Syntactic features of english noun phrases with reference to their vietnamese equivalents

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitle “Syntactic features of English noun phrases with reference to their Vietna

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNVERSITY

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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNVERSITY

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

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

entitle “Syntactic features of English noun phrases with reference to their

Vietnamese equivalents” (Đặc điểm cú pháp của cụm danh từ Tiếng Anh

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 my lecturers at the Faculty of Graduate Studies at Hanoi Open University for their useful lectures, supports, encouragement and for inspiring me the love for English teaching and doing scientific research

Besides, the study could not have been prepared without the support

of the lecturers and students of tourism and foreign language department of Sao Do 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

This study describes the syntactic features of English noun phrases with reference to Vietnamese equivalents It aims to find out the similarities and differences between syntactic functions of noun phrases in English and Vietnamese and then analyzing noun phrases from some chapters of “Pride and prejudice” by Jane Austen and the equivalents in the translated version

in Vietnamese The research also aims at giving some suggestions for translating and teaching noun phrases to Vietnamese learners

LIST OF ABBREVIATION

Cs: Subject complement

Co: Object complement

Cprep: Prepositional complement

Cadj: Adjectival complement

App: Appositive

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 3.1 Information of the research participants 14 Table 4.1: The learners’ acquisition levels on the use of article in

English noun phrases

67

Table 4.2: The learners’ acquisition levels on syntactic function of

English noun phrases

67

Table 4.3: The learners’ acquisition levels on the use of word

order in English noun phrases

67

Table 4.4: The learners’ acquisition levels on the ability of

translating English noun phrases into Vietnamese

68

1.6 Structural organization of the thesis 3

3.2.2 Data collection techniques 16

4.1.2 Syntactic functions of English noun phrases 28

4.2.1 Structure of Vietnamese noun phrases 30 4.2.2 Syntactic functions of Vietnamese noun phrases 41 4.3 The similarities and differences between syntactic features of

English noun phrases and Vietnamese noun phrases

4.4.3 Mistakes of Vietnamese students when learning English

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale for the research

English is the most popular language in the world It plays an important role in our social-economic life of human beings Indeed, in the minds of many people, there is no longer an issue They argue that English has already become a world knowledge by virtue of the political and economic progress made by English speaking nations in the past 200 years It is now the main language of books, newspapers, airports, international business and academic conferences, science technology, medicine, diplomacy, sports, international competition, pop music and advertising In order to speed up the country’s economy, and to improve living standards as soon as possible,

it is very necessary for scientists, technicians and engineers to learn and acquire English so as to keep up date with the latest developments in technology taking place in the world Learning and teaching English, reading with comprehension or translating material from English into Vietnamese or vice versa, always create difficulties for learners particularly because of the differences between English and Vietnamese

There are differences in phonology, vocabulary and grammar In order

to help learners acquire a better knowledge of English, it is of great importance to predict difficulties arising from the differences between the two languages and solve them In English grammar, word combination in phrase is considered to be one of the most difficult phenomena

Among the five different types of phrases in English (namely noun phrases, verb phrases, adjective phrases, adverb phrases and prepositional phrases), noun phrases are the most common playing various syntactic

functions in the sentence and clause structure: subject, object and complement (of various kinds), apposition and attribute Without knowledge

of noun phrases in English, learners could not produce comprehensible sentences Noun phrases seem to cause great deal of trouble when translating noun phrases from English into Vietnamese English noun phrases and Vietnamese noun phrases have both similarities and differences

In order to find out this issue, in this graduation thesis, I have decided to choose the topic “Syntactic features of English noun phrases with

reference to their Vietnamese equivalents”.

We hope that this study will contribute a small part in teaching and translating noun phrases to Vietnamese learners

1.2 Aims of the research

This research aims to find out the similarities and differences between syntactic features of noun phrases in English and Vietnamese and then analyzing noun phrases from chapter seven of “Pride and prejudice” by Jane Austen and the equivalents in the translated version in Vietnamese The research also aims at giving some suggestions for teaching and translating noun phrases to Vietnamese learners

1.3 Objectives of the research

This research pursues the following objectives:

- Describing the syntactic features of English noun phrases with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents

- Finding out the similarities and differences about syntactic features between English noun phrases and Vietnamese noun phrases

