Grammatical emphasis means in english with reference to their vietnamese equivalents

THESIS GRAMMATICAL EMPHASIS MEANS IN ENGLISH WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS CÁC PHƯƠNG TIỆN NHẤN MẠNH NGỮ PHÁP TRONG TIẾNG ANH VỚI LIÊN HỆ TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A THESIS

GRAMMATICAL EMPHASIS MEANS IN ENGLISH WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR VIETNAMESE

EQUIVALENTS (CÁC PHƯƠNG TIỆN NHẤN MẠNH NGỮ PHÁP TRONG TIẾNG ANH VỚI LIÊN HỆ TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT)

PHAM THI KIM DUNG

Hanoi, 2016

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A THESIS

GRAMMATICAL EMPHASIS MEANS IN ENGLISH WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR VIETNAMESE

EQUIVALENTS (CÁC PHƯƠNG TIỆN NHẤN MẠNH NGỮ PHÁP TRONG TIẾNG ANH VỚI LIÊN HỆ TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT)

PHAM THI KIM DUNG

Field: English Language Code: 60220201 Supervisor: Assoc.Prof.Dr Hoang Tuyet Minh

Hanoi, 2016

Back hard cover

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

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

entitled “Grammatical emphasis means in English with reference to their 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

Pham Thi Kim Dung

Approved by SUPERVISOR

Hoang Tuyet Minh

Date:………

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

ABTRACT

The study is aimed at grammatical emphasis means in English with reference to Vietnamese equivalents by using descriptive method and contrastive analysis as the major method The research is done to investigate the features of grammatical emphasis means in English, finding out the similarities and the differences between grammatical emphasis means in English and in Vietnamese in order to help learners of English to learn English effectively In doing the research, descriptive method and comparative analysis are done either to describe the meanings conveyed by the grammatical emphasis structures/ means to determine the similarities between grammatical emphasis means in English and in Vietnamese Data for this study were collected from two foreign novels, namely, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J K

written by Tô Hoài, Hà Nội trong mắt tôi by Nguyễn Khải and Truyện ngắn tuyển chọn, written by Nam Cao This study has been primarily carried out to answer two questions, one is to investigate the possible meanings of grammatical emphasis means in English and the other is to investigate their Vietnamese equivalents The results provide some supports for learners to have a deep understanding in learning English grammar

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

A = Adverbial

Aloc = Adverbial of location

Adir = Averbial of direction

3.5. Research method 24 3.5.1 Major methods vs supporting methods 24

4.1.8 Present progressive tense with adverbials “always,

constantly, continually and forever”

63

4.2. Similarities and differences between grammatical emphasis

means in English and theirs Vietnamese equivalents

5.4. Implications for teaching grammar in English 79

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale

Every day, we communicate with people around At first, we talk with our family members and then to a larger scope of the society Later, the whole world is in the need of communication This lead to the fact that there should be a common language for people all over the world And, in effect, English, has to some extent, been chosen to be the international language nowadays Grammatical emphasis is one of important factors help us success in communicate with each other

In English, there are many writers in the world wrote about this field

such as Alexander, L.G (1992), Huddleston, R (1985); Quirk, R Greenbaum, S (1987); Thomson, A.T Martinet, A.( 1985), etc In their

works, they are mainly focus on the general information about English grammar

According to Chomsky (1965), “A grammar of language purports to be

a description of the ideal speaker-hearer’s intrinsic competence.”; “A fully adequate grammar must assign to each of an infinite range of sentences a strutural description indicating how this sentence understood by the ideal speaker-hearer.”

According to Quirk, R., “many variations of grammatical structure relate to the speaker’s or writer’s need to present the message in a form readily adapted to addressee’s requirements as interpreter.”

According to Halliday, M.A.K (2004), “Grammatically, however, the

constituent of a clause is not, in fact, a word; it is either a phrase or a word group.”

In Vietnamese, grammar was concerned by some famous writers and publishers and their establishments were indicated in their works such as:

Nguyễn Tài Cẩn (1975), Trần Ngọc Thêm (1985), Lý Toàn Thắng (1981), Diệp Quang Ban (1981), (2001), Hoàng Trọng Phiến (1980) and especially

the author Cao Xuân Hạo (1988), (1991),(1998) So far, many relevant

studies on grammar field in English and in Vietnamese have been carried out However, grammatical emphasis means in English and in Vietnamese have not been done before

As a matter of fact, every Vietnamese, like any second language users, often finds it difficult to communicate effectively They may have to face the difficulties of grammar, vocabulary or stress Among these difficulties that caused by the differences between the two languages and the two cultures, we find it hard to put our emphasis on the important information when communicating

For the Vietnamese who learn English, they have some difficulties in using grammatical emphasis Not only for students how to learn and use grammar correctly but also for teachers how to teach students effectively

Therefore, this thesis: “grammatical emphasis means in English with reference to Vietnamese equivalents” has been decided to be chosen because of the above reasons

1.2 Aims of the research

The study is conducted to aim at investigating the features of grammatical emphasis means in English and making comparison with their Vietnamese equivalents in order to help learners of English to learn English effectively

