Syntactic features of exclamation in english and vietnamese

THESIS SYNTACTIC FEATURES OF EXCLAMATION IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE ĐẶC ĐIỂM CÚ PHÁP CỦA CÂU CẢM THÁN TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT NGUYỄN THỊ THU VÂN Field: English Language Code: 6

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A THESIS

SYNTACTIC FEATURES OF EXCLAMATION

IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

(ĐẶC ĐIỂM CÚ PHÁP CỦA CÂU CẢM THÁN TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT)

NGUYỄN THỊ THU VÂN

Hanoi, 2016

Back hard cover

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A THESIS

SYNTACTIC FEATURES OF EXCLAMATION

IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

(ĐẶC ĐIỂM CÚ PHÁP CỦA CÂU CẢM THÁN TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT)

NGUYỄN THỊ THU VÂN

Field: English Language Code: 60220201

Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Hoàng Tuyết Minh

Hanoi, 2016

i

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

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

report entitled SYNTACTIC FEATURES OF EXCLAMATION IN

ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE 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

Hanoi, 2016

Nguyễn Thị Thu Vân

Approved by SUPERVISOR

Assoc Prof Dr Hoàng Tuyết Minh

Date:………

through my growth as an academic researcher

My thanks also go to 80 students from the class 12A and 12B of Yen Phong Continuing Educational Centre for their enthusiasm and participation

in this study

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

iii

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the syntactic features of exclamations in English and Vietnamese It is conducted with the hope of finding out the similarities and differences between how exclamations are formed in both languages and suggesting practical applications to the learning and teaching

of English as a foreign language in Vietnam Data used for analysis in this study were mainly collected from books, literary works, and questionnaire which employed 80 participants who are Vietnamese students of English at Yen Phong Continuing Educational Center in Bac Ninh province Data analysis is based on descriptive and contrastive methods The result of the study illustrates the fact that Vietnamese and English native speakers are similar in the choice of interjections as the most prominent element in exclamations However, the structures of exclamations are quite different

between two languages English exclamations are mainly formed by elements, so/such, and phrases meanwhile particles, adverbs, and idioms

wh-are dominated in Vietnamese Moreover, the findings of questionnaire showed a lot of mistakes made by Vietnamese students in using English exclamations, so the implications of the study indicate solutions to help Vietnamese students have more competence as well as confidence when using English exclamations

4.1 Syntactic features of exclamation in English and Vietnamese 34 4.1.1 Syntactic features of exclamation in English 34

4.1.2 Syntactic features of exclamation in Vietnamese 46 4.1.2.1 Exclamation formed by using interjections or exclamatory

idioms

46

4.1.2.2. Exclamation created by particles – thay/ cho/ thay cho/ nhỉ 47

4.2 A contrastive analysis of syntactic features of exclamation in 54

viii

English and Vietnamese

4.2.1 Similarities in terms of syntactic features of exclamation in English and Vietnamese

1

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION

1.1. Rationale

Up to now, English has become one of the most important international languages Many countries in the world use English as their first language In Vietnam, English has not been used as the first or the second language but it is used widely in many fields of life such as in politics, economy, national education system and even in daily life

And we know that both English and Vietnamese people have thoughts and emotion in common They also have different tone of emotion such as anger, joy, happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, despair, disgust, etc However, the ways of expressing it out are different One can use gestures

to show their attitude or feeling because gestures are specific body movements that carry meaning While the others express their emotions and attitude through facial expressions For instance: our eyes soften or look thoughtful to show our interest or the pupil can become small because we are angry or it can become large if we are excited It is said that the eyes are

the window of the soul Through the eyes we can feel the emotion, states of

another people But the most basic and important means is language It is easy to recognize the other’s feelings or attitude through their utterances People use language to express their shock, surprise, fear, anger, admiration These utterances are called exclamations Exclamation is one of the sentence types and it attracts much attention from researchers in English as well as in Vietnamese

In English, there are many authors studying sentences including exclamations such as Quirk, R et al (1972 & 1985), Bolinger, D.L (1998), Crystal, D (1995), Radford, A (1997), Biber, D (1999), etc

2

Moving on Vietnamese linguistists, we cannot but mention Nguyễn Kim Thản (1963), Nguyễn Thiện Giáp (1997 & 2008), Cao Xuân Hạo (1998), Diệp Quang Ban (2004) & (2008), Nguyễn Thị Lương (2005), etc

