A contrastive analysis of nominal substitution in English and Vietnamese conversation

A contrastive analysis of nominal substitution in English and Vietnamese conversation Trần Thị Khương Liên Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn Thạc sĩ ngành: Ngôn ngữ Anh; Mã số: 60.22.1

A contrastive analysis of nominal substitution

in English and Vietnamese conversation

Trần Thị Khương Liên

Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn Thạc sĩ ngành: Ngôn ngữ Anh; Mã số: 60.22.15

Người hướng dẫn: ThS Nguyễn Huyền Minh

Năm bảo vệ: 2012

Abstract: This thesis is aimed at nominal substitution in Conversation and equivalent

expressions in Vietnamese by using Contrastive Analysis as the major method Through the contrastive analysis, we state the similarities and differences of Ns in English and Vietnamese on different forms of Ns, grammatical or syntactical functions

of substitute words as well as the role of making discourse as cohesive device in conversation The research is carried out using qualitative and descriptive methods The data of the study are collected from stories and novels as well as grammar books

in both languages The findings of the study are mostly discussed on the theoretical framework of the works by Halliday & Hasan (1976) and Halliday (1985) The thesis also draws some implications for teaching and learning as well as suggestions for further study It will be useful for learners when investigating conversation in English

as well as in Vietnamese for successful communication

Keywords: Phép thế danh từ; Tiếng Anh; Tiếng Việt; Ngôn ngữ học đối chiếu; Hội

thoại

Content

CHAPTER 1: 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 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 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

2 Objectives of the study

The objectives of this research are as follows:

- 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

The specific research questions are addressed as follows:

1 What are the linguistics means used for nominal substitution in English conversation?

2 What are the equivalent linguistics means used for nominal substitution in Vietnamese conversation in contrast with those in English conversation?

3 The 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

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1.1 The theories of discourse

1.1.1 The concept of discourse

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

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) Brown & Yule (1983) shared the same idea with Cook 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

1.1.3 Discourse and Text

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 such as Crystal, Brown and Yule, Nunan Whereas, for some linguists these two terms seem to be used almost interchangeably Text or discourse is an instance of language in use, this means that no text occurs without a context

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 Zellig Harris, an American linguist, was the first person who recognized discourse as one main object of study in linguistics 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

1.1.5 Spoken and Written Discourse

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

1.2 The theories of conversation

1.2.1 The concept of conversation

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

1.2.2 Why is Conversation Analysis important?

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

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

1.3.2 Coherence and cohesion

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

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

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

1.5 Substitution

1.5.1 The concept of substitution

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

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

1.6 Contrastive Analysis

1.6.1 Definition

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

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 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

1.7 Summary

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) The classification of these terms will be of

great importance with regards to the contrastive analysis in the next chapter

CHAPTER 2

A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF NOMINAL SUBSTITUTION IN ENGLISH AND

VIETNAMESE CONVERSATION

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

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

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

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

2.2 Personal Pronouns

2.2.1 Subjective Personal Pronouns and Objective 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

To sum up this subsection, I would like to go over several points which are taken into account with regard to the English third person pronouns and their Vietnamese counterparts:

 Vietnamese has more pronouns and pronominalized lexical items to address the third person as compared with English, and as a result these Vietnamese equivalents have more restrictions on their use

 The Vietnamese equivalents of the English third person pronouns are governed

by the so-called principle of formality in conversation They reflect not only the relationship between the addressor and the person he/she is talking about, the education background of the addressor, or his/ her attitude towards he person/ thing being talked about, but also his/ her character Therefore, we can say that pronouns used in Vietnamese conversation are deeply expressive

 English has two separate forms for the objective and subjective cases, but Vietnamese has a single form for both cases

The following table is that of the English third person pronouns and their Vietnamese equivalents:

