Syntactic and semantic features of english compound nouns with reference to their vietnamese equivalents

THESIS SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF ENGLISH COMPOUND NOUNS WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS ĐẶC ĐIỂM CẤU TRÚC VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA DANH TỪ GHÉP TIẾNG ANH LIÊN HỆ TƯƠNG T

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNVERSITY

M.A THESIS

SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF ENGLISH COMPOUND NOUNS WITH REFERENCE

TO THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

(ĐẶC ĐIỂM CẤU TRÚC VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA DANH TỪ GHÉP TIẾNG

ANH LIÊN HỆ TƯƠNG TƯƠNG VỚI TIẾNG VIỆT)

Hanoi, 2016

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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNVERSITY

M.A THESIS

SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF ENGLISH COMPOUND NOUNS WITH REFERENCE

TO THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

(ĐẶC ĐIỂM CẤU TRÚC VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA DANH TỪ GHÉP TIẾNG

ANH LIÊN HỆ TƯƠNG TƯƠNG VỚI TIẾNG VIỆT)

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report

entitled SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF ENLISH

VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS ( Đặc điểm cấu trúc và ngữ nghĩa của danh t ừ ghép tiếng Anh liên hệ tương đương với tiếng Việt) submitted in

partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in English Language Except where the reference is indicated, no other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis could not have been completed without the help and

support from a number of people

First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Assoc Prof Dr Phan Van Que, my supervisor, who has patiently and constantly supported me through the stages of the study, and whose stimulating ideas, expertise, and suggestions have inspired me greatly through my growth as an academic researcher

A special word of thanks goes to all the lectures of the Master course

at Hanoi Open University and many others, without whose support and encouragement it would never have been possible for me to have this thesis accomplished

Last but not least, I am greatly indebted to my family, my friends for the sacrifice they have devoted to the fulfillment of this academic work

ABSTRACT

Compounding nouns is one of the ways to create new word Especially

in the tourism and hotel industry, compounding nouns are used very much The students of Foreign language and tourism Department at Red star University get some difficulties to learn and translate some compound nouns

in their textbooks To help them to solve the problems, the author chose the

title Syntactic and semantic features of English compound nouns with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents for research

To get the aims and the objectives of the research, both quantitative and qualitative research were applied in this study The author combines Descriptive Research Method and Comparative Analysis Method, in which the survey questionnaires, the comparative method, the statistic method and the analytical method are included

Basing the result of survey, the author has pointed out the similarities and differences of English compound nouns in both languages and classify the English compound nouns s in the two textbooks into Appendix 1,2 This will help the learners to understand and remember them systemically Besides, the authors also imply some suggestions for teaching and learning English compound nouns

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

1 ECNs: English compound nouns

2. VCNs: Vietnamese compound nouns

3. CP : Compound nouns

4. RSU : Red Star University

5. ESP : English for Specific Purposes

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1 English compounds in term of the parts of speech 15 Table 2.2 English compounds in term of semantic 16 Table 2.3 English compounds in term of a phrase or clause 16

Table 3.1 Information of the research participants 34 Table 4.1 Meaning formation of compound nouns 42 Table 4.2 Syntactic and semantic features of ECNs in their Vietnamese equivalents

45

Table 4.3 The learners’ acquisition levels on the syntactic features 56 Table 4.4 The learners’ acquisition levels on the semantic features 56 Table 4.5 The learners’ acquisition levels on the syntactic and semantic features

57

Table 4.6: Syntactic and semantic features of ECNs in their Vietnamese

equivalents

62

Table 4.7 The similarities and differences on syntactic and semantic features

of ECNs in their Vietnamese equivalents

63

1.6 Structural organization of the thesis 3

2.2.1.2 Distinguishing compounds from phrases 9

2.2.2 Overview of English compound nouns 19

2.2.2.3 The distinction between English compound nouns and English noun phrases

24

2.2.3 Overview of Vietnamese compound nouns 26 2.2.3.1 General charateristics of Vietnamese compound nouns 26 2.2.3.2 The classification of Vietnamese compound nouns 28

3.2.2.2 The survey questionnaire 37

4.1 The syntactic and semantic features of English compound nouns 42

4.5.1 Main compound nouns in textbooks “English for the hotel and tourist industry” and “Hotel English”

53

4.5.1.1 Main patterns of compound nouns in two textbooks 53 4.5.1.2 Non-idiomatic and idiomatic compound nouns in two books 55 4.5.2 Errors of students on understanding and translating English compound nouns

