A contrastive analysis on selected English and Vietnamese dog-related idioms

Contrastive analysis and content analysis were used to analyze and discuss 110 selected dog-related Vietnamese and English idioms in both syntactic and semantic features.. While the two

HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY 2 FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE

-

NGUYEN THI TRUNG ANH

A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS ON SELECTED ENGLISH

AND VIETNAMESE DOG-RELATED IDIOMS

Major: English Language Teaching

Ha Noi, 2019

HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY 2 FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE

-

NGUYEN THI TRUNG ANH

A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS ON SELECTED ENGLISH

AND VIETNAMESE DOG-RELATED IDIOMS

Major: English Language Teaching

Supervisor: Pham Thi Tuan

Ha Noi, 2019

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would love to show profound gratitude to my supervisor, Ms Pham Thi Tuan, for her dedicated and scholarly instructions, wholehearted guidance, critical comment, great encouragement and valuable materials that she gave me while I was doing in research Without these, the thesis could not have been completed

I wish to express my sincere thanks Mr William Salazar for his dedicated instructions and reminding in time during months of my graduation paper

Last but not least, I owe a debt of gratitude to my beloved family and friends for their support and love, which were extremely important for the completion of this paper

Student

ABSTRACT

Idioms can be found in every language and in all types of discourse, ranging from daily conversations to scientific texts Hence, it is indispensable for language learners to know what idioms are and how they are related within and among languages This study was aimed to investigate the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese idioms containing the word „dog‟ Contrastive analysis and content analysis were used to analyze and discuss 110 selected dog-related Vietnamese and English idioms in both syntactic and semantic features The results revealed that dog-related English and Vietnamese idioms greatly differ in terms of syntactic structures, namely noun phrases, verb phrases, adjective phrases, preposition phrases, and sentences While the two most common syntactic structures for dog-related English idioms are noun phrases and verb phrases, sentence is the syntactic structure for the majority of Vietnamese ones As for semantic features, dog-related idioms in these two languages; however, share similarities in positive, negative and neutral connotation, which are particularly influenced by culture and stylistic devices

Key words: idiom, dog, syntactic features, semantic features, contrastive analysis

Date of submission: 10 th May, 2018

LIST OF THE TABLES AND FIGURES

Tables:

Table 1 Classification of idioms in syntactic features

Table 2 Classification of idioms in semantic features

Table 3 Structures of selected English dog-related idioms

Table 4 Structures of selected Vietnamese dog-related idioms

Table 5 Syntactic features of selected English and Vietnamese dog-related

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP iv

LIST OF THE TABLES AND FIGURES v

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Significance of the study 2

3 Scope of the study 2

4 Aims of the study and Research questions 3

5 Research methods 3

6 Design of the study 3

PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT 5

Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

Chapter 2: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 6

1 An overview of idioms and dog-related idioms 6

1.1 Definition of idioms 6

1.2 Idioms which are related to dogs 7

1.3 Linguistic features of idioms 7

1.3.1 Syntactic features 7

1.3.2 Semantic features 8

1.3.3 Culture features 9

2 Classification of idioms 10

2.1 Based on syntactic features 10

2.2 Based on semantic features 12

2.3 Idioms in association with culture 13

3 Overview of Phrase, Clause and Sentence Structures 14

3.1 Phrase 14

3.2 Clause 14

3.3 Sentence 15

Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY AND PROCEDURES 17

1 Research Methods 17

2 Research Procedures 17

3 Description of the Sample 18

Chapter 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 19

1 Syntactic analysis of selected dog-related idioms in English and Vietnamese 19

1.1 Idiom structures based on syntactic features 19

1.2 Discussion of similarities and differences in Syntactic features of selected English and Vietnamese dog-related idioms 24

1.2.1 Similarities in Syntactic features of selected English and Vietnamese dog-related idioms 28

1.2.2 Differences in Syntactic features of selected English and Vietnamese dog-related idioms 29

2 Semantic analysis of selected dog-related idioms in English and Vietnamese 32

2.1 Meaning colors of selected English and Vietnamese dog-related idioms 32 2.1.1 Meaning colors of English dog-related idioms 32

2.1.2 Meaning colors of selected Vietnamese dog-related idioms 34

2.2 Discussion of similarities and differences in Semantic features of selected English and Vietnamese dog-related idioms 35

2.2.1 Similarities in Semantic features of selected English and Vietnamese dog-related idioms 37

2.2.2 Differences in Semantic features of selected English and Vietnamese dog-related idioms 39

3 Cultural factors behind English and Vietnamese idioms concerning dogs 41 5 Difficulties in learning idioms concerning dogs and suggested solutions 42

