SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF NEGATIVE STATEMENTS IN ENGLISH AND THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY NGUYỄN THU HƯƠNG SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF NEGATIVE STATEMENTS IN ENGLISH AND THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS ĐẶC ĐIỂM

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

NGUYỄN THU HƯƠNG

SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES

OF NEGATIVE STATEMENTS IN ENGLISH

AND THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

ĐẶC ĐIỂM CẤU TRÚC VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA CÂU TRẦN THUẬT PHỦ ĐỊNH TRONG TIẾNG ANH

VÀ TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT

M.A THESIS

Field: English Language

Code: 8220201

Hanoi, 2018

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A THESIS

SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES

OF NEGATIVE STATEMENTS IN ENGLISH

AND THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

ĐẶC ĐIỂM CẤU TRÚC VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA CÂU TRẦN THUẬT PHỦ ĐỊNH TRONG TIẾNG ANH

VÀ TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT

Student‟s name : NGUYỄN THU HƯƠNG Supervisor: Dr ĐẶNG NGỌC HƯỚNG

Hanoi, 2018

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents the background of the study, reasons for choosing the topic, statements of the problem, objectives of the study, significance of the study, and outline of the study

1.1 Rationale for the study

English is the powerful business language It has become a necessity for people tospeak English if they want to enter a global environment Most of the information on the internet is in English Knowing English will allow people to access to an enormous amount of information We can see that English is also a valuable language to learn and can create many opportunities Most international events use English as their official language Learning English is essential if the job or hobby is to get involved in such events Not only it helps to understand the many activities in the event, but also take advantage of opportunities to develop the career

“Grammar has always been playing a role in foreign language teaching and learning This may probably be one of the reasons leading to the debates of teaching grammar The debates result in fresh cognition of grammar: it is very important in that not only does it help improve learners writing, but also it helps learners do better in reading comprehension and listening alike; more significantly, the problem of how to teach grammar has been raised The finding from the survey is that middle school students from China believe that grammar is very important and necessary There are several reasons for its importance and necessity, one of which is that they have few opportunities and little time to get enough input inside and outside the class.” (Shengmei Wang, 2010)

This paper plans to show some differences and similarities of simple negative statements in English and Vietnamese, improve Vietnamese English-as-foreign-language students‟ knowledge in English and Vietnamese negative phrases and make a comparison between English and Vietnamese negative phrases

To achieve the aim of the paper, the objectives are set: describing the structure

of negative phrases in Vietnamese and English sentences, contrasting to find out the

similarities and differences in the structure of negative forms in English and Vietnamese sentences and drawing practical applications and conclusions of the study

The study concentrates on simple negative sentences in English and Vietnamese However, this study just focuses on some conventional forms and constructions of the negative forms of the two languages because of the restricted scope The study wishes to point out the language tools denoting negative in English and the corresponding language tools denoting negative in Vietnamese Base on that, the study presents the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese in the simple sentences of negative forms

The syntactic and semantic features of negative phrases will be referenced in the bilingual book: “The World is flat” by Thomas L.Friedman, translated by Nguyen Quan A, Nguyen Hong Quang, Vu Duy Thanh, La Viet Ha, Le Hong Van and Ha Thi Thanh Huyen, published in 2010

For the above mentioned reasons, the thesis has the title: NEGATIVE STATEMENT IN ENGLISH WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

1.2 Aims and Objectives of the study

This thesis is aimed to analyzing of syntactic and semantic features of

English negative statements with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents and find out the similarities and differences between them Base on the result found, the author will give the suggestions for teaching, learning English negative statements to Vietnamese learners of intermediate level who can successfully using English on a day

to day basic at work and still want to advance their foreign language skill

There are three main objectives in this study The first objective is to identify syntactic and semantic features of negative statements in English and their Vietnamese equivalents The second one is to find out the syntactic and semantic similarities and differences between English negative statements and their Vietnamese equivalents And last but not least, it is to offer some implications for teaching and learning and English negative statements

1.4 Scope of the study

As the title indicates, the thesis focuses on the study of the syntactic and semantic features of English negative sentences and their Vietnamese equivalents The research does not focus on negative phrases which appear in all types of sentence, but only in English statements and their Vietnamese equivalents in novels and short stories Due to time, length limit of the thesis and the ability of the writer, the paper intends to devote only to investigating the syntactic and semantic features of these negative phrases In other words,

- The thesis only focuses on the investigation of negative statements, not other types of sentences (not questions and requests)

- The term negative in the thesis means the shortage or nonexistence of something This meaning is expressed either with such words as NO, NOT, NEVER, etc or with words that imply negative meaning such as hardly, few, etc For this reseaon, the negative statements investigated in the thesis will deal with those sentences which have the meaning of the whole clause or parts of the clause

- The thesis will not investigate negative meanings implied in other types of sentences That is why the sentences like I can‟t do it is the subject for investigation; the sentences like *How can I do it alone is outside the scope of study

- The thesis does not attempt to make comparison between English negative sentences and Vietnamese ones since English and Vietnamese belong to different linguistic typology; English grammar is not the same as Vietnamese grammar

Therefore, the thesis will compare negative sentences in English with their translated versions especially in terms of word order in the sentencee