5.4 Recommendations/Suggestions for further research 65 REFERENCES

APPENDICES

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale for the research

In recent years, teaching English has been paid considerable attention

by many linguistic scholars and teachers Various communicative approaches have been applied with the hope to teach learners to use English as the native speakers However, the process of learning English involves not only practicing the four skills needed in communication as speaking, listening, reading and writing but also mastering other aspects such as grammar structures, sounds and vocabulary And enriching one’s vocabulary of a language is very important as Wilkins (1972:111) comments: "Without grammar, very little can be conveyed; without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed." Besides, possessing a rich source of vocabulary in English will enable learners to speak and to write concisely Unfortunately, dealing with new English words is one of the most difficulties for any language learners as words in English are numerous and continuously developing together with the changes of the society New English words are formed in various ways such as borrowing, affixation, conversion, composition, shortening, etc Among which, compounding or composition is a rich source of English neologisms According to an analysis of the Longman Register of new words Vol 1, it accounts for 39.8 % of new words (Ayto, in Anderman 1996:65) while a similar analysis of the Macquarie Dictionary of new words shows that it can account for 54.5% (Butler, in Ayato in Anderman 1996:66) Given, therefore, that compounding is highly productive process of word formation Moreover, compounding is an effective tool to express ideas concisely However, compound words have specific and complicated features that many learners of English find it not easy to use Furthermore,

there is a fact that nominal compounds appear most in our daily life, especially in professional texts as in business, medicine, science and technology as well as other areas of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) Thus, students of ESP have a greater difficulty when coping with them Because of its importance and complication, study on compound nouns interests so many linguists and researchers There have been a number of studies on compound nouns conducted by many researchers for suggestions dealing with compound nouns in commerce, science, technology and software computer texts but there is no systematic research on compound nouns of tourism terms For those reasons, as a learner as well as a teacher of teaching English in the Foreign language and Tourism Department, I would like to do a research on this matter with the hope that I would understand properly the features of English compound nouns and find out

an appropriate way to teach them to my students of ESP

The title of the research is “Syntactic and semantic features of English

compound nouns with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents”

1.2 Aims of research

The thesis is aimed to get the full knowlegde of syntactic and semantic features of ECNs with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents From that, the author will give the suggestions for teachers to teach English compound nouns and methods to learn English compound nouns for Vietnamese learners

1.3 Objectives of research

There are three main objectives in this study The first objective is pointing out the syntactic and semantic features of English compound nouns with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents The second one is helping

Vietnamese learners be aware of the differences and similarities between English compound nouns and their Vietnamese equivalents And lastly, it is proposing some implications for mastering English compound nouns in effective ways

1.4 Scope of research

Within my thesis, I only focus on the syntactic and semantic features

of English compound nouns in reference with the Vietnamese equivalents The compound nouns being analyzed in this study are those that are formed from two words while the data source of the compound nouns are in some dictionaries, the reference grammar books by Quirk, R & Greenbaum, S (1985) and especially in the textbooks “English for the hotel and tourist Industry” by Nguyen Thanh Chuong and “Hotel English” by Tuyet Son-Thu

Ha

1.5 Significance of research

The finding of this study is expected to give valuable contribution theoretically and practically Theoretically, this study will deepen our understanding and knowledge about the syntactic and semantic features of English compound nouns in reference with the Vietnamese equivalents Practically, this study will classify the English compound nouns on the tourism and hotel industry in two textbooks “English for the hotel and tourist Industry” by Nguyen Thanh Chuong and “Hotel English” by Tuyet Son-Thu

Ha more detail and give better ways for learning compound nouns in English for Vietnamese learners, especially for our students at Red Star University

1.6 Organizational structure of thesis

The thesis is designed with five chapters:

Chapter 1: “Introduction” that gives the overview of the thesis

including rationale, aims of research, objectives of research, scope of

research, significance of research and organizational of research

Chapter 2: “Literature review” that provides the previous studies and

theoretical background

Chapter 3: “Methodology” that indicates research orientations and

research methods

Chapter 4: “Finding and discussion” that analyzes and discusses to

answer the research questions

Chapter 5: “Conclusion” is the last chapter to summarize and close

our research

knowledge of the background and present state of this field of research

2.1 Review of previous studies

2.1.1 Previous studies overseas

The amount of research conducted on the syntactic and semantic features of compound nouns on tourism and hotel industry relevant to this thesis is somewhat limited

Charteris-Black , J (1999) reported that the second language learners encounter comprehension problems with compound nouns and that idiomatic, syntactic and lexicalization factor may influence their comprehension And he also pointed out that the problems come from the learner’s word combination This problem is very similar with native speakers However, the research only focuses on the acquisition of English Neologism

Mgr Marie Gajzlerová (2007) pointed at the types and classification of ECNs and other compoundings And he also proved that ECNs had a higher frequency However the research is mainly general information

Lone Secher Wingreen Christensen (2014) researched on translating compound nouns in User Manuals His study aided translators and people

training to be translators in discovering the best way in which to translate CNs in technical language Although the study can only say something more specific about the 10 user manuals, which were used as the data, those user manuals should represent a good sample of the user manuals available for electric products Furthermore, the study has provided both a theoretical look

at the compound nouns in the qualitative analysis, in which the use of various strategies was considered, and a more real-world look at the translation of ECNs in connection with comprehensibility in the quantitative part

