LV INFORMATION FOCUS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE SENTENCES

-1- CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 RATIONALE English, like any other language, is full of problems for the foreign learner As L.G Alexander [40, p.9] states, what makes language difficult is not just words, but the way words are combined to make sentences, for a sentence is a sum-total of words and this sum-total is greater than its parts Methodologists [57, p.116] have pointed out that the goal of foreign language learning is to communicate appropriately by means of the foreign language and that understanding the grammar of English can help learners to communicate appropriately since grammar is the support system of communication As for language teaching and learning in general, both teachers and students usually pay much attention to vocabulary and grammar However, how to make use of grammatical knowledge in order to carry out communication is still a more important matter Linguistic communication is not merely a matter of transmitting meanings from one mind to another but also of achieving communicative effects One of the ways in which speech achieves its communicative effects is through information organization embedded in syntactic structure Whether language is spoken or written, it has structure and a structure is not included in itself a hotchpotch of randomly distributed elements I cannot string words in a sentence randomly but arrange them in accordance with a set of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic rules There is a whole range of both canonical and non-canonical syntactic structures used in writing and speaking, which aid language users in conveying messages successfully The question is that the speaker has to make a right choice among these structures which will explicitly signal the writer’s -2- intention to the reader The reader as a result will be warned about the sort of interactional effects the writer intends Their communication is successful only when the reader gets the writer’s intention English, like any other foreign language, is very complicated to Vietnamese learners English and Vietnamese are of different language types belonging to distant language families Also, there are quite a lot of differences in way of thinking, lifestyle and literature between the Vietnamese people and the English native speakers These differences themselves cause many difficulties for Vietnamese learners of English As an important modern concept, Information Focus is a very important issue in the Information theory of language communication, especially when we want to express our intended meaning to the hearer It is the speaker who decides how to cut up his message into pieces of information, each of which is called an information unit In each information unit, there is one part that is made outstanding from the other by processing in different ways Consider, for example: (1.1a) John kissed Mary (1.1b) Mary was kissed by John (1.1c) It was John who kissed Mary (1.1d) What John did was kiss Mary (1.1e) Mary, John kissed her [42, p.127] What we want to identify in each of these sentences is focus of information – the propositional content In each case, it is asserted that kissing went on, John did the kissing and Mary was the one who was kissed However, these sentences differ from one another in terms of the order of the elements and emphasized elements (1a) is considered to be the most neutral or unmarked word order The other sentences are marked in one way or another with the focus laid on different elements -3- The study of how information focus is organized and realized is the study of syntactic devices to assign information focus These devices are marked by variations of basic simple structures such as: extraposition, cleft structures, passive voice, etc that are largely guided by some discourse and pragmatic factors The learner is usually provided with syntactic structures or patterns but he is not fully aware of which one will be used in which situation and how to organize the message in accordance with information focus This paper is intended to raise the importance of teaching and learning syntactic structures to assign focus information English and Vietnamese are two different languages Devices of focusing information in these languages are certainly very different though there exist some similarities Learning these differences and similarities genuinely aids us in both using our native language accurately and improving our English teaching 1.2 SCOPE OF THE STUDY There are several different ways of showing Information Focus in English and Vietnamese To begin with, phonologically Focus can be shown by changes in stress and intonation Words as Focus are usually spoken with higher intonation and a lower voice than normal and vowel may be longer (1.2) The bulldozer destroyed the cottage The bulldozer destroyed the cottage [58, p.176] Secondly, lexically Information Focus can be shown by using special words or phrases, such as “really” (thật là), “certainly”(chắc chắn là), “definitely”(dứt khoát) ect For example, the following sentence: ‘I enjoyed it’ will be more emphatic if we add the adverb “ really” to intensify the meaning of “enjoyed” So we have: -4- (1.3) I really enjoyed it [82, p.183] Similarly, owing to the presence of the word “definitely”, the meaning of the sentence: (1.4) Certainly, several women loved him, and he was married twice [82, p.152] is stronger than that of the sentence: ‘Several women loved him, and he was married twice’ Finally, syntactically (through marked word order or special focus constructions), different parts of a sentence can be given more importance by using special grammatical constructions For instance, part of a sentence can be moved to front Instead of “Tôi biết điều này” ( I knew this.) we can say: Điều này, biết.