5.1 Difficulties of learning idioms related to dogs 43

5.1.1 Idioms are not literal 43

5.1.2 Dog-related idioms has complex structures 43

5.1.3 It’s difficult to use idioms correctively 43

5.1.4 Teaching materials are not much available 43

5.2 Suggested solutions 44

5.2.1 Learn idioms in context, never in isolation 44

5.2.2 Create conversation using idioms 44

5.2.3 Themes: Related to your topic 45

5.2.4 Always study about culture 45

PART THREE: CONCLUSION 46

1 Major findings 46

2 Limitation of the study and suggestions for further research 47

REFERENCES 48

APPENDIX 1 50

APPENDIX 2 55

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

A quite long time ago, human being used numerous forms of language to convey their messages with one another and show the cultural identity of the country Meanwhile, with the development of the 21st century society, people are in high demand for learning languages to interchange such a lot of fields as economy, education, service, etc Therefore, English has increasingly become much more necessary but quite struggling for learners to understand the words

In daily conversations, communicators may encounter odd and puzzling phrases or expressions whose meanings are different from what their components convey This challenge lies in the complicated, strange yet captivating nature of idioms owing to such cultural identity of different countries as history, religions, tradition, etc (Grunwell, 1998 & Yagiz, 2013) To English learners, if they desire to reach the ultimate goal in communicating as native speakers, they need to pay attention to the idioms as well

Idioms are appeared in every single material surrounded us It can be in

“newspapers, books, magazines, on the radio, on the television, in everyday conversation, and at work.” Besides, what the world‟s perceptions and viewpoints about things in human and animal existence between English and Vietnamese is quite different and leads most of the idioms not the same Expressions in this way bear the cultural characteristics of a country in which they are used Therefore, to understand as well as translate idioms from a language into another one, knowledge

of not only linguistic aspects but also of cultural reality has to be involved

Finding idioms exciting and compelling for quite a long time, I would like to take this chance to achieve deep insight into both English and Vietnamese idioms

As a matter of fact, a wide variety of studies and investigations into idioms have been done so far which mainly concern love, family, colors, body parts, animals, plants, etc With limited time, this study focuses on a tiny part of the whole immense idiom treasure – English and Vietnamese idioms related to dogs Furthermore, I personally find dog-related idioms fascinating to learn and use and there has been no study of idioms related to dogs in a range of Hanoi Pedagogical University Number 2

Hopefully, this analysis can be helpful, to a certain extent, for learners to understand the fundamental nature of dog-related idioms in both languages and how

to use them practically It can also contribute a bit to the teaching and learning as a second language in Vietnam, particularly in Hanoi Pedagogical University 2

2 Significance of the study

Idioms are plentiful in both English and Vietnamese, and there are numerous aspects to investigate regarding idioms It is undeniable that idioms concerning animals account for a significant proportion of both English and Vietnamese idiom system, especially dogs, are the most frequently mentioned animal in English idioms (Ruhanen, 2015)

However, to what extent, it is easier to find out how to learn idioms in foreign languages if having clear understanding in similarities and differences between them I used to encounter it when I study English and then took notes all of them so that they now are sources in this paper to help language learner deal with

To be equal and have the best general look at both languages, and I choose the same number of dog-related idioms Therefore, the study is considered a dog-mentioned idiom dictionary for learners to study effectively and use them correctly

3 Scope of the study

During doing this research, all the idioms are carefully selected from official resources and specialized idiom dictionaries such as American Idioms Dictionary, English Idioms Dictionary, and Từ điển Thành ngữ Tiếng Việt based on their convention and system Throughout the process of finding and filtering idioms, there is a significant number of selected idioms about dogs including 55 idioms in Vietnamese and 55 idioms in English

In this study, only dog-related idioms are selected to make a contrastive analysis of English and Vietnamese idioms about dogs “It is a contrastive analysis focusing on terms of syntactic and semantic aspects Syntactically, my study will investigate into account of dogs with noun phrase structure, verb phrase structure, adjective phrase structure, prepositional phrase structure, and sentence structure In the aspect of semantic opacity, an investigation into Positive connotation, Negative connotation, and Neutral connotation will be carried out.”

4 Aims of the study and Research questions

4.1 Aims of the study

This study is carried out with the hope to identify the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese dog-related idioms regarding semantic features and syntactic features to help people to be master in learning English and Vietnamese In addition, learners are able to imply the beauty of a foreign language and its social features

4.2 Research questions:

The study is to answer the following questions:

1 What are the similarities in syntactic and semantic features of selected English and Vietnamese idioms concerning dogs?

