A study on some english negative structures and their vietnamese equivelents in gone with the wind

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY NGUYEN THI TUYET A STUDY ON SOME ENGLISH NEGATIVE STRUCTURES AND THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS IN ‘GONE WITH THE WIND’ NGHIÊN CỨU MỘT SỐ CẤU TRÚC PHỦ ĐỊNH TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ NHỮNG TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG TIẾNG VIỆT TRONG TIỂU THUYẾT ‘CUỐN THEO CHIỀU GIÓ’ M.A. THESIS Field: English Language Code: 60220201 Supervisor: Nguyen Dang Suu, Ph.D Hanoi - 2013 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For the completion of this work, I have been fortunate to receive invaluable contributions from many people. First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Nguyen Dang Suu for his indispensable assistance, excellent suggestions, expert advice and detailed critical comments, without which the work would not have been complete. In addition, I am greatly indebted to all my lecturers at Hanoi Open University for their constant support and encouragement. I would also like to extend my sincere thanks to my family and my friends for their unconditional support, encouragement and forbearance. Finally, I am all too aware that despite all the advice and assistance, I feel that the project is far from perfect; it is, therefore, my sole responsibility for any inadequacies and shortcomings that the thesis may be considered to have. i DECLARATION I hereby declare that no part of the enclosed Master Thesis has been copied or reproduced by me from any other’s work without acknowledgement and that the thesis is originally written by me under strict guidance of my supervisor. Hanoi, December 30, 2013 Nguyễn Thị Tuyết APPROVED BY: ii ABREVIATIONS A: adverbial Adj: adjective Aux. Auxialiary C: complement Noun: noun NP: noun phrase O: object S: subject V: verb Pr: Predicate BN: Bổ ngữ CN: Chủ ngữ DT: Danh từ ĐT: Động từ TN: Tân ngữ TrN: Trạng ngữ VT: Vị thể iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS DECLARATION i ABREVIATIONS ii ABSTRACT 1 PART A: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY 2 1. Rationale of the study 2 2. Aims of the study 2 3. Research questions 2 4. Scope of the study 3 5. Methods of the study 3 6. Design of the study 4 PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5 CHAPTER ONE: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 5 1.1. Review of the previous studies. 5 1.2. Theoretical Background: 6 1.2.1. Overview of negation. 6 1.2.2. Characteristics of negation 7 1.2.3. Negation under some linguists’ viewpoint 12 1.2.4. Negation in Vietnamese in brief 15 CHAPTER TWO: THE COMPARISION OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES OF NEGATION BETWEEN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE 19 2.1. Stuctures of negative statements 19 2.1.1. Subject negation: 19 2.1.2. Predicate negation 21 2.1.3. Object negation 29 2.1.4. Complement negation 30 2.1.5. Adverbial negation 31 2.1.6. Clause negation 32 iv 2.1.7. Total negation 34 2.2. Negative questions 35 2.2.1. Negative Yes-No questions 35 2.2.2. Negative Wh- questions 36 2.2.3. Question tags 37 2.3. Negative commands 37 CHAPTER THREE: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION OF THE STRUCTURES OF NEGATION IN “GONE WITH THE WIND” AND THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS 39 3.1. The structures of negations used in ‘Gone with the wind’ 39 3.1.1. The frequency of using the negators in the novel and in translated version 39 3.1.2. The frequency of using “NOT” in the novel 39 3.1.3. The frequency of using “NO” in the novel 43 3.1.4. Negation with NOT … ANY, NOT…… EITHER, NOT ….EVER in the novel 45 3.2. Syntactic features of negative sentences in the source language and the translated version in the target language 46 3.2.1. Negative statements in the novel 47 3.2.2. Negative questions in the novel 62 3.2.3. Negative commands in the novel 64 3.3. Similarities and differences of English syntactic negative structures in ‘Gone with the Wind’ and their Vietnamese translations 65 3.3.1. Similarities 65 3.3.2. Differences 67 PART C – CONCLUSION 68 1. A brief summary of the thesis and main conclusions 68 2. Limitations of the study 68 3. Suggestions for further studies 69 REFERENCES 70 v TABLES AND FIGURES Table1. The frequency of using modal verb with ‘not” in negative structures in the novel 42 Table 2. The frequency of using negators “không” and “chẳng” in translated version 46 Table 3. Negative structure in the source language text and the target source one 46 Figure 1. The frequency using “not” in different parts in the sentence 43 Figure 2. The frequency of using “no” in different parts in the sentence 44 Figure 3. The frequency of using negators in translated version 45 1 ABSTRACT