2.1.2 Previous studies in Vietnam

Duong Thi Ngoc Anh (2009) pointed out the general information of ECNs on classifications, form, syntactic and semantic features The study also mentioned ECNs in the book “ Hotel and tourism industry” However, the study was only a minor thesis, it couldn’t prove and analysis deeply and

in detail on tourism and hotel industry

Tran Hoai Da Vu (2010) on his minor thesis “Contrastive Analysis of Word Compounds in English and Vietnamese”, Bui Thi Thao Uyen( 2010)

on her minor thesis “English and Vietnamese Compounding: A Contrastive Analysis”, Ho Ngoc Phuong Tram(2010) on her minor thesis “Compound nouns in Vietnamese focused on the descriptions of English compound nouns in the comparison to Vietnamese equivalents Great efforts were made to find a better way of teaching and learning compound nouns

in an English Second Purposes textbook However, they are all minor thesis, many other related issues cannot be discussed thoroughly

Compared to those previous studies, this study will have more obvious similarities and differences, namely analyzing English Compound Nouns in term of their syntactic and semantic features denoting tourism terms Especially, this study will focus on the students in Red Star University and the field of compound nouns is on the tourism and hotel in the textbooks

“English for the hotel and tourist Industry” by Nguyen Thanh Chuong and “ Hotel English” by Tuyet Son – Thu Ha

2.2 Review of theoretical background

2.2.1 Overview of English compounding

Compounding, or also equally termed composition, is one of the major English word-formation processes and also serves as an excellent source of noun formations (formations created for a single occasion) and neologisms

As mentioned by Štekauer (2000, p 99) it is even often regarded as the most productive process of the English word-formation Plag (2002) also maintained this opinion Furthermore, Plag (2002, p.169) added that compounding is the most controversial process in English in terms of linguistic analysis This is due to the fact that “numerous issues remain unresolved and convincing solutions are generally not easy to find” (Plag,

2002, p 169) Because of this, there is no universal definition of compounds (Kavka and Štekauer, 2006), so an attempt to find one, which would be highly unfeasible, will not be made

2.2.1.1 Definition

Adams (1973) sees compound as "the result of the (fixed) combination

of two free forms, or words that have an otherwise independent existence" (p 30) He adds that compounds, "though clearly composed of two elements, have the identifying characteristics of single words" (p 30)

Molhova (1976) explains that “composition is that means of forming new words which causes two or more roots to be merged into one, whose meaning might be the sum total of the meanings of the components or it might be idiomatic”( Molhova 1976: 136)

The probably most intuitive definition of compounding was proposed

by Bauer (1983, p 11) who described it as “the process of putting two words

together to form a third” But as this definition is rather vague at first sight and would also rule out many established compounds, need for providing a more complex one can be felt The most suitable definition for purposes of this thesis may be the treating of compounds as free lexical units consisting

of two or more roots and “functioning both grammatically and semantically

as a single word” (Quirk et al., 1985, p 1567)

Plag (2002) claims that compound is in fact a combination of no more than two elements According to his explanation, even compounds consisting

of more elements can be analyzed as essentially binary structures (p 172)

170-Vogel (2007) characterises a compound as “a vocabulary unit consisting of more than one lexical stem (called a base) Compounds apparently include in their structure two or more lexemes, but they function

as a single item with its own grammar and meaning” (Vogel 2007: 17)

Crystal (2009) gives a more detailed definition of compound saying it

is "a linguistic unit which is composed of elements that function independently in other circumstances" (p 96) He calls these elements free morphemes claiming that there are two or more such elements in each compound (p 96)

The authors offer comprehensible definitions and provide an explicit explanation of word composition Although the different terminology is used

by each author, e.g root, stem, base, element, the meaning is the same

Concluded, a compound can be defined as a combination of two or more elements If the compound is composed of more than two elements it is still analyzable into two-element structures This characteristic of compounds

is called binarity Other important factors that are being used to define

compounds (except for the number of their constituents) are their function and meaning Units that are labeled as compounds behave as single units in regards to their syntactic and semantic function Besides, it has been received a lot of concern from linguistic scholars such as Yule(1985) , Fromkin, V; Rodmar, R.; Collins P and Blair P (1998), Hornby, A.S (1995), Jackson, H & Amvela E Z (2000), Leech, G,N (1974), etc They have proposed a number of different definitions on compounding In this study the definition of Quirk et al (1985) is considered to be of

appropriate, sufficient and easy one to understand: “Compound is a lexical unit consisting of more than one base and functioning both grammatically and semantically as a single word” (1985:1567)