- Giving out some suggestions for teaching and translating noun phrases

1.4 Scope of the research

Noun phrase is an important and complicated part of English grammar in English However, due to constraints as well as the framework

of a graduation thesis, it is impossible to touch all the differences and similarities in syntactic features of noun phrases of all schools In this research, I only mention some common syntactic features of English noun phrases from perspective of traditional grammar and Vietnamese noun phrases and then find out the similarities and differences between noun phrases in English and Vietnamese The research is focused only on noun phrases in some selected chapters rather than in the whole novel of the source language text and the translated version The sources of data are typical written examples from the collected materials or extracts from

“Pride and Prejudice” in the source language text and its translated version

1.5 Significance of the research

The study explores the syntactic functions of English noun phrases and its equivalents in Vietnamese It is hoped that the results of the study will partly contribute to the research of noun phrases In addition, the study will bring in practical benefits to language teachers, translators, learners and people who are in favor of it

1.6 Structural organization of the thesis

This graduation thesis is designed with 5 chapters

Chapter 1 (Introduction) states clearly the reasons for doing the research and the objectives of the thesis as well as the scope and significance of the research

Chapter 2 (Literature review) gives a critical review of the previous studies relating to the research problem under investigation and presents the

theoretical background employed as tools for conducting the whole research

Chapter 3 (Methodology) provides the information by which the research is conducted with a method section answering two main questions: How the data was collected or generated and how it was analyzed

Chapter 4 (Findings and discussions) describes what can be learned during the research and interpreting the results

Chapter 5 (Conclusion) restates the aims and summarizes how to conduct the research to the objectives

Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Review of previous studies

2.1.1 Previous studies oversea

There were many works overseas related to noun phrase such as

Keizer, E (2007) The English Noun Phrase: The Nature of Linguistic

Categorization, Studies in English Language (series) Cambridge:CUP

Quirk, Greenbaum et al (1972) in the book “A comprehensive

grammar of the English language ” studied the structure and syntactic functions of English noun phrases

Fromkin et al (1990) considers "a noun phrase could be an article followed by a noun (the car, ) A noun phrase could also be made of a head

and a prepositional phrase as its modifier such as (a man in a uniform) A

noun phrase could also contain an adjective phrase as the modifier in the head.”

According to Paul Robert (1964), "all sentences contain two main parts, a noun phrase and a verb phrase"

There were also many other studies related to noun phrases such as Xiao Li, (2010) Understanding the Semantic Structure of Noun Phrase Queries Microsoft Research Association for Computational Linguistics;Nulty, Paul (2007)Semantic classification of noun phrases Optimization Techniques; ProgrammingModels; Dynamic Analysis or Lita Taylor, Claire

Grover, Ted Briscoe The syntactic regularity of English noun phrases

Department of Linguistics University of Lancaster

2.1.2 Previous studies in Vietnam

There were also many studies related to noun phrases in Viet Nam Doctor Đặng Ngọc Hướng had the dissertation “Danh ngữ Tiếng Anh trong

sự đối chiếu với Tiếng Việt” which was done in 2009

The scientific report of Nguyen Thi Van Lam (2007) The structure

of English noun phrase Scientific magazine This article aimed at discussing the structure of English noun phrases both basic and complex

In his book "An outline of syntax", Mr Nguyen Hoa Lac - lecturer in English states that a noun phrase is a group of words with a noun or pronoun

as the main part (the head) The noun phrase may consist of only one word

as in this case "Tom arrived yesterday" or it may be long and complex

There were also many thesis of noun phrase in Vietnam, for example,

the thesis of Trinh Thi Vinh (2009) A contrastive analysis of

premodification of noun phrases in English and Vietnamese This study aims to discuss the premodification of noun phrases in English and in Vietnamese and their impact upon teaching and learning English in the Vietnamese situation Attempts have been to state the similarities and differences in premodification of noun phrases – in the two languages and raise and solve some difficulties and problems arising particularly from differences between English and Vietnamese

Besides, the master thesis of Nguyen Thi Hong Phuong (2013) Word

order in English noun phrases in comparison with Vietnamese was also a contribution to the noun phrases The study aims at analyzing word order in English and Vietnamese noun phrases to show the basic word orders and the changes of word order in English and Vietnamese noun phrases and find out

some similarities and differences between word order in English and Vietnamese

Moreover, the thesis of Nguyen Anh Thi (2007), Reflections on the

application of noun phrases in English – Vietnamese translation aimed at finding out whether there is a correlation between the comprehension of English noun phrases and the translation performance