1.5 Significance of the study

Theoretical significance:

Theoretically, the study will provide a full description of syntactic and semantic features of howEnglishnegative statementsareclassified, whatthecommonlyused English negative statementsand their Vietnamese equivalents are and how these kinds negative statements are used in different types of discourses From this, the thesis analyzes the syntactic and semantic features of the English negative statements at phrase level and their Vietnamese equivalents

Practical significance

In practice, the study aims to offer implications to language teaching and language learning of the English negative statements The practical information is hoped to raise the language users‟ awareness of the differences between the two languages in terms of negative statements from phrase point of view so that they can effectively apply in English communication

1.6 Design of the study

The thesis is divided into five chapters as follows:

Chapter 1: The Introduction, which includes the rationale, aims and objectives of the

study, research questions, scope of the study, significance and organization of the study

Chapter 2: The Literature Review review of related literature and the theoretical

backgrounds of the study, in which theories of negative statements are discussed Negative statements will be also identified in terms of grammatical characteristics in structures at phrase level Also, this chapter presents and describes concrete cases of English negative statements with its Vietnamese equivalents in corresponding contexts

Chapter 3: The Methodology, presents the research governing orientations and the

research methods used in implementing and developing the study This chapter focuses

on research questions, research setting, approaches to investigate the research problem,

the principles, techniques to collect and analyze data, etc

Chapter 4: Findings and Discussion, introduces the results of the survey which

syntactic and semantic features of the English negative statements appear in the documentary book “The world is flat” Several similarities and differences of the negative statements are illustrated The research recommendations for learning English

as a foreign language can be found as the last part of this chapter

Chapter 5: Conclusion, provides concluding remarks Summarizes major findings of

the study, points out the limitations and proposes some suggestion for further research

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Previous studies

There are many articles and papers researching on negation in the sentence, both

overseas and in Vietnam

2.1.1 Previous studies overseas

There are some researches found considered relevant references:

“Expression and Interpretation of Negation” (Henriëtte Swart,2010), often cited

by many reseach papers as Negation in a Cross-Linguistic Perspective It explores

the territory where logic, natural language and typology meet She in favour of the idea that: meaning of negation is not conveyed only through the expression of negatives, but also their interpretation De Swart deploys the framework of bi-directional Optimality Theory to develop a typology of the relationship between syntax and semantics in negation markers and negative indefinites In this model, syntactic and semantic constraints act in concert to define the grammar of a language Some languages are

„double negative‟, some „negative concord‟, and others belong to subclasses identified

by „strict negative concord‟ „nonstrict negative concord‟ or „negative spread‟ In addition the author analyses intermediate cases, and examines complex instances of double negation occurring in negative concord languages Her OT analysis of the Jespersen cycle brings together typological and diachronic variation This book‟s unique combination of theoretical precision and wide empirical coverage make it essential reading for any researcher approaching semantic typology from a logical, linguistic or cognitive perspective

“Contrastive Analysis of Negation in Language and Its Implications for Mwaghavul and English” in Journal of language in India authored by Judith Makse Patrick, Nanbam Yuwana Ojo, Professor Mingcai Sui and Banenat Didampublished in

2014 This paper compared the negation in the language of two languages at the syntactic and lexical verb levels Besides, it was an effort to contribute to the field of contrastive analysis of the Mwaghavul-English language The scope of this study

focused on the six personal pronouns in the sentence context presented in English and Mwaghavul in the present simple, simple past and future simple negative tenses

2.1.2 Previous studies in Vietnam

Nguyen Thi Luong in “Câu tiếng Việt” (2006) mentioned a negative sentence is

a sentence that uses negative words to confirm that there are no certain things, characteristics, properties and relationships or negate an opinion and a comment From this perspective, negative statements not only perform the ability to describe as definition of Diep Quang Ban but also able to perform the function of negating an idea

“The negative statements correct a mistaken idea, such as the idea that the monster was called Frankenstein In general, we use negative statements to inform someone that what they might think or expect is “not” so.” (Eastwood, 1994)

“Phân tích đối chiếu câu phủ định tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt trên bình diện cấu trúc – ngữ nghĩa” (Tran, 2000) This study established the concept of the structure, the semantics of negative statement, analyzed the description, classified of negative statement models in English and similarities or differences in Vietnamese negative models, analyzed and contrasted the semantics structure expressed through grammar or vocabulary in two languages

―An investigation into negative sentences in English and Vietnamese: A word grammar perspective‖, M.A thesis in the English language at Da Nang University

authored by Nguyen Vu Phong Van in 2012, under the guidance of Tran Quang Hai, analyzed the structures of sentences containing negative words extracting from Vietnamese and English works In addition, this paper identified negative devices in English and Vietnamese, the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese when using negative sentences; determined the aims of using negative sentences and found out the functions of negative sentences in context The aim of the study was to investigate the negative sentences in English and Vietnamese

Based on the negative structure andthe negative words in Chinese and

Vietnamese, “Câu phủ định tiếng Hántrong sự đối chiếu với tiếng Việt‖, M.A thesis in

the linguistics, written by Ly Bao My in 2015 at Ha Noi National University showed the comparison of the negative structure between the two languages tofind out the

differences between the two languages and to summarize the different elements about how to use negative in Chinese and Vietnamese sentences