2.2.1.2 Distinguishing compounds from phrases

As stated before, sometimes it is really difficult to decide whether a given formation is a compound or a phrase While the definition itself is rather simple, as compound is treated as “one word” and phrases as “two or more words” (Matthews, 1974, p 94), the reality is considerably more complicated When a noun is premodified (by noun, adjective, participle or nominalization), the sequence which comes a result of this process may be either compound or a free phrase, as was remarked by Adams (1973, p 57)

Of course, several tests of “compoundhood” may be applied to those

constructions (e.g green house, black bird), but the question is whether is it

really possible to come up with a definite answer Adams (1973) stated that there is no answer to this problem which would cover all the cases It can be however supposed that distinctions can be made “on phonological, syntactic and semantic grounds” (Jackson and Amvela, 2007, p 93) Thereupon, these aspects will be discussed successively from now on by mentioning selected criteria which may be used for recognizing compounds

2.2.1.2 1 Stress

Stress may often distinguish a compound from a phrase This is caused

by the fact that words in English tend to have one primary stress, so compounds can be often recognized by “having a stress pattern and a lack of juncture” (Jackson and Amvela, 2007, p 94) It is generally believed that when the primary stress is on the first constituent, the construction is regarded as a compound When the primary stress falls on the later element, than the expression tends to be recognised as a noun phrase This can be seen

on an example: a ‘dark room vs a dark ’room where the first expression is a

compound, while the latter one a noun phrase Quirk et al (1985, p 1569) state that “almost all compounds have this accentual pattern” However, not every compound receive this stress According to Štekauer (2000, p 100) this criterion cannot be regarded as a “hard-and-fast rule”, as there are multiple expressions with two main stresses which are definitely accepted as

compounds (e.g.: ‘trade ‘union) Moreover, Štekauer (2000) says that

number of compounds with this stress pattern is increasing and therefore it would be convenient to use a more general criterion As Matthews (1974) pointed out, this criterion is highly subject to variation, as there tends to be

no consistency of stressing the compounds, even among native speakers It also often depends on “sentence stress and intonation” (Matthews, 1974, p 98) and therefore this test of compoundhood is clearly not very reliable

2.2.1.2.2 Spelling and lexicalization

Compounds are spelled in three different ways (Lieber and Štekauer, 2009, p.376) – they may be solid, i.e written as one word (e.g

blackboard ), two hyphenated words (baby-sitter) or written as two separate

words (living room) That already indicates a problem, as not much effort is needed to find a compound which can be written in either of the three above

mentioned ways Example of this can be the word girlfriend where all the forms girlfriend, girl-friend and girl friend are acceptable Therefore,

spelling is often regarded as not particularly relevant and unreliable criteria for compoundhood (Adams, 1973, p 59)

Lexicalization is unfortunately not much of a different case While

compounds with lexicalized meanings can be found, such as blackbird, it was

already mentioned that productivity of compounding is enormous So is also its ability to create nonce formations and that is why lexicalization will probably never be treated as a proper criterion for compoundhood

2.2.1.2.3 Inflectibility

Inflectibility, which refers to “the use of inflections to modify the grammatical functions of compounds” (Jackson and Amvela, 2007, p 94), also appears frequently as a test of compoundhood An assumption is made

in Jackson and Amvela (2007) that the constituents of compounds are usually inflectionless and that they should be treated(and inflected) as a single lexical

unit This works perfectly well in most cases, where e.g baby-sitters is acceptable while babies-sitters is not, but counter examples maybe found again, like girl’s club or children’s hour (Lieber and Štekauer, 2009, p 376)

So it is apparent that inflectibility, while it is sufficient in many cases, cannot

be regarded as totally universal criterion by any means

2.2.1.2.4 Inseparability and modification

Inseparability is regarded as a much stronger test of compoundhood (in comparison to methods described above) among the scholars Lieber and Štekauer (2009, p 377) even stated that “inseparability is perhaps the strongest test of compoundhood” Also Jackson and Amvela (2007, p 93)

element may be put between its constituent parts and such tests as separating the first element from the head were also successfully applied by Adams

(1973) This implies that while there is nothing wrong with a pretty girl friend , a girl pretty friend is not acceptable anymore and cannot be

recognized as a compound in English

Modification is closely tied to inseparability; when an arbitrary modifier is inserted between elements of a compound, the resulting phrase is unable to maintain compoundhood of the original (Lieber and Štekauer 2009,

p 377), as shown above Furthermore, as compound is treated as a single unit, its elements cannot be modified separately As seen in example taken

from Jackson and Amvela (2007, p 93-94), air- sick can occur in a phrase like seriously air-sick, where seriously modifies the whole compound, but it cannot modify just the second element which means that phrase air- seriously sick is not possible

