a study on semantic features of english adjectives denoting “big” with reference to their vietnamese equivalents

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNVERSITY + PHÙNG THỊ THANH THỦY A STUDY ON SEMANTIC FEATURES OF ENGLISH ADJECTIVES DENOTING “BIG” WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR VIETNAMESE E

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNVERSITY

+

PHÙNG THỊ THANH THỦY

A STUDY ON SEMANTIC FEATURES

OF ENGLISH ADJECTIVES DENOTING “BIG” WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

(NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ ĐẶC TRƯNG NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA TÍNH TỪ TIẾNG ANH BIỂU THỊ KHÁI NIỆM “TO LỚN” VÀ

LIÊN HỆ VỚI TIẾNG VIỆT)

M.A THESIS

Hanoi, 2016

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNVERSITY

PHÙNG THỊ THANH THỦY

A STUDY ON SEMANTIC FEATURES

OF ENGLISH ADJECTIVES DENOTING “BIG” WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

(NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ ĐẶC TRƯNG NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA TÍNH TỪ TIẾNG ANH BIỂU THỊ KHÁI NIỆM “TO LỚN” VÀ

LIÊN HỆ VỚI TIẾNG VIỆT)

M.A THESIS Field: English Language Code: 60220201 Supervisor: Ph.D Lưu Thị Phương Lan

Hanoi, 2016

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

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

entitled A Study on Semantic features of English Adjectives denoting “Big”

with reference to Vietnamese equivalents 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

Phùng Thị Thanh Thủy Approved by

SUPERVISOR

Lưu Thị Phương Lan

Date: 28/ 11/ 2016

A special word of thanks goes to colleagues 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, especially my mother for the sacrifice they have devoted to the fulfillment of this academic work

ABSTRACT

English is, at this moment, the most common language in the world Therefore, there has been a lot of research to make comparison between the meaning of the word in English and corresponding in Vietnamese The

comparison range means “Big” of the adjective would more practical

applications, especially, in teaching Indeed, the adjectives, however, cannot occur in just any order, and native speakers of English have very particular intuitions about what order is more correct, even if they have never been explicitly taught ordering rules In this study, I describe the adjective have

meaning denoting “Big” and compare with synonym in Vietnamese After

learning and researching about my thesis, I prove the existence of using

English adjectives denoting “Big” with reference to their Vietnamese

equivalents Additionally, I want to give a briefly discussion about the prosodic differences between English and Vietnamese adjectives as well as a development about semantic theory that describes how pre-nominal adjectives are ordered based on their semantic properties, with adjectives that depict

“intrinsic” properties closer to the noun, and adjectives that are “speaker relative” in a more distant position In the theory, the use of multiple adjectives is described as being equivalent to a sequential series of restrictions placed on the set of properties for a given noun