―Câu phủ định tiếng Nga trong sự đốichiếu với tiếng Việt‖, M.A thesis in the

linguistics, Academy of social sciences, authored by Nguyen Thi Thanh Hien in 2016 presented the similarities and differences on negative sentences of two languages As a result, it helped to image to read the specified type of the language type over the negative sentence This paper showed generalization of some research achievements on negative sentences in Russian and Vietnamese and the theoretical issues related to the thesis topic, performance the means of expressing negative in the negative sentences in Russian and Vietnamese, comparison of expressing negative meanings in Russian and Vietnamese to indicate the differences and similarities of negative sentences between the two languages The description method and the comparison method were used to conduct this study

“A contrastive analysis of simple negative sentences in English and Vietnamese” (Chau, 2017) This research paper was issued in Magazine of Van Hien University, Volume 5, No.2, published in 2017 This is an application-oriented work into the similarities and differences in the formulation of negative sentences in English and Vietnamese based on the commonly used terms in these two languages The author

in favour of Diep Quang Ban‟s view “The way to express the negation in both of languages is to use negative words Vietnamese has negative words like ―không‖,

―chẳng‖, ―chưa‖, ―chả‖, especially the word ―chả‖ is commonlyused in speaking”

Indo-– was concerned with matters of phonology and morphology; there was a neglect of both syntax and semantics It was not until the 1950s with the reaction to classical structuralism that syntax came into its own as an autonomous level of linguistics

As far as how syntax is defined, it is common knowledge that syntax is the study of structure of language In other words, syntax aims to study a series of rules, principles, and processes that govern the ways of using basic lexical units to form bigger units to construct sentences in a given language To this end, the goal of many syntacticians is

to discover the syntactic rules common to all languages This type of grammar is so called universal grammar They are to dictate how words from different parts of speech are put together to convey a complete thought

Syntax is also considered a form of grammar and it is concerned primarily with word order in a sentence and with the agreement of words when they are used simultaneously Every language has a limited number of syntactic relations However, subject and object are probably universal of syntactic relations which apply to every language Because languages are different from each other, the criteria for classifying word classes may differ from language to language, so do the ways in which syntactic relations are marked It is also true that every language has developed a specific mechanism that is similar to syntax to make a boundless number of sentences This is a common feature that can be found in all languages

In the past, syntactic clues have sometimes been utilized in lexicography as

an aid to establishing polysemy In theoretically oriented linguistic literature, too, the claim had often been made that a difference in meaning In the present work, however,

a stronger claim has been tried to explore that a syntactic similarity is likely to reflect a similarity in meaning, so that shared syntactic patterns are likely to reflect shared semantic components To the extent to which this claim is validated, shared syntactic properties can be seen as evidence for postulated semantic structures

As has been discussed above, syntax refers to the rules that govern the ways in

which words combine to form phrases, clauses, and sentences Therefore, studying the syntactic features means studying the properties of words and their relationships when they combine together in specific patterns of arrangement in a sentence

2.2.2 Theory of Semantics

So far there have been a great number of concepts of semantics Semantics is a branch of linguistics, which deals with meaning or the content of communication However, the meaning of words cannot be derived from their physical properties, it cannot be reduced to the real-world objects or their perception, and it cannot be reduced to the particular image in human minds The meaning of words is to be derived from the relations between words, concepts and things in the real world

Jack Richards, John Platt, Heidi Weber (1987:172) state that “the study of meaning is semantics Semantics is usually concerned with the analysis of the meaning

of words, phrases, or sentences and sometimes with the meaning of utterances in discourse or the meaning of a whole text.”

Hurford and Heasley (1983:14) further explain that the study of semantics is largely a matter of conceptuality and exploring the nature of meaning in a careful and thoughtful way, using a wide range of examples, many of which we can draw from our knowledge

David Crystal (1992:347) defines that semantics is the study of meaning in language Structural semantics applied the principles of structural linguistics to the study of meaning through the notion of semantic relations (also called sense relation), such as synonymy and antonym In generative grammar, the semantic component is a major area of the grammar‟s organization, assigning a semantic representation to sentences, and analyzing lexical terms of semantic features The theory of semantic fields views vocabulary as organized into areas, within which words (lexical items) interrelate and define each other

Semantics is usually connected with pragmatics Carnap (Lyons, 1977:116) says that descriptive semantics (i.e the investigation of the meaning of expressions in

“historically given natural language”), may be regarded as part of pragmatics The reason why descriptive semantics is part of pragmatics seems to have been that he believed that differences in the use of particular expressions were not only inevitable in language - behavior, but must be taken account of in the description of context Smith,

as quoted by Lyons (1977:116) states that semantics studies how these signs are related

to things And pragmatics studied how they are related to people According to Leech

(1983:5) in practice, the problem of distinguishing language and language use has

centred on a boundary dispute between semantics and pragmatics

Additionally, there is one idea regarded as the most important subject in contemporary semantics, pointing out that meaningful units could combine with each other to form larger meaningful units and that understanding the meaning of the whole sentences is an appropriate method to work out these combinations Researchers, therefore, are to look for general rules to indicate the relationships between forms or arrangements of words in sentences and meanings It is not an easy job as these relationships are often very complex