2 What are the differences in syntactic and semantic features of selected English and Vietnamese idioms regarding dogs?

5 Research methods

This research was conducted with the use of contrastive analysis and content analysis method They are research methods that analyze “the differences and similarities of two or more languages (or subsystem languages) are made explicit”, more specific it is English and Vietnamese I based on database analysis form resources of material both on the Internet and my supervisor

“An explicit analysis is a way of comparing the forms (phonemes, morphemes, syntax, etc.) of first language and a second language to find out how far or close the structures of the two languages are In this case, the primary language is English and the second one is Vietnamese and the features of syntactic and semantic.”

6 Design of the study

For a transparent organization, my graduation paper is divided into three main parts in which the second is the most important part:

- Part 1 is entitled the “Introduction” where rationale, significance, scope,

aims and research questions, research methods and design of the thesis are presented

- Part 2 is the “Development” which consists of three chapters:

+ Chapter 1: Theoretical Background, including small parts presenting the

definitions of idioms; principal features of idioms: syntactic and semantic and culture features; and overview of phrase, clause and sentence structures

+ Chapter 2: Methodology and Procedure, dealing with research design,

research methods, research procedures, description of the sample, data collection, reliability and validity

+ Chapter 3: Findings and discussion, presenting the data analysis and

discussion on the similarities and differences of dog-related English and Vietnamese idioms in terms of syntactic and semantic features

- Part 3 is the “Conclusion” to perform summary of the study, limitation of

the study and suggestions for further studies

PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT

Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

In fact, idiomaticity is not a new subject in linguistic study There has been plenty of work on it such as “Essential Idioms in English” by Dixon, R J [17], or

“Idioms for Everyday Use” by Broukai, M [6]…

Vietnamese idioms also prove significant in Vietnamese language, and several native linguists have been trying to collect them and to detect their special peculiarities The pioneers are Nguyễn Lực and Lương Văn Đang [63] Lately, Nguyễn Lực has just produced an important and useful book “Thành ngữ tiếng Việt” [64] More interestingly, there have been a lot of contrastive studies on idioms

in Vietnamese and other languages such as English, French, Russian… by Nguyễn Đình Hùng [60], Bùi Phụng [67] Furthermore, a number of contrastive studies on the various aspects of idioms have been carried out in many universities and colleges across Vietnam For example, in Danang University, there are “An investigation into syntactic, semantic and cultural features of idioms denoting life and death in English and Vietnamese” by Nguyễn Hoàng Trà My [25]; “A Contrastive Analysis of English and Vietnamese Idioms Using the Terms of Human Body Parts” by Nguyễn Thị Hiệp [31]… It can be seen researches on such terms as plants, time, happiness but none of term of dog

To be clearer, there has been thesis in Hanoi Pedagogical University 2 involved in dogs Based on many interviews second language learners, the obstacle they feel hard to overcome most is studying idioms Therefore, this paper is necessarily fulfilled in the university library and may be small dictionary for whom wants to look up the idioms‟ meanings and find the approach to be better

Chapter 2: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1 An overview of idioms and dog-related idioms

1.1 Definition of idioms

As a peculiar part of the language, idioms have drawn so much attention from linguists globally that numerous research has been conducted to investigate their basic nature, characteristics and varieties from various approaches However, the concept of idioms has remained controversial in the field of language, leading to

no agreed definition of idioms among linguistic scholars

First and foremost, defined by the Oxford Advanced Learners‟ Dictionary

(2006), idioms are “a phrase or sentence whose meaning is not clear from the

meaning of its every single words and which must be learnt as a whole unit” For example, the idiom “under the weather” refers to the state of being slightly unwell

or in low spirits, which means that it is impossible to understand this idiom by merely knowing the meaning of its components – “under” and “weather” Likewise,

on the ground of semantics, O‟Grady (1998) stated that what idioms truly convey is

a more complicated interpretation of its components In a similar vein, Adkins (1968) provided a more specific explanation that idioms, known as phraseological unit, are a stable multi-word group whose meaning is entirely or partially transferred In other words, as assumed by Fotovatnia and Goudarzi (2014), idioms

in the form of fixed expression convey meaning in a non-literal or metaphorical way

Another concept of idioms provided by Johnson (1993) is that “If natural language had been designed by a logician, idioms would not exist” (Khosravi & Khatib, 2012, p.274) That is to say, the real meaning of an idiom cannot be logically deduced from its elements

In Vietnamese, idioms are generally considered “thành ngữ”, “nhóm ngữ cú”, or “cụm từ cố định” According to another concept of idioms given out by Nguyen (2010), idioms are viewed as groups of words which are restricted in syntax and often convey imaginative and figurative meanings Hanh (2002) mentioned idioms in “Kể chuyện Thành ngữ, Tục ngữ” as a set expressions stable in structure, figurative in connotation and used mainly in daily discourse

In a nutshell, despite minor differences in aspects among concepts of idioms previously mentioned, idioms can be generally considered as fixed word groups whose meaning is not deducible from the meaning of individual constituents