These previous works studied about some issues of noun phrases but the research on the syntactic features of English noun phrase with reference

to their Vietnamese equivalents haven’t been paid much attention So I decide to do this research

2.2 Review of theoretical background

2.2.1 Noun phrases in English

2.2.1.1 Definitions of English noun phrases

By traditional, grammar is usually used to refer to the grammar

written by classical Greek scholars, the Roman grammars largely derived from the Greek tradition, the speculative work of the medieval and the prescriptive approach in the 18th century The noun phrase can be defined in many ways; however, most scholar of traditional grammar agree on the

following definition which is quoted from A comprehensive grammar of the

English language (Quirk and Greenbaum, 1972): “The noun phrase typically functions as subject, object, complement of the sentence and complement of the preposition phrase” It can be inferred from the definition that the functions of noun phrases bring about the recognition of noun phrase For example:

Sarah has written fifty books for children

Premodifier + Head (thing) + postmodifier

What’s more, there are more definitions about noun phrases from other

grammarians such as: According to Jacobs (1995), noun phrases are word

phrases which are used to refer to things people want to talk about Referring is important, speakers need to refer to people, objects, concepts, processes, and all kinds of entities, and noun phrases serve this function.

And Schmidt (1999) said that: A noun phrase is one or more words which

we use in a sentence as subject, direct, indirect object, complement or as prepositional complement In addition to, In Quirk and Greenbaum’ viewpoint (1973), the complex noun phrases consist of three components:

the head, the premodification, and the postmodification.

We see that there are many different attitudes about noun phrases because this is studied from different aspects like: the function of noun phrases, role of noun phrases, or components of noun phrases However, all definitions include some common features such as components and their relationships of noun phrases

2.2.1.2 Structure of English noun phrases

Basic noun phrases

Structurally speaking, in the first place, basic noun phrases consists

of pronouns, numerals or nouns with articles (indefinite, definite or zero) or nouns with other closed – system items that occur before the noun head including pre – determiners, determiners and post – determiners Many linguists argue that pronouns are a special class of noun According to Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik (1972), the implication of the name

as pronouns is that they replace nouns or rather whole noun phrases, since they cannot normally occur with determiners For example, personal pronouns have two sets of case forms: subjective and objective: “I” / “me”,

“We” / “us”, … Subjective personal pronouns functions as subject and sometimes as subject complement while objective personal pronouns as object, prepositional complement and sometimes as subject complement These can be illustrated by;

He is happy

I saw him at the station

Like personal pronouns, other types of pronouns including reflexive, possessive, relative, demonstrative, interrogative, universal, assertive, non – assertive and negative pronouns are all basic noun phrases

Not only can basic noun phrases consists of pronouns or numerals, but they can also comprise a head noun with determiners or determiners modified by pre-determiners and / or post – determiners The head noun of a noun phrase is the central element and decisive factor in performing the syntactic functions of the whole noun phrase It can be singular count noun such as “book”, plural noun “books” or mass noun like “ink”

Complex noun phrases

Complex noun phrases contain three components: pre – modification, head noun and post – modification

Head noun

As in the basic noun phrase, the head noun, first of all is the central element and core component of the complex noun phrase It may be count

or mass noun which dictates concord and (for the most part) other kinds of congruence with the rest of the sentence outside the noun phrase

Pre – modification

The second component of a complex noun phrase is pre-modification, also called pre – modifiers, including modifiers that stand before the head noun Pre – modifiers can be closed – system and / or open – class items Closed – system pre – modifiers are optional in the complex noun phrases Meanwhile, open – class pre – modifiers come after the closed – system ones and precede the head noun

Post – modification

The third important component of a complex noun phrase is post – modification, called post – modifiers, comprising all the items placed after the head These post – modifiers are mainly realized by prepositional phrases, finite clause (or relative clauses), non finite clauses, adjective phrases, noun phrases or adverbial phrases:

2.2.2 Noun phrases in Vietnamese

2.2.2.1 Definitions of Vietnamese noun phrases

Noun phrases in Vietnamese, like that of English, play a very important role in sentences As was stated earlier, in European languages, especially those inflectional languages, there is a system of grammatical categories in nouns, such as number, gender, and case These are marked by suffixes English, although being a little inflectional language, has this grammatical phenomenon, especially in number Vietnamese is an un – inflectional and isolating language and the word order in the language is of special importance, relating to the word order in the noun phrase Vietnamese linguist focus on the combination between Vietnamese nouns

and other modifications as well as the combination among modifications in the relationship with nouns