1.3 Objectives of the research

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

− Pointing out the features of grammatical emphasis means in English

− Finding out the similarities and differences between grammatical emphasis means in English and their Vietnamese equivalents

− Suggesting some implications for learning and teaching grammatical emphasis means in English to Vietnamese learners

1.4 Scope of the research

(i) Academic scope

The study is an attempt to listing out the grammatical emphasis means in English with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents within grammatical theoretical framework Grammatical emphasis structures in English and in Vietnamese will be taken into account Some implications for learning and teaching grammatical emphasis will be suggested to Vietnamese learners (ii) Social scope

The data were collected from English and Vietnamese grammar books,

magazines and some Vietnamese versions

1.5 Significance of the research

In terms of theoretical significance, the thesis is expected to contribute a small part that helps the linguistics of English provide comprehensive features of emphasis means in English For practical significance, hopefully, the thesis is conducted to help Vietnamese learners acknowledge the similarities and differences about grammatical emphasis means between the two languages and help know how to use grammatical emphasis effectively in order to improve their communicative skill

1.6 Structural organization of the thesis

This study is divided into five chapters as follows:

Chapter 1, Introduction, presents an overview of the study in which the reason for the researcher, the aims, the objectives, the scope, the significance as well as the organization of the study is briefly presented Chapter 2, Literature review, includes the theoretical issues relevant

to the study including the theory of emphasis, grammatical emphasis in English

Chapter 3, Methodology, discusses some issues of research questions, research setting, research approaches, research method, data collection and data analysis

Chapter 4,Findings and discussion, presents an overview of findings and discussion of using grammatical emphasis in English, the similarities and differences between using grammatical emphasis in English and the equivalents in Vietnamese

Chapter 5, Conclusion, summarizes the whole study and the whole process of the research, shows the significance of the research for knowledge in the discipline, gives concluding remarks on each objective, shows limitations of the current research, suggests some implications for learning and teaching grammatical emphasis in English to learners and suggests research in future

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW

This section presents the thorough and in-depth studies which are done by previous researchers This will also present the synthesis of the theoretical and conceptual framework to fully understand the research A new research based on previous studies and theoretical background will be studied

2.1 Previous studies

Emphasis means in English were paid attention by many previous linguistics researchers

According to Webster’s New Dictionary of Synonyms (1986, p.285),

emphasis is stress, accent, accentuation denoting exerted force by which one thing stands out conspicuously among others

Quirk and Greenbaum (1998) argue that using grammatical ways of

expressing emphasis correctly is very important so that the participants of communication understand the message and its implications properly (p.406)

Biber, Conrad and Leech (2002) state that to be able to comprehend

all the properties of grammatical ways of expressing emphasis it is essential

to be familiar with “four major discourse factors that are important in understanding the grammatical choices that influence word-order”, and these are “information flow: given v new information; focus and emphasis, including end-focus and double focus; contrast and weight, including end-weight and balance of weight” (p.398)

In Vietnamese, Cao Xuân Hạo (1988),(1991),(1998), he mentioned to

Vietnamese grammar problems; Diệp Quang Ban (2000), he mentioned to Vietnamese grammar: part of speech, phrase, construction of sentence;

Hoàng Trọng Phiến (1980); Nguyễn Kim Thản (1997), he mentioned to Vietnamese grammar : Sentence; Đái Xuân Ninh (1975); Nguyễn Tài Cẩn

(1999), he focus his attention on the study of the language, compound word,

phrase; Trần Ngọc Thêm (1985), he wrote about Hệ thống liên kết văn bản tiếng Việt There are some researchers did thesis about grammar, emphasis means, however, there has not been so far a study on grammatical emphasis means in English with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents Therefore,

it is necessary to do a research on this matter to hit the target

2.2 Concept of emphasis

According to Websters’s New Dictionary of Synonyms (1986, p.285),

emphasis is stress, accent, accentuation denoting exerted force by which one thing stands out conspicuously among others This is also the most preferred definition used by Longman and Oxford dictionaries But the definition covers all the fields and aspects in which emphasis is used in daily life while the only field I am working on is the use of emphasis in

English When we say He put emphasis on studying English, we mention

emphasis in the broadest way It means he, in his speech or essay, said that studying English was very important But from the sentence, we draw out a

question By what means, in his speech and essay, does he put emphasis on studying English? Answering the question, we find out that in order to highlight the importance of studying English so that the information stands out more importantly The way that he used to achieve the effect on the readers and listeners is called emphasis in the narrower way, emphasis in the language of English He may use stress, repetition of words or grammatical structures to highlight the matter They are what we call emphasis means And the way to use these means is called emphasis in English

In short, emphasis in English is all the ways such as stress, word repetition, grammatical structures that we use to give additional force or focus on part of the sentence so that it stands out more importantly,

conspicuously among others The definition raises another issue: why emphasis is used and how it is used