In short, meanings could be distinguished, according to how they deal with the relation between words, concepts and things in the world, and the conventions that are constitutive of this relation The main types that dominate the linguistic field today can be split into such large classes as: referential, cognitive semantic theories, propositional and foundational theories of meaning:

As for the referential, the theory is concerned with the relation between expressions and the external world The referential theory is used to explain our knowledge of linguistic meaning, but makes no claim about how we actually know how linguistic expressions acquire meaning In other words, it makes no psychological claims A referential theory of semantics assumes that meaning is reference to facts or objects in the world In these theories, the denotation relation constitutes the most fundamental semantic relation The same paradigm can be extended to kinds of expressions other than proper names, to expressions of any kind The meaning of the

word, for example, house (syntactic category: common noun) is what the word refers

to, points out, in the world The denotation of the word house right now is the set of all

houses that there are right now in the world If the relevant world, or domain of

reference, were this classroom, then the meaning of the word house would be an empty set: common noun: house > set of houses As for the verb phrase in the sentence, for example: John is walking , The verb walk as an intransitive verb, a syntactical term,which isone-place predicate (semantic term),: walk denotes or refers a certain set

or collection of individuals the set of walkers (John is in the set of walkers)

As for the cognitive, the cognitive theory of meaning refers to the fact that if

a sentence like John walked is seen or heard, the experience with how human beings

typically move is perceived It is sensed that walking is slower than running, how it relates to other ways in which humans move: jumping, hopping, etc From these two

theories of meaning, for example, John kissed Mary, the reference of kiss as a

transitive verb (syntax) or a two-place predicate (semantics) kiss is the set of ordered

pairs of individuals where the first individual stands in a kissing relation to the second

John kissed Mary will be true just in case the pair John and Mary are in the set of

ordered pairs of individuals where the first individual kisses the second one

Propositional semantic theories answer the question, „What is the meaning

of this or that expression?‟ The relationship between content and reference, character and content, context and circumstance and Foundational theory of meaning tries to explain what about some person or group gives the symbols of their language the meanings that they have Mentalists aim to explain the nature of meaning in terms of the mental states of language users, mentalist theories may be divided according to which mental states they take to be relevant to the determination of meaning Utterance

is in an important respect very typical: usually the propositions which speakers mean to convey by their utterances include the propositions expressed by the sentences they use, but also include other propositions When we ask „What did you mean by that?‟

we are usually not only asking for the lexical but pragmatic meaning of the sentence

uttered

In conclusion, syntax deals with the formation of sentences, how words are combined to larger units than words, to phrases and sentences whereas semantics is the study of meaning expressed by elements of a language, characterizable as a symbolic system In other words, syntax is defined as the sequencing of language elements in time; semantics is defined as the selection from among the contrasting elements of a given syntactic and/or pragmatic type ranging from the atoms to the molecules of language structure These dimensions, however, are by no means independent Syntactic units constitute semantic units in that they embody implicit exclusions When

a syntactic unit of a given type is semantically selected, all others of the same type are implicitly excluded This is to say that any meaningful use of language involves simultaneous implementation of syntax, semantics These two aspects of language do not exist independently and can only be understood in terms of their inter-relationships When a language is viewed as a medium for communication, the implicit error of

attempting to deal with linguistic units apart from meaning, or meaning apart from the speaker's knowledge of the world becomes explicit A brick wall does not exist apart from the space-time relation between its bricks and mortar Neither does a description

of bricks or of mortar constitute an explanation of a brick wall As a complex means of communication language can only be explained within the framework of the context of communication and this can only be accomplished through an integrated theory of syntax and semantics

2.3 Theoretical framework

2.3.1 Definition of the sentence

2.3.1.1 The clause in English

So far there have been a variety of definitions about the clause in English grammar One definition is that a group of words containing a subject and a predicate and forming part of a compound or complex sentence makes up a clause In accordance with Wikipedia, a clause is the smallest grammatical unit that can express a complete proposition A typical clause in English contains minimally a subject and a predicate

In other languages, the subject is often omitted if it is retrievable from context A simple sentence usually consists of a single finite clause with a finite verb that is

independent More complex sentences may contain multiple clauses Main clause ( =

matrix clauses, independent clause) are those that could stand as a sentence by

themselves Subordinate clauses ( = embedded clauses, dependent clauses) are those

that would be awkward or nonsensical if used alone In this definition, the parts of a

clause contains: Subject (S): A person, animal, place, thing, or concept that does an

action Determine the subject in a sentence by asking the question “Who or what?”