1.2 Idioms which are related to dogs

Although the origin of the domestic dog is not clear, it is known that the dog was the first domesticated species and has a very close-knit relationship with human beings Thanks to the dogs‟ senses include vision, hearing, sense of smell, sense of taste, touch and sensitivity to the earth's magnetic field, and they make lots of efforts in helping people such activities as hunting, protection, assisting police and making as friends

English idioms were classified into several special groups including numbers, time, body parts, animals and briefly listed by Seidl & Mordie (1993) in

“Pocket English Idioms” According to them, dog-related idiom is a special kind in which dog elements with special meanings are considered vital words In other words, dog-related idioms are one specific group of idioms that demonstrate the way each person using in set expressions and how they associate these terms with other things in the world

1.3 Linguistic features of idioms

Existing in most languages, idioms have long posed long-lasting challenges for linguistic scholars to figure out typical characteristics of idioms As a matter of fact, tremendous efforts in this field have been made among researchers According

to Carter (1997), features can be summarized based on two major grounds: syntactic and semantic peculiarities

1.3.1 Syntactic features

“Syntactic” refers to “the way that words and phrases are put together to form sentences in a language” (Cambridge Advanced Learners‟ Dictionary) Regarding syntax of idioms; inflexibility, fixedness and invariability are frequently used words by linguists to describe the nature of idioms

First of all, it is impossible to replace any individual element of idioms; otherwise, there will be loss of idiomatic meaning For instance, the idiom “cup of tea” refers to something you are interested, you are good at, or you enjoy doing; however “glass of tea” would not create any idiomatic expression though glass and cup are near synonyms It is this feature that makes idioms truly distinct from other

lexical units because, in daily discourse, replacement of words within structures is

so common to convey similar ideas

Secondly, introducing any additional constituent into idioms‟ structures is not allowed That is to say, idioms are regarded as whole chunks, nearly equivalent

to a single word (Cacciari and Tabossi, 1988) An example can be “like two peas in

a pod” which means two things bear a very close resemblance The idiom‟s real meaning will be broken or distorted if a component is added into the structure like

“like two small peas in a pod” or “like two green peas in a pod”

The third restriction that should be considered when using idioms is grammatical invariability For example, for the idiom “pull someone‟s leg” (make fun of someone), it is possible to say “He always pulls my leg” or “He pulled my leg whenever he met me” However, the idiomatic meaning will not be delivered if

we add plural forms: “pull my legs” or an article: “pull the leg” Moreover, while passivization is a common phenomenon in English to retain the same sense, it is not applied for the case of idioms Take idiom “spill the beans” as an example It can be seen that in the passive voice, “beans are spilled” may make literal sense in some certain context but it fails to retain idiomatic connotation of the original idiom

Another noteworthy feature of idioms is that they can bear regular structures

or grammatically incorrect ones (Holsinger, 2013) Considering the first group, some idioms have correct grammatical structures like “You can‟t teach an old dog new tricks” or “It‟s not just a day” Meanwhile, others have unconventional forms

“Through thick and thin” is a typical illustration for illogical and irregular grammatical forms According to the rule of language, the preposition “through” must be followed by a noun, a noun phrase or a gerund, but “thick and thin” in this idiom is an adjective phrase

1.3.2 Semantic features

Semantics, rooted from Greek verb “Semainein” meaning “to signify”, is an aspect of linguistics dealing with the meaning of words and sentences (Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary)

The degree of meaning transference of idioms may be varied at different levels because some idioms are “semantically opaque” (Langlotz, 2006, p.2) while others are relatively transparent With the same viewpoint, Coulson (2001) referred

to two terms which are non-compositional and partly-compositional idioms

In non-compositional idioms, the whole group undergoes meaning transference and there is no relation between the surface sense of words and the true meaning of idioms A wide variety of idioms can be taken as examples for this like

“dark horse” (a little known person who keeps their abilities secret and suddenly surprises others with unexpected success), “have one‟s heart on one‟s sleeve” (openly show one‟s feelings rather than keeping them hidden) or “anh hùng rơm” in Vietnamese (a person who always tries to show off his incredible characteristics like a hero, but it is not true in reality) They are considered higher idiomatic expressions since their meanings are not related to meaning of individual elements

Meanwhile, some idioms are regarded partly-compositional because literal meaning of one or some components is still preserved so that the meaning of the whole expression can somehow be guessed For instance, “fall in love” (to be suddenly and strongly attracted to someone) or “lose someone‟s temper” (become angry at somebody or something)

Furthermore, sematic characteristics of idioms are under tremendous influence of cultural factors which clearly reflect how people perceive and view the world That‟s why it is of significant importance for learners to figure out hidden connotation of idioms “by summoning knowledge of cultural peculiarity as well as personal life experience since idioms are closely related to the culture of the country that they belong to.”