2.2.1 Importance of using emphasis

In spoken as well as in written English, when a sentence is produced,

it is not always simple that a state or an action is introduced Far more than that, the speaker or the writer usually wants to focus on some special information in the sentence In one sentence, the author of the sentence may want to focus on the actor while in another sentence, he wants to focus on the action or the way the action is carried out, etc Let us consider the following examples:

John sent Mary a letter

It was John who sent Mary the letter

What John did was (to) send Mary a letter

( Edward L.Keenan -Universal Grammar)

In “John sent Mary a letter”, the speaker only want to give out the

introduction of the action However, when uttered, if the sentence has the

main stress on JOHN, the thematic meaning changes In this case, he focuses on the doer of the action Similarly, when Mary is stressed, the speaker wants to focus on the recipient of the action In “It was John who sent Mary the letter” the grammatical structure of cleft sentence is used to

focus on the doer In “What John did was (to) send Mary a letter”, the

grammatical structure of pseudo-cleft sentence does the work of giving additional emphasis on the recipient of the action The two last sentences can be used both in spoken and written English In spoken English, with the

combination of grammatical structures and intonation and stress, “It was John who sent Mary the letter”

“What John did was (to) send Mary a letter” seem to be more effective in information emphasis

In short, in any languages, when a person uses his own language, he always has his own intention The intention here is to make people around him understand what he means In order to do so, he has to focus on important information in his speech, essay or sentence With the help of emphasis, communication can be more colorful and is easily understood in the way that the speaker of the writer wants That is the reason why emphasis is often used in communication in any languages In fact, emphasis gives us another dimension of the nuance of the sentence

2.2.2 Classification of emphasis

There are many ways and means to emphasize in English However, according to the nature and characteristics of emphasis, linguistics subdivided emphasis into three groups: phonetic emphasis, lexical emphasis and grammatical emphasis

2.2.2.1 Phonetic emphasis

It is known that phonetic emphasis is the way in which additional emphasis is given in spoken English by phonetic means When a word is stressed, it stands out more importantly among the others Therefore, intonation and stress are an effective way to give emphasis while we speak

By using stress and intonation, speaker can focus on the important information that he wants to put emphasis on Let us consider how the English language organizes a spoken message into units of information Intonation is normally realized in tone units consisting of a sequence of stressed and unstressed syllables Among them, the greatest prominent is called the nucleus of the tone unit Each tone unit represents a unit of information, and the place where the nucleus falls on is the focus of information

The year before last,/ we spent our holiday in Huế

The sentence when spoken out may be subdivided into two-tone units as

shown by “/” There are two nuclei in the sentence They are last and Huế,

and they are the focuses of information in each tone unit However, not every focus of information in an utterance is equally important Their importance depends on the stress given by speakers Within the tone unit, the nucleus is the most prominent and is of course stressed Nevertheless, among nuclei of the sentence, the most prominent is the one that is put emphasis on Turning back to the example above, we recognize that there are two tone units and consequently there are two nuclei Which of the two nuclei stands out more importantly depends on the stress that falls on one of them So, whether the first or the second nucleus is prominent to the other

depends on the way the speaker utters the sentence If he puts stress on last,

it means he makes the first unit prominent to the other, and therefore, the information in the first tone unit is the one that the speaker puts emphasis

on Meanwhile, if he puts stress on Huế, it means the important point here is

the place his family went to, not the time So, the implication of the sentence changes according to the use of intonation and stress This property of spoken English not only makes it possible for speakers to focus on the part

he wants but also enables him to make his texts, dialogues more colorful and impressive; and the last but not least is that listeners can understand what lies beyond the words

Focus can be divided into two types: end-focus and contractive focus focus seems to be the neutral position of focus That is the chief prominence

End-on the last open class item or proper noun in a sentence

S: John was the one to play truant yesterday (contrast: not Bill) V: John is playing football (not studying)

Prep: He put it on the bed (not under the bed)

Determiner: He lives in this house (not that house)

The use of contrastive focus, obviously, makes listeners act, feel or think according to the implication that lies beyond the words That is the reason why in spoken English, contrastive focus in particular and phonetic emphasis in general are often used

However, within the frame work of the thesis Phonetic emphasis is not

analyzed and more discussed

2.2.2.2 Lexical emphasis

People said that vocabulary is of great importance to a language It is one of the main and the most essential factors to determine the existence of

a language People can understand us when we use wrong stress, intonation

or grammatical structures but they can never know what we mean if we do not have any words about it It also allows language users to decide how their speeches or essays will be English with a great variety of words and phrases is not out of the way Its vocabulary promises writers and speakers with colorful and meaningful dialogues and texts The property leads to the fact that lexical means are very effective in giving additional emphasis In spoken English, it is even more effective because there is a combination between lexical means and the use of intonation and stress

It is really, really good

It is absolutely John who sent Mary a letter

The two examples above show the ability of combination In “It is really, really good”, the word really is both stressed and repeated Therefore, what

is emphasized is the adjective good with the modification of the adverb of degree really In “It is absolutely John who sent Mary a letter” although the

adverb of degree absolutely stands in front the highlighted element, it does put extra emphasis on the highlighted element John Therefore, the emphasis given by cleft sentence is reinforced