(This I knew) as in this sentence: (1.5) When they scented my fear, they would attack This I knew [79, p.429] “điều này” or “This”is placed at the beginning of the sentence for focus One more way to focus information is using the structure of cleft sentence The following two sentences: (1.6) It is his callousness that I shall ignore [79, p.1383] and (1.7) What I shall ignore is his callousness [79, p.1383] The Focus “his callousness” is stronger than the sentence: ‘I shall ignore his callousness’ Due to the limitation of time as well as the lack of material, our thesis focuses on Syntactic Devices used to mark Information Focus in English and Vietnamese sentences Besides, in this study, I also figure out how Information Focus is arranged in these syntactic devices I also try to find out some major problem that Vietnamese learners of English face in the identification and performance of -5- Information Focus in English to help them make a systematic and detailed investigation so as to produce an adequate and plausible explanation of the topic 1.3 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY Our thesis aims at finding out all possible means of focusing information in English and Vietnamese equivalents In particular, I make a special effort to describe and classify grammatical constructions employed for assigning focus The intended readers of the thesis are therefore English learners and teachers, who need to understand the major syntactic devices that are used to make more prominent the information they want to communicate Such an understanding will help the teacher to present language material in details, and the learner to make individual choices without any serious risk of error It will help to guide him towards confidence in personal expression as well What is more, the thesis will offer some suggestions for preparing and teaching language material involving means of assigning information focus As determined by its purpose, the study attempts to find out the answers to the following main questions: What syntactic devices are commonly used to assign Information Focus in English sentences? What are Vietnamese equivalent devices used to assign Information Focus in sentence? Which sentence elements are Focuses in English and Vietnamese? What are the pragmatic factors (information status) that trigger in these devices? What are the implications of learning and teaching English constructions? However, at the comparatively advanced level at which this thesis is aimed, it is necessary to present the information systematically, and how it is used in language communication At lower levels of study, one is concerned simply with -6- how to form grammatical sentence to convey their idea, therefore they need to grasp all possible grammatical construction for marking information focus The theorical material presented in this thesis is necessary for anyone who needs to understand the principles regulating the use of devices, mainly syntactic devices to mark Information Focus in English and Vietnamese 1.4 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY The study is divided into five chapters as follow: - Chapter is Introduction In this section, the rationale of the study is presented It also contains the purpose, the scope of the study, and the organization of the study - Chapter consists of parts The first part is a review of previous studies related to the problems under investigation The second is concerned with the theoretical background which includes the concepts of information, information structure, focus, classification of focus All of the syntactic devices to mark information Focus are introduced and classified depend on the principle of endfocus or thematisation In this chapter I also introduce basic sentence patterns in both languages because it is necessary to analyse the sentence construction during the study - Chapter is methodology and procedures of the study Here I focus on the aims and objectives of the study The questions raise in this chapter are answered and analyzed in the next one The reseach methods and research procedures are also included in this chapter - Chapter is findings and discussion In this chapter, I analyze, describe and illustrate the syntactic devices to assign information focus in English and the Vietnamese equivalents From these analyses, I find out the pragmatic factors trigger in these devices - Chapter is conclusion and implications I summarize the results of the tasks done in chapter and suggest some implication for teaching and learning grammatical constructions to mark information focus as well as present the suggestion for further research in this chapter -7- CHAPTER REVIEW OF LITERATURE 2.1 REVIEW OF PREVIOUS STUDIES Information structure was first studied by the linguists of the Prague School Their studies is concerned with “Communicative Dynamism” “Communicative Dynamism” is the extent of the contribution which the sentence elements make the push forward the development of communication The theory of Communicative