Basic sentence patterns in English and Vietnamese

This sentence above extracted from a Vietnamese student’s translating Vietnamese sentence into English

HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH



Basic sentence patterns

in English and Vietnamese

Instructor : Nguyen Ngoc Vu

Student : Nguyen Thi Ai Thu

HCMC, 30/12/2009

Basic sentence patterns

in English and Vietnamese

A contrast analysis

“I give to him some sweets (Tôi cho nó mấy cái kẹo)”

This sentence above extracted from a Vietnamese student’s translating Vietnamese sentence into English Why did this student make errors? In dealing with learners’ errors, Lado states “since the learner tends to transfer the habits of his native language structure to the foreign language, we have here the major source of difficulty

or ease in learning the structure of a foreign language Those structures that are similar will be easy to learn because they will be transferred and may function satisfactorily in the foreign language Those structures that are different will be difficult because when transferred they will not function satisfactorily in the foreign language and will therefore have to be changed.”

Vietnamese students usually make errors when translating Vietnamese sentence into English because there are some differences between Vietnamese and English grammar This paper will focus on these differences and classify some error types that students often meet

In the first part of this paper, we will discuss types of the basic sentence patterns

in English and Vietnamese and make comparison between English and Vietnamese to find out whether Vietnamese has the same basic sentence patterns or not

The second part focuses on some errors types that students often meet and how

to conduct teaching translating Vietnamese sentence into English

Before we explore the basic sentence patterns in English and Vietnamese, it is important to understand definition of the sentence, element of the sentence and their functions Traditional grammar defines that a sentence is ‘a group of words expressing a complete thought’ or ‘a group of words that begins with a capital letter and ends with a period’ Vietnamese and English sentence have two main elements: subject and predicate Lynnm Berk defines that “the grammatical subject of the sentence is often the conversational subject, i.e, the person or thing that the sentence is about The predicate often makes a comment about that subject, i.e, it ‘predicate’ “ We often see that in a simple sentence, a subject is a single structure, while a predicate can have internal structure.

His mother considers him quite handsome

The predicate must contain a verb and can contain other structure such as a direct object, an indirect object, various complement structures, and adverbs In other words, there are different elements with different functions in the sentence According to

“A university Grammar of English” there are five elements in English sentence, including subject(S), verb (V), object (O), complement(C), adjunct (A) According to “Thành phần câu Tiếng Việt”, there are seven elements in Vietnamese sentence, including

Subject-chủ ngữ(C), verb(V), object-bổ ngữ (B), theme-complement- khởi ngữ( K), disjunct- tình thái ngữ(T), định ngữ- complement (Đ), trạng ngữ - adverbial(Tr)

In general, English and Vietnamese have the same elements: subject, verb, object, adjunct (adverbial) and complement But in Vietnamese has two elements that has not in English They are theme complement (khởi ngữ) and disjunct (tình thái ngữ) Every element may play different functions in sentences Now we will step by step analyze each element’s function in detail

Subject

In English, a subject is normally a noun phrase or any word classes that function

as a noun phrases and always precedes the verb in the sentence In Vietnamese, the subject has two types: the subject that occurs with verb and the subject that

co-occurs with copulas là In first type, the subject can be a noun (Cầu sập) or a noun that show person’s parts of body (Chân anh ta gẫy rồi), pronoun (chúng nó đi học) and

“subject-verb structure” (Nhà cháy làm bị thương hai người) In this type, the subject

always precedes the verb in sentence The second type, the subject can be a noun (Ba

là sinh viên), a verb (Học tập là nhiệm vụ chính) or a pronoun (Họ là công nhân) In this

type, the subject can change its position

In short, the subject in Vietnamese and English sentence has both similarities and differences Similarly, the subject is a noun, pronoun, noun phrases and always precedes the verb in the sentence However, in Vietnamese, the subject can co-occur with copulas là and can changes its position In addition, subject in Vietnamese sentence can be “subject-verb structure”

In English, verb is the main part of verb phrase and always combines with tense

in the sentence Verb can be intransitive verb, transitive verb or state verb/state of being verb In Vietnamese, there are three types of verb First, verb combines directly with the

subject that does not need copula in the affirmative and negative form (Tôi đọc sách/Tôi

không đọc sách) Second, verb combines with the subject that has copula in the

affirmative and negative form (Tôi là sinh viên/Tôi không phải là sinh viên) Third, in the

affirmative form verb combines directly with the subject, but in the negative form it

combines the subject that have copula (Anh ấy 30 tuổi/Anh ấy không phải 30 tuổi).