Let us now consider the basis clause pattern in English proposed by the Hyper Text Book of the English faculty of the University of Dupage (1998, p.101)

Meaning Actor Action Beneficiary Goal

The clause expresses the common order as well as the common use of the words In everyday English, people not only use this simple type of clause but also add other words as modifiers to it and convert it into other various types The addition of the words makes the contextual meaning and message clearer Moreover, the words themselves can bring language users with colorful texts and dialogues With special words, we can also put our focus

on the information that we want and highlight it, make it understandable to people so that they can know what lies beyond the words Normally, words used in this purpose are called intensifiers Most of the intensifiers are adverbs though some of them are NPs and PPs Back to the matter of lexical emphasis, let us consider adverbs as intensifiers Adverbs as intensifiers are divided into three groups: emphasizers, amplifiers and downtoners

Emphasizers have a general heightening effect, according to Quirk, R (1977, p.121); Amplifiers scale upwards from an assumed norm; Downtoners have a lowering effect on the verb, usually scaling downwards from an assumed norm They are shown below:

Emphasizers: actually, certainly, clearly, definitely, indeed, obviously, plainly, really, surely, for certain, for sure, of course, etc

He was obviously wrong

(Golden Heart/Deep Soul (Grovehill Giants Book 2) by Stephanie Perry

Moore, Derrick Morre)

Most of the emphasizers precede the item they emphasized (except for for sure, for certain)

I certainly know him

(The Wolves of Craywood: A Novel of Lycanthropy written by V J Banis)

I know him for sure

(The Yoshinobu Mysteries written by John A.Broussaard) Amplifiers : are subdivided into maximizers and boosters

Maximizers denote the upper extreme of the scale They are absolutely, altogether, completely, entirely, fully, thoroughly, utterly, in all respects, etc

I absolutely agree with you

(Secrets of Power Negotiating: 15th Anniversary Edition, by Rogeer

Dawson)

Booster denotes a high point on the scale They are badly, deeply, heartily, much, so, well, a great deal, a lot, by far, violent, etc

Oh, I love you badly

Downtoners: have a lowering effect on the verb They can be subdivided into four groups: compromisers, diminishers, minimizers and approximators

Compromisers have only slight lowering effect They are quite, rather, more

The accident partly put influence on him

Minimizers, like Diminishers, usually scale downwards They are words

like barely, hardly, scarcely, in the least, at all, in the slightest, etc

I don’t know him at all

(Waking Dream: Dream Series, book 5 written by J.J DiBenedetto)

Approximators serve to express an approximation to the force of the verb

They are almost, nearly, all but, etc

The car nearly hit the tree

Beside adverbs as intensifiers, reflexive pronouns are also freely used after

nouns and pronouns for emphasis to mean “that person (thing) and only that person (thing)” When used in this way reflexive pronouns are stressed on

speech, especially when there is ambiguity: He talked to the PREsident himself Normally, the reflexive pronoun is placed immediately after the noun that it emphasizes:

I like you yourself, not him

But there is difference between the common use and the emphasis use of reflexive pronouns If reflexive pronouns are used for the purpose of emphasis, they can be omitted without any changes, occurring to the meaning of the sentences But for common use, they cannot be omitted for it will lead to the loss of meaning or cause a sentence to be ambiguous

I cut myself (common use)

I cut it myself (emphasis use)

The use of reflexive pronouns is indeed the repetition of the words (nouns)

in the form of reflexive pronouns In fact repetition can occur to any parts of speech, not only nouns

Adjective: He is an old, old man (a very old man)

Adverb: It is very, very good (extremely good)

Adverb: Over and over I kiss you again (kiss repeatedly)

Verb: Study, study more, study forever (study without rest)

And in the case of word repetition, certainly, the highlighted element is the word repeated So, in the examples above, the adjective, adverb and verb stand out more conspicuously among the others Besides, the questions

beginning with the words why and where can be made more emphatic by repetition with the help of the emphatic word oh:

Why, oh why did you leave me?

(The Grace of Kings written by Ken Liu)

In English, as well as in Vietnamese, there are often some words and phrases that can be used in questions and turn these questions into emphatic ones Emphatic questions are used to express admiration, anger, concern,

etc In everyday English, emphatic questions often begin with wh-elements

In fact, all of the wh-words, except for which and where, can be used with

some set words and phrases to form emphatic questions They are words

like ever, on earth, etc The word ever can be used after any question-words, except for which, where When used with this purpose, ever is often written

as a separate word from the question-word and is often heavily stressed

What ever did you tell him?

How ever could you open the door?

Ever can also be used in short responses to express surprised reactions:

A: I didn’t go to the party last night

B: Why ever not?

In everyday English, stronger emphatic questions can also be conveyed by

using the expressions on earth and even by using taboo words like the blazer, the devil, the dickens, the hell, etc

What The dickens is it?