TABLE OF CONTENT

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENT iv

LIST OF TABLE vii

Chapter 1 1

INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale for the research 1

1.2 Aims of the research 3

1.3 Objectives of the research 3

1.4 Scope of the research 3

1.5 Significance of the research 4

1.6 Structure of thesis 4

Chapter 2 6

LITERATURE REVIEW 6

2.1 Review of previous studies 6

2.1.1 Previous studies overseas 6

2.1.2 Previous studies in Vietnam 10

2.2 Theoretical background 11

2.2.1 Theory of semantics 11

2.2.2 Theory of adjectives 12

2.2.2.1 Definitions of adjectives 12

2.2.2.2 Adjective Ordering 14

2.2.3 Synonyms 23

2.2.4 Context 25

2.2.5 Collocation Range 26

Chapter 3 31

METHODOLOGY 31

3.1 Research-governing orientations 31

3.1.1 Research approaches 31

3.2 Research methods 35

3.2.1 Major methods and supporting methods 35

3.2.3 Data analysis techniques 36

3.3 Summary 37

Chapter 4 38

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 38

4.1 Preamble 38

4.1.1 Adjectives in English 38

4.1.2 Adjectives in Vietnamese 39

4.2 Semantic features of adjectives denoting “Big” in English 40

4.2.1 “Big” in Size, Dimension, or Space 40

4.2.2 “Big” in Number or Amount 42

4.2.3 “Big” in Degree 44

4.2.4 “Big” in Value, Significance or Importance 46

4.3 Relative frequency of occurrence of adjectives denoting “Big” in English 49

4.3.1 Frequency of Occurrence of Adjectives Denoting “Big” in English 49

4.3.2 Trend 50

4.4 Discussion of findings 51

4.4.1 English Adjectives Denoting “Big” and Their Vietnamese Equivalents 51

4.4.2 Conclusion 53

Chapter 5 54

CONCLUSION 54

5.1 Recapitulation 54

5.2 Concluding remarks 55

5.3 Limitations of the current research 56

5.4 Some implications for teaching and translating English adjectives denoting “Big” 56

5.4.1 Implication on the language teaching 56

5.4.2 Implication on translation work 57

5.5 Suggestions for further study 58

REFERENCES 59

BIBLIOGRAPHY 62

LIST OF TABLE

Table 2.1 Inherent and non-inherent adjective……… …… … 21

Table 4.1 “Big” in Size, Dimension and Space in English and Vietnamese… ….41

Table 4.2 “Big” in Number and Amount in English and Vietnamese……… … 43

Table 4.3 “Big” in Degree in English and Vietnamese……… ……….45

Table 4.4 “Big” in Value, Significance or Importance in English and Vietnamese…….48

Table 4.5 The frequency of occurrence of value adjectives denoting “Big”………50

Table 4.6 The summarizing table of adjectives denoting “Big” both in English and Vietnamese……… 52

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale for the research

Many writers across the world agree that English is the “queen of languages” Indeed, English is generally acknowledged to be the world’s most important language There are thousands of different languages in the world, and each will seem uniquely important to those who speak it as their native language, the language they acquired at their mother’s knee, but English is still the world’s most widely used language

It is indispensible that an English word often has various meanings depending on the context, and adjectives in English are no exceptions They can be appropriately applied to fully transmit the speaker’s thoughts and ideas Nevertheless, it is not easy for those who learn English as a second language to use them correctly and effectively In fact, most learners often feel confused with adjectives of the same denotation especially when they are used in various contexts since they fail to grasp the contextual meanings that are central to the interpretation of meaning There can be no denying that a general sense of one adjective can be adjusted by virtue of contextual factors and each context can make certain aspects of meaning vary interestingly

Big is one of the most commonly used adjectives, and is used to modify

or describe nouns both in colloquial and in scientific or academic discourses

In some different contexts, the meaning of “Big” can be represented by virtue

of different lexical devices Indeed, there are many English adjectives

denoting the meaning of “Big” when used in varying contexts We use

adjective Big in every day conversations with its common and general

meaning Big is used to describe something or someone with a large shape,

size, or building In particular contexts, however, the meaning of “Big” is implied by other adjectives such as big, huge, enormous, tremendous, etc For example, a big house (một ngôi nhà lớn), tremendous efforts (nỗ lực lớn),

radical changes (những thay đổi lớn), or a sweeping view (quang cảnh rộng)

On the contrary, Vietnamese has phrases like mưa to, gió lớn whereby the meaning of “Big” is realized by various lexical items, i.e, “to”, and “lớn”, and their English equivalents should be “heavy rain”, and “strong wind”, rather than being literally translated as big rain, or big wind Although “lớn” or “to

lớn” is the main aspect of meaning of “Big”, yet upon being rendered into English, there are several different adjectives belonging to the semantic field

of “Big”

In addition, adjectives in English have attracted the attention of both English and Vietnamese researchers In fact, attempts have been made to study single adjectives like good, bad, nice or a group of adjectives denoting color, and the like However, there has yet been any research done into

adjectives in the school meaning of “Big”, which is supposed to be an

exciting but problematic area of study For this reason, I would like to focus

my paper on the topic: “A study on semantic features of English adjectives

denoting “Big” with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents” On that

foundation, I would like to study and compare the collocation range of “Big”

and of other common generic size adjectives such as great, large, huge, etc

By doing so, the study can help equip English learners with some critical

knowledge of adjectives in the school meaning of “Big” while at the same

time suggesting some possible Vietnamese translational equivalents

Hopefully, once learners of English have a good grasp of these adjectives, they will possibly achieve their communicative target and their

studying English will become an easier and more interesting experience

1.2 Aims of the research

The study aims to:

- Show the semantic features of Adjectives denoting “Big”

- Provide English learners with a better insight into the meaning Big and the way it is represented by means of different lexical devices – or rather of adjectives in the same field of meaning

1.3 Objectives of the research

To achieve the aims mentioned above, following objectives are put forward:

various contexts

denoting “Big”

as translating adjectives denoting “Big”