2.2.1.2.5 Semantic criteria

Semantic criteria are the last ones that are to be discussed in this part, and since the formal criteria mentioned above are not satisfying in many cases, semantics is often emphasized (Matthews 1974, p 95) This leads to Jespersen‟s (1974) supposition that “if the meaning of the whole cannot be logically deduced from the meanings of the constituents the expression is a compound”, as cited by Štekauer (2000, p 101) Also Jackson and Amvela (2007) stated that compounds tend to acquire very specialized meanings and therefore their constituents may lose their original meanings This works very

well for lexicalised compounds such as blackboard (as it may have also a different color) or dustbin (it is not entirely restricted to dust), as exemplified

in Jackson and Amvela (2007, p 94) However, this is not true for all compounds as there are also expressions whose meaning can be easily

predicted from the meaning of their elements, which include compounds like

dance-hall or green-eyed (Štekauer 2000, p 101) Another drawback of this

criterion is shown by Matthews (1974) on the example of idioms, where an

expression such as He made his mind up has a literal meaning in only greatly

limited amount of cases, while there are “good reasons” (Matthews, 1974, p 96) for not treating idiomatic expressions as compounds

After this overview of various tests of compoundhood, it is clear that none of the above mentioned criteria would cover all the possible cases However, it is to be noted that these criteria “operate simultaneously” (Jackson and Amvela, 2007, p 94) and when applied all together, the probability of successful distinguishing compound from a phrase rises

is based on discussion in Bauer (1983)

No Compounds in term of the parts of speech

a Noun + noun: bath towel; boy-friend; death blow

b Verb + noun: pickpocket; breakfast

c Noun +verb: nosebleed; sunshine

d Verb +verb: make-believe

e Adjective + noun: deep structure; fast-food

f Particle + noun: in-crowd; down-town

g Adverb + noun: now generation

h Verb + particle: cop-out; drop-out

i Phrase compounds: son-in-law

a Noun + verb: sky-dive

b Adjective + verb: fine-tune

c Particle + verb: overbook

d Adjective + noun: brown-bag

3 Compound adjectives

a Noun + adjective: card-carrying; childproof

b Verb + adjective: fail safe

c Adjective + adjective: open-ended

d Adverb + adjective: cross-modal

e Particle + adjective: over-qualified

f Noun + noun: coffee-table

g Verb + noun: roll-neck

h Adjective + noun: red-brick; blue-collar

i Particle + noun: in-depth

j Verb + verb: go-go; make-believe

k Adjective/Adverb + verb: high-rise;

l Verb + particle: see-through; tow-away

example, in traffic-cop the head is cop, which is modified by traffic; in backer the head is backer, which is modified by line Linguists distinguish at

line-least three different semantic relations between the head and modifier(s) of compounds

No Compounds in term of semantic

relations

Examples

1 Endocentric compounds:

represents a subtype of whatever

the head represents

- a traffic-cop is a kind of cop -a teapot is a kind of pot

- a fog-lamp is a kind of lamp

- a blue-jay is a kind of jay

2 Exocentric compounds: the type

is not represented by either the

head or the modifier in the

compound

Dead- head, redhead, and

pickpocket represent types of people by denoting some distinguishing characteristic

3 Coordinative compounds: there

are compounds in which both

elements are heads; each

bitter-sweet; researcher and producer- director

teacher-contributes equally to the meaning

of the whole and neither is

subordinate to the other

Table 2.2: English compounds in term of semantic (Bauer, 1983, page

a pool for swimming

a friend who is a girl

Table 2.3: English compounds in term of a phrase or clause ( Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik (1972, 1985)

2.2.1.4 Types of compounds

In this section, only compounds consisting of two elements will be included The so-called “phrasal compounds” will not be mentioned here Compounds can be divided into main groups by taking lots of different approaches which appear to vary among linguists Various criteria are therefore applied This part will provide an overview of the most common ones and although they may have much in common and even overlap each

other in some respects, they will be discussed separately

2.2.1.4.1 Primary and synthetic compounds

Štekauer (2000) divided compounds based on presence or absence of verbal element If a compound includes a deverbal element, which is derived

from a verb, he named them synthetic (verbal) compounds (Štekauer, 2000,

p 102) Examples include earthquake-struck or good-looking Otherwise (i.e

no verbal element is present) they are referred to as primary (non-verbal)

compounds (Štekauer, 2000, p 102), e.g blackbird or birthday Selkirk

(1982, p 24-25) also pointed out that while range of possible relations between non-verbal compounds is broad, this is not the case with verbal

compounds Thus, earthquake means “quake the earth” Therefore, synthetic

compounds are sometimes termed predictable, or regular (Štekauer, 2000, p 102) Synthetic compounding is claimed to be very productive in English, whereas primary compounding tends to be similarly productive only when concerned with combinations of nouns and adjectives (Lieber and Štekauer

2009, p 375)