(Deering of Deal: The Spirit of the School- by Latta Griswold)

The effect on the listeners in spoken English, when emphatic questions are used, is conspicuously higher

In short, in any language, vocabulary plays a great important role for it directly transfers what we think to other people It is not out of the way in emphasis In fact, often with the combination with intonation, lexical emphasis is the most effective way in adding extra emphasis on the item concerned Therefore, it is widely used in daily communication

2.2.2.3 Grammatical emphasis

The last in the classification of emphasis is emphasis by grammatical means Before going into details, the thesis researcher intends to present some strokes about grammar

The word grammar has many meanings For some people, grammar

specifies the correct way to speak or write For others, the word refers to the reflection (the word endings) common in many languages For still others, the word grammar is about how human organizes ideas into words The word grammar means all of those things But, according to the Hyper Text Book, the word means something quite specific It describes how we choose and arrange our words

Grammar is one of the three main factors to determine the existence of a language We have vocabulary and then there should be ways to arrange those words into intelligible units All of those ways are what we call

grammar So, in fact, grammar consists of rules to put words in certain reflections and particular orders so that they form understandable units like phrases, clauses and sentences The target of these formation is to help readers and listeners understand more easily what is expressed in written as well as in spoken language Some people say that grammar is what makes the language confused But, as for me, grammar holds an essential role in English as well as any other languages It is because it decides the ways people understand a phrase, a clause or a sentence For example, normal orders help people understand exactly, or nearly exactly in some cases, what

is spoken or written But misuse in grammar structures will lead to misunderstanding

A long brown hair girl

A long hair brown girl

In the first phrase, the two adjective long and brown are modifiers to the noun hair And the noun hair, in its turn, modifies the head noun girl The phrase means A girl who has long and brown hair Meanwhile, in the second phrase, the head noun is still the word girl The adjective long is a modifier to the noun hair Then the phrase long hair plays an equal role to the adjective brown in modifying the head noun The phrase means A brown girl (her skin is brown) has long hair So, the two examples above show that grammar plays an essential part in helping people decide how to understand the grammar units

Yet grammar is more than the idea about the organization of words in a language It is also an activity

“The Gothic style of building could produce nothing better than Mr Allworthy’s house There was an air of grandeur in it, that struck you with awe, and rival’d the beauties of the best Grecian architecture; and

it was commodious within, as venerable without.”

(Chapter 4 – Book 1 of Henry Fielding’s Tom John- the Foundling)

As we read the paragraph above, our thinking went through several stages:

First, we notice the unusual words (grandeur, awe, etc.) and find it difficult

to understand the language Then we probably notice that several of the unusual words have endings that are surrounded by familiar words

(grandeur is surrounded by two prepositions so we know that it is a noun)

Finally, having guessed the meaning of those unusual words from context clues in paragraph, we could reread and understand the paragraph more easily

Considering the paragraph above, a conclusion can be drawn out the grammar can make us do a serious of actions when reading or hearing units

of language In a sentence, or the paragraph, grammar may make us act or respond to the situation, posed by the sentence or paragraph, after learning about ‘the way’ that grammar structure is constructed That is when grammar structures are succeeded in transferring the message from writers

or speakers to readers or listeners And in this case, grammatical emphasis proves to be one of the best ways Grammatical emphasis is the use of special grammar structures so that the important element we want to put emphasis on is highlighted and therefore the message is highlighted too For

example, the normal order of words as the following gives no emphasis: I tried hard but couldn’t open the door But when there is some special changes in the word order or the construction of the sentence (in this case, the inversion of adverb), emphasis is given and the nuance of the sentence

changes For example: Hard as I tried, I couldn’t open the door

This thesis is focused on the marked word order and individual grammatical ways of expressing emphasis in English as a majority of non-native English speakers is not familiar with this part of grammar which is used for stressing a piece of information that needs to be

emphasized for particular purposes

Quirk and Greenbaum (1998) argue that using grammatical ways

of expressing emphasis correctly is very important so that the participants of a communication understand the message and its implications properly (p 406)

Biber, Conrad and Leech (2002,p.398) state that to be able to comprehend all the properties of grammatical ways of expressing emphasis it is essential to be familiar with “four major discourse factors that are important in understanding the grammatical choices that influence word-order”, and these are: “information flow: given v new information; focus and emphasis, including end-focus and double focus; contrast and weight, including end-weight and balance of weight”

The information flow principle, being the first factor, is a standard way of ordering certain pieces of information in a sentence According to Biber et al (2002,pp.398 - 399), that includes placing the discourse-older information at the beginning of the sentence and the discourse- newer information in the final position This method is used so that the listener/reader receives the piece of information he/she is familiar with first, and than the new piece of information comes as the last item This is mainly applied to make the discourse coherent and therefore easily understandable for the receiver However, according to Swan (2005,p.501),

“even new information that is not the main point of the message” can appear at the beginning of the sentence which will be further discussed in the following chapters

The second factor is focus and emphasis When the information flow principle is taken into consideration the point of focus is usually

sentence This principle is referred to as so called “end- focus” Nevertheless, certain deviations from this principle may occur, for

instance fronting As a result of this the sentence does not have only one point of focus, but gains another one, being placed in the initial position The end-focus is still present which leads to having two points

of focus, so called “double focus” (Biber et al., 2002, p 399)