The conclusion here is that the verb in Vietnamese and English sentence is different In my opinion, the verb in English sentence is more complex than in Vietnamese because we must distinguish intransitive verb, transitive verb and state verb Verbs that can be followed by direct objects are considered transitive The intransitive verb is not followed by a direct object (or an indirect object) although it is often followed by adverbs that express time or place

Object

In English, object is a noun phrase or a prepositional phrase Some sentences have two objects, named direct (D.O) and indirect object (I.O) or sometimes object 1 and object 2 The indirect object normally refers to a person (more particularly the person who is recipient or who benefits from the action) In Vietnamese, Object can be

a noun or noun phrase (Thợ may may áo), verb or verb phrase (Cụ tôi muốn về/Sinh viên thích chơi trò chơi điện tử) or a “subject-verb structure” (Thầy giáo hi vọng mọi học

sinh đều thành đạt) Some Vietnamese sentences also have two objects: direct and

indirect object To classify direct object and indirect object, we indicate whether the object combines preposition or not

Cô ta gởi thư(direct object) cho mẹ( indirect object)

“mẹ” is direct object because “mẹ” combines with preposition “ cho”

Paraphrase: cô ta gởi mẹ một bức thư

In short, the object in Vietnamese and English sentence also both has similarities and differences It can be a noun or a noun phrase However, in Vietnamese, the object can be verb, verb phrase or a “subject-verb structure”

Complement

In English, complement is a noun phrase or an adjective phrase (Jim has become a qualified engineer) In Vietnamese, complement is second component in the

sentence It can place before the sentence or between subject and predicate (Đ ột nhiên cậu ta nảy ý định bỏ học/ Cậu ta đột nhiên nảy ra ý định bỏ học)

Adjunct

In English, adjunct is normally an optional element in clause structure and may

be freely add to any clause It gives circumstantial information about the action or event the clause refers to information about: time (when or how long), place (position or

direction), manner, and cause It can be an adverb phrase (John was playing as well as

he

could ), a prepositional phrase (John was playing with great skill) or a noun phrase

(John was going last week), finite verb clauses (John was playing although he was very

tired), non finite verb clauses (John was playing to win), verbless clauses (John was

playing, unaware of the danger), -ing participle( wishing to encourage him, they praised Tom), -ed participle ( If urged by our Friends, we will stay)

Similarly, In Vietnamese, Adverbial refers to place (Cơn ớn lạnh cứ lan ra khắp

thân hình hắn ), time (Lúc nào cũng vậy, sự giận dữ làm người ta mù quáng), purpose

(Bố mẹ cho An một ít tiền để mua sách vở ) , cause ( Vì lợi ích mười năm trồng cây),

manner ( Bất chợt cơn mưa ập đến), definite (Tôi đến anh ngay nếu trời tạnh mưa)

Theme- complement (khởi ngữ) and disjunct( tình thái ngữ)

In English, there are no two elements above In Vietnamese, theme – complement always precedes the sentence and expresses the topic that is indicated in

the sentence (Hai ng ư ời đó , một người là thầy giáo còn một người là sinh viên).

Disjunct always places the end of the sentence and adds idea for the sentence (Được

học ở trường này, họ thích quá còn gì)

To sum up, there are five elements in the English sentence Vietnamese sentence shares some similarities with English sentence but it has two elements that English do not has What about their basic sentence patterns? Are they different or similar? We will continue to analyze the basic sentence patterns in English and Vietnamese

English

There are some examples of the basic patterns in the following story:

An unlucky thief

A man walked into a hotel, saw a nice coat, put it over his arm and walked out again Then he tried to hitch a life out of town, while he was waiting he put the coat on his arm At last a coach stopped and gave him a lift It was carrying forty detectives on their way home from a conference on crime One

of them had recently become a detective inspector He recognized the coat It was his He had left it in the hotel, and it had gone missing It seemed a good idea at the time, the man said He thought himself rather unlucky.