Negation is present in all human languages; it is one of the prevalent and fundamental features of any human languages. As Larry Horn observes in his “A Natural History of Negation” that all human systems of communication contain a representation of negation. No animal communication system includes negative utterances, and consequently none possesses a means for assigning truth value, for lying, for irony, or for coping with false or contradictory statements (Horn2001: iii). In English, especially in the novels, negative sentences account for not a small proportion. Much attention has been paid to the patterns and semantic of negative sentences. However, there has been no investigation into a particular literal work so far. For this reason, the study aims at pointing out the syntactic differences and the similarities between negation in Vietnamese and English and analyzing some negative structures from the novel “Gone with the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell and its equivalents in the translated version by Duong Tuong in an attempt to clarify the negative structures in English and Vietnamese equivalents. 2 PART A: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY 1. Rationale of the study Negation is a topic that is widely discussed within semantics, pragmatics, morphology, and syntax. In general, English and Vietnamese have similar features in terms of expressing negation. However, a profound analysis shows that each language has its own chracteristics making some differences in comparison with other languages. Negative syntactic structures in English and Vietnamese are considered to be one of the most interesting and difficult issues that require a great attention in learning English as a foreign language.It is the structures that may cause difficulties for learners in communicating English and Vietnamese. Therefore, this study describes, analyses and compares negation between English and Vietnamese in terms of structures. In addition, the investigation into negation in “Gone with the Wind” and its Vietnamese version translated by Duong Tuong is conducted in an attempt to demonstrate how negative sentences are formed in this novel. Hopefully, it will benefit people who have an interest in this thesis. 2. Aims of the study This study mainly focuses on: Describing and classifying how negative structures of English and Vietnamese are built and used in details. Making a comparison of English negation with Vietnamese one. Carrying out an investigation into the structures of expressing negation in the novel “Gone with the Wind” by American writer Margaret Mitchel and its translated version “Cuốn the chiều gió” by Duong Tuong. 3. Research questions The following are the four research questions: -What are the brief features of negation in English and Vietnamese? - What are the syntactic similarities and differences between negative structures in English and Vietnamese? - How are negative ideas expressed in the novel “Gone with the Wind” and its translated version? 3 4. Scope of the study Firstly, the theoretical background of the study focuses on some fundamental issues in negation, which is of vital importance of the study. Secondly, the research focuses on negation equivalence in the novel: “Gone with the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell and the Vietnamese translated version by Duong Tuong. The research questions in the preceding part have already implied that the research is focused on negation in the novel “Gone with the Wind” rather than in the other literary works. To be more specific, the study will examine the similarities and differences between negation in English and Vietnamese. However, since negation is a very big issue, this study mainly examines syntactic features of English negative sentences that contain the formal makers of negation such as not, no, nobody/no one, nothing, nowhere, none, never, neither/nor in the novel “Gone with the Wind” and their Vietnamese equivalents in translated version “Cuốn theo chiều gió” Beside the novel “Gone with the Wind” by Margaret Mitchel and its translated version “Cuốn theo chiều gió” by Dương Tường”, the sources of data are also taken from the other novels such as: The Vanity Fair by Tharkeray and its Vietnamese translated version Hội chợ phù hoa by Trần Kiêm , The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway and the translated version “ Ông già và biển cả” by Huy Phương. 5. Methods of the study The contrastive method is mainly used in the thesis to analyze the ways of expressing negative ideas in English and Vietnamese. The main research methods include three techniques namely (1) description, (2) translation and (3) deduction. The descriptive and deductive approach is applied in the theory revision to come to the nature of negation in English and Vietnamese. Data randomly collected are qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed on the basis of grammatical and pragmatic theories. [...]