The third element is the contrast between two items Biber et al (2002,p.399) point out that “contrast occurs when the focused part is highlighted to show its difference from another element” It can be well demonstrated in the sentence:

There are two items contrasted in this sentence due to using the cleft constructions

The last aspect is the weight of individual clause elements The

longer they are the heavier they become These heavy elements are

usually placed at the end of the sentence which is in conformity with the information flow principle as new pieces of information are presented in them (Biber et al., 2002, p 400) It is apparent in the example:

In an arch, under the dresser, reposed a huge liver coloured bitch

(Bronte, 1985, p.47)

The discourse-newer information a huge liver colored bitch pointer

which consists of long pre- and post-modifications Biber et al (2002, p 400) also state that “this placement helps hearers and readers to follow the message more easily, because they do not have to keep in their mind complex information from the beginning of the clause as they reach the end of the clause”

In general, there are some effective grammatical means in giving additional emphasis in English They are inversion, cleft sentence and

pseudo-cleft sentence, existential sentence, the passive voice, emphasized operator and present progressive tense with adverbials “always, constantly, continually and forever”.

The first technique is inversion In linguistics, authors indicated that inversion is any of several grammatical constructions switch their canonical order of appearance, that is, they invert The most frequent type of inversion

in English is subject-auxiliary inversion in which an auxiliary verb changes

place with its subject; it often occurs in questions, such as Are you coming?, with the subject you is switched with the auxiliary are In many other

languages, especially those with a freer word order than English, inversion can take place with a variety of verbs (not just auxiliaries) and with other syntactic categories as well

The second technique used for grammatical emphasizing is fronting

As well as inversion it puts emphasis on particular clause element by reordering the original sentence structure More precisely, by placing a clause element, which normally occurs in the post- verbal position, at the very beginning of the sentence (Biber et al, 2002, p 400) According to Biber et al (2002, p 402), the main function of fronting is putting emphasis

on the fronted item as well as on the last item of the clause That means that not only the fronted element is emphasized, but the last element of the sentence is emphasized, too, as it carries the end focus Such clauses can be

Greenbaum, 1998, p 413) Biber et al (2002, p 401) state that it is possible

to divide fronting into several categories according to the clause elements that are fronted: fronted objects and other nominals, fronted predicatives, fronted non-finite constructions, fronting in exclamations and fronting in

dependent clauses that use as or though

The third mean is cleft sentence Among other ways of expressing

grammatical emphasis belong cleft structures

To cleave means to cut or split into two parts, and the cleft-sentence takes its name from the fact that the single clause of the basic sentence pattern above is split into two clauses (here we recognize clause by the presence of

a subject and a verb) Cleft-sentence provide writers with another type of sentence that splits the basic clause pattern into two parts in which one part begins with “it” clause “It” in the sentence is an “empty” function word, a pronoun that has no meaning like an ordinary pronoun since it refers to focus on part of the sentence

Besides cleft sentence, Wh-cleft (pseudo-cleft sentence) is also one

of emphasis means in English

To cleave means to cut or split into two parts, and the cleft sentence takes its name from the fact that the single clause of the basic sentence pattern is split into two The pseudo-cleft sentence is a sentence that splits the basic sentence into two parts, of which one of the sentence parts begins with a

word that starts a wh

The forth mean of grammatical emphasis is passive voice is also plays an important role in grammatical emphasis in English

The passive voice is one of the grammatical ways of expressing emphasis

as it “[reverses] the normal order of 'agentive' and 'affected' elements, and thus [adjusts] clause structure to end-focus and end-weight” (Quirk & Greenbaum, 1998, p 411)

As Swan (2005,p.501) states, in many discourse situations, “there is an 'agent' (the person or thing who does something) and a 'patient' (the person

or thing that something is done to)” Usually, most sentences start with the agent, however, in some situations it is more appropriate to start with the patient, and that is when the passive voice is introduced This word order is used when we are more interested in what happens rather than to whom it happens According to Swan (2005), the most common reasons for using

passive voice are interest in the action, putting the news at the end, putting heavier expressions at the end, etc (Swan, 2005, pp 387 – 388).

used to refer to a specialized or non-canonical construction which expresses

a proposition about the existence or the presence of someone or something Existential sentences are principally those beginning with the unstressed (in

spoken English) word there

The sixth grammatical emphasis mean is Emphasized Operator There is “one type of focus so far ignored [and that] is focus on the operator, which often has the function of signaling contrast between positive and negative meaning” (Quirk and Greenbaum, 1998, p 409)

2.4 Summary

In this chapter, the thesis is mainly focus on reviewing the theoretical background, in which the review of information flow principle, focus and emphasis, the contrast between two items and the weight of individual clause elements are concerned the most Because the thesis studies about grammatical emphasis means , the definition of grammar, definition of emphasis, importance of using emphasis, classification of emphasis are also necessary to be mentioned carefully and adequately

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

3.1 Research questions

The thesis contains three research questions relating to the grammatical emphasis means

1 What are the features of grammatical emphasis means in English?

2 What are the similarities and differences between grammatical emphasis means in English and their Vietnamese equivalents?