In Vietnamese, when a noun is used to perform some functions in a sentence, some modification is often added to form a phrase Such phrases

in which there is a noun acting as a head are called noun phrases

To make more clearly, we give more definitions from Vietnamese grammarians: According to Đỗ Thị Kim Liên: “A noun phrase is combination of words in which the noun is a central element and it has one

or more subordinate elements around to supplement grammatical meanings

to itself.” And in Lê Dũng’s viewpoint (2002), “A noun phrase is a group of words which the beginning is a noun and its function is appositive

2.2.2.2 Structure of Vietnamese noun phrases

In general, a noun phrase is Vietnamese may have two parts, they are:

(i) the head taken by noun, in the middle of the phrase

(ii) modification is divided into two parts: pre modification and

postmodification

The order of modification is never free in Vietnamese noun phrases, occurring either as premodification or postmodification The order of a noun phrase may be exemplified as follow:

(Phạm Công Sơn, Non nước Việt Nam, nhà xuất bản văn hóa thông tin,

Post modification

đó

a Those with premodification and the head

Phần đầu

Premodification

Phần trung tâm Head

b Those with the head and postmodification

Phần trung tâm Head

Phần cuối Postmodification

Chapter 3 METHODOLOGY 3.1 Research-governing orientations

This chapter describes the research methodology used for the whole study It comprises of 2 main parts: Research orientations and Research methods Relating to research orientation, there are 4 smaller parts: Research questions, Research approaches, Research setting, Data-related issues/criteria for intended data collection And research method includes major methods, supporting methods and data collection techniques

3.1.3 Research approaches

This study is a quantitative and qualitative research In the early phases, Qualitative Research is used It can involve collecting quantitative information, involves gathering mass of raw data from different powerful sources In the last phases, Quantitative Research is used to count and classify features and construct statistical models and figures to explain what

is observed on syntactic features of noun phrases in English and Vietnamese

3.1.4 Principles/criteria for intended data collection and data analysis 3.1.4.1 Research participants

The 120 participants of this study were selected from second-year learners (including males and females) at Tourism and Foreign language of Red Star University English is one of the compulsory subjects, but in fact a certain numbers of learners are facing a big challenge in mastering English

Therefore, those who were chosen for the investigation must be the ones who have acquired certain English knowledge They have already finished two textbooks of Know How They have basic sentence structures and vocabulary And they are required to complete some tasks dealing with English noun phrases

Table 3.1: Information of the research participants

Gender of participants Number of participants

To implement the survey, all the participant are required to complete some tasks dealing with English noun phrases which were essential to find out what difficulties they are facing so as to suggest possible implications for translating noun phrases and teaching English noun phrases

3.1.4.2 Data collection

The syntactic features of English noun phrases were taken from books

written by contemporary influential linguists in English as “A

comprehensive grammar of the English language” by Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum et al (1972) and from some master thesis of Trinh Thi

Minh (2009) A contrastive analysis of premodification of noun phrases in

English and Vietnamese, the minor thesis of Cao Thi Thu Giang (2005)

Noun phrases from some selected chapters from “Pride and prejudice”by

Jane Austen and the equivalents in translated version in Vietnamese

Besides, to give some suggestions for translating noun phrases, I have chosen the novel “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen and the translated version by Diep Minh Tam (2009) as reference books

In this research method, survey questionnaires in form of a written test is used as one of data collection methods to evaluate the participants’ ability in understanding English noun phrases and translating noun phrases Then statistic method is applied to present quantitative descriptions in manageable form to simplify large amounts of data in a sensible way

Vietnamese equivalents to point out relations between them

The contrastive method is applied to compare English noun phrase with reference to Vietnamese equivalents

3.2.2 Data collection techniques

For achieving the aims and objectives of the study with high reliability, two data collection instruments have been employed: selected material and survey questionnaire

3.2.2.1 Selected materials

In order to give the detail description of syntactic features of English noun phrases, a lot of examples have been taken from the grammar and reference books written by influential linguists in English as well as from

translated publications available in Vietnam, such as “A comprehensive

grammar of the English language” by Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum

et al (1972)