... exercises A negative with assertive-form implies another affirmative or is regarded as “partial negative Apart from adverbials, the ambiguity is also made by an operator in a negative, here, operator is not a normal auxiliary expressing grammatical function, but a modal auxiliary With a negative modal auxiliary, verb phrase falls into a situation 9 that the negation belongs to main verb or auxiliary, the interpretation... well as negation in English and Vietnamese in particular However, there has been no investigation on a particular novel so far Therefore, the investigation into negation in Gone with the Wind is conducted in an attempt to prove how syntactic negative structures are used and translated into Vietnamese by Duong Tuong 1.2 Theoretical Background: This chapter offers some theoretical background on negation... looked at negation syntactically and differed from Klima in certain areas He raised some main objections, but his finding or proposition are not as far reaching or all encompassing in relation to negation and a bit ambiguous Tot Tie (1991) puts forward a classification of the uses of negatives in both oral and written language in “Negation in English Speech and Writing” Pagan (1990) shows the pragmatic... negation in English and in Vietnamese in brief, to which the study related 1.2.1 Overview of negation There have been many definitions of negation in English In the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, negation is defined as “contradicting the meaning or part of the meaning of sentences.” Horn (2010) gives out the definition about negation: In many ways, negation is what makes... is the list of variations of predicate 22 negation: modal negation, negation with BE, negation with lexical HAVE, negation with auxiliary HAVE, negation with DO, negation with NOT…ANY, negation with NOT….EITHER, and negation with NOT ….EVER Structure of auxiliary negation In English, modal verbs have only one form; they have no -ing or -ed forms and do not add -s to the 3rd person singular form Negative. .. “Negatives in Written Text” Horn, Laurence, R and Yasuhiko Kato (2000) in “Negation and Polarity Syntactic and Semantic Perspectives” give out the syntactic features and scope of negation Mazzon in A History of English Negation” concerns about an extensive study of negation that combines both synchronic and diachronic complementary analyses Vietnamese grammarians and linguists have investigated into... variations in Vietnamese Then Ms Tran Phuong Thao from Danang University conducted “An Investigation into English Lexical Devices Denoting Negation versus Vietnamese Equivalents” (2010), in which the ways that express the conception of negation in English and Vietnamese equivalents are clarified All those books and studies have revealed typical and very interesting features of negation in general as... are carried out depending on the position of the words or phrases, which convey the negative meanings 18 CHAPTER TWO: THE COMPARISION OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES OF NEGATION BETWEEN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE In this chapter, we confine our attention to English and Vietnamese negative structures to see how they are similar and how they are different In general, English and Vietnamese have numbers of similar... interpretation of the negative depends on the negative meaning of modal auxiliaries themselves 1.2.2.2 Focus of negation Beside the scope, the focus of negation is also needed to incorporate Focus of negation places a stress on particular part of a negative clause, which helps to make the notice of the contrast of meaning implicited in the negative, at the same time indicates the rest of the clause in the. .. like WATER (not all cats like water) (The negative meaning operates “ALL cats don’t like WATER”( Quirk, p.187) 1.2.3 Negation under some linguists’ viewpoint 1.2.3.1 According to the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics: The dictionary shows that The main negator (negator is a word that makes a negative sentence”) is “not”, often in its contracted form “n’t” and combined with . analyses and compares negation between English and Vietnamese in terms of structures. In addition, the investigation into negation in Gone with the Wind and its Vietnamese version translated. negation. There have been many definitions of negation in English. In the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, negation is defined as “contradicting the meaning. This study mainly focuses on: Describing and classifying how negative structures of English and Vietnamese are built and used in details. Making a comparison of English negation with Vietnamese