1.4 Scope of the research

(i) Academic scope

This research is restrict to English adjectives denoting “Big” in English such descriptive adjectives as big, great, large, huge, enormous, tremendous and valuable adjectives like big, great, important, considerable The

contrastive analysis is based on the source language English with reference to Vietnamese equivalents

(ii) Social scope

To carry out the research thesis, all the material collection of English

adjectives denoting “Big” and their Vietnamese equivalents are selected from

some reliable dictionaries in both languages: English and Vietnamese

It is hoped that the outcomes of this thesis, to some extent, can make a certain contribution to enhance knowledge and quality of communication for language learners at Hanoi Open University

1.5 Significance of the research

(i) Theoretical significance

In terms of theoretical significance, the research is expected to contribute some literature to the repertoire of adjectives after analyzing their semantic features

(ii) Practical significance

In terms of practical significance, adjectives denoting “Big” are used

popularly in daily life, but so far, there have been no studies about this topic

As a result, this research is conducted in an attempt to provide Vietnamese learners with better mastering about semantic features of English adjectives

denoting “Big” From the findings, Vietnamese learners of English will

enhance knowledge about adjectives as well as apply this kind of adjectives

denoting “Big” in sensible ways in communication The study is hoped to

make a major contribution to the process of teaching and learning English

1.6 Structure of thesis

The thesis is designed with five chapters:

Chapter 1: Introduction – provides an overview of the issues, the aims,

the specific objectives, the scope, the significance and the structural

organization of the research are also mentioned in this chapter

Chapter 2: Literature review – discusses the previous studies on

adjectives relating to the area of the research and presents some theoretical preliminaries that could be used as foundation for the process of conducting the research

Chapter 3: Methodology – presents the research questions, the major

methods, the minor methods and the techniques employed in the research The chapter also describes the way the data are collected and analyzed

Chapter 4: Findings and discussion – describes and analyses the

semantic features of adjectives denoting “Big” in English and Vietnamese to

find out the similarities and differences in terms of semantic features

Chapter 5: Conclusions – summaries major findings found out from the

investigation and data analysis, presents the limitations of the study, and provides some suggestions for further research

References come at the end of the study

Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW2.1 Review of previous studies

The prosperity of language in form and content not only has the beauty

of language but also deeply contributes to successful daily communications Every language in the world has large numbers of adjectives Indeed, adjective always takes an important role in enriching language by its abundance and potentially descriptive qualities and characteristics In English, the adjective is multi – functional It is used essentially to describe

an object but, in general, it is meant to enrich and clarify ideas and lead the interlocutors to communicate eloquently Being aware of the important role

of adjectives denoting “Big” in the daily communication in the society as

well as teaching and learning languages, many researchers have taken studies on adjectives denoting in various field such as syntax, semantics and translation, etc

2.1.1 Previous studies overseas

In recent decades, the semantic aspects of English adjectives have become one of the major focusing in studies of language use So it said above that adjectives introduce properties Two kinds of facts suggest that adjectives also denote properties First, as people have already seen, adjectives may provide the main predicate in a sentence Second, they often see entailments from the attributive form to the predicative form

A number of researchers, including Creswell (1973), Lewis (1970) and Montague (1974) have taken the existence of non-intersective interpretations

of adjectives as evidence that adjectives do not denote properties, but rather

must be analyzed as expressions that map properties into new properties (Others have adopted a more nuanced view whereby attributive uses involve such a meaning, while predicative uses denote properties; see Siegel 1976 for

a sophisticated implementation of this kind of account, and the kind of linguistic data that can be brought to bear to support it) In some cases (the intersective adjectives), the output is just the conjunction of the input with a property introduced by the adjective; in others (the non-intersective ones), the adjective determines the output property in a more complex way, as we have seen Furthermore, apparent predicative uses of adjectives are analyzed as deriving from an underlying attributive source, so that what is predicated of the subject The advantage of such an approach is that it allows for a general theory of lexical types and compositional operations, and if the general goal is

to show that the semantic properties of natural language can be accounted for within a compositional framework, the strategy is a reasonable one The disadvantage of such an approach is that in effectively building noun-dependency into the meaning of the adjective, the uniformity hypothesis doesn’t leave much space for complex structural effects on meaning of the sort we observed in the previous section for adjectives like visible At the same time, it can lead to an over-simplistic assessment of the data, when a more sophisticated analysis of both noun and adjective meaning can provide

us with ways of explaining patterns like those above without adopting the attributive analysis of adjective meaning