He reads many books Verb (V): Expresses what the person, animal, place, thing, or

concept does Determine the verb in a sentence by asking the question “What was the

action or what happened?”: He reads many books In English, the be verb is also

sometimes referred to as a copula or a linking verb It links the subject to the

complement or the predicate of the sentence: He is interested in reading books Object

(O): A person, animal, place, thing, or concept that receives the action Determine the

object in a sentence by asking the question “The subject did what?” or “To whom?/For

whom?”: He reads many books And Adverbial (A): A phrase that modifies a verb,

an adjective or an adverb in the sentence functions as An adverbial phrase can be

headed by a preposition (i.e., in, at for, behind, until, after, of, during) or an adverb (slowly, late…), answering the questions about the verb “Where? When? In what

way?”: He is running slowly or He likes spaghetti for dinner

Quirk et al (1985) classifies clause structure in greater detail They claim that a clause

can be structured by 1) SV(It can’t stop), 2) SVCs (She is tall), 3) SVO(He has nothing to read)., 4) SVOiOd (He gave her a book)., 5) SVOCo(He always keeps his books clean), 6) SVA(He is reading in the library) , 7) SVOA (He is reading books in

the library)

From what has been described about clause definition, the clause structure in English may include the main parts as follows:

Table 2.1: English clause structure based on their syntactic function

Order Parts of clause

structure

1 Subject Doer of action - He reads many books

2 Main verb states what subject

does

- Nam plays football well

3 Complement Completing

meaning of sentence units

- He has nothing to read

- She is American

4 Object Acted upon by

verbs

- I can’t see anything

5 Adverbial Modifying verbs,

adjectives, adverbs or whole sentence

- The man is walking

veryslowly

- The weather is very hot

- Unluckily, she lost all the

money

2.3.1.2 The Sentence

Sentence, which is usually considered the largest syntactical unit, is one of the problems taking up a large portion of grammar books It is quite easy to understand

why so much attention has been paid to the study of sentence The term sentence is so

familiar to everyone, from a learner who has just started a language course to a linguist, yet its definitions are far from homogeneous, they are even very confusing, instead

In traditional grammars, sentences are simply defined as “ composed of words” and it is function of syntax to state what words can be combined with others to form sentences and in what order

In addition, a linguistic definition of the sentence must be in terms of its internal structure A sentence will be composed of certain specified elements in a certain order, ultimately, of course, of word, or parts of word

According to G Leech and J Svartvict (1992), “ Sentences are units made up by one or more clauses Sentence containing just one clause is called simple, and sentences containing more than one clause are called complex”

A clause is normally understood as a group of words containing a subject and finite verb, forming a sentence or part of sentence, and often doing the work of a noun, adjective or adverb

In the traditional view, clauses are sentences that are part of larger sentences That is to say, clauses are seen as the minimalsentences while the term sentence is used for the larger or maximal sentence (Palmer (1994: 11))

To put it in another way, the “traditional” clause is a component of the sentence Though arbitrary, this conception has indicated what is meant and illustrated a very important characteristic of natural language

Quirk et al (1972: 42) give simple explanation, more structurally and formally biased, of the clause A clause is a unit that can be analyzed in to the elements: S, V, O,

C, and A (subject, verb, object, complement and adverb) Later Leech and Svartvick (1992) modify this conception, proposing that clauses are the principal structures of which sentence are composed They also put forward three important ways in which clauses may be described and classified

+ In terms of clause elements (subject, verb etc.) from which they are constructed and the verb patterns which are formed from the elements

+ In terms of the use in which a clause is made by verb phrase structure to help distinguish between finite clauses, non-finite clauses, and verbless clauses

+ In terms of clause function (the function of a clause performs in a sentence), such as nominal clause, adverbial clause, etc Thus, Later Leech and Svartvick work out some criteria for their explanation of clause on the ground proposed by

In the view of speech function, Halliday‟s “clause” has a two-part structure consisting of modal element and propositional elements In whichever approach, traditional, structural or functional, there is always a widespread agreement that a clause typically consists of five elements: S, V, O, C and A

Table 2.2: Classification of sentences based on form and function

Example sentence (clause)

Final punctua- tion

1 Declarative (SV) Statement: It tells us

!

Simple sentences

A simple sentence has one clause:

All the girls are learning English

Complex sentences

A complex sentence has a main clause and one ore more adverbial clauses The clauses of a complex sentence are joined by subordinating conjunctions such as: when, after, since…

(Her father died) when (she was very young)

Subordinate clauses (adverbial clauses) usually come after the main clause as above , bur some can come in front of the main clause:

Although a few snakes are dangerous most of them are quite harmless

A sentence can contain both subordinate and coordinate clauses complex sentences):

Although she has always lived in France, she speaks fluent English because her mother was American and her father was Nigerian

2.3.2 Concepts of the phrase and classification of phrase

2.2.2.1 Phrases in English

According to ( Alexander 1998, 243 ), a phrase is a group of words acting as a single part of speech and not containing both a subject and a verb It is a part of a

sentence, and does not express a complete thought

For example, the phrases in the first two sentences of this page are italicized In

which the first sentence contains five phrases: “ of words”, “ acting as a single part of speech,” “ as a single part of speech,” and “ not containing both a subject and a verb

“ Except for the phrase beginning with as, all the phrases are acting as adjectives The

phrase beginning with as is adverbial

According to http://www.thefreedictionary.com., a phrase is a group of words

without a Subject and a Verb, which makes sense, but not complete sense

Examples:

- Lectures begin at nine

- They bought me a box of chocolates

- I’m feeling cold

- They are behaving badly

- Classification of phrase

In English grammar, grammarians divide phrases into an array of categories with

specific names based on the type of word that begins or governs; noun phrase, verb phrase, prepositional phrase, infinitive phrase, participle phrase, gerund phrase, and absolute phrase, to name but a few However, the definition of phase should be

clarified to understand the diversity of those terms

According to Sidney Greenbaum (1963:234), the five types of phrases are named after the class of word that is the head of the phrase The phrase types are exemplified below :