All of these books could be used as the valuable references of this thesis However, there has been so far no research into exclamations in terms of syntax in details in both languages Moreover, practically, learners often make confusion in using exclamations both in English and Vietnamese Because they have syntactic forms that look like statements or question but their usages are quite different So we decided to choose the

topic “Syntactic features of exclamation in English and Vietnamese” to

find out the similarities and differences of exclamations in terms of syntax between two languages

1.2. Aims of the study

The study is aimed at investigating syntactic features of exclamation

in English and Vietnamese and making a contrastive analysis on the syntax

of exclamation between two languages in order to help the teaching and learning of English exclamation to Vietnamese learners of English more effectively

1.3. Objectives of the study

The study is intended to:

- Identify and describe syntactic features of exclamation in English and Vietnamese

- Point out the similarities and differences of syntactic features of exclamation in English and Vietnamese

- Suggest some implications for teaching and learning English exclamation to Vietnamese learners of English better

3

1.4. Scope of the study

In the framework of the study, exclamations in English and Vietnamese are considered in terms of syntax and 300 samples of exclamations are based on literary works and grammatical books provided

in references

1.5. Significance of the study

Theoretically, with the purpose of doing the research into syntactic features of exclamations in English and in Vietnamese, this study could help learners have a deeper understanding about syntactic features of exclamations in English and Vietnamese

Practically, the study provides the similarities and differences about exclamations in English and in Vietnamese in terms of syntax So it could help learners grasp the use of exclamations in these two languages and use exclamations effectively in their learning process as well as in their daily life

1.6. Design of the study

The thesis consists of five chapters and references as presented below

Chapter 1, Introduction, presents the reason why the topic is

chosen, the aims, the objectives, the scope, and the significance of the study

Chapter 2, Literature Review, is about the brief review of the

previous studies This chapter is also devoted to the presentation of the basis of establishing exclamation

4

Chapter 3, Methodology, covers the research method, the research

questions, the description of the samples and research procedures

Chapter 4, Findings and Discussion, describes and analyzes

exclamations in English and Vietnamese concerning the syntactic features Then a contrastive analysis of syntactic features of exclamation between both languages is drawn out Some implications for teaching and learning English exclamation are also included in this chapter

Chapter 5, Conclusion, summarizes the major points of the thesis

along with concluding remarks, the limitations of the study and the suggestions for further study

References comes at the end of the study

5

Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Previous studies

In English, there have been many authors carrying out studies on exclamations However, their approaches are different in some ways

Quirk et al (1972 & 1985) use the term “exclamative” to refer to the grammatical category They recognize several different form types that can

be used as exclamations, but still prevail in the belief that there exists an exclamatory form type on a par with declaratives, interrogatives and imperatives Since the publication, these books have been the standard reference work used by professional grammarians

David Crystal (1995) explores the many facets and varieties of the English language, bringing life to this large and complex subject Rarely has

a book so packed with accurate and well researched factual information been so widely read and popularly acclaimed David Crystal recognizes four types of sentence functions: statements, questions, commands, and exclamations Exclamations can have either minor or major sentence status and are mainly investigated in syntactic form

Andrew Radford (1997) provides a concise, clear, and accessible introduction to current syntactic theory Radford defines an exclamative as “a type of structure used to exclaim surprise, delight, annoyance etc.” and goes on

to say that “in English syntax, the term is restricted largely to clauses beginning

with wh-exclamative words like what! or how!” The use of the word

“structure” seems to indicate that he regards the exclamative as a syntactic

phenomenon

6

In terms of pragmatics, there is only the research of Beijer F

(2001) In this research, the author aims at separating what has been called

exclamatives from other kinds of expressive/emotional utterances The term

“exclamative” does not refer to a syntactic phenomenon, but to a pragmatic one

In Vietnamese, we cannot but mention Nguyễn Thiện Giáp, Đoàn Thiện Thuật & Nguyễn Minh Thuyết (1998) According to these authors, exclamative theory was developed greatly from 18th to 20th century Those who advocated this theory were Humbon, Stundan, Russo said that human’s language derived from the sounds of anger, joy, sadness, anguished cried expressed when we were moved In some cases, interjections are signals of our emotion and thoughts In the other one, the relationship between the sounds of words and emotive state of human is considered such as the combination of sound causing the impression in our soul that is similar to the one caused by things

In the thesis of Hà Thị Hải Yến (2000), the consideration of Vietnamese exclamations is taken into seriously But actually, this thesis deals with the scope of a study of conversation interactions She focuses on the exclamative function of each move in each conversation without paying much attention to illocutionary force of exclaiming though it is an illocutionary act in speech acts