Adjectives have played a prominent role in a number of philosophical discussions of aspects of human language, as I will document in this section, but perhaps the most prominent is their role in the characterization and analysis of vagueness (chapter 4.3) The problem of vagueness is essentially the problem of being unable or unwilling to say of any single point along an

ordering generated by the meaning of a particular term whether that point separates the things that the term is true of from the things that it is false of Vagueness is not a feature of adjectives alone, but adjectives provide a particularly rich empirical ground for investigating it, because so many of them fall into the class of gradable adjectives discussed in the previous section, and so (in their basic, unmodified forms) introduce properties that are true of false of objects depending on their position on a scale

A central question in work on gradable adjectives and vagueness is whether vagueness is the defining characteristic of the class, with their other significant properties, such as the possibility of forming comparative constructions, arising as a result of this feature, or whether vagueness is derived The first view is seen in the work of Kamp (1975), Klein (1980), van Benthem (1982) and most recently by van Rooij (in press), who provide compositional semantic analyses of various kinds of comparative constructions in terms of an initial analysis of gradable adjectives as vague property terms This approach has the advantage of explaining the apparent morphological universal mentioned at the end of the previous section: if there

is a difference in morphosyntactic complexity between the positive and comparative form of an adjective, it is always the latter that is complex (Though it should be noted that many languages - probably the majority – do not make a morphosyntactic distinction between the forms.)

The second view is associated with degree-based analyses of gradable adjectives of the sort discussed in the previous section: since adjectives do not denote properties at all, but rather relations between individuals and degrees, there is no sense in which the basic meanings of the terms are vague Instead, vagueness is introduced compositionally through the mapping of such relations to properties In particular, if this mapping is achieved through

composition with a phonologically null “positive” morpheme, as described above, this opens up the analytical possibility of associating vagueness with the particular semantic features of this morpheme, a move advocated and justified by Fara (2000) and Kennedy (2007)

Adjectives have also played an important role in discussions of the implications of variable judgments about truth for theories of meaning Recent work on semantic relativism has focused extensively on differences in truth judgments of sentences containing adjectives of personal taste like tasty and fun (see e.g Cappelen and Hawthorne 2009; Lasersohn 2005; MacFarlane 2005; Stephenson 2007; Richard 2004;), and researchers interested in motivating contextualist semantic analyses have often used facts involving gradable adjectives (recall the judgments in which show that the threshold for what “counts as” tall can change depending on whether we are talking about jockeys or basketball players) to develop arguments about the presence (or absence) of contextual parameters in other types of constructions, such as knowledge statements (see e.g Cohen 1999; Lewis 1979; Stanley 2004; Unger 1975) Other researchers have attempted to account for the apparent context sensitivity of these examples without importing context dependence into the semantics (see e.g Cappelen and Lepore 2005)

More radically, Travis (1997; 1985; 1994) has used judgments about the truth of sentences containing color adjectives to argue against the view that sentences determine truth conditions Instead, according to him, the semantic value of a sentence at most imposes some necessary conditions under which it may be true (as well as conditions under which it may be used), but those conditions need not be sufficient, and the content of the sentence does not define a function from contexts to truth However, Travis’ argument goes

through only if it is the case if the truth conditional variability introduced by color adjectives cannot be linked to a context-dependent element in its logical form or to an underlying ambiguity Indeed, there are responses to his work which argue for each of these positions based on careful and sophisticated linguistic analysis of color adjectives

2.1.2 Previous studies in Vietnam

Adjectives are also a matter of concern to many Vietnamese researchers Vietnamese adjectives also prove significant in the Vietnamese language, and several native linguists have been trying to collect them and to detect their special peculiarities Adjectives are also a matter of concern to many Vietnamese researchers Take example, Cao Xuân Hạo (1998), Đinh Văn Đức (1986), Phạm Hồng Hải (2012), Nguyễn Hữu Quỳnh (2001), Nguyễn Tài Cẩn (1999), etc

According to Dinh (1986) in Ngữ Pháp Tiếng Việt, “General speaking,

adjectives are the kind of words that shows the characteristic of all these concepts can be expressed in nouns and verbs”