3 What are implications for teaching grammatical emphasis means in English to Vietnamese learners of English?

3.2 Research setting

The research was executed at home through Internet access to get necessary information Apart from that, the author went to liability in city center to read books, find magazines, proses, verses and previous thesis related to theme studied Then, the researcher collected, took notes significant information and began doing the research with the assistance of the supervisor The research was conducted within six months, from 15 April

2015 to 30 September 2016

The data mainly collected from novels are written in English: “Wuthering Heights” written Emily Brontë and “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood

authors such as Alexander L.G; Huddlestone R (1985);

Quirk.R.Greenbaum (1987; Quirk.R.Greenbaum (1972; Thomson, A.T.Martinet, A.V (1985) or Diệp Quang Ban -NXB Giáo dục 2000; Đái

Xuân Ninh etc In these materials, writers pointed out more detail about grammar and ways to express grammatical emphasis The result of the thesis is applied to help learners can learn English well

3.3 Research approaches

It is a common knowledge that there are a variety of research approaches including quantitative, inferential, experimental, simulation, qualitative, deductive, inductive, comparative, contrastive, basic, applied, synthetic and analytic approaches In this thesis, descriptive, comparative, contrastive and analytical methods were applied

The main reason for selecting those research approaches was that they brought obvious and satisfactory results with relatively high accuracy Especially, those research approaches helped the researcher to save much time and money during the research process Furthermore, it was so easy to

execute those research approaches in an effective way

3.4 Principles/criteria for intended data collection and data analysis

Due to the thesis is a study of grammatical emphasis in English, the data has been chosen to study coming from conversations and utterances quoted from novels, books and from the Internet Also, short conversations with one speaker and one listener are used more than long ones Especially, the implications of this study aim to improve learning English skills for Vietnamese learners, so conversations used most are in typescripts in the course book “New English File” and Oxford Living Grammar Moreover, a number of conversations in novels “Wuthering Heights” written Emily Brontë and “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” written by J K

3.5 Research method

3.5.1 Major methods vs supporting methods

Because the thesis is about grammatical means to express, the major methods are descriptive method and contrastive analysis A description of

strategies which famous authors displayed is concentrated on Basing on the materials collected from the sources such as novels, stories or books, comparative and contrastive analysis is carried out to find out similarities and differences between grammatical emphasis means in English with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents Moreover, to fulfill my thesis, supporting methods are used such as reference to publications, discussion with supervisor, discussion with colleagues, discussion with students and personal observation

3.5.2 Data collection techniques

A list of examples is set up Daily conversations taken mostly from stories, novels, the course book “Oxford Living Grammar” as well

as the Internet for each language are selected to serve the purpose of the research The novels in English were chose to take example are:

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J K Rowling In Vietnamese, stories such as: Dế mèn phiêu lưu ký , written by Tô Hoài, Hà Nội trong mắt tôi by Nguyễn Khải and Truyện ngắn tuyển chọn, written by Nam Cao and so on Sentences and utterances in their stories are used flexibly which used grammatical emphasis means Besides, a number of dialogues and conversations happening in daily life have also been chosen to illustrate for the thesis

3.5.3 Data analysis techniques

The function of data analysis is to organize data in order to make sense of the remarkable amount of information

After finishing collecting the examples, the researcher rearranged information related to grammatical emphasis Then, the researcher studies the result of analysis above, compare the similarities and differences

between conversation maintaining strategies of the two languages After all, from the generalized conclusions about the comparison the researcher put toward the implications about teaching and learning English

3.6 Summary

In this chapter, three research questions are considered to study in the thesis Research methods, data collection techniques and data analysis techniques are also mentioned The researcher collects examples, describes, analyze and compare them so as to answer three objectives of the thesis The first answer for the first object is pointing out the features of grammatical emphasis means in English The main research method of this objective is descriptive method The second answer for the second object is comparing the similarities and differences between grammatical emphasis means of the two languages, which is used by comparative method The implications will be applied for teaching English for the Vietnamese learners at the Hanoi College of Industrial Economics

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

4.1 Grammatical emphasis means in English

There are many ways to emphasize on the intended information when speaking but because of the frame work of the study, the thesis only intend to focuses on emphasis by grammatical means in English with reference to Vietnamese equivalents

As mentioned above, emphasis can be subdivided into three types: emphasis

by phonetic means, emphasis by vocabulary and emphasis by grammatical means So, what is emphasis by grammatical means? The answer can be seen in the name itself However, the question here is: “what are the

grammatical means in emphasis?” They are grammatical structures by which an information unit in a sentence stands out more importantly among the others, according to Webster’s New Dictionary of Synonyms (1986, p.787) Unlike emphasis by phonetic means, emphasis by grammatical means can be used both in spoken and written English

In spoken English, when grammatical means are used to give additional emphasis on part of the sentence, we usually notice the combination between the use of grammatical structures and the use of stress and intonation Therefore, in communication, it is more effective to use grammatical means to give emphasis In written English, emphasis by phonetic means is rarely used Meanwhile, grammatical means prove to be

an effective way in emphasizing information when stress and intonation are absent For example, when we say: “JOHN went to Jerry’s house last night”,

we can understand the important emphasis on “John” because it is stressed However, when we write the sentence, we cannot know which information

is the most important for it does not show stress at all Fortunately, we have such grammatical means as cleft-sentence to give additional emphasis So,

we have a new sentence deriving from the sentence “John sent Marry a letter.”