Besides that there have been some publications on sentence types

including exclamations such as Câu trong tiếng Việt (Cao Xuân Hạo,

1998); Ngữ pháp Việt Nam – phần câu (Diệp Quang Ban, 2004); Giáo

trình ngôn ngữ học (Nguyễn Thiện Giáp, 2008); Nghiên cứu ngữ pháp tiếng Việt (Nguyễn Kim Thản, 1963); Câu trong tiếng Việt (Nguyễn Thị

Lương, 2005); etc

7

However, there has not been so far a study on syntactic features of exclamations in English and in Vietnamese So it is necessary to do a research on this matter to have a deeper understanding about exclamations

in the two languages

2.2 An overview of sentence

2.2.1 Definition of sentence

The sentence is probably the most familiar of all grammatical terms

We are introduced to it in our early school years, and it quickly becomes part of our linguistic awareness We imagine we speak in sentences, and we teach children to write in them, making sure that they put in all the periods

It might therefore be thought that sentences are early things to identify and define There are different ways to define a sentence but we would prefer a traditional grammar-based definition There are many authors giving different definitions about English sentence

According to David Crystal (1995), there are three general points applying to any English sentences

- Sentences are constructed according to a system of rules, known by all the adult mother-tongue speakers of the language, and summarized in the grammar A sentence formed in this way is said to be grammatical

- Sentences are the largest constructions to which the rules of grammar apply This means that, before we can satisfactorily carry out the task of identifying sentences, we need to know something about grammatical analysis

- Sentences are constructions which can be used on their own units of meaning which seem to make sense by themselves

Alexander (1988) cites that sentence is a complete unit of meaning When we speak, our sentences may be extremely involved or unfinished, yet

8

we can still convey our meaning through intonation, gesture, facial expressions, etc when we write, these devices are not available, so sentences have to be carefully structured and punctured A written sentence must begin with a capital letter and end with a full stop (.), a question mark (?) or an exclamation mark (!)

Another idea of sentence structure comes from Alice Oshima & Ann

Hogue (2006) They states: The subject is a word or a group of words that name the person, thing, or place that a sentence is about It is usually a noun or a pronoun The predicate makes a statement about the subject It consists of a verb and its modifiers or complements The verb is the most important point of the predicate expressing an action or a state of being

Normally, the subject of the sentence, in word order of a statement, stands before its verb predicate However, the order of the sentence can vary according to the types of sentences (statement, question, request, etc.) Moreover, sentence structure, in concentrating on the elements (subject, verb, direct object, indirect object, adverb, subject complement, object complement) is used to form a sentence

In Vietnamese grammar, many authors have been trying their best to give out exact and full definitions of sentences

According to Nguyễn Thiện Giáp (2008), sentence is the smallest unit

of language being capable of conveying a thing, an idea, a feeling, or an emotion The definition shows two characteristics of the sentence:

- In terms of functionality, sentence is a unit being capable of declaration Thanks to this feature, it is possible to distinguish the sentences from its lower rank (words)

9

- In terms of structure, sentence is the smallest language unit For example, if we consider a paragraph, or even an article, a chapter, a book are declarative units, these units are split into several smaller units while the sentence is not split any more

Diệp Quang Ban (1996) cites that sentences are the largest units of structure in the grammatical organization of a language Here are some

main characteristics of sentences:

- In terms of function, the sentences are used to carry out the acts of base language Such sentences are considered as a minimum speech act

- In terms of meaning, sentences covey complete thoughts, believes, attitudes, feelings, and emotions of the speakers

- In terms of form, sentences have inner form and have an ending intonation

Sửu ơi! Giáp về rồi à? Mình có chút việc muốn gặp Giáp

The bold part is a sentence because it express interrogative act

(Function), indicate an event which has already happened – Giáp về (Meaning), and has an inner structure – Giáp is subject, về rồi is predicate,

and ending intonation (i.e,the listener does not have the feelings to wait anymore for the speaker)

Mai Ngọc Chừ, Vũ Đức Nghiệu & Hoàng Trọng Phiến (2008) state

that a sentence is the language unit which has independent inner and outer grammatical structure and ending intonation It bears a relatively complete thought enclosed with the speaker’s attitude or only displaying the speaker’s attitude, which helps form, show, and communicate ideas and affection as the smallest information unit