It can be said that the above – mentioned authors appear to have made good use of adjectival characteristics in the hope of bringing about their semantic and pragmatic recognition profoundly Though linguist have written much on adjectives, and chiefly focused on their meaning and use However, there so far has not been a specific study which is designed for semantic

features of a range of adjectives denoting the meaning of “Big”; for these

reasons, I have made my attempt to make an investigation into this matter

2.2 Theoretical background

2.2.1 Theory of semantics

After searching a large amount of reliable sources, I have found some theories of semantics which are helpful for analyzing the semantics features

of English and Vietnamese adjectives of comparisons

Semantics (as the study of meaning) is central to the study of communication and as communication becomes more and more a crucial factor in social organization, the need to understand it becomes more and more pressing Semantics is also at the center of the study of the human mind – thought processes, cognition, conceptualization – all these are intricately bound up with the way in which we classify and convey out experience of the world through language

Because it is, in these two ways, a focal point in man’s study of man, semantics has been the meeting place of various cross-currents of thinking and various disciplines of study Philosophy, psychology, and linguistics all claim a deep interest in the subject Semantics has often seemed baffling because there are many different approaches to it, and the ways in which they are related to one another are rarely clear, even to writers on the subject (Leech 1990: IX)

According to Thomason (1966), semantics is the study of the meaning

of linguistic expressions The language can be a natural language, such as English or Navajo, or an artificial language, like a computer programming language Meaning in natural language is mainly studied by linguists In fact, semantics is one of the main branches of contemporary linguistics Theoretical computer scientists and logicians think about artificial languages

In some areas of computer science, these divisions are crossed In machine

translation, for instance, computer scientist may want to relate natural language texts to abstract representations of their meanings; to do this, they have to design artificial languages for representing meanings

From my point of view, generally, semantics is the study of meaning It

is a wide subject within the general study of language An understanding of semantics is essential to the study of language acquisition (how language users acquire a sense of meaning, as speakers and writers, listeners and readers) and of language change (how meanings alter over time) It is important to understand language in social contexts, as these are likely to affect meaning, and for understanding varieties of English and effects of style

It is thus one of the most fundamental concepts in linguistics The study of semantics includes the study of how meaning is constructed, interpreted, clarified, obscured, illustrated, simplified, negotiated, contradicted and paraphrased

Professor Robert’s lecture on environment was fascinating

Many adjectives can answer the question What …like?

What’s Tom like? (ask for the appearance)

He is dark/ short/ tall

(Alexander, 1998, p 106) However, as the opinions of Quirk et al., “We usually cannot tell a word is an adjective by looking at it in isolation because the form of a word doesn’t necessarily indicate its syntactic function Nor can we identify a word

as an adjective merely from its potentials for inflexion” (1973, 114)

In The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, adjectives are characterized as expressions “that alter, clarify, or adjust the meaning contributions of nouns”, in order to allow for the expression of “finer gradations of meaning” than are possible through the use of nouns alone (Huddleston and Pullum 2002, p 526) At a general level, adjectives gain this capability in virtue of two main characteristics, one of which is semantic and one of which is syntactic On the semantic side, they introduce properties (Whether they actually denote properties is a question we will address in detail below.) On the syntactic side, they are able to function as modifiers, and so may (with some restrictions) combine recursively with nouns The result of this combination is a new property which is typically (though not always) true of a subset of the entities that the original properties are true of, thereby providing a “finer gradation of meaning” than is possible using the noun alone This simple picture hides many important and interesting complexities, however, which provide insights on several topics of central interest to both linguists and philosophers, including: vagueness, contextualism, relativism, compositionality, and the semantic analysis of significant phenomena such as modality I begin with an examination of the distributional properties of adjectives, then summarize the most prominent analyses of their meanings, and finally conclude with a look at some of the roles that adjectives have played in reasoning about the issues and phenomena

mentioned above

Adjective is one of the most common categories of the English words Adjectives can simply be defined by Richard et al (1993) as 'a word that describes a noun', or referred to a more specific notion as 'a word that describes the thing, quality, state or action which a noun refers to'

An adjective is a part of speech which describes, identifies, or quantifies

a noun or a pronoun So basically, the main function of an adjective is to modify a noun or a pronoun so that it will become more specific and interesting Instead of just one word, a group of words with a subject and a verb, can also function as an adjective When this happens, the group of words is called an adjective clause

So the English adjective is various They typically denote properties - most centrally in the domains of opinion, size, age and origin Hence, the learners have many choices of using adjectives based on their purposes