I have collected many noun phrases in the chapter seven of the novel

“Pride and prejudice” by Jane Austen and its translated version in Vietnamese They are good examples for the syntactic features of noun phrases as well as offering some implications for translating and teaching noun phrases

3.2.2.2 Survey questionnaire

The author has conducted the survey questionnaire with the aim at finding out the mistakes of students in learning English noun phrases From that the author can have some suggestions for teaching and translating English noun phrases

Task 1: Fill in the blank with the suitable article “a/an/ the” or “ф” if no

article is needed

This task focus on the use of premodification of noun phrases

Task 2: Combine two sentences to form one sentence

This task is designed to check the understanding of learners about the syntactic function of English noun phrases

Task 3: Word ordering

This task focuses on word ordering The learners are required to put all those words in the correct order This task is to check if the learners can make syntactically correct sentences related to noun phrases

Task 4: Translate into Vietnamese

This task focuses on learner’s competence in doing translation with certain knowledge of noun phrases

3.2.3 Data analysis techniques

The collected data of the learners’ responses are first computed and analyzed by statistical procedures to find the answers to the question of the investigation, such as number of correct responses In addition, an error analysis technique could also be used to identify and classify difficulties being faced by Red Star university’s learners

To assess the learners’ proficiency in the use of the noun phrases, the number of the participants with correct responses of 50% or above per each task is 50 or above, the unit is considered as “passed” or the learners have achieved an acceptable acquisition level of it If the number of the correct responses on each task is below 50 and the number of participants for this task is below 50, it is considered as “non-passed” or that the learners have not achieved an acceptable level of proficiency in it Based on the result, 50 participants getting the score of >50 of correct responses in each task that is

“pass” grade for the second - year learners at tourism and foreign language department of Red Star university

3.3 Summary

In general, this chapter has provided a description of steps to be undertaken in doing the study on noun phrases The specific syntactic features of noun phrases with illustrations extracted from the novel “Pride and prejudice” by Jane Austen and from the book “A comprehensive grammar of the English language” by Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum

et al Further discussion on the results of the survey conducted at tourism and foreign language of Red Star university will be mentioned in the next chapter to prepare some implications for translating and teaching noun phrases

Chapter 4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 4.1 English noun phrases

In describing noun phrases we need to distinguish the following

constituent parts: The head, the pre-modification and the post-

modification

4.1.1 Structure of English noun phrase

4.1.1.1 The head

According to Randolphin Quirk in A comprehensive grammar of the

English language, 1972, 1238 “The head, around which (for the most part)

of the other constituents cluster and which dictates concord with other parts

of the sentences”:

The tall girl standing in the corner is my sister

The tall girls standing in the corner are my sisters

The tall girl in the corner who has a blue sweater is my sister

4.1.1.2 Pre – modification

The pre – modification comprises all the items placed before the head It can

be formed by:

a Predeterminers

- All, both, half

These prederterminers can occur only before articles or demonstratives

but, since they are themselves quantifiers, they do not occur with the

following ‘quantitatives’ determiners: every, (n)either, some, any, no,

enough.

All, both , and half have of-constructions, which are optional with nouns

and obligatory with personal pronouns:

all (of) the water all of it

both (of) the children both of (them)

half (of) the time half of it

- Double, twice, three/ four…times

- One-third, two-fifths, etc

b Determiners

- Article: the, a, an

- Possessive adjectives: my, our, their, etc

- Interrogative pronouns: which, who, that, etc

- Demonstrative pronouns: this, that, etc

c Postdeterminers

- Cardinal numerals: Apart from one, which can co-occur only with

singular count nouns, all cardinal numerals (two, three, etc) co-occur only with plural count nouns:

E.g I have one brother and two sisters

- Ordinal numerals: except first, co-occur only with count nouns All

ordinals usually precede any cardinal numbers in the noun phrase:

E.g My classroom is on the second floor

- Quantifiers

There are two small groups of closed-system quantifiers:

- many , (a) few, and several co-occur only with plural count nouns:

Eg: My sister has many friends

- much and (a) little co-occur only with non-count nouns:

Eg: He has much money

- Several is rarely (and much virtually never) preceded by a determiner, and in the case of few and little there is a possitive/negative contrast

according as the indefinite article is or is not used:

a few oranges (=several)

few oranges (=not many)