1 Noun phrase recent deluges of reports (head: deluges)

2 Verb phrase might have been accepted (head: accepted)

3 Adjective phrase surprisingly normal (head: normal)

4 Adverb phrase more closely (head: closely)

5 Prepositional phrase for a moment ( head: for)

the headword The other words describe or modify the headword

- Mary left late

- The manager interviewed all the applicants on Tuesday

Words that go before the headword are called pre-modification which include

determiners and pre-modifiers Determiners can be The indefinite article, The definite

article, Demonstratives, Possessives, Quantifiers, Numbers, a student, three days, etc

Pre-modifiers may include: adjectives, nouns or participles of a verb: a nice view, the railway station buffet, an annoying habit, etc

Words that go after the headword are called post-modifiers Post-modifiers of a

noun phrase can be a prepositional phrase, or a clause:

o Can you see the person in the corner

o All the women who had gathered there finally went away

o He is working in the office

o He has got a good job

o He can earn a lot of money

ADVERB PHRASE

An adverb phrase consists of one or more words The adverb is the head of the phrase and can appear alone or it can be modified by other words Adverbs are one of the four major word classes, along with nouns, verbs and adjectives An adverb phrase, like an adverb, modifies a verb, an adjective, or an adverb by providing additional

details about it For example, in the sentence She speaks English (very) fluently, fluently is an adverb phrase and very fluently is also an adverb phrase; the former is a one-word phrase and the latter a two-word phase with very as modifier

Table 2.3:Classification of English phrases based on parts of speech

1 Noun phrase (NP) He is a good student

2 Verb phrase (VP) He speaks good English

3 Adjective phrase (AdjP) The film is very interesting

4 Adverb (AdvP) The car is running very slowly

5 Prepositional phrase (PP) She is cooking in the kitchen

2.4 Negation and negative statements

2.4.1 Concepts of negation

In English, an affirmative sentence such as John came to school can be denied

by sentential negation didn’t, as in John didn’t come to school; a predicate such as the adjective mortal can be negated by attaching not or a negative affix to it as used in the

sentence: People believe that the soul is immortal Negation is one of the distinctive

properties of human language (Horn, 2001) Every natural language includes at least one device that can express the negation of an affirmative constituent Even in rudimentary linguistic systems such as home sign negation is one of the first structure building operations to emerge during language creation (Franklin, Giannakidou, and Goldin-Meadow 2011)

All else being equal, the semantic computation of negative sentences seems to

be more complex than that of their affirmative counterparts, since negative statements involve an extra step of semantic processing, along with extra morphological or syntactic structure Moreover, negation presents challenges for semantic and syntactic computation not only because it is an additional layer of meaning and structure to process, but also because there are many different ways to

express negation Not many students came to school is approximately synonymous with Few students came to school Likewise, John didn’t believe Mary would win expresses a similar negative meaning to John doubted Mary would win The necessity

of identifying different types of negative expressions, based on morphosyntactic, semantic, or pragmatic cues, enhances the processing complexity of negation (see Horn (2001) for a detailed and lucid discussion of the issues of complexity, or markedness,

of negation)

Negation is extremely common in everyday communication, since most of the above

mentioned research has focused on the negative form not, we know very little about

how other types of negation are processed In my study, I make use of the property of phrases to investigate how negative meaning appear in English statement and their Vietnamese equivalents There are two general classes that we call explicit (asserted) and implicit(non-asserted) negation

negation-2.4.2 Types of negation (explicit and implicit)

Natural language has a rich landscape of negative expressions There are numbers of dimensions we can use to classify negative expressions into groups We

make a distinction between negation in the asserted meaning and negation in the asserted content (also see Horn (1996)); also following Clark (1976), we call the first group explicit negation, and the second implicit negation Under Clark‟s classification, explicit negation in English includes expressions like scarcely, hardly, few, seldom, little, and only, as well as more obviously negative expressions like no, not, and never Implicit negation, on the other hand, includes expressions like forget, fail, doubt, and deny (see also Fodor, Fodor, and Garrett, (1975)).2 It is already clear from these examples that explicit negation is not a label for morphologically explicit (or overt)

non-negation, though overt negation is indeed a core member of this category Rather, the contrast between explicit versus implicit negation relies on which level of semantic representation, i.e., assertion or non-assertion, negation appears at, a distinction we come to below Any given utterance conveys an array of meanings In the widely used Gricean and neo-Gricean frameworks (Grice, 1975; Stalnaker, 1978, Horn 2001, Geurts, 2010), assertion conveys the logical meaning of a sentence, and non-asserted

meaning is thought of as pragmatic meaning Logical semantic meaning determines the literal meaning of a sentence, i.e., the truth conditions and entailments of a sentence;

pragmatic meaning, on the other hand, includes inferences beyond entailments, specifically presuppositions, conversational implicatures, and conventional

implicatures For example, if I say Mary’s children are blond I am asserting that

Mary‟s children are blond, the sentence entails that Mary‟s children are blond, and it is true if they are, and false if they are not The sentence also conveys the information that Mary has children, and this is, classically, a presupposition of the sentence, not an

entailment A common diagnostic to distinguish presupposition from entailment is that presupposition survives under negation, but entailment does not For example, with a

negative sentence like Mary’s children are not blond, it is no longer entailed that