To sum up, adjective is one of four elements of open class items (noun, adjective, adverb, and verb) which belongs to part of speech in English

grammar, and adjectives are describing words expressing quality, quantity,

size, color, characteristics, etc

2.2.2.2 Adjective Ordering

Almost all languages allow attributive adjectives to modify nouns; in fact, in many languages this is the only or primary function In some languages, attributive modification is limited to a single adjective phrase; additional adjectives must be coordinated, introduced by apposition, or introduced in relative clauses In other languages, such as English, multiple adjectives are possible, and in such languages there are very clear cross-

linguistic tendencies in the ordering of attributive adjectives By and large, the order of pre-nominal adjectives tends to be similar cross-linguistically, for example size before color In many cases, there is a preferred ordering and a marked ordering, or two different interpretations for two different orders

In this theory, the semantic subcategories of adjectives (shape, color,

size, etc.) are further categorized into broader “spheres,” where sphere 1 contains adjectives that are decreasing in intransitivity as they increase in distance from a noun Sphere 1 adjectives are also less likely to be found out

of order Sphere 2 adjectives are internally relative, and internally comparative, and when found out of order, result in a semantic shift from the underlying order Sphere 3 adjectives are externally comparative, and involve the speaker’s opinion and perspective Sphere 3 adjectives are more likely to

be found in inverse position, and the semantic shifts that occur when this is done Lastly, the category of scope-taking adjectives, which move more freely and have a more “adverbial” quality

Scope-taking adjectives are capable of taking the noun and all of the adjectives that modify it and modify all of them further How adjectives from identical semantic categories behave when they interact and the semantic differences between ordered pairs and their inverses

Across languages, which was successful in some languages, but not as much so in English translating My cross-linguistic analysis is clearly very limited; I did not have extensive data or access to many native speakers, so naturally, it was very difficult to test the semantic and syntactic features of English adjectives denoting with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents in the other languages, as I will able to do in English In the future, I believe this would be an interesting study to do

Additionally, I would be interested in exploring in more detail the relationship between scope-taking adjectives and the adjectives within the other spheres; these adjectives seem to behave in an interesting way that is easy to understand in English

The free nature of these adjectives makes them naturally more likely to vary cross-linguistically, and I would be very interested to analyze the semantic and syntactic features of English adjectives denoting with reference

to their Vietnamese equivalents in the other languages

In general, however, one thing that is never seen cross-linguistically, despite the controversy about the placement of the noun, is a clear violation

of the underlying The adjectives consistently remain in the same order in relation to one another, whether in mirror image or not, which is a very robust finding Having consistent cross-linguistic relative adjective order as predicted by a semantic theory may be evidence that a semantic theory will also suffice in explaining cross-linguistic variation among the syntactic relationships between the placement of a noun and the adjectives that modify it

It is of paramount importance to learn the pattern of adjective order if it

is not part of what you naturally bring to the language The royal order of adjectives can be seen in this part In conclusion, adjectives are words used to describe or modify nouns They give the reader more information about noun and make our writing more interesting

2.2.2.3 Semantic features of English adjectives

Based on A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language of Randolph Quirk published in 1985 and English Grammar of Dave Willis, the writer found that adjectives are classified into stative and dynamic, gradable and non – gradable

Stative and dynamic adjectives

Adjectives are characteristically stative Many adjectives, however, can

be seen as dynamic In particular, most adjectives that are susceptible to subjective measurement are capable of being dynamic Stative and dynamic adjectives differ syntactically in a number of ways For example, a stative adjective such as tall cannot be used with the progressive aspect or with the imperative:

On the other hand, we can use careful as a dynamic adjective:

A general semantic feature of dynamic adjectives seems to be that they denote qualities that are thought to be subject to control by the possessor and hence can be restricted temporally

Adjectives that can be used dynamically include:

Irritating jealous kind

In English grammar, stative adjective denote a state or condition, which

may generally be consider permanent, such as big, red, tall, etc Stative

adjectives cannot normally be used in imperative constructions:

Be brave

Don’t be afraid (Quirk et al., 1973, p 124)

The majority of adjectives are stative The stative or dynamic contrast, as

it related to adjectives, is largely a semantic one, though as we have seen it also has syntactic implications

Gradable and non-gradable adjectives

According to Longman English grammar (1998) adjectives can be also divided into gradable and non-gradable