10

In short, different schools have their own definitions about sentences They have tried to elicit the good and radical points from many different ideas to present the most reasonable one In fact, no definition about sentences has been perfect so far Anyway, they can help each of us have a general idea of what a sentence is Personally, sentence can be understood from the opinion of Nguyễn Thiện Giáp (2008) that sentence is the smallest unit of language conveying something such as a thing, an idea, a feeling, or

an emotion

2.2.2 Classification of sentence

As we look through the pages of a novel or a daily newspaper, there must be a large number of sentence patterns in English These patterns can

be grouped into different types as follows

In terms of structure, sentences can be classified into 3 types: simple sentences, compound sentences and complex sentences

According to Alexander (1988), a sentence which contains one clause

is called a simple sentence (e.g., Stephen apologized at once) or it may

contain more than one clause, in which case it is either a compound

sentence (e.g., Stephen realized his mistake and (he) apologized at once) or

a complex sentence (e.g., When he realized his mistake Stephen apologized

at once)

David Crystal (1995) divides sentences into two main types: regular and irregular sentences Regular sentences are often referred to as major sentences, irregular ones as minor sentences

The major sentences are ones which can be broken down into a specific and predictable pattern of elements

11

I / give / the / letter / to / Mary

The visitor / brought / a book / for you

(David Crystal, 1995)

Minor sentences are no constructed in irregular way They use abnormal patterns which cannot be clearly analyzed into a sequence of clause elements as can major sentences Minor sentences do not follow all the rules of grammar

David Crystal (1995) states some minor sentence types as follows

1 Formulae for stereotyped social situations, such as Hello, How do you do? Thanks and cheers!

2 Emotional or functional noises (traditionally called interjections), many of which do not follow the normal pronunciation patterns of the

language such as Eh? Ugh? Ow? Tut tut and shh!

3 Proverbs or pithy sayings such as Easy come, easy go

4 Abbreviated forms, such as are used in postcards, instructions or

commentaries, as in Wish you were her! Mix well! and One lap more!

5 Words and phrases used as exclamations, questions and commands

such as Nice day! Taxi ? and All abroad !

If sentences are divided into 2 types above, exclamations belong to minor sentences Those are frequently used in every day conversation and look quite complex because they have no grammatical rules The speaker of any language can accomplish a great many communicative tasks with the sentences of their language They can start a conversation, order someone to

do something, narrate a tale, ask for information, promise to do something

12

at some future time, report what they have known or have heard, express surprise or dismay, suggest a joint action, give permission for someone to

do something, make a bet, offer something to someone and so on For some

of these uses of sentences, a language will have specific syntactic constructions, or even specific forms Such a coincidence of grammatical structure and conventional use, we call a sentence type

In terms of purposes, sentences may be divided into four major syntactic classes whose use correlates with different communicative functions: statements, questions, directives (commands), and exclamations (Quirk et al, 1985)

a Statements are primarily used to convey information

b Questions are primarily used to seek information on specific points

c Directives are primarily used to instruct someone to do something

d Exclamations are primarily used for expressing the extent to which the speaker is impressed by something

Andrew Radford (1997) recognizes the same types of clauses/sentences as Quirk et al (1985) do, namely declarative, interrogative, imperative and exclamative sentences

2.2.3 Minor types of simple sentence

Most grammarians have chosen to describe exclamatives as either one of the major clause types on a par with declaratives, interrogatives, and imperatives, or as a minor clause type This is not surprising since

13

utterances lacking inversion, beginning with what and how do not function

in the same way as ordinary declaratives or interrogatives

We know, however, that declarative clauses, for instance, can be used to fulfill many different functions in natural languages, i.e there is no one–to–one relation between language form and language function Consequently, exclamations need not be of a clause type, but may instead

be a pragmatic phenomenon, a claim comes from the fact that those who consider exclamations to be of a sentence type (e.g Quirk et al 1972 & 1985) have to introduce minor sentence types having the same exclamatory function as the sentences they call exclamations Quirk et al (1972) recognize four major classes in which simple sentences may be divided, and the division seems to have been made on the basis of (syntactic) form and (pragmatic) function

Statements, i.e sentences in which the subject is always present and

generally precedes the verb, such as John will speak to the boss today

Questions, i.e sentences marked by one of the following three

c)Rising question intonation: You will speak to the boss?

Commands, i.e sentences which normally have no overt

grammatical subject, and whose verb is in the imperative mood, e.g Speak

to the boss today!

14

Exclamations, i.e sentences which have an initial phrase introduced

by what or how, without inversion of subject and operator, e.g What nice clothes she wears!