Mary‟s children are blond But the presupposition that Mary has children remains intact The precise division of labor between asserted and non-asserted meaning is a central issue in the study of linguistic meaning (for recent overviews, see Potts (2005, 2007), Tonhauser, Beaver, Roberts, and Simons, (2013)) We can define two classes of negation based on their source of negative meaning If negation is expressed as part of

the asserted meaning of an utterance, i.e., if it is an entailment, it is explicit negation; if

it belongs to the non-asserted meaning (i.e., presupposition or implicature), it is

implicit negation Overt negation, such as no and not, mark grammatical negation and

obviously affect the assertion, as we just saw They constitute explicit negation But it

is important to note that explicit negation does not necessitate that negation is

morphologically overt Expressions such as few, scarcely, hardly, seldom, and little,

although not morphologically realized as negative, behave nevertheless syntactically and semantically negative under a number of well known, and by now classic,

diagnostics (Klima, 1964; Horn, 2001; Postal, 2005; etc.) For instance, few, scarcely, hardly, seldom, and little can be followed by a conjunct modified by neither, but not by

so Moreover, they may also co-occur in a conjunct with either, but not with too Some

examples are given below:

o I have little money, not enough to buy the ticket / * I can buy the ticket

o You have little money and I have little, either / *too

2.4.3 Concepts of a negative statement

The concepts of a negative statement vary from one grammarian to another According to Macline (1992) a negative statement is built when the verb in the

sentence is negated When the negative words such as not, no, neither, nothing… are used in the sentences, they have negative effect In addition, the word negative which

is defined in Longman Dictionary of Current English means that a negative sentence,

the opposite of affirmative contains one of the words: no, not, nothing, never etc (p

1167):

According Wikipedia, Free encyclopedia, a negative sentence (or statement) states that something is not true or incorrect

One of the ways negating a sentence is the use of using negative adverb A negative adverb has to be added in order to negate or “cancel” the validity of the sentence This “negation” element is created according to the following general rule

In English, in order to claim that something is not true, you form a negative

sentence by adding the word not after the first auxiliary verb in the positive sentence If

there is no auxiliary verb in the positive sentence, as in the Present Simple and Past

Simple tenses, then you add one (in both these cases, the auxiliary verb do)

However, in reference to negation, Quirk et al (1985) claims that negation of a sentence could divide into three types; clause negation frequently followed by one negative item, or one or more nonassertive items, through which the whole clause is syntactically treated as negative; local negation in which one constituent (not necessarily a clause) is negated; and predication negation, a minor type applying only after certain auxiliary, in which the predication is negated (p.775)

Examples:

- I have not finished (Clause negation)

o Not many people came to the party (Negation with a negative item)

o Few people came to the party (Negation with a nonassertive item)

o They own two not very fierce dogs (rather docile: Local negation)

o I visit them not very often (Local negation)

o You can not obey the order (Predication negation)

As has been noticed from above, negation can be explicitly or implicitly expressed The thesis adopts the concept that a negative sentence can be syntactically

or semantically structured

2.5 Overview of Vietnamese negative sentences

Diep Quang Ban in his book “Ngữ pháp tiếng Việt” (2005) and later “Ngữ pháp Việt Nam” (2009) define statement as sentencenes which functioning explaination, experesstion of the speakers‟ belief, they are used to tell, describe an object, an event, a phenomenon or to identify, verify during the brainstorming process He also mentioned

to negative sentences from multiple aspects: negative sentence from syntactical point

of view and negative sentence due to negation acts In the first subject, Diep divided negative statement with no subject, negative clauses, negative subject, negative object and adverb, … For example:

Negative sentence with negative adverb:

Anh ta nói không rõ (His speech isn‟t clear)

Negative sentence with negative clause:

Không phải mẹ bảo con đến đây (I did not ask you to come)

Negative statement with negative verb element:

Quyển sách này chẳng phải của tôi (This book isn‟t mine)

Anh ấy làm gì có nhà giờ này (He isn‟t home now)

Tôi không nghi ngờ anh (I have no doubt about you)

Negative statement with negative subject:

Chẳng có người nào làm như thế cả (No one would do so)

Không có gì quý hơn độc lập tự do (Hồ Chí Minh) (Nothing is more precious

than independent and freedome)

The second one metion to negation act in negative sentences including negative description, rejection Such as:

Tôi đâu có biết (I don‟t know)

Nguyen Thi Luong in “Câu tiếng Việt” (2006) expresses that a negative sentence is a sentence that uses negative words to confirm that there are no certain things, characteristics, properties and relationships or negate an opinion and a comment This conception shows that negative statements not only have the task of describing as definition of Diep Quang Ban but also have another function as negating

an idea “The negative statements correct a mistaken idea, such as the idea that the monster was called Frankenstein In general, we use negative statements to inform someone that what they might think or expect is “not” so.” (Eastwood, 1994)

“Phân tích đối chiếu câu phủ định tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt trên bình diện cấu trúc – ngữ nghĩa” (Tran, 2000) This study established the concept of the structure, the semantics of negative statement, analyzed the description, classified of negative statement models in English and similarities or differences in Vietnamese negative models, analyzed and contrasted the semantics structure expressed through grammar or vocabulary in two languages