1.3.3 Culture features

Based on the Merriam-Webster dictionary, an idiom is defined that it expresses the meanings cannot be grasped from “its separate words but has a separate meaning of its own.” In other words, idioms should not be taken literally People use them in order to communicate to others and interchange their thoughts and feelings in a various way “To understand idioms you have to know the culture that is behind them, or at least their origin We can say that understanding idioms is like being “in over one‟s head”, meaning it is something difficult to do.”

It is not vague that idioms brings cultural aspects to the language They themselves in particular and words in general closely associate with historical background, economy, geographical environment, custom and innermost spirit For example, there an idiom in Venezuela, “al mal tiempo, buena cara” which can be

word by word translated to “during bad times, put on a good face” The English

“idiom equivalent” would be “seeing through rose-tinted glasses”

“It is the totality of human experience acquired during transmission of heritage from one generation to another and to learn the ways of learning, eating, drinking, behaving, walking, dressing, and working is the culture of man.”

“From a dynamic view, language and culture interact with each other and shape each other Language is the carrier of culture which in turn is the content of language.” “Idioms as a special form of language exist in both of them and carry a large amount of cultural information such as history, geography, religion, custom, nationality psychology, thought pattern…, and therefore are closely related to culture Consequently, we can know much about culture through studying idioms and in turn get better understanding of idioms by learning the cultural background behind them.”

2 Classification of idioms

It can be seen that it is absolutely crucial to systematize idioms for better learning and studying process In fact, different linguists and researchers always have their own ways to classify idioms, leading to various criteria for grouping them The oldest principle for sorting idioms mentioned by Nguyen (1995), also widely known as “thematic” categorization, is based on varied themes of idioms Nevertheless, as he stated, this method does not cover important linguistic characteristics of idioms Due to the fact that form numerous approached, the understanding of idioms‟ nature by linguistic scholars can significantly vary; it is beyond the realms of possibility to cover all grounds of sorting idioms Hence, the thesis only focuses on two basic criteria of idiom categorization as follow:

 Syntactic approach

 Semantic approach

2.1 Based on syntactic features

Apart from semantic approach, syntax is also a significant criterion for idiom grouping According to Linden (1993), idioms can be sorted into phrasal and sentence idioms In other words, phrasal idioms have structures of phrases while sentence counterparts come in the form of a complete sentence structure To be more specific, regarding phrasal idioms, they can come in an extensive range of constructions

Table 1: Classification of idioms in syntactic features

a three-dollar bill Adverbial phrase (adv

P)

Now and then, when pigs fly

Preposition phrase (P.P) Over the moon, up in the air

 Comparison idioms: “mỏng như lá lúa”, “nhẹ tựa lông hồng”, etc

 Idioms with symmetrical structures (idioms with two members which have the same form or balanced contents opposite or supplement of each other): “được ăn

cả ngã về không”, “ăn chắc, mặc bền”, etc

 Alliteration idioms (idioms with the same letter or sound at the beginning

of adjacent or closely connected words): “dấm dấm dớ dớ”, “đi đi lại lại”, “đi đêm

đi hôm”, etc

 Reduplication idioms (idioms that have all or a part of a word is repeated):

“khúc kha khúc khích”, etc

In brief, there exist various ways to categorize idioms in both English and Vietnamese However, for the purpose of identifying syntactic similarities and differences of English and Vietnamese idioms, the aspect of grammatical patterns and structural mechanism will be analyzed in the next chapter

2.2 Based on semantic features

From semantic approach, idioms can be sorted on the degree of metaphoricity conveyed by these multi-word units from the lowest level to the highest one In reality, a wide variety of idiom classifications have been proposed

by numerous linguists According to Vinogradov (1986), there are three major groups of idioms from semantic view: phraseological combinations, phraseological unities and phraseological fusions

 Phraseological combinations

This is the least idiomatic because one of the member words still retains its literal meanings, making it possible to catch the figurative meaning of the whole expression partly based on individual elements For instance, in the idiom “bosom friends” which means intimate friends, the component “friends” is literal while

“bosom” is used figuratively

 Phraseological unities

The typical feature of this type is that meaning of idioms cannot be deduced from the total meaning of its components because it undergoes metaphoric or metonymic transference However, the real meaning can be inferred from the image

of the whole expression For example, “turn over a new leaf” or “fish out of water”

 Phraseological fusions

This type of idioms is considered to have the highest degree of semantic cohesion, which means its meaning is not related to the meaning of its constituent parts “Spill the beans” is one of typical illustrations for this Its connotation is