2.2.1.4.2 Syntactic and lexical compounds

As already indicated in the title of this section, this division is done according to syntactic principles This is proposed as the starting point by Stockwell and Minkova (2001, p 10) This sorting of compounds is once

again a very general one By syntactic compounds, forms which are formed

with respect to regular rules of grammar are meant Stockwell and Minkova (2001) added that those compounds are formed similarly to sentences and are

usually not listed in dictionaries (p 10) Therefore, birthday (the day of birth), or daylight (light which occurs during the day) are examples of

syntactic compounds In contrast, meaning of lexical compounds cannot be

predicted from the regular rules of grammar, e.g ice cream and water-proof

This means that their meaning has to be looked up in dictionary (Stockwell and Minkova, 2001, p 10.) Lexical compounds can be also termed

non-syntactic compounds (Jackson and Amvela, 2007, p 97) Štekauer

(2000) added that constituents in lexical compounds are “ordered differently from the corresponding syntactic phrases” (p 104) as opposed to syntactic compounds

2.2.1.4.3 Endocentric, exocentric, subordinate and coordinate compounds

This classification is based on semantic principles and was done

by Bauer (1983), or Jackson and Amvela (2007) As this approach will be followed in the practical part, this classification will be of the biggest importance in this thesis Terminology varies here, but this thesis will mostly stick to the Bauers (1983) terminology including slight subdivision made by Jackson and Amvela (2007) Most of the English compounds tend to have

“modifier-head structure” (Plag, 2002, p 173) which means that the left-hand element modifies the right-hand one As pointed out by Ackema and Neeleman (2004, p 81), this ensures that there is a semantic relation between its constituents

Compounds with the previously described structure will be termed endocentric They can be in short described “to have a head, and that head is

on the right” (Selkirk, 1982, p 19) Bauer (1983, p 30) added that the hand element does not mark neither gender, nor number in his classification

left-In his words (p 30), “the compound is hyponym of its grammatical head”, as

in armchair or boyfriend, where armchair is a type of chair and boyfriend is

a boy who is also a friend As the latter compound can be often described

vice-versa, difference between these examples can be seen Compounds such

as armchair or call-girl will be thus named subordinate (Jackson and

Amvela, 2007, p 97) as they contain one head root and a modifier On the

other hand, compounds having two head roots (e.g girlfriend, maidservant) will be termed coordinate compounds (Jackson and

Amvela, 2007, p 97) Bauer (1983, p 30) referred to this type of

compounds as appositional compounds and said that both elements are

hyponyms of each other

Special subtype of coordinate compounds is also often distinguished

and named dvandva, or copulative compounds (Huddleston and Pullum,

2002, p 1648) Dvandva compounds cannot be used individually as opposed

to non-dvandva coordinate compounds They can be alternatively described

as constructions with no clear head present (Bauer, 1983) Therefore, mainly proper nouns are dvandva compounds in English (Huddleston and Pullum,

2002) This type of compounds can be exemplified by Alsace-Lorrine or Rank-Hovis (Bauer, 1983, p 31) and is exceedingly rare Probably the only

commonly used dvandva compound is panty-hose (Bauer, 1983)

However, not all compounds fit into this category Some of them

appear to “have no head at all” (Selkirk, 1982, 19) For example, skinhead is not a type of skin, pickpocket is also not a kind of pocket at all These

compounds are known as exocentric, where the semantic head is not

expressed (Bauer, 1983, p 30) They are also sometimes named bahuvrihi

compounds (Bauer, 1983, p 30) It is to be noted that this terminology is far from constant and can differ considerably across the scholars Therefore, it was possible for Plag (2002, p 188) to state that dvandva compounds are in fact quite common in English, because he defines them slightly differently

2.2.2 Overview of English compound nouns

Compound constructions are widely usd and common in everyday speech in many languages In additioen to this, they are widespread in written texts, especially professional texts And compound nouns, which are also known as nominal compounds, are considered to be the largest in number and variety among others such as compound adjectives and compound verbs

According to Englishclub.com, “ A compound noun is a noun that is

made with two or more words A compound noun is usually [noun + noun] or [adjective + noun], but there are other combinations It is important to understand and recognize compound nouns Each compound noun acts as a

single unit and can be modified by adjectives and other nouns

In the website http://www.thefreedictionary.com, a compound noun is defined as “a noun consisting of two or more words working together as a single unit to name a person, place, or thing Compound nouns are usually made up of two nouns or an adjective and a noun, but other combinations are also possible, as well Generally, the first word in the compound noun tells

us what kind of person or thing it is or what purpose he, she, or it serves, while the second word defines the person or object, telling us who or what it

is For example:

• water + bottle = water bottle (a bottle used for water)

• dining + room = dining room (a room used for dining)

• back + pack = backpack (a pack you wear on your back)

• police + man = policeman (a police officer who is a man)

And in http://dictionary.cambridge.org/, “some nouns consist of more than one word These are compound nouns Compound nouns can be