2.6 Summary of the chapter

In this chapter, the thesis presents some theories which are related to the topic

of the research with relevant theoretical framework to cite the theoretical background for the study Throughout this chapter the thesis deals with a number of basic concepts

of syntax, semantics, the definition and structure of sentence and clause, the concept of negation and the characteristics of negative sentence These concepts make up a valuable foundation for the author to take an insight into the investigation into the analysis of the syntactic and semantic features of negative statements in English and their equivalents in the next chapter

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY

This chapter describes in details about the method of investigation It consists

of 5 parts namely subject of the study, instrumentation, procedures, statistical analysis and summary

3.1 Subjects

English statement negated by phrases of all kinds are collected from the documentary book “The world is flat” by Thomas L Freidman” After that, data population are analyzed to produce the use of them the documentary book “The world

is flat” In this book, negative statement is used 300 times

3.2 Instrumentation:

In order to get information to fulfil the research task, the author has to use a number of sources for data collection With the selected materials relating to the topic, the author sorted out all the information necessary to set up theoretical framework on syntax and semantics of negative sentences The books for the author to get theoretical information are listed in the list of references at the end of the thesis The second tool used to do the task is the number of research methods and techniques These factors help to collect sufficient data to use in the thesis The very important factors that decide

on the success of the research are all the bilingual documents The first main source to get information about English negative statements and their Vietnamese equivalents is the novel „The World Is Flat‟ by Thomas L Friedman Other important sources are bilingual dictionaries such as English and Vietnamese Dictionary published by The Institute of Linguistics (1993), Based on these sources, the author sorted out all the negative statements and categorized them into different types of negative sentences together with their Vietnamese equivalents

3.3 Procedures

In order to achieve the main aims and objectives of the study, the followings procedures are followed for data collection and analysis;

Stage1:Identifying the research topic by reviewing previous studies which

accords to the author‟s interest

Stage2: Collecting all the possible literature related to the topic after it is

decided and approved by the authority;

Stage3: Collected all information available from topic-related literature which is

listed in the references at the end of the thesis in order to set up a review which deals with all the theories related to the topic;

Stage4: Collecting all the negative statements and their Vietnamese equivalents

found in the bilingual novel and other materials and classifying them according to the syntactic and semantic features of each type of negative statements During this stage, careful consideration is taken to make sure that all the negative statements in English in the bilingual materials are within the scope of study;

Stage5:Analyzing data based on syntactic and semantic features of English

negative statements and Vietnamese equivalents to classify them into specific types

Stage 6: Defining, by means of analyzing strategies, all the syntactic and

semantic differences between negative statements in English and their Vietnamese equivalents in order to suggest ways for Vietnamese learners to learn negative statements effectively

3.4 Statistical Analysis

Based on the grammatical structures and meanings, the negative statements extracted from the bilingual documents are classified into six types:

- Negative statements with negative verb phrases,

- Negative statements with negative noun phrases,

- Negative statements with negative adjective phrases,

- Negative statements with negative adverb phrases,

- Negative statements with negative prepositional phrases and

- Negative tatements with negative conjunctions

Each type of negative statements in English is featured by the use of negative words The negative words may exist in negative form, with negative meaning; sometimes negative words are used in positive form but with negative meaning The negative meaning of the statement could be expressed by clause negation by means of verb negation or other the negation of other elements in the sentences

In general, all the six types of English negative sentences have their Vietnamese

equivalents in terms of structure and meaning; however, there are some differences in lexical equivalents and word order of negative elements between English and Vietnamese

3.5 Summary of the chapter

In this chapter, the thesis has described the research subject, instrumentation and procedure which are three of the very important elements to help the author to carry out the study The methods which are controlled by research questions in this study include data collection method, descriptive method, and comparative and contrastive methods The data used in the thesis which are collected from prestigous English and bilingual materials are helpful for the author to classify different types of negative sentences All the findings about the syntactic and semantic features of negative sentences in English with their Vietnamese equivalents together some implications concerning the ways to learn sentences of these types for Vietnamese learners will be presented in the next chapter

CHAPTER 4 SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF

NEGATIVE STATEMENTS IN ENGLISH AND THEIR

VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

In this chapter, the author attempts to investigate the negative sentences in English and their Vietnamese equivalents in terms of structure and meaning The negative sentences under investigation include all the three types of negation traditionally classified by Randolph Quirk (1985, p.775): clause negation, local negation and predication negation The chaper divides into three parts, corresponding

to the three research questions, the first part deaking with the syntactic and semantic features of English negative sentences In some cases, when there are some typical syntactic and semantic features of Vietnamese equivalents against those in English negative sentences, these features will be highlighted, which serves as a basis for the syntactic and semantic comparison between English and Vietnamese in the second part The last part will be devoted to some implications concerning the ways of learning and teaching negative sentences in English to Vietnamese learners

4.1 Syntactic and semantic features of negative statements in English

4.1.1 Syntactic features of negative statements in English

4.1.1.1 Negative statement with negative verb phrases

Negative statements with negative verb phrases are those with the main verb negated, causing clause negation as classified by Quirk (1985)

i Negative verb phrases consist of one negative verb: deny, refuse…