Tôi đi đây

Con gà này béo lắm

Interrogative can be classified into sub-types based on the ways of

forming: using interrogative pronouns such as ai, gì, nào, như thế nào, bao nhiêu, bao lâu, đâu, etc., using connectors hay, hay là, some interrogative particles có…không, đã….chưa, xong…chưa, or rising intonation as

examples below

Anh tìm ai?

Họ đã đến hay chưa?

Imperatives usually begin with hãy, đừng and end with particles nào, thôi, đi, etc

Ta đi đi nào!

Anh hãy ngồi xuống đây!

Exclamatives are ussually formed by using interjections ô hay, ôi, ơ, etc., using a combination of interjection and content word buồn ơi là buồn,

15

con ơi là con, using particles thay, nhỉ, adverbs lạ, thật, quá, ghê, biết mấy

at the end of sentence of using intonation only as in the following examples

Ô hay! Bà cứ tưởng con đùa

Con này gớm thật!

According to Nguyễn Thiện Giáp (2008), sentences are divided in term of their structure and communicative purpose

- Basing on structural characteristics, it is common to distinguish simple sentences with complex sentences, particular sentences with elliptical sentences

- Basing on communicative purpose, like Diệp Quang Ban, the author also agrees that there are 4 kinds of sentences including declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamative

Ngôi nhà này rất đẹp (Declarative)

Có phải anh đọc sách không? (Interrogative)

Hãy im lặng! (Imperative)

Đẹp vô cùng tổ quốc ta ơi! (Exclamative)

In summary, each linguist may have their own ideas about types of sentences Anyway, in terms of communication purpose, most of them agree that sentences can be classified into 4 types: declarative, interrogative, imperative and exclamative

2.3 An Overview of exclamation

According to http://www.oxforddictionaries.com, the root or main

word in exclamatory is exclaim The word exclaim means to speak or cry out suddenly or vehemently or to speak loudly or cry out in anger or surprise or delight or with some other strong and sudden emotion The word exclaim comes from the Latin word exclamare The word exclamare

16

comes from two Latin words that have been combined to form one word

These words are ex, and clamare Ex means out of, from or clamare means

to cry out Hence, the word exclaim means to cry out from some cause

Therefore, an exclamatory sentence is a statement of a complete thought or way of thinking that shows a great and usually sudden emotion of some

kind

2.3.1 The English linguists’ conception of exclamation

According to David Crystal (1995), exclamations are sentences which show that a person has been impressed or roused by something They often

take the form of a single word or short phrase - a minor sentence such as

Gosh!, Oh! dear!, or of all the nerve! But exclamations can have major

sentence status too, with a structure which differentiates them from statement, questions and directives

- Their first element begins with what or how and is followed by a

subject and a verb

What a lovely day it is!

What a mess they’ve made!

How nice they look!

17

What a beautiful house you have!

It is such a nice house!

Your house is so nice!

Nice house!

How nice a house!

Isn’t the house nice!

What nice clothes she wears!

Andrew Radford (1997) defines an exclamative as a type of structure used to exclaim surprise, delight, annoyance, etc and goes on to say that, in

English syntax, the term is restricted largely to clauses beginning with

wh-exclamative words like what or how The use of the word structure seems to

indicate that he regards the exclamative as a syntactic phenomenon, whereas, with Rosengren (1997) and others, argue that the exclamative is a pragmatic phenomenon

Following Bolinger (1989) who states that in the broadest sense, exclamations are thus anything at the end of which one would put an exclamation mark This of course is circular, but it does give a basis for searching out a corpus of examples

Although there are many opinions about exclamations, the common characteristic in the linguists’ conception of exclamations is that:

18

exclamations are words and structures that express something emphatically They are used to express surprise, shock, fear, anger, admiration, etc We usually show this in speech by our intonation and in writing by the use of an exclamation mark at the end of sentence, although full stops are often used instead If the exclamation is only a part of sentence, it is separated from the rest of sentence by a comma

2.3.2 The Vietnamese linguists’ conception of exclamation

In traditional grammar, exclamation is considered as a type of sentence and it is seen in the typical opinions as follows

Nguyễn Kim Thản (1963) defines exclamation is to express the emotion, the mental state of the speaker ( ) Thanks to these intonations, the sentiments can be said as: joy, fear, anger, tenderness, coddle, regret, blame, contempt, indifference, reluctance, etc

Diệp Quang Ban (1996) suggests that exclamations are sentences used to express the certain degree of different emotion, the attitude of assessment, the unusual mental state of speaker towards things or events