In conclusion, combining many defintions of compound presented in

the part 2.2.1.1, compound nouns are understood as a “ lexical unit consisting of more than one base and functioning both grammatically and semantically as a single word ” ( Quirk et.al, 1985:1567)

And it is to easy to imagine the ECNs by classiflying them into the following types in the next part

2.2.2.2 Types of English compound nouns

Considering the types of English compound nouns, many linguistic scholars give different types based on different criteria Bauer (1983) pays attention to the part of speech of the constituents’ combination,

meanwhile Quirk et al (1972, 1985) classifies compound nouns based on the

underlying structure In the latest publication, Huddleston et al (2002) divide compound nouns into two distinguish groups, namely noun-centred compound nouns and verb-centred compound nouns in which he describes both the elements’ combination and the semantic relation analyzing underlying structure In each group of compounds, he divides them into subtypes In this study the author gives the priority to Huddleston’s view According to Huddleston et al (2002), a noun-centred compound noun (or verbless compound noun as called by other linguists) is a compound in which the head is purely or at least primarily a noun For

example, in girlfriend, the head friend can only be a noun

A compound, by contrast, is a verb-centred compound noun in that the head is the lexical base of a verb or else formed from one by suffixation or

conversion For example, in bus-driver, life-guard are formed by

suffixation, guard is form by conversion and take is, of course, a verb

We will look at these types in turn in the following sections

2.2.2.2.1 Noun-centred compound nouns

These compounds have a noun as the final base Usually, the first constituent is the modifier and the second one is the head However,

centred compound nouns, the first element (the dependent) may be a noun, adjective, verb or some other categories We will look at it in turn in the following parts

a Noun + noun compound nouns

Examples of this type are: ashtray, bedtime, beehive, birdcage, life raft, motorcycle, steamboat, bulldog, goldfish, handbag etc Clearly, this type is not only the most productive kind of compounding but also the most productive kind of word-formation This type is often used to denote a new concept Their semantic relationships compound nouns can vary greatly The vast majority of compound nouns in this class are endocentric They have the meaning which is systematically predictable

from the meaning of the component bases For example, handbag is a kind of bag; goldfish is a kind of fish

However, there are also many compound nouns in this class which are

exocentric such as: ladybird, shoes-tree, network etc We will leave them till

the end of this section

In addition, some noun-noun compounds make up coordinative For

example, secretary-treasurer, singer-songwriter, Bosnia-Herzegovina The

relations between two components of this type are subject and

complement (as in girlfriend) or subject and object (as in power plant)

b Adjective + noun compounds

This type often causes ambiguous for the learners as it is similar to a noun phrase in its form However, this type possesses a quite high degree of semantic specialization and lexicalization The compound, therefore, differs significantly from a syntactic construction consisting of an

attributive adjective +head noun As we have already seen blackbird is different in meaning from black bird Many other examples of this class are: blueprint, madman, smalltalk, busybody,etc

c Verb + noun compounds

These compounds have the noun as head and the verbal element in dependent position The semantic relation between the two constituents is similar to clausal construction

The head noun may stand in a subject relation to verb For example:

crybaby ~ the baby cries

hangman ~ the man hangs (people sentenced to death)

The head noun may match up with a clausal object For example:

punch bag ~ X punches the bag

call girl ~ X calls the girl

The noun may also stand in an adverbial relation to verb The relations

involved instrument (e.g swearword, grindstone), location (e.g bake house, dance hall ) or time (e.g payday) With the compounds having the verbal

element in -ing suffix (i.e V-ing + Noun), they denote a purposive meaning For example:

chewing gum ~ gum for chewing

frying pan ~ pan for frying

d Other categories + noun compounds

This type has a preposition as dependent There are also a few elements which is a numeral or a gender-specific personal pronoun For example:

after-effect, backwater, off-chance, overcoat, six-pack, he-man, wolf

she-e Noun + preposition compounds:

This type is rarely For example: hanger on

2.2.2.2.2 Verb-centred compound nouns

In verb-centred compound nouns, the relation between constituents is similar to that between a verb and a noun phrase i.e the noun is subject or object of the verb element The dependent, therefore, is

group usually consist of a verbal element in combination with a noun, an adjective, or a preposition We will look at them in turn

a Noun + verb

When the compound noun consists of a verb + noun, the noun corresponds to the subject, object of a clause construction or the object of a preposition And the whole compound often denotes the person or thing that

caries out the action For example, pickpocket is a person who picks (steal

from) pocket

The verb element may appear without suffix: bee-sting, bus-stop, earth-quake, handshake, moon-walk, day dream, haircut, birth-control, waterfall, car-park etc The verb element may appear in -er suffix and

become the deverbal noun For example: radio- operator, goal-keeper, shoes maker, city-dweller, factory-worker. This type of compounds has a relative narrow range of meanings The whole compound often denotes the person, animal or machines perform the action expressed in the verbal element