2 Subject Verb Adjunct (SVA) The coat was over his arm

3 Subject Verb Complement (SVC) The detective became an inspector

4 Subject Verb Object (SVO) The detective arrested the thief

5 Subject Verb Object Adjunct (SVOA) He put the coat over his arm

6 Subject Verb Object (SVOO) The thief gave the inspector his coat

7 Subject Verb Object Complement(SVOC) They called the inspector sir

Look at the table above, we can see that there are seven basic sentence patterns in English Compare with English, basic sentence patterns in Vietnamese have some differences

Vietnamese

Type Basic patterns example

2 Subject Object Verb (SOV) Anh ta thuốc không hút

3 Object Subject Verb (OSV) r ư ợu anh ta uống

5 Verb Subject Verb (VSV)(Not real)

6 Verb Object Subject (VOS) Tạo ra của cải là ng ư ời lao động

7 Subject Verb Object Adverbial(SVOA) Sinh viên đọc sách ở phòng đọc

8 Subject Verb Object complementAdverbial (SVOCA) Sinh viên tặng sách cho bạn nhân ngàysinh nhật

9 Theme-complement Subject VerbObject Adverbial Không biết nghĩ thế nào, cậu ấy đọcsách bằng kính lúp ở lớp

10 Theme-complement Subject Verb

Object Adverbial Disjunct

Nghĩ sao, học sinh lại vứt rác ra đường

như thế

From the basic sentence patterns are mentioned above We can see similarities and differences of two languages In English and Vietnamese, there are some the same basic patterns such as SVO, SVOA However, in Vietnamese, verb and object can precede the sentence Subject can change its position in the sentence Beside, Vietnamese has two new elements: theme-complement and disjunct So, in Vietnamese, we can make a lot of the different basic patterns more than in English As

a language teacher, we have to help students realize these similarities and differences.

At the same time of the comparing, we should give student some examples in both languages to help student understand structure of the basic patterns clearly and use them correctly

As mentioned in the introduction, Vietnamese students often encounter with problems of translating Vietnamese sentence into English because of differences between two languages In this paper, I only refer to two of them, which is “omission” and “repetition”,

Omission

Students often omit the subject and the object when they translate Vietnamese sentence into English

Omission of subject

Ex: 1) Nó rất thông minh dù còn nhỏ tuổi

Incorrect: he is very intelligent though is young.

Correct: he is very intelligent though he is young.

Omission of object

Ex: 2) Tôi xin tiền nhưng nó không cho

Incorrect: I asked for money, but he did not give me

Correct: I asked for money, but he did not give it for me.

The subject “he” is omitted in the first sentence and the object”it” is omitted in the second This reflects a very common feature of Vietnamese grammar, in which empty pronouns exist in the most sentences and from the practice of word-by-word translation The cause of omitting subject and object in their translation can be:

 do not master the basic sentence patterns in two languages

 do not distinguish between intransitive verb and transitive verb

 do not distinguish between direct object and indirect object and their positions

Repetition

Similarly, students also often repeat the subject and the object when they translate Vietnamese sentence into English

Repetition of subject

Ex: Nó khóc và xin tiền

Incorrect: he cries and he asks me for money.

Correct: he cries and asks me for money.

Repetition of object

Ex: Nó véo và đá tôi

Incorrect: he punched me and kicked me.

Correct: He punched and kicked me.

Vietnamese students often repeat subject and object in their translation because

of their habit of mentioning both topic and subject in one sentence and the practice of word-by-word translation They think that repeating subject or object can emphasize or clarify the sentence

As a teacher, what can we do to help student correct these errors? Based on contrastive analysis between the basic sentence patterns in English and Vietnamese and the cause of two common errors given above, I discuss some implications of the study for language teaching and learning

Firstly, it is necessary for a teacher to help students realize and master the similarities and differences between the basic sentence patterns in Vietnamese and English The difficult patterns may require an explanation such as object’s position, the differences between direct object and indirect object, object and complement, and between intransitive and transitive verb and how to use them in one sentence Learners must understand main elements and their functions in the sentence and the basic patterns clearly to be able to translate Vietnamese sentence into English and vice versa correctly

Secondly, with common errors, the teacher must introduce them to students and ask students to focus on them instead of ignoring them With omission errors, students must be aware that in Vietnamese sentence is often dropped but not in English With repetition errors, students must understand why they are not repeated subject and object at these positions in the sentence The teacher should give students the rule of common errors So that when they meet these errors, they can correct errors themselves