In the book entitled Câu trong tiếng Việt by Cao Xuân Hạo (1998),

exclamation is identified as illocutionary act to express feelings and emotions The author suggests that there is a typical kind of exclamatory

sentence (special exclamation) and the atypical exclamation (main form of the narrative sentence or narrative forms combined with the indefinite pronouns, which make them look like a question)

And exclamations in Vietnamese have particular forms They are

often used with interjections such as ôi, quá, thay, sao, chao ôi, ô hô, a ha,

ái chà, ồ, ơi, etc or groups of interjections: ôi chao ôi, ối cha mẹ ơi, ối trời

ôi, etc; pronouns expressing degree of feeling: biết bao nhiêu, biết bao, etc; and adverbs: quá, ghê, vô cùng, etc

Trời ơi! Nhục nhã ơi là nhục nhã!

(Chí Phèo – Nam Cao)

19

Than ôi ! Sắc nước hương trời

(Truyện Kiều – Nguyễn Du)

From the above concepts, we can understand that exclamation in Vietnamese is a kind of sentence using specific words to express strong and sudden emotions of the speakers, and is often used in daily life and literary language In Vietnamese, although the frequency of exclamation is not as much as other sentences, it plays an important role in communication This

is a special kind of sentence in terms of content and form and it has great expressiveness

From the above things mentioned, we can see that both English and Vietnamese linguists have the same ideas in defining exclamation Whether exclamatory structures in the two languages are similar or different? Let’s move to the next part of the thesis

2.3.3 Forms of exclamations

2.3.3.1 Forms of English exclamations

According to Sadock & Zwicky (1985), English exclamations can be

in forms of declarative, interrogative, and imperative sentences

As concerned with declarative sentence, the function of exclamatory

sentences is much like that of declarative sentences, except that exclamations are intended to be expressive whereas declaratives are intended to be informative Both represent a proposition as being true, but in

an exclamation, the speaker emphasizes his strong emotional reaction to what he takes to be a fact, whereas in a declarative, the speaker emphasizes his intellectual appraisal that the proposition is true Because of this close relationship, exclamatory sentences are often similar in form to declarative

sentences, as in the English exclamatory type with so and such

That’s so tacky!

20

She’s such a good syntactician!

(Sadock & Zwicky, 1985

Besides that, English also has an exclamatory type that resembles

yes-no questions Sadock and Zwicky (1985) have claimed that

exclamations are of another minor sentence type; in form they resemble interrogatives

Boy, does he ever have beautiful legs!

Wow, can he knit!

Sometimes, exclamations can be in form of imperative sentences Imprecatives, like exclamations, are expressive or emotional in tone

Shit on you!

Screw you!

2.3.3.2 Forms of Vietnamese exclamations

Before coming to the opinions of Diệp Quang Ban (2004), which are

on focus in this part, stepping backwards to the main forms of English exclamations and it is shown that Vietnamese ones share the same Factually, in everyday conversations, exclamations are in declarative form

or in imperative one and even in interrogative one

Người đâu mà đẹp thế? (Interrogative form)

Bài tập này khó thật! (Declarative form)

Ðừng ngớ ngẩn thế! (Imperative form)

21

Moreover, these forms by setting a stable foundation of knowledge concerning exclamations enable to complete the study of exclamations in

Vietnamese

Being discussed by a lot Vietnamese authors and when accessing to

the work of Ngữ pháp tiếng Việt – Phần câu by Diệp Quang Ban (2004), it

provides a better insight of sentence types, especially exclamations That is the reason why we, in our writing, focus much on the opinions of Diệp Quang Ban (2004) and it seems that his ideas rule out for the syntax of Vietnamese exclamations According to him, to study exclamations, we need to take syntax, communicative function, mood and structure, and text

as well into consideration

In terms of syntax, exclamations consist of some minor clauses and they are the ones formed by exclamatory expressions that function as a sentence with no syntactic features Interjections are the factors that have

no lexical meaning and they are used as an indefinite sound, which are used to express physical or mental reactions and have no representative meaning For this reason, exclamations are ungrammaticalized to separate subject or predicate in sentences

In terms of communication, exclamations are used to express feelings caused by physical and mental impulse (including reprimand, compliment, swear, etc which have no direct representative meaning)

In terms of mood and structure, exclamations consist of only mood expression but not residue In terms of texts, exclamations are minor clauses and this type of sentence has no separation between theme and rheme