Dynamism that was devised by Czech linguists lays a foundation for the analysis of sentences in term of the information they contain Adopting the Prague School view, M.A.K Halliday (1991) with: “An Introduction to Functional Grammar” affirmed the notion of Theme and Rheme in which Theme responded to Known and Rheme responded to Unknown Halliday delimited the categories of these elements: the given, the new and described their organization in an information unit Halliday also gave the role of information and stress in expressing information unit, especially new information Halliday assumed that each information segment contains one information focus and this focus was realized by stress After that, a lot of linguistics assumed that there may be more than one information focus in a discourse The information status was identified by speakers who used intonation to mark off the focus on any segment of information The focus can be on not only New information but also Given information where the speakers make the listeners pay much attention on the focus element as the emphasis or the contrast of what was said in the presupposition K Lambrecht (1994), “Information Structure and Sentence Form”, interested much on focus structure and types of focus structure in sentences He -8- distinguished Old information from New information base on Pragmatic Presupposition and Focus All of these previous works help me a lot in gaining background knowledge to penetrate to the domain of information structure concerning the issue In examing devices marking information which is the main part in my thesis there were many other linguists: VanVallin & Lapolla (1997), “Syntax: Structure, Meaning and Function”, suggested that all languages have some grammatical systems for marking which type of information is which within the utterance; it may involve intonation, morphological marking, word order or some combination theory of information In “An Introduction to English Transformational Syntax” by Rodney Huddleston (1979), only one kind of extraposition is mentioned in the viewpoint of a transformationalist He transformed a sentence with clausal subject, called deep structure, into the sentence introduced with an introductory subject “it”, call surface structure This transformation shows the relation between syntax and semantics E.K Brown and J.E Miller in “A Linguistic Introduction to Sentence Structure” (1986) generally mention end-focus and end-weight principles The language phenomenon occurs when language users want to place focus on “heavy” constituents at the end of the sentence In this book, they mainly discuss extraposition of subject and object “A University Course in English grammar” by Agenla Downing and Phillip Locke (1992) discusses syntactic strategies in assigning focus, three of which are postponement devices: extraposition, discontinuity of sentence elements, and dative movement In general, all English linguists succeed in giving out some types of devices in marking information -9- Dang Phuong Ha (2000) examined the phonological and syntactic features of Information Structure in the light of discourse analysis It is concerned with both spoken and written English used in the functional style of everyday – life discourse However, the syntactic features that are presented in this thesis are studied in English sources only Tran Huu Manh (10/2004) applied the modern concepts that are raised by Lambrecht(1994) and Van Vallin & Lapolla(1997) to the study of sentences and Information Structure in Journal of Linguistics Phan Thi Linh Giang (2002) investigated the postponement devices in English and Vietnamese The devices she mentioned in her thesis are extraposition, discontinuity of sentence elements and existence construction These devices are based on principle of end-focus and end-weight Therefore, the devices based on thematization have not been presented Huynh Thi Bich Ngoc (2005) presented, described and analyzed Information Structure at the level of sentences and paragraphs as well In this thesis, she tried to present different kinds of Focus, Focus Domain, Topic sentences in paragraphs No devices are investigated Moreover, the resources used in her thesis is in English language only In Vietnamese, Diệp Quang Ban (1998) in “Một Số Vấn Đề Câu Tồn Tại Trong Tiếng Việt” has paid special attention to existence constructions in Vietnamese He groups types of existential constructions and generalizes syntactic forms, lexical constraints and semantic feature of existential constructions Yet, few pragmatic characteristics have been discussed “Thành Phần Câu” (1998) and “Tiếng Việt Thực Hành” (1999) by Nguyễn Minh Thuyết and Nguyễn Văn Hiệp describe rules of movement of Subject and object on syntactic and pragmatic ground Syntactically, they mention syntactic constraints on sentence element movement Pragmatically, they state - 10 - that the purpose of the movement is to meet the principle of information structure, and to place a topic for the next sentence “Phong Cách Học Đặc Điểm Tu Từ” (1983) by Cù Đình Tú and “Phong Cách Học Tiếng Việt (1997) and “99 Phương Tiện Biện Pháp Tu từ Tiếng Việt (2001) by Đinh Trọng Lạc have studied pragmatic features of variations of Vietnamese basic structures The linguistic phenomenon of movement of sentence elements is considered one of the syntactic devices They say that the constituent that is moved out of its normal position to the end of sentence is the one