Most adjectives are gradable Gradable adjectives mean a large class of words which can be graded, or in other words, they can be modified by

intensifiers and include comparison such as very young, young, younger, the

youngest

Gradability is also manifested through modification by intensifiers, ie adverbs which convey the degree of intensity of the adjective:

Gradability applies to adverbs as well as adjectives, and hence it is considered below in relation to both classes

All dynamic and most stative adjectives (eg: tall, old) are gradable; some stative adjectives are not, principally denominal adjectives like atomic,

scientist and hydrochloric acid, and adjectives denoting provenance, eg:

British.( Quirk, 1985)

According to Longman English grammar (1998) an adjective is non – gradable when:

We cannot modify it, it means that we cannot use it with very, too,…

We cannot make a comparative or superlative from it such as daily

dead, medical, unique, etc

Inherent and non-inherent

Based on English Grammar of Quirk et al (1973), some adjectives are classified into inherent and non-inherent

Most attributive adjectives denote some attribute of the noun which they

modify For instance, the phrase a red car may be said to denote a car which

is red In fact, most adjective – noun sequences such as this can be loosely reformulated in a similar way, for example:

This applies equally to postpositive adjectives as

In each case the adjective denotes an attribute or quality of the noun, as the

reformulations show Adjectives of this type are known as inherent adjectives

The attribute they denote is, as it were, inherent in the noun which they modify However, not all adjectives are related to the noun in the same way

For example, the adjective small in a small businessman does not describe an attribute of the businessman It cannot be reformulated as a

businessman who is small Instead, it refers to a businessman whose business

is small We refer to adjectives of this type as non-inherent adjectives They

refer less directly to an attribute of the noun than inherent adjectives do

Whether or not an adjective is inherent or non-inherent, it may involve

relation to an implicit or explicit standard, such as in a big mouse, the

adjective big is inherent, the meaning is the relative size of mice, contrast a

little mouse and in a big fool, the adjective big is non-inherent, the meaning is degrees of foolishness, contrast a bit of a fool

Here are some more examples, showing the contrast between inherent and non-inherent:

Table 2.1 Inherent and non-inherent adjective

A complete chapter A complete idiot

(Wikipedia.com viewed on October 1 st , 2016)

Some adjectives can come before or after nouns, which may change meaning or may not change meaning of adjective The following is some cases denoting the position of adjectives (with or without change in meaning) Adjectives come before or after nouns, which may not change in

meaning: some adjectives, mostly ending in –able and –ible can come before

or after nouns and usually with no change in meaning such as available,

eligible, imaginable, taxable, possible, impossible, etc Let’s consider the above examples:

I doubt whether we can complete our contract in the time available/ in the available time (1)

We have to exploit all available potential/ all potential available in our

country (2)

As we know that when changing the position of adjective available in

the example (1) and (2), there is no change in meaning of adjective/

However, some adjectives sometimes have different meanings if they

modify different nouns, for example, old can be either a central adjective or

an adjective restricted to attribute position as in an old friend of mine means a longstanding friend In this case, old is the opposite of new The person referred to is not identified as old, but it is his friend that is old

Furthermore, some adjectives come before or after nouns with a change in meaning, in some case a few adjectives change in meaning depending on whether they are used before or after a noun Some of these

are concerned, elect, involved, present, proper, responsible They would

be illustrated as follows:

Some adjectives such as present, absent, concerned, involved and

responsible are used with most frequency in post-modification Sometimes, they are also used in post-modification but then their meanings are different, for example:

There were ten members of staff present (there)

So far, I have, in this chapter, provided a review of literature concerning the matter under investigation, then given a discussion of the theoretical preliminaries needed for the research Notion of semantics, collocation, context, and characteristics of adjectives have been presented to highlight the theoretical framework that scaffolds the whole study from beginning to end

2.2.3 Synonyms

In both English and Vietnamese, a word including noun, adjectives or adverbs, etc has the same or nearly same meaning as another in the language

as happy, joyful, elated or hạnh phúc, vui vẻ, phấn khởi

Synonymy in a language can be viewed as a basic concept in lexicology When meaning relations of words are studied, most researchers are inclined to prioritize the concept of synonyms in their investigation (Harley, 2006) Etymologically speaking, the term synonymy originates from a Greek word sunonumon meaning ‘having the same name’ (Amvela & Jackson, 2000) Linguists interested in a study of meaning in language, known as semanticists, use this term to refer to a relationship of similarity or sameness of meaning between two or more words (Amvela & Jackson, 2000)