He took

a little bread(=some)

little bread (=not much)

d Premodification by adjectives

e.g: He is a hard worker [1: 1325]

e Premodification by – ing participles

E.g - The approaching train is from Liverpool [1: 1326]

(The train which is approaching)

- She has a very interesting mind [1: 1326]

(Her mind interests me very much)

f Premodification by – ed participles

Most –ed participles have passive meaning, and only a few will easily

admit the permanent reference that will permit premodifying use We may contrast the participle of the stative verb in [1] with that of the dynamic verb

in [2]

e.g The wanted man was last seen in Cambridge [1] ( Tai lieu so 1:

1328)

( The man goes on being wanted by the police)

The found purse was returned to its owner [2]

(The purse was found at a particular moment)

g Premodification by nouns

In most cases, premodifying nouns correspond to postmodification with prepositional phrases:

e.g his life story (the story of his life)

an iron rod (a rod of iron)

life imprisonment (imprisonment for life)

(Tai lieu so 1: 1330)

h Premodification by genitive

The illustration of the genitive as premodifier with restrictive function was the following example:

I visited his fisherman’s cottage

The meaning is “The cottage belongs/belonged to a fisherman” or

“resembles/ resembled the cottage of a fisherman” It should be noticed that

if we had used another noun in the genitive, eg: his friend’s cottage, we would have moved from restrictive to restrictive function and, above all, changed the relationship of the constituents from premodification and determinative The difference in structure is clearly brought out if further premodifying items are added:

I visited his old fisherman’s cottage

I visited his old friend’s cottage

(Tài liệu số 1: 1335)

i Premodification by adverb and other phrases

Another minor type of premodification is the adverb phrase, as in:

e.g: She travelled to many far – away places [The places are far

I visited his what-do-you-call-it cottage [What do you call it when a

cottage has walls made from overlapping pieces of timber?]

(Tài liệu số 1: 1337)

4.1.1.3 Post – modification

a Post – modification by finite clauses

We distinguish two major types of finite clauses as noun – phrase postmodifiers, relative clauses [1] and appositive clauses[2]

e.g The news that appeared in the papers this morning was well

received [1]

The news that the team had won calls for a celebration.[2]

Although similar, the difference between these two types of finite clause becomes apparent, for example if we try to replace “that” by “which” in the two example

The news which appeared in the papers this morning was well

received [1a]

The news which the team had won calls for a celebration.[2a]

Thus “that” is not replaced by a wh-pronoun in appositive clauses, as it is in

relative clauses More significantly from a general point of view, “that” in

[2] has no function as clause element within the that-clause, as it has in

relative clause structure Thus in [1] the relative pronoun is subject, in [1b]

it is object:

The news which we saw in the papers this morning was well

received [1b]

Relative clauses include restrictive and non – restrictive clauses

are used, the information is essential and the head noun is specific reference When we indicate a parenthesized relative pronoun, it means that there is

the option between that-relative and “zero”:

This is the book (that) I bought at the sale

When we use parentheses only “( )”, this is to indicate “zero”:

This is the book ( ) I bought at the sale

S, O, C, A in the survey below means that the relative pronoun functions respectively as subject, object, complement, and adverbial (or complement

in a prepositional phrase functioning as adverbial) in the relative clause:

S: They are delighted with the book which / that / ( ) has just appeared O: They are delighted with the book which / that / ( ) she has written

C: She is the perfect accountant which / who / that her predecessor was not A: She arrived the day in which / that / ( ) I was in (on)

(Tài liệu số 1: 1248)

(ii) In non- restrictive relative clause, the most explicit forms of relative

pronouns, the wh-series, are typically used The information is additional

and the head noun is unique reference The relative pronoun can be subject,

object, complement, or adverbial Here is a survey of the different forms for personal and non- personal antecedents:

S: I spoke to Dr Spolsky, who was unwilling to give further details

S: This excellent book, which has only just been received, was published a year ago

O: I spoke to Dr Spolsky, whom I met after the inquest

O: This excellent book, which Freda has only just received for review, was published a year ago

C: Anna is a vegetarian, which no one else is in our family

A: This is a new type of word processor, about which there has been so much publicity

With non – restrictive relative clauses, we usually have a tone unit boundary, often accompanied by a pause, before the relative clause and often a repetition at the end of the relative clause of the nuclear tone of the tone unit preceding the relative clause In writing, non – restrictive relationship is usually marked off by commas