the writer intends to emphasize most and give some specific information Briefly, all of linguists in both languages discussed information structure through syntactic devices to mark information focus However, no one have a full picture of these devices in English and Vietnamese equivalence The study of syntactic devices to mark information focus in both English and Vietnamese is still open As the background mentioned above, it is worthwhile analyzing information structure, information focus to contrast and distinguish information focus by investigating the syntactic devices to assign the information focus in English and Vietnamese sentences 2.2 THEORICAL BACKGROUND 2.2.1 INFORMATION When we talk about a situation, we can usually organize the information in various ways; for example, by choosing different elements of the situation as the subject of a clause or sentence (2.1a) Last night, the C.I.A arrested the attorney general of the United States (2.2b) The attorney general of the United States was arrested last night by the C.I.A (2.3c) The attorney general of the United States was arrested by the C.I.A last night [64, p.175] - 90 - principle on which thematisation strategies work is thematisation They are motivated by marked focus on new information, emphasis and contrast Table 4.3: The syntactic strategies, the focused elements, the principles and the motivations for those strategies Focused elements Strategies Extraposition finite subject Finite clause clause non-finite To-infinitive To- subject clause clause Ing-clause Principles subject End-focus End-weight infinitive End-focus Motivations Focus on New information Emphasis clause End-weight Ing-clause End-focus Stylistic effect Object clause End-focus Focus on new End-weight information End-focus strategies object clause Pseudo-clefting -Verb – Object – End-focus Focus on new Complement – information Adverbial Notional subject Existential End-focus Focus on new information with the Agent Passivising Subject in active End-focus Focus on new construction information Theme End-weight maintaining Without the Agent Verb Adjunct End-focus Complement Themati- Left-movement Theme -Object - Thematisation - Marked focus on Complement - Verb - Adverbial sation Different Choices of new information Emphasis -Subject - Direct Thematisation Contrastivity strategies Clefting object - Prepositional phrase -Adverb of time or place - 91 - CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS – IMPLICATIONS – LIMITATIONS – RECOMMENDATIONS 5.1 SUMMARY OF DEVELOPMENT OF THE STUDY As I stated in the previous chapters, the thesis involves the syntactic devices assigning information focus in English and Vietnamese Based on language structure and function, the thesis has made a study of the English and Vietnamese language structures employed for assigning information focus I have made an attempt to present, classify, and describe the English as well as Vietnamese devices which can be used to mark information focus I study these grammatical structures not to find out how they are formed (e.g.: passive forms consist of an appropriate tense of the verb “be” followed by the past participle of the main verb) but mainly to point out their function of showing information focus It may be thought as a minor function of language structure but cannot be considered an unimportant one because it makes remarkable contribution to making the act of communication more efficient It prevents ambiguity and helps participants in a conversation be fully understood The thesis has finished its duty of outlining the organization of Chapter Chapter 2, as our study follows qualitative research method, is concerned with the basic notions which lay the foundations for the investigation Each information unit consists of obligatory New information and optional Given one In cases the New is kept until last and highlighted with tonic prominence or special constructions In this final position, the prominence is said to carry endfocus In case the New is at the beginning of the sentence, the prominence is said thematisation There are number of devices for assigning information focus based on these principles: end – focus and thematisation These devices are main - 92 - parts which were mentioned in Chapter The most important chapter of the whole thesis is Chapter that focuses on syntactic devices, by which information Focus can be showed in English and Vietnamese sentences Based on the principle of end-focus and end-weight in which the information focus is shift toward the end of the clause, there are four end – focus devices mentioned in the thesis Extraposition provides the prominence a writer might want for information focus at the end of the sentence The second is pseudo-clefting construction which is used to split off the item being given focus This makes explicit the division between the New and Given part of the communication The third of the end-focus devices is existential construction This device is used to introduce indefinite noun phrase having the status of new information focus The fourth is passive constructions which give prominence to the thing affected by placing it in the subject position, and emphasize as new the agent’s identity in the sentence-final position Based on the principle of thematisation in which the information focus is moved to front position, we mentioned two syntactic devices Left-movement strategy helps to put what is the important element at