“reveal someone‟s secret” and has no direct relevance to the literal image That is to say, idioms come as an independent part of language and must be comprehended as

a whole

Besides Vinogradov, other linguists also suggested numerous ways of categorizing idioms as listed in the following table:

Table 2: Classification of idioms in semantic features

Fernando (1996) Moon (1998) Yorio (1980) Grant & Bauer

(2004)

Literal idioms: on

foot, rely on

“Transparent

idioms: pack one’s

bags, alarm bells ring”

idioms: the pecking

order, grasp the nettle”

expressions: hit the

nail on the head”

Pure idioms: smell

a rat, under the

weather

Opaque idioms:

over the moon,

“kick the bucket”

“Opaque/True

idioms: be on the

wagon, in the nutshell”

“Core idioms: by

and large, red tape”

2.3 Idioms in association with culture

Considered as the mirror of culture, languages clearly reflect how people in different countries perceive and view the world in different ways The intimate relation between language and culture can be described with a metaphor that culture

is the iceberg The visible part is the language and lying hidden beneath the surface

is the invisible aspect of culture

As an essential component of a language‟s vocabulary, idioms truly reflect related-culture factors like history, religion, customs and tradition Both English and Vietnamese language in general and idioms in particular have developed with the long history of the two countries That‟s why English and Vietnamese idioms not only carry folk tradition but also represent cultural identities of the two nations For example, English people compare strength with a horse –“as strong as horse” while Vietnamese people believes “as strong as buffalo” It is cultural factors that can give

a reasonable explanation for this difference In English with nomadic culture, horse can carry heavy load, pull carts, plough, transport… which is ideally helpful for nomadic people to serve for their moving lifestyles Meanwhile, in Vietnam – an

agricultural country, buffalos not horses are a precious property of every farmer because they are very strong and hard-working to help farmers do heavy tasks in the field The example is to demonstrate that what idioms convey is under significant influence of culture aspect and shaped by cultural view Therefore, the deeper learners understand cultures of the two countries, the better they can grasp and use idioms This is also an essential factor to take into consideration in analyzing similar and dissimilar semantic features of dog-related idioms in this study

3 Overview of Phrase, Clause and Sentence Structures

3.1 Phrase

A phrase, a single unit that words group together is typically an element in a clause or a sentence It does not have a subject and verb which is opposite to clause,

as a result could not express a complete thought

Shirley Temple‟s quotes as some following examples The phrase italicized

in “I stopped believing in Santa Claus when my mother took me to see him in a department store, and he asked for my autograph.” “acts like a noun It is the direct

object of the verb stopped This phrase is a gerund phrase.”

“This phrase acts like a noun It is the subject of the adverbial clause when

my mother took me to see him in a department store I stopped believing in Santa

Claus when my mother took me to see him in a department store, and he asked for

my autograph.”

“I stopped believing in Santa Claus when my mother took me to see him in a

department store, and he asked for my autograph This phrase acts like a noun It is the object of the preposition for.”

“I stopped believing in Santa Claus when my mother took me to see him in a

department store, and he asked for my autograph This phrase acts like an adverb It

tells us where the activity took place It is an adverb of place.”

In this study, I focus on verb, noun, adjective, adverb and prepositional phrases

3.2 Clause

A clause includes “a subject and a verb” separated into “independent

clause”, convey “a complete thought and can be a standalone sentence; dependent

clause, a supporting part of a sentence and cannot stand by itself as a meaningful

proposition.”

For example:

“When the man broke into the house, the dog barked at him”

“When the man broke into the house” called “Subordinate clause” because it

contains incomplete idea and needs a main clause “the dog barked at him” to make

a meaningful sentence In the contrary, “the dog barked at him” is independent

clause since people can grasp it

Clauses are used in sentence as a variety of roles Firstly, noun clause is in “I

cannot remember what I said last night.” Secondly, adjective clause is in “My dog,

who usually refuses to go near the water, dived in the canal to chase a water vole.”

Thirdly, abverbial clause is in “He lost his double chin after he gave up beer.”

3.3 Sentence

“A sentence is a set of words that is complete in itself, typically containing a subject and predicate, conveying a statement, question, exclamation, or command, and consisting of a main clause and sometimes one or more subordinate clauses.”

“A sentence must have a main clause or more than one main clause There are as many clauses as there are finite verbs in a sentence (The finite verb is the verb that changes with the person or number of the subject.)”

It is adapted from

https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/grammar/sentencestructur

e a sentence:

 Begins with a capital letter and ends with a punctuation

 May be a word or short sentence as statement or question, “used to express a strong feeling such as surprise, excitement or anger.”

 “Can also be a combination of two or more clauses One of the clauses must be an independent clause, and the other clause can either be an independent or

a dependent clause It is important to know about clauses in order to construct complete sentences.”