It was John who went to Jerry’s house last night

It is very clear that it was John, not Bill or anyone else who went to Jerry’s house last night And certainly we understand that the doer of the action is emphasized Similarly, we have other sentences from the original one when different parts are focused:

It was Jerry’s house that John went to last night

Or It was last night that John went to Jerry’s house

That is only some strokes about the effectiveness of grammatical means in emphasis Before going further into the matter, let us consider some grammatical features of emphasis by grammatical means

As mentioned in above chapter, here is the basis clause pattern in English

In the example above, according to the Hyper Textbook of the English faculty of the University of Dupage, is the basic clause pattern in English The sentence expresses the proposition in the most common grammatical

pattern in English The grammatical subject expresses the action and the grammatical objects express the beneficiary and goal of the action In other words, what it means to be a subject in the basic English clause is to convey meaning about the actor or the agent responsible for the action realized in

the verb, and so on

Commonly, in the simple basis clause pattern in written as well as in spoken English, the order of the meaning units (actor, action, etc.) is kept the same

as above However, in addition to the basic clause, there are ways to express the same basic information in which the common order is altered These

ways allow speakers or writers to put additional emphasis on different parts

of the sentence

Individual grammatical emphasis means in English discussed in this thesis are inversion, fronting, cleft sentences, the passive voice, emphasized operator and the exceptional use of present progressive tense with certain adverbials

4.1.1 Inversion

Inversion is a kind of grammar structure in which the normal order of words in the sentence is reversed Normally, inversion is not used except for the case emphasis is given The thematic fronting of an element is often associated with inversion, of which two following types are distinguished, consisting respectively in the reversal of subject and verb, and the reversal

of subject and operator

“In statements it is usual for the verb to follow the subject, but sometimes this word order is reversed” (Hewings, 2005, p 198) Inversion, i.e placing the verb phrase or the operator in front of the subject, is one of the ways of expressing grammatical emphasis

Two basic types of inversions are distinguished, subject – (simple) verb inversion, sometimes referred to as full inversion, and subject – operator inversion, sometimes referred to as partial inversion (Quirk & Greenbaum, 1998, pp 413 – 414)

Theme is the initial element of a clause Usually, the theme is the most important part of a clause (Quirk et al 1972:945)

Theme can function as:

Subject: He was the best (statement)

Operator: Did he win? (yes-no question)

Wh- element: What do you want? (wh-question)

Main verb: Go away! (command)

Normally, theme is “unmarked” In some cases, theme becomes

“marked”, and then becomes a thematic prominent element in the sentence Therefore, “marked” theme is one of the most effective ways to give additional emphasis

is not used to preserve the end-weight principle (Biber et al., 2002, p.407)

Subject-verb inversion is usually facultative (Hewings , 2005, p 198)

Sometimes the nominal Subject-verb order in a sentence is reversal if the sentence begins with an adverb This is the case that the adverb of the sentence becomes “marked” theme Therefore, in this case, the most thematic important element is the adverb In other words, emphasis is put

on the adverb

a) Subject-verb inversion with initial time and place adverbials

Inversion with fronted time and place adverbials is particularly common in the discourse where various descriptions and narrations are

I had just fastened our pinafores together, and hung them up for a

curtain, when in comes Joseph,

(Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.p17)

The example above illustrates that the subject-verb inversion places the subject in the post-verbal position, more specifically at the end of the

clause as it is the discourse-newer information, and the initial adverbial in

is emphasized due to being fronted Had the normal word order been used

been the adverbial particle in To emphasize a sudden happening in

dramatic narration, inversion is preferred instead (Biber et al., 2002, p 407)

Inversion after adverb of place

After here, there and such adverb participles as back, down, up, etc, the

noun subject comes after the verbs This happens commonly with the verbs

of motion like go, come, appear, etc

Here’s the football player (AVS)

Here comes the sun (AVS)

There are our friends (AVS)

There, at the summit, stood the castle in its medieval splendor

Away went the car like a whirlwind (AVSA)

Down came the rain and up went the umbrellas (AVS, AVS)

(Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik, A Communicative Grammar of English,

3rd ed Routledge, 2002/2013)

This kind of inversion is common after the verb be when we refer to offer

or location: Here’s a cup of tea for you (offer) and There’s John Smith

(location) When the subject is a pronoun, inversion doesn’t happen e.g

Here comes the sun but Here it comes

Inversion after adverbials of place with verbs of position and motion

After such verbs of motion and position as lie, live, sit, stand, go,