the beginning of a sentence to receive information focus of sentence-initial position Clefting constructions focus on new information followed by the verb “be” All these English devices are paralleled with Vietnamese equivalents There are some main similarities between English and Vietnamese devices: Syntactically, all the end-focus and thematisation devices: extraposition, pseudo-clefting, existential, passive, left-movement and clefting constructions allow the speaker to package the same proposition in various syntactic forms Pragmatically, the end -focus devices as well as thematisation devices are used to achieve discourse and stylistic values in English and in Vietnamese They enhance the beauty of the language, effectiveness of communication, and allow the speaker to express different degrees of logical and emotional emphasis The crucial pragmatic factors include information structure, end –focus, end- - 93 - weight, thematisation and all these serve four stylistic motivation: effective communication, perceptual motivation, better understanding, and rhetorical purposes These enable the hearer to catch the right information at once The message, consequently, is more comprehensible In addition, when long and complicated elements are shifted to the end, they lower ambiguity, and highlight the ability of clarity, of understanding The main differences between the two languages lie on the devices marking Information Focus Some Information Focuses are emphasized by syntactic devices in English whereas in Vietnamese, they are emphasized by lexical devices, such as Pseudo-clefting, clefting construction and passive construction The other difference is on the frequent use of these devices Table 5.1: The frequency of devices assigning information focus in English Strategies Raw number Percentage finite subject clause 30 3.90% non-finite To-inf clause 69 8.98% subject clause Ing-clause 0.91% 23 2.99% Pseudo-clefting 25 3.25% Existential 149 19.40% with the Agent 122 15.88% Without the Agent 230 29.94% Left-movement 51 6.64% Clefting 61 7.94% Total 768 100% Extraposition object clause Passivising - 94 - In English, the devices have the highest frequency (45.82%) is passivising Second is existential devices (19.40%) The next high frequency goes to extraposition of non – finite subject clause (9.98%) The fronting (6.64%) and clefting (7.94%) are less frequent since they are marked in some way Table 5.2: The frequency of devices assigning information focus in Vietnamese Strategies Raw number Percentage subject clause 177 23.13% object clause 122 15.94% Pseudo-clefting 54 7.05% Existential 237 30.98% with the Agent 27 3.52% Without the Agent 16 2.09% Left-movement 72 9.41% Clefting 60 7.84% Total 765 100% Extraposition Passivising In Vietnamese, the devices that have the highest frequency level (30.98%) are existential devices The next is extraposition of subject (23.13%) and then extraposition of object (15.94%) The fronting devices (9.41%) and clefting (7.84%) are less frequent The lowest is passivising devices (5.61%) With regard to frequency in table 5.1 and table 5.2, in English the end-focus devices are used more frequently than the thematisation one in both English and Vietnamese - 95 - The frequency of these devices is different in English and Vietnamese The following chart can show clearly: 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 Extraposition Pseudo-clefting Existential Passivising Left-movement Clefting English Vietnamese According to the findings which are showed in the chart, there is a biggest difference between the frequent use of these devices in English and Vietnamese: passive voice is the most frequently used in English, whereas it is the least used in Vietnamese to focus information in sentences Extraposition is the much more frequently used in Vietnamese, whereas it is the least used in English The reason of this difference is due to the different cultures of both countries English people often go straight to the main point of what they want to say, whereas Vietnamese people like to hedge before getting to the main point of the matter Therefore English people tend to focus on the action, whereas Vietnamese pay attention to the agent Moreover, English and Vietnamese are languages with different features on syntactic, morphological as well as pragmatic aspects English is a flectional language, that is, certain part of speech is always located in certain sentence positions whereas Vietnamese is a non-inflection one, that is, grammatical features of a word is decided in its sentence position, so basic word orders are often fixed - 96 - 5.2 METHODOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS 5.2.1 SUGGESTION ON TEACHING OF SYNTACTIC DEVICES TO ASSIGN INFORMATION FOCUS Information Focus, as it has been studied, plays a very important role in getting efficient communication It helps the speaker make himself fully understood because he will be able to communicate what he means to the listener At the same time, it helps the listener get the exact information from the speaker Misunderstanding certainly will not take place In addition, devices for assigning Information focus serve to prevent ambiguity Therefore, in the process of English teaching and learning, more attention should be paid to the problem of how to deal with all devices to mark Information focus, especially syntactic devices mentioned in this thesis Devices to assign Information Focus have