 “Has two parts: a subject (noun or pronoun) and a predicate (a verb or a phrase)” and the subject-predicate agreement must be observed

 Be complete idea that “can stand alone, its meaning is clear, and does make sense, it is accepted as a sentence.”

 “Can be joined to another sentence without the use of a conjunction We

do it by using the present participle which is the –ing form of a verb: look – looking.”

 “Can be made a negative sentence using –ing form of the verb, we put not

in front of it.”

Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY AND PROCEDURES

1 Research Methods

The meanings of idioms, in accordance with their syntactic and semantic features, are described and interpreted with means of descriptive method and a powerful source of dictionaries and document

To what extend, the contrastive method is applied to draw out the similarities

as well as differences of selected English and Vietnamese dog-mentioned idioms

During process of collecting data, I have consulted ideas from my supervisor for worth-reading books and websites on the Internet I employed contrastive analysis method and content-analysis to accomplish the research paper

1.Contrastive analysis

Contrastive analysis is to contrasts the linguistic systems of two languages in order to pick all the relevant differences This thesis is to distinguish selected English and Vietnamese dog-mentioned idioms according to their syntactic and semantic features to determine both the differences and similarities between them so that this kind of research method is suitable It has pedagogical goals in the field of translation and second language acquisition

2.Content analysis

Content-analysis was mostly quantitative analysis of documentary materials concerning certain characteristics that can be identified and counted

2 Research Procedures

This part of the thesis includes all research-related activities to be undertaken

in order to achieve the aims of the study and to offer some possible solutions to the problem

- Firstly, 55 English and 55 Vietnamese idioms which contain elements „dog‟ are gathered from the sources of books, dictionaries and internet and the author‟s notes

- Secondly, English and Vietnamese dog-mentioned idioms are analyzed and categorized according to their syntactic and semantic features “Syntactically, the analysis and classification are mainly based on the different structural categories of idioms such as noun phrase, verb phrases, adjective phrases, prepositional phrases,

adverb phrases Semantically, the classifying is carried out on the basic typical semantic features of idioms in two languages Culturally, idioms will be treated and presented objective demonstrations to find out the cultural characteristics of dog-mentioned idioms.”

- Thirdly, the tables are used to demonstrate different types of dog-related idioms in English and Vietnamese in the first column basing on structures of “noun phrase, verb phrase, adjective phrase, adverb phrase and sentence” in the second column The third column contains idioms which are used to make clear the patterns and the last one is number of idioms of that pattern to estimate the proportion The similarities and the differences in terms of the syntactic and semantic features of English and Vietnamese dog-related idioms are figured out from that

- Fourthly, some implications for teaching and learning idioms as well as making some suggestions for further research are put forward

3 Description of the Sample

- There are thoudsands of idioms in English and Vietnamese, particularly approximate hundreds of dog-related idioms in these two languages that cannot be covered in one paper Besides, with limited time and effort, so the author has to consider them to make research and gain the correct results Choosing the samples must base on a certain criteria:

+ There is at least a word „dog‟ in an English idiom and „chó‟ in a Vietnamese idiom

+ Which has the same meaning will be chosen only one

- With that criteria set, a number of English and Vietnamese idioms from many books, dictionaries, notes and the internet is selected Therefore, the author got the collection of a total of 110 English and Vietnamese idioms related to dogs for building up my corpus which consists of 55 English idioms and 55 Vietnamese ones

Chapter 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

1 Syntactic analysis of selected dog-related idioms in English and Vietnamese

1.1 Idiom structures based on syntactic features

In this section, a total of 55 English and 55 Vietnamese idioms related to dogs are categorized on the ground of grammatical patterns mentioned previously in Chapter 2 Moreover, idioms in each group are sub-divided for a more specific and accurate contrastive analysis

Table 3: Structures of selected dog-related English idioms

Structure Idioms Number Percentage

1.Noun Phrase

1 N + N “A shaggy-dog story,

top dog, a dog and pony show, cat-and-dog life, prairie dog”

11 20%

2 N‟s N “A dog‟s breakfast/

dinner, dog‟s chance, the dog‟s bollocks”

3 N + prep + N “A dog in the manger,

a whole team and the dog under the wagon”

4 N + non-finite clause

“The tail wagging the dog”

2.Verb Phrase

1 N + N “Dog somebody‟s

footsteps, everybody and his dog”

21 38%

2 V + N/NP (+NP)

“Bark up the wrong tree, rain cats and dogs, give the dog a bad name, couldn‟t get elected dogcatcher, play hide the hot dog, put on the dog”

3 V + prep +

NP

“Be done like a dog‟s dinner, be dressed up like a dog‟s dinner, go

to the dogs, go to see a man about a dog, blow this hot dog stand, call off one‟s dogs”