English3 rd person

pronouns subjective and

objective

Vietnamese Equivalents

He/him Ông, ngài, cậu, anh, nó, chàng, hắn, y

She/her

non - human

nó

personalization

It/it nó

Table 3: The English third person pronouns and their Vietnamese equivalent

2.2.2 Possessive Pronouns

In agreement with the various forms of the three persons of the personal pronouns, the system

of the English possessive pronouns has as its members the following forms: mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, and theirs All these possessive pronouns function as Head in the nominal

group and work to substitute for the corresponding possessive adjectives plus the noun which

is mentioned previously for the purpose of avoiding unnecessary repetitions

To conclude, we see that the English possessive pronouns and their Vietnamese counterparts are doubly anaphoric as they all substitute for both the possessor and the possessed Besides, because the Vietnamese personal pronouns and pronominalized lexical items vary to a great extent, the English possessive pronouns undoubtedly have various realizations in Vietnamese conversational discourse In addition, normally, the numeratives

(especially những) can be used before indexical CÁI/ Head 1 to show the plural number of the

nominal group being substituted The relationship between the English possessive pronouns

and their Vietnamese equivalents is shown in the following table:

Possessive pronouns as

Head (mine, yours, ours,

etc.)

Indexical CÁI/ Head 1 Qualifier

(của) Personal pronouns/

Pronominalized lexical item mine ~ my cell phone

his ~ his bed room

yours ~ your toys

cái phòng

đồ

của của

tôi ông ta con

Table 4: The English possessive pronouns and their Vietnamese equivalent

2.3 One

2.3.1 One as a Substitute for a Nominal Group Head/ the substitute one

For Halliday & Hasan (1976), the substitute one or ones always holds the position of Head in

a nominal group and can substitute only for item which itself Head of a nominal group

In the process of investigating the nominal substitution in the English conversations contrasted with Vietnamese, we should equally pay attention to the cases in which nominal substitution with the

substitute one/ones cannot occur except several restrictions on the use of one/ones mentioned at the beginning of this subsection (mass nouns, proper names), substitute one/ones cannot take place in the nominal compound structure (like fountain pens, polar bears, apple trees etc.) as shown in the

following examples for the simple reason that a word following the accented word in a nominal structure cannot be replaced

2.3.2 Indefinite One

According to Quirk et al (1972), the indefinite one as a substitute for an indefinite noun

group can occur without a modifier but the substitute one can not do so the Vietnamese

equivalent of the indefinite one must have một as its numerative, and this is obligatory What

to be noted here is that the Vietnamese equivalent does not need any qualifiers or Demonstratives since their English counterpart has no modification Thus, the form of the

Vietnamese equivalent of the indefinite one can be depicted as Numerative (một) + Head 1 (cái, cây, con etc.) Like the Vietnamese equivalence of the substitute one/ones, Head 2 is

sometimes repeated to avoid any possible misunderstanding especially when two or more

nominal groups share Head 1 ( like cái bàn, cái ghế and cây đinh, cây tre), and when repeated

it may take Qualifiers or Demonstratives Regarding the plural form of the indefinite one, namely some, what I have talked about the indefinite one goes equally for some The Vietnamese equivalent of some can be stated as (một) vài + Head 1 for countable nouns and

as một ít/ một chút ít + (Head) for uncountable nouns; in the latter case the whole Head is

either repeated or left out

2.4 The same

In English, as Halliday & Hasan (1976) point out, the item same, which is often accompanied

by the definite article the, is also used to substitute for a nominal group But unlike the substitute one/ones which replaces only the Head noun, the same can substitute for the whole

nominal group

2.4.1 Say the same

Halliday & Hasan (1976: 107) propose that the same can be used in place of the fact if it

occurs “in the environment of process in which a fact is involved

With the exception of say the same, in English conversation the same can still be found in a

number of expressions which also substitutes for the fact Let us have a look at the commonest ones:

 Think the same

 The same applies to /The same goes for…

It can be said that the Vietnamese equivalent of the same in the expressions mentioned in these conversations above still adopts the form cũng …thế/vậy What is to be noted here is the position of the pronouns thế/vậy in the sentence I see that when thế/vậy substitutes for a

noun, it does not mean that they will become nouns Substitution here should be understood