not been referred to as adequately and thoroughly as other categories of grammar such as “tense”, “clause”, or “direct and indirect speech” Furthermore, when dealing with this grammatical category, the teacher tends to describe and classify devices in terms of form and structure, without explaining the reason why they are used and what they are used for That is to say, he usually passes over the functions of these language structures, one of which is that of showing Information they convey For example, concerning cleft sentence, the teacher makes an attempt to help students make as many cleft sentences as possible Students therefore hardly ever know when and in what situation cleft sentence could be used For the above mentioned reasons, language teaching should aim at helping students make use of the language rather than learn about its structure As a result, teaching language is developing students’ language competence, and improving and extending the range of their communicative skills in the language - 97 - In the process of teaching and learning, it is necessary to show students the difference between grammatical structures assigning Information Focus Each of them has its own uses For example, cleft sentence are used to emphasize any Information Focus element of a sentence: subject, object, complement or adverbial; the passive is used to focus on the performer of the action or the thing affected by the action Also, one item can be made prominent by several devices For example, in order to put the subject in Information Focus position we can use the cleft sentence or the passive voice including a “by” phrase On the other hand, one device can be used for more than one item, e.g fronting is a means of focusing on object, complement, or adverbial Syntactic devices in assigning focus vary The same propositional content can be encoded in one strategy or another For example, the proposition: (5.1a) A waiter brought them cocktails [47, p.221] can be processed in English into different combinations such as the following: (5.1b) They were brought cocktails by a waiter (5.1c) Cocktail, they were brought by a waiter (5.1d) It was cocktails that a waiter brought them (5.1e) What the waiter brought them was cocktails (5.1f) There was a waiter who brought them cocktails All of these clauses have the same propositional meaning but not the same communicative significance For this reason, the various alternatives are not equally appropriate at any given point in the discourse To illustrate this we can start by making sentence (5.1) form part of a text (5.2) They arrived at the hotel and sat on the terrace The sun was hot but the canopies gave a pleasant shade There was a glimpse of the sea through the palm trees A waiter brought them cocktails [47, p.221] - 98 - Of the five alternations listed above, only (195b) “They were brought cocktails by a waiter” and (195f) “There was a waiter who brought them cocktails” are reasonable alternatives Therefore, in teaching English devices in assigning focus, teacher should pay much attention to how to write beautifully and effectively, not only how to write grammatically accurately Understanding the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese in assigning Information Focus, students can express themselves more easily and spontaneously without clearly understanding Within the scope of this study, we would like to propose some ways of teaching syntactic devices to assign Information Focus - Combine teaching syntactic rules of devices assigning Information Focus with their pragmatic features - Get students to learn that when producing speech or doing translation, they should pay attention to not only meaning but also Vietnamese and English ways of saying things - Offer students lots of exercises in context to practice the devices assigning Information Focus till the mastery of these devices can be achieved - In order to overcome the mistakes, I think the teacher should give the student examples and the formula of construction again and then ask them to more and more exercises from easy to difficult Basing on the students mistakes the teacher corrects them and, in some cases, translates into Vietnamese in order to help them notice the differences and the similarities between the two languages 5.2.2 TYPES OF SUGGESTED EXERCISES The exercise is regarded as an integral part of the grammar syllabus It provides practice in applying the grammatical principles and criteria, and in dealing with many of the problems that the grammar explains Doing exercises - 99 - may be the best way for students to consolidate what they have studied within the theoretical framework Following are some of the suggested types of exercise: Type (Level: Intermediate) Rephrase the following, postponing all or part of the post modifier in the long noun phrase but avoiding ambiguity Example: That loaf that you sold me was stale Answer: That loaf was stale that you sold me The time to face the facts squarely has now come A public inquiry to investigate the causes of the disaster was instituted immediately The belief that foreigners are responsible for all our economic troubles is commonly held Stories of how people have lived for several weeks without food are sometimes told A great deal of nonsense about the modern permissive society is published in the press Type 2: (Level: Intermediate) Rewrite the following sentences beginning each with the filler “it” Example: This question