4 V1 + N1 + V2 + (N2)

“Let sleeping dogs lie, let the dog see the rabbit, look for a dog

to kick”

5 V + N1 + prep + N2

“Throw someone to the dogs, better be the head of a dog than the tail of a lion, have a dog in the hunt, help a lame dog over a stile”

3 Adjective

Phrase

1 As + adj + as + NP

“As crooked as a dog‟s hind leg, as mean as a junk-yard dog, as sick as a dog,

as quick as a dog can lick a dish, as clean as

a hound‟s tooth, as sad

as a hound dog‟s eye”

2 N + V + N “Dog eat dog”

3 N + adj “Dog-tired, lucky dog”

4 Preposition

Phrase

1 prep + NP “In the doghouse, like

a whimpped dog, until the last dog is hung” 6 10%

2 prep + NP1 + prep + NP2

“Like a dog with two tails, like a dog with a

bone, like a blind dog

in a meat market”

5 Sentence

NP + V + N “Every dog has its

day, you can‟t teach an old dog new tricks, a barking dog never bites, a live dog is better than a dead lion, dog ate my homework,

it is easy to find a stick

to beat a dog, one‟s dog are barking, there‟s life in the old dog yet”

As can be seen from the table, selected idioms concerning dogs in English are constituted by both phrases and sentences with a variety of structures Noticeably, while sentence pattern is the least frequently used structure, phrasal patterns make up nearly all selected English dog-mentioned idioms (85%) To be more specific, selected English idioms have abundant structures of verb phrases, noun phrases, adjective phrases and preposition phrases in which verb phrases are the most common pattern (38%), followed by noun phrases (20%) and adjective (17%) Meanwhile, preposition is rarely used in selected English dog-related idioms

Table 4: Structures of selected Vietnamese dog-related idioms

Structure Idioms Number Percentage

1 Noun

phrase

1 N + N/Adj, N + N/Adj

“Lợn rọ, chó thui”

2 N + adv “Mèo đàng, chó điếm”

2 Verb 1 V + adv, V + adv “Bán gà ngày gió, bán

chó ngày mưa; làm 18 32%

Phrase kiếp trâu ăn cỏ, làm

kiếp chó ăn dơ; luồn cửa tiền cửa hậu, chẳng thèm luồn bờ giậu chó thui; xuỵt chó bụi rậm; thui chó nửa mùa/chừng hết rơm”

2 V + như + NP “Ăn ở như chó với

4 V + N, V + N “Chửi chó mắng mèo,

chửi mèo quèo chó;

đánh chó ngó chủ; lên voi xuống chó; treo đầu dê bán thịt chó; ăn cùng chó, ló xó cùng ma; sống được miếng dồi chó, thác được bó vàng tâm”

Sentence váy lĩnh, chó già gữ

xương, bọ chó múa bấc, chó cắn trộm, chó chạy hở đuôi, chó cùng rứt giậu, chó đen giữ mực, chó đói mới chịu giữ nhà, chó hùa đàn, chó ngáp phải ruồi, chó nhà quê đòi ăn mắm mực, chó sói đội lốt cừu, chó sủa là chó không cắn, chó sủa trăng/ma”

2 N + V, N +V “Chó tha đi, mèo tha

lại; chó đen ăn vụng, chó trắng chịu đòn; chó treo, mèo đậy; mang chết chó cũng lè lưỡi”

4 N + V + N, N + V + N

“Chó ăn đá, gà ăn sỏi; chó cậy gần nhà, gà cậy gần chuồng; chó chê mèo lắm long, hóa

ra chó lại lắm long hơn mèo; chó giữ nhà, gà gáy trống canh; chó ị bàn cờ, dơ mặt tướng; chó lê trôn, gà gáy gở; con chẳng chê cha mẹ khó, chó chẳng chê nhà chủ nghèo; dâu dữ mất họ, chó dữ mất láng giềng”

5 N + V + adv, N + “Chó chui gầm chạn;

V + adv chó ghẻ có mỡ đằng

đuôi; chó ị bờ giếng không sao, chó ị bờ ao người ta cắt cổ; chó khôn chẳng sủa chỗ không; mèo đến nhà thì khó, chó đến nhà thì sang”

As illustrated by table 4, selected idioms related to dogs in Vietnamese are in the form of both phrases and sentences with numerous structures; especially, about two-thirds of the idioms are sentences Regarding phrasal structures, selected Vietnamese idioms are constituted by three types of phrases including verb phrases, noun phrases and adjective phrases; particularly, verb phrases significantly outnumber the others

1.2 Discussion of similarities and differences in Syntactic features of selected English and Vietnamese dog-related idioms

Figure 1: Selected English and Vietnamese dog-related idiom structures