According to Arnold (1986), synonym is defined in terms of linguistics

as two or more words of the same language, belonging to the same part of speech and possessing one or more identical or nearly identical denotation meanings, interchangeable, at least in some contexts without any considerable alternation in denotation meaning, but differing in morphemic composition,

phonemic shape, shades of meaning, connotations, style, valence and idiomatic use

Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2009, p 1479) defines synonym as “a word or phrase which has the same or nearly the same meaning as another word or phrase in the same language”, such as small and little In a study of synonyms, two major types, strict and loose synonyms, are worth being discussed

Synonyms are normally divided into two main types: strict (absolute) and loose synonyms As for strict synonymy, two words are considered strict synonyms if they can be used interchangeably in all of their possible contexts

of use Furthermore, the substitution of one word for the other must not result

in a change in meaning, style, and connotation of what is being said or written (Amvela & Jackson, 2000) In this case, it is the speaker’s or writer’s choice to use one or the other since either can fit in the same context

Still, according to the above definition, such strict synonyms are extremely rare or not existent (MaCarthy, O’Keeffe, & Walsh, 2010) As a matter of fact, strict synonymy is considered uneconomical since it leads to unnecessary redundancy in a language Normally if a language begins to have

a word which can fully replace another in every context of use, one of them tends to somehow change its meaning or become out of use For example, according to Fromkin, Rodman, and Hyams (2003), in the history of English, the Old English word frumsceaft was widely used Then with the flood of French words in the late 14th century, the word creation was borrowed and it was used alongside with frumsceaft Later on, creation took over frumsceaft completely in all contexts, making frumsceaft become obsolete Such phenomenon is claimed to prevent the occurrences of strict synonyms in English (Amvela & Jackson, 2000)

With regard to loose synonyms, they are the most commonly found in a language When linguists talk about synonyms, they generally refer to varying degrees of loose synonymy, “where we identify not only a significant overlap

in meaning between two words, but also some contexts at least where they cannot substitute for each other.” (Jackson & Amvela, 2000, p 94)

Clear examples of loose synonyms in English are the words mad and

insane, both of which generally mean ‘mentally ill’ They are interchangeable

in such a context as the team of psychiatrists found out that he is mad/ insane

However, when mad means ‘angry’ as in Lisa is very mad at Tim now., the

word insane cannot be used in this context without a change in meaning, as in

Lisa is very insane at Tim now Additionally, the use of insane here also violates the grammatical patterns since the combination insane at are not likely to occur in native speakers’ speech

The above examples indicate that synonyms can be interchangeably used where their meanings overlap, but where a meaning is beyond the shared area, one cannot substitute for the other Therefore, it is important to analyzing

many adjective have meant denoting “Big”

2.2.4 Context

A language is way to see and understand the world It is the vehicle of ideas, thoughts and perspectives of the world However, since human being is essentially a social animal we perpetually interact with our environment This interaction with environment is a factor of time and space When and where people are interacting determines what actually they are meaning Indeed, context affects strongly to the way translating from this language to another one, especially from English to Vietnamese – the two different cultural environments

Widdowson (1996), when focusing his study on language meaning, thought “context” as “those aspects of the circumstance of actual language use which are taken as relevant to meaning” Or according to another definition from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ‘Context is the relevant constraints of the communicative situation that influence language use, language variation, and discourse’ In studying the relationship between discourse and literature, Cook (1999) took “context” into consideration as well When studying reference and inference, Yule (1997) also took “context” into account He provided us with a somewhat general definition, “Context is the physical environment in which a word used.”

Opinions on how to classify context vary from one to another Some linguists divide context into two groups, while others insist on discussing context from three, four, or even six dimensions Based on different circumstances as mentioned earlier, I would like to divide context into three categories, namely linguistic context, situational context and cultural context

2.2.5 Collocation Range

A semantic account of adjective ordering requires placing adjectives into semantic categories, which has been done and made available to learners of English by people who have developed grade-school textbooks and instructional materials Grammarians have worked on this topic before, but adjective order seems to have been taught only in recent years to grade-school students and people acquiring English as a Second Language This suggests that classifying adjectives into semantic categories is also a rather recent teaching tool for language instruction The Internet, for example, has numerous sites dedicated to the instruction of English and English grammar