:3] Girl: Is the book in this bag for Mum, then? I didn‘t think she was particularly

interested in flowers

Father: I thought she‘d like it – to give her some good ideas for the garden And even if she

never reads it – it‘s got some lovely photos

Girl: I thought you were going to get those gloves I showed you in that shop last

Saturday They match the scarf I‘ve bought her (PET 3, 2003)

Cô gái: Cuốn sách trong túi này có phải tặng mẹ không bố? Con không nghĩ mẹ lại đặc biệt

thích hoa

Bố: Bố lại nghĩ mẹ con sẽ thích nó ………và thậm chí nếu như mẹ

không bao giờ đọc nó thì nó cũng có một số bức ảnh rất tuyệt

Cô gái: Con lại nghĩ bố sẽ mua đôi găng tay (mà) con đã chỉ cho bố ở cửa hàng đó thứ bảy

trước cơ Chúng rất hợp với chiếc khăn quàng cổ con đã mua tặng mẹ

[2:4] Woman: Have you seen my new passport photographs? I put them on the bookshelf

Oh here they are, with your coffee cups I hope they aren‘t dirty

Man: Oh sorry, I was showing them to Pat He says they make you look like that

newsreader on the television (PET 3, 2003: 126) (they/ them ~ my new passport photographs)

Người phụ nữ: Anh có thấy mấy bức ảnh hộ chiếu mới chụp của em không? Em đã

để chúng ở trên giá sách mà Ồ chúng đây rồi, cạnh mấy tách cà phê Em hy vọng

chúng không làm sao

Người đàn ông: Ôi anh xin lỗi, anh vừa cho Pat xem chúng Cậu ấy nói trông em cứ

như phát thanh viên trên truyền hình

In those above examples, it is not very difficult to take note of that he in [2:1] substitutes for your friend, he in [2:2] for the robber, it in [2:3] for the book in this bag, they for those gloves I showed you in that shop and they for my new passport photographs in

[2:4] In most cases, we do not have any problems in the use of English personal pronouns However, it is worth noting that their Vietnamese equivalents are much more complex Their complexity is caused by many restrictions imposed on their use As shown in [2:1], the

Vietnamese equivalent of he/him could be ông (ta) In Vietnamese the word ông is used to

address a man with respect, perhaps because he is an elderly one or has high status In

addition, a man with high social status may also be politely addressed as ngài, as seen in the

following example:

[2:5] “Poor Mr Edward! He ejaculated, ―I little thought ever to have seen it Some say it was just judgment on him for keeping his first marriage secret, and wanting to take another wife while he had one living: but I pity him, for my part‖

―You said he was alive?‖ I exclaimed

―Yes, yes: he is alive, but many think he had better be dead‖

……….What agony was this! And the man seemed resolved to protract it

“He is stone-blind,‖ he said at last ―Yes – he is stone-blind – is Mr Edward.”

(WJB – 1958)

“Ngài Edward đáng thương làm sao! Anh ta thốt lên, ―……… ………Một

số người cho rằng đó chính là sự trừng phạt ngài về việc giữ bí mật cuộc hôn nhân đầu tiên