is very easy to answer Answer: It is very easy to answer this question Finlay is a difficult man to understand He is known to double – cross his best friends You seem to have taken a dislike to him He is certain to be charged with an offence You were very kind to come Type 3: (Level: Intermediate) Rephrase the following sentences using the filler “it” - 100 - To be with you here this evening is a great pleasure What you say does not matter in the least That you should feel obliged to resign at this point is regretted Seeing you sitting all alone makes me feel sad Do you find living here very dull? Type 4: (Level: Intermediate) Write the passive counterpart for each of the following sentences Be sure to include a “by” phrase in all your sentences The police stopped each car on the freeway Two justices will consider this case The judge fined Sugita one hundred thousand yen Several companies sent Calexico detailed proposals The prosecutor considered them criminals Type 5: (Level: Intermediate) In answering the question below, use the information given in brackets and the passive voice as a means to achieve end - focus for emphasis Example: Who invented the telephone? (Graham Bell, 1876) Answer: It was invented by Graham Bell in 1876 What is the cause of influenza? (Two main types of virus cause it) Where does ultra- violet light come from? (The sun emits it) Why is it comparatively easy to eat Chinese food with chopsticks? (Chinese cooks first cut all their ingredients very small.) Were Christopher Columbus and his men the first Europeans to discover America? (Norsemen landed on the coast of North America in the 10th or 11th century) In the Middle Ages, how did workmen manage for board and lodging? (The master for whom they worked provided them with board and lodging.) - 101 - Type 6: (Level: Pre-Intermediate) Rephrase these sentences so as to begin each with existential “there” Example: A small, grey monkey was wearing my best silk tie Answer: There was a small, grey monkey wearing my best silk tie A boy named George Samperter sat in the same class as me Several trains were coming into the station at the same time My front door had a bolt but I never used it The Maldives consists of several thousand little islands Beneath our house was an old cellar with a thick flint wall Type 7: (Level: Intermediate) Rewrite these sentences using existential “there” Example: We not want any disturbance to occur Answer: We not want there to be any disturbance An impregnable castle stood on the top of the hill Having a bus stop so near the house is a great advantage A time will come when you look back on this day with pride Is anyone waiting to see me? No messages have come for me, have they? Type 8: (Level: Intermediate) Rewrite these sentences putting the element underlined in front position Example: He can’t take that heavy trunk Answer: That heavy trunk he can’t take I call it a scandal Joe may be a fool, but he is not a thief He probably put it on that shelf It was raining heavily outside I will break his bloody neck - 102 - Type 9: (Level: Intermediate) Change the following sentences so that the underlined phrases are in sentence- initial position Example: It is hard to argue with Jeffrey Answer: Jeffrey is hard to argue with It is hard to convince Bob It is easy to remember this rule It is not difficult to heat our house It seems that victory is impossible It appears that you have made a mistake Type 10: (Level: Intermediate) Convert the following sentences into it-clefts His plan failed Leonardo drew that sketch She appeared at the castles gate that morning He sent Admiral Gage a report of this incident The dominant constraint on broadcasting is the restriction on etherspace Type 11: (Level: Intermediate) Convert the following sentences into wh-cleft Crashaw wanted to sell off all the agricultural land George was born in New Jersey The plant manufactured automatic transmission Darlene used mud to patch up her walls A technical fault caused the delay Type 12: (Level: Intermediate) From each of the sentences below, form cleft sentences that will focus, in turn, on the different elements given in brackets - 103 - Sartoris first saw an enormous serpent approaching.(S, Od) The most striking feature of malaria in Tropical Africa is its high endemicity with hardly any reasonable changes.(Cs) Captain Mackay reported this incident to Admiral Gage (S, Od, Cprep) The Daedalus docked at Bristol on a dark and cloudy afternoon.(C of “at”, C of “on”) The book took a long time to write because it raised so many difficult questions.(A reason) 5.3 LIMITATIONS The biggest difficulty I met in doing the thesis is the lack of English and Vietnamese materials (especially Vietnamese materials) and previous works concerning devices marking Information Focus Therefore, mistakes and shortcomings are surely inevitable in this thesis I welcome the reader’s contributive ideas 5.4 RECOMMENDATIONS Information Focus can also be shown by phonological devices, i.e stress and intonation We can use our voice to stress the parts of an utterance we want to focus on Or we can put stress of Information Focus on a word to contrast it with something else E.g.: “Is your birthday on Friday?” “No, it is on Thursday.” “I wanted plain paper, not ruled.” One more way of giving Information Focus is to use vocabulary Special words can be used to focus Information to some part of a sentence, or to the whole sentence: You can indeed dial direct to Brazil What on earth will tomorrow bring? Why ever did he marry her? - 104 - In addition, there are other things concerning devices for focusing Information which need to be explored They include similarities and differences between phonological devices, lexical devices and syntactic devices; a contrastive analysis of devices assigning Information Focus in English and Vietnamese In conclusion, some further issues that we should continue to concentrate on could be enumerated as follows: - Other possible Syntactic Structure for Focus Information - Phonological Devices for Information Focus - Lexical Devices for Information Focus - Similarities and Difficulties between the three sets of Devices for Information Focus [...]