Compound nouns consist of Noun + verballed noun in -ing such as writing, book- keeping, house-keeping, church-going, hand-writing, shop- lifting etc and they often denote an activity, an action or a kind of stool

letter-b Verb + preposition or preposition + verb

The compounds of this type typically denote some kind of

actions There are many examples of this type such as: walk-over, walk-out, press-up, sit-in, take-off, show-off, drop-out, outlook, onset, overflow etc

c Adjective + verb

Most compounds in this type have the -ER or - ing suffix

attached to the verb The examples are: best-seller, high-flyer, well-being, new-coming, shortcoming

2.2.2.3 The distinction between English compound nouns and English noun phrases

One of the most problems to deal with compounding is the

criteria for distinguishing between a compound and a phrase This problem

is mentioned in the part 2.2.1.2 And basing on the information from different

linguistics’ view in the part 2.2.1.2, there are three criteria that we can base

on to distinguish a compound noun with a noun phrase: phonological,

syntactic, and semantic

Phonologically, most (not all) compound nouns can be identified as

having a main stress on the first element meanwhile a phrase often has stress

on the last Consider the following examples:

A house that is green

Table 2.4: Examples of ECNs and VCNs (Plag, I (2003), page 176)

Howerver, some famous linguistics such as Bauer 1998b, Olson 2000

have poited that there are numberous exceptions from the rule Some of

exeptions are apple ‘pie, scholar-‘activities, silk ‘tie, summer ‘night,

Syntactically, Jackson (2000) considers the specific syntactic features

to make a compound noun different from a noun phrase, namely, word order,

interpretability, modification and inflexibility By word order, he refers to

the position of the different elements of a compound in relation to one

another Some compounds have ungrammatical or unusual word order in

English For example, dry-cleaning, output, haircut etc

Compound nouns have non-interruptible characteristic Their

constituents are not interrupted by extraneous elements This again confirms

the compound blackbird cannot be inserted extra elements as in the black night bird which is a noun phrase

By modifications, it means the use of other words to modify the meaning of a compound As a compound is a single unit, it can only be modified by other words as a whole but cannot be modified independently each of its constituents

Inflexibility is the use of inflections to present the grammatical

function of compound To make the compound noun bottle-neck plural,

for example, its constituents cannot be inflected as bottles-necks Instead,

bottle-necks must be used Similarly, we have the other compound nouns in

plural as ash-trays, dishwashers, water paper baskets

Semantically, most compounds tend to acquire special meanings like idiom And some authors take this special characteristic as their defining feature: “If the meaning of the whole cannot be deduced from the meaning

of the element separately, then we have a compound” (Jesperson 1942:137) Each compound conveys only one concept even though it may consist of

more than two stems Take the word tallboy as an example; it does not

denote a person, but a piece of furniture, a chest of drawers supported by a

low stand Tall boy expresses only one concept whereas a tall boy, a

noun phrase, conveys two concepts: a young male person and big in size Although all the criteria above seem to be convincing, it is insufficient

to base on a criterion alone, it is advisable to combine all three criteria to distinguish a compound noun from a noun phrase

2.2.3 Overview of Vietnamese compound nouns

2.2.3.1 General charateristics of Vietnamese compound nouns

According to Nguyễn Hữu Đạt (2000), Vietnamese compounding is the combination of two or more morphemes which may be meaningful or meaningless according to a certain relationship Most Vietnamese compounds are also of binary structure-the head and modifier The

compound of more than two components can be constructed from the element compound Vietnamese compounds constituents may be dependent or independent, meaningful or meaningless Their combination mechanisms are various

two-Nguyễn Tài Cẩn (1975) points out three ways of combination: based

on semantic relation (e.g diện mạo, công nghiệp), phonetic relation (e.g thanh danh, châu chấu, đất đai) and neither phonetic nor semantic relation

(e.g bù nhìn, mặc cả, a-xít) which resulted in forming different types of

compounds

Vietnamese compounds, like compounds in other language, have their own semantic characteristics: imagery, accuracy, generality, and integration These characteristics enable us to express all the deepest, the most abstract and sublime thoughts and emotions

Nguyễn Thiện Giáp (1978) notes that Vietnamese compound nouns are imagery rich As the vocabulary of a language develop along with the development of the society, new words are created day by day to denote new concepts, new things New meanings of a word can also derived from the old meaning existing in the language When old words are used in new

meanings they are still connected to their first meanings For example, bệnh thành tích, bệnh lười, tệ nạn tham nhũng etc Temperament of human is compared with his physical state An abstract category is specially concretized Therefore, Vietnamese compounds are said to have imagery

And they are quite sensitive E.g bánh trôi, cỏ tóc tiên, tóc đuôi gà

Vietnamese compounds can also accurately express various thing of the same sort

For example:

Film: phim hoạt hình, phim tài liệu, phim hành động

News: tin thể thao, tin tài chính, tin cuối ngày, tin nóng etc