22

All exclamation expressions have their own forms and they are independent of the remaining parts of a sentence (so we can name them exclamation expressions) Not all exclamation expressions function in the mood structure, but within the relation of mood structure, exclamation is categorized in terms of exclamatory factors Thus, we then pay much attention to the factors, which have an impact on the syntax of exclamation

2.3.4 The elements used with exclamations

literature work as well as in daily conversations such as wow, ouch, oops,

er, huh, gee, ooh, uh, aha, brrr, shh, ahem, psst, etc

The definition somehow reflects the dual nature of interjections in

language When we consider the forms oh or phooey, we can see that we

have to speak in terms of a definitely separate class of elements which share the qualities of not having any inflection typical of them, and that they are largely suggestive of sensations, attitudes and states of mind Aside from these, there are no other characteristics that these forms can perform On the other hand, depending on the context, interjections can form sentences and utterances that consist of one or two words without the subject - predicate relation

Traditionally, interjections have often been regarded as peripheral to language Latin grammarians characterized them as non-words, unrelated to

Biber et al (1999) notes that interjections have many functions

including the followings: greetings and farewells (e.g good morning, goodbye), discourse markers (e.g well, right), attention signals (e.g alright, okay), responses (e.g yeah, alright), hesitators (e.g er), various speech act formulae (e.g thank you, please, sorry) and expletives (e.g Jesus)

Like Biber et al (1999), Essberger (2009) presents that the functions expressed by interjections are typically emotional, such as pleasure, surprise, pity, hesitation, greeting, pain, pleading, etc The following table lists some of the common interjections and their communicative functions

Table 1: Common English interjections and their communicative functions

Interjections Communicative

Function

Example

Ah

Expressing pleasure "Ah, that feels good."

Expressing realization "Ah, now I understand."

Expressing resignation "Ah well, it can't be hoped." Expressing surprise "Ah! I've won!"

Dear Expressing pity "Oh dear! Does it hurt?"

Expressing surprise "Dear me! That's a surprise!" Asking for repetition "It's hot today." "Eh?"

"I said it's hot today."

24

Eh

Expressing enquiry "What do you think of that, eh?" Expressing surprise "Eh! Really?"

Inviting agreement "Let's go, eh?"

Er Expressing hesitation "Lima is the capital

of er Peru."

Hello, Hullo Expressing greeting "Hello John How are you

today?"

Expressing surprise "Hello! My car's gone!"

Hey Calling attention "Hey! Look at that!"

Expressing surprise, joy etc

"Hey! What a good idea!"

Hi Expressing greeting "Hi! What's new?"

Hmm Expressing hesitation,

doubt or disagreement

"Hmm I'm not so sure."

Oh Expressing surprise "Oh! You're here!"

Expressing pain "Oh! I've got a toothache."

Expressing pleading "Oh, please say 'yes'!"

Ouch Expressing pain "Ouch! That hurts!"

Uh Expressing hesitation "Uh I don't know the answer to

that."

Uh-huh Expressing agreement "Shall we go?" "Uh-huh."

Um, umm Expressing hesitation "85 divided by 5 is um 17." Well Expressing surprise "Well I never!"

Introducing a question "Well, what did he say?"

dạ, này, etc Cao Xuân Hạo divides interjections into two kinds consisting

expressive interjections and calling–responding interjections According to

Nguyễn Kim Thản, interjection is a word used as a signal from the state of the emotion, the different excitements, but not for identifying those emotions and excitements, and the signal of the calling–responding speech

Diệp Quang Ban (1996) cites that interjections are words – signals reflect the physiological status Interjections have their own characteristics that can stand alone as sentences or subcomponents of the sentences Interjections as subcomponents of the sentences (except calling–responding words) often turn those sentences into the exclamatory sentences The

author divides interjections into 3 groups:

- Authentic interjections: words are only used to convey

exclamation: ôi, ối, a, ô, ồ, ái, á, ấy, ái chà, úi, úi dào, eo ôi, etc

A! Mẹ về kia kìa!

Ô! Cái anh này hay nhỉ!

(Diệp Quang Ban, 1996)

- Inauthentic interjections (loaned interjections): words that have

clear lexical meaning are used only or combined with authentic interjections

to express exclamatory meaning: trời, trời ơi, trời phật ơi, mẹ cha ơi, làng nước ơi, tội nghiệp, khổ thân nó, gớm, chết, hoan hô, etc

Khổ! Thàng bé mới có tí tuổi đầu

Gớm! đi đâu mà bây giờ mới về?