By contrast, with restrictive relative clauses, there is usually no tone unit boundary or pause before the relative clause; nor in writing is the relative clause separated by a comma from what precedes

b Post – modification by non finite clauses

(i) Post – modification by present participle clauses:

Postmodification of the noun phrase is possible with all three of the

non-finite clause types: -ing participle, -ed participle and infinitive clauses

The correspondence between –ing clauses and relative clauses is limited to those relative clauses in which the relative pronoun is subject:

The person who will write/ writes/ is writing/ wrote reports is my

colleague

The person writing reports is my colleague.[1]

The non – finite clause writing reports in [1] may be interpreted, according

to the context, as equivalent to one of the more explicit versions Other

examples or post – modifying –ing clause:

The dog barking next door sounded like a terrier (“which was

barking next door”)

You should look for a man carrying a large umbrella (“who will be

carrying a large umbrella”)

It must be emphasized that – ing forms in postmodifying clauses should not be seen as abbreviated progressive forms in relative clauses Stative verbs, for instance, which can not have the progressive in the finite verb phrase, can appear in participle form

(ii) Post modification by infinitive clauses:

Eg: The student to answer this question…

(iii) Post modification by past participle clauses:

Eg: The doctor (who is) expected to arrive at any moment

c Post – modification by prepositional phrases

In addition to reduction of sentences into noun phrases by means of post modification by finite and nonfinite clauses, we have the further possibility of reduction of postmodification by prepositional phrases A prepositional phrases is by far the commonest type of postmodification in English It is three or four times more frequent than either finite or nonfinite clausal postmodification The full range of prepositions is involved, including complex prepositions

e.g: the road to Lincoln

this book on grammar

a man from the electrictity company

the meaning of this sentence

the house beyond the church

two years before the war

a tree by a stream

(Tài liệu số 1: 1274)

4.1.2 Syntactic functions of English noun phrases

Randolph Quirk et al (1980) say "the functions of noun phrases, as subjects, objects, complements or appositive in English sentence structures are diverse" Some other functions of English noun phrases are prepositional complement, adverbial, adjective complement

a Noun phrases function as subject (S) :

Noun phrase can be a subject for a verb

For example: Musician plays the piano

ex: My sister is a teacher

S

The tall girl standing in the corner is my sister [1: 1238]

S

b Noun phrases function as object (O):

- A noun phrase can be direct object:

Ex: I saw the tall girl in the corner [1: 1238]

O

I spoke to Dr Spolsky, whom I met after the inquest

O

- A noun phrase can be indirect object:

Ex: Tom gave my sister flowers

O

- A noun phrase can be an object for a preposition:

Eg: I will speak to my teacher about it

O

c Noun phrases function as complement

- Noun phrases function as subject complement (Cs)

A noun phrase can be complement for the subject when standing after linking verbs such as become, to be, to seem

ex: She is the perfect accountant who her predecessor was not [1: 1248]

Cs

He is the policeman that the burglar fired the gun at

Cs

- Noun phrases functions as object complement (Co)

A noun phrase can be complement for an object when standing after some verbs like to make, elect, to call, to consider, to appoint, to name, to declare,

to recognize, …

ex : They elected him their chairman

Co

We recognize him a good student

Co

- Noun phrases function as prepositional complement (Cprep):

ex: On the way, we looked at it

- Noun phrases function as adjectival complement (Cadj) :

ex : The game isn’t worth the candle

d Noun phrases function as appositive (App) :

ex : A neighbour, Fred Brick, is on the telephone [1: 1301]

App

Anna, who is my best friend, was here last night [1: 1301]

App

e Noun phrases function as Adverbial (A) :

ex: Last week we telephoned him

4.2 Vietnamese noun phrases

4.2.1 Structure of Vietnamese noun phrases

Noun phrases in Vietnamese, like that of English language, play a very important role in sentences Vietnamese linguists focus on the combination among modifications in the relationship with nouns Like in English, in Vietnamese when a noun is used to perform some grammatical function in a sentence, some modifications are often added to form a phrase Such phrases in which there is a noun acting as the head are called noun phrases

In general a noun phrase in Vietnamese two parts, they are

(iii) the head taken by noun, in the middle of the phrase

(iv) modification is divided into two parts: pre-modification and

post-modification