... use of the devices to mark information focus in sentences -To show the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese devices in syntactic and pragmatic aspects -To offer some suggestions for the application of the study to the learning and teaching how to mark information focus in English and Vietnamese sentences 3.3 RESEARCH METHOD AND PROCEDURE With the aims and objectives described above,... As determined by its purpose, the study attempts to solve the problem concerning the following issues: - What syntactic devices are commonly used to assign Information Focus in English sentences? What are Vietnamese equivalent devices used to assign Information Focus in sentences? - Which sentence elements are Focuses in English and Vietnamese sentences? - What are the pragmatic factors (information. .. speaking” is given information: it is already given by the preceding clause He was speaking to me GIVEN NEW As new information is obviously what is most important in a message, it receives the information focus, whereas given information does not That is to say, the focus, signaled by the nucleus, indicates where the new information lies, and the unit carrying such information has the nucleus in final... the initial position and the one that carries new information stands at the final position of the clause Hence, the beginning and the end of the sentence are two focal points in English and as a matter of fact, there is indeed a correlation between word order and information structure of sentences and that pragmatic consideration is reflected in the syntactic composition of English utterances In any... of information , or that this word is - 19 - the element “whereby the speaker marks out [the] part… of [the] message block which he wishes to be interpreted as informative” 2.2.3.2 Types of focus a New Information Focus Constituents of information unit in an utterance are organized into principled order: old –new Old information precedes New information, thus new information focus often stands in the... the most important of information, takes the last position: “Lại đến” Therefore information focus in this sentence is new information focus b End -Focus and Contrastive Information Focus The neutral and usual position of focus is end -focus, the chief prominence on the last open-class item or proper noun in the clause (2.16) Dylan Thomas was born in SWÀNsea [73, p.938] Contrastive focus, however, may be... assign Information Focus in English and Vietnamese so as to find out the similarities and differences of these devices in two languages The basic unit for investigation is the sentence and its equivalent The thesis focuses mainly on material collected from both English and Vietnamese novels as well as short stories The data in English are taken mainly from three sources The first source is English. .. normally in initial-clause position and post-verbal focus position (known as end -focus) , i.e focused information follows verbs, usually in final-clause position Quirk et al [74] calls the end -focus the old –before- new principle since the principle is related to the tendency of recoverable (old) information to precede irrecoverable (new) information So, there exists one-to-one correlation between new information. .. theoretical background in the thesis is taken from various English and Vietnamese authors 3.3.1 DECISION ON THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS The thesis aims at finding out all syntactic devices of focusing information in English and Vietnamese equivalents Therefore English learners and teachers, who need to understand the major syntactic devices that are used to make more prominent the information they want to... Therefore, in this study I only desire to gain the following aims and objectives 3.2.1 AIMS The research aims - To make learners be aware of the syntactic devices to mark Information Focus in English and Vietnamese sentences - To help Vietnamese learners of English have a better insight of syntactic devices to mark Information Focus in order to apply appropriate devices to express correctly, effetely and ... analyzing information structure, information focus to contrast and distinguish information focus by investigating the syntactic devices to assign the information focus in English and Vietnamese sentences. .. the role of information and stress in expressing information unit, especially new information Halliday assumed that each information segment contains one information focus and this focus was realized... Information Focus Constituents of information unit in an utterance are organized into principled order: old –new Old information precedes New information, thus new information focus often stands