(Diệp Quang Ban, 1996)

26

- Calling-responding interjections: words are used to call the others

and to respond to the call: hỡi, cùng, ơi, ới, bớ, này, nè, vâng, ừ, dạ, etc

Hỡi các bạn

Dạ, con đây ạ

(Diệp Quang Ban, 1996)

About the way of this expression, the author, Nguyễn Thị Lương (2005), has listed a number of exclamatory groups and assigned each group

a value expressing different feelings, specifically as follows

- The word or combination of words expressing joy, surprise,

admiration: a, a ha, ôi, ơ, ờ, etc

- The word or combination of words expressing depression, sadness,

lack of trust: ôi, ôi dào, dào ôi, ôi chao, chao ôi, etc

- The word or combination of words expressing worry, fear, disgust:

eo, eo ôi, eo lèo ôi, etc

- The word or combination of words expressing pain, suffering,

anxiety, sadness, anger: trời, ôi, ối, ái…

- The word or combination of words expressing sympathy, pity,

annoyance: chao ôi, hừ, etc

Yet, from the actual survey, we found that the meaning of these interjections are functional, were identified by the context and tone of the speaker, interpreting them tied to the context in which it appears Therefore, the division of the group from the exclamation with a fixed meaning as above may cause restrictions and ambiguity of the words Thus, when

2.3.4.2 Intonation

Speech is also like music in that it uses changes in pitch, speaker can change the pitch of their voice as they speak, making it higher or lower in pitch at will Their pitch can even jump up suddenly like the singer’s So speech has a melody called intonation

The sound system enables us to express meaning in speech in verbal and non- verbal ways Verbal meaning (what we say relies on vowel, and consonants to construct words, phrases and sentences Nonverbal meaning (the way that we say it) makes use of such factors as intonation, rhythm, and tone of voice to provide speech with much of its structure and

expressiveness As old song widely says “it is not what you say, it is the way that you say it” So often, it is the nonverbal meaning which is the

critical element in a communication And intonation is one of factors that make great contribution to create exclamation Exclamation has its own intonation, rising intonation is often used

28

That is so funny!

What a beautiful day!

Compared with statement, melodic contour of exclamation is not different from of statement There is only difference in words carrying different lexical meaning in which people show their emotion, feelings and these words are pronounced differently to make prominence Let’s compare the two following Vietnamese sentences with each other

Thật là vinh dự! (Exclamation)

Thật là một điều vinh dự cho chúng tôi! (Statement)

In the first sentence, vinh is pronounced a little longer and higher

Although in Vietnamese, stress of sentence is placed on the final syllable If

sentence has such interjections as ôi, ơi, biết bao or words showing degree: qúa, vô chừng, vô cùng these words will be highlighted In Vietnamese, these one are mainly pronounced with higher and stronger length; e.g Quá đẹp!, Ngon ơi là ngon!, Thật vô cùng sung sướng!

However, each language uses one or more different means to highlight any words In English, together with vowel length, consonant length is also increased in interjections, and intensifies as well as pitch of a sound is raised So intonation of exclamation will involve stress and pause in sentence

2.3.4.3 Exclamation mark (!)

Written language is a very important communicative form It complements the limitation of spoken language such as limitation of space and time Because of the importance of punctuation marks so when writing

29

we can’t write series of words without punctuations, if so the reader can’t understand what we write Punctuations help writers express their intention exactly, logically Punctuation can bring out more clearly the author’s intended meaning

An exclamation mark or exclamation point is a type of punctuation marks It first appeared in 14th century to show an utterance needed to be read with some exclamatory force It looks like this (!) It is used at the end

of exclamation or after interjections

What a beautiful scenery!

Oh! I miss you so much!

Phong cảnh mới đẹp làm sao!

Than ôi! Sắc nước hương trời

2.4 Summary

In this chapter, the review of previous studies and the theoretical background of the study are presented Especially, in the theoretical background, an overview of sentences in English and Vietnamese is introduced It is significant to find out that there are no differences of sentence subtypes between English and Vietnamese, the detailed subtypes are major or non-major, simple, complex or compound (ranking of structure) and statements, questions, commands or exclamations (ranking

of purpose) Then exclamations are studied in detail Different scholars have different opinions about definition of exclamation, however most of them agreed that exclamations are sentences, which show that a person’s feeling has been impressed or roused by something, and they can be in declarative or interrogative or imperative forms Lastly, elements used with exclamations have been introduced and presented at the end of this chapter