A study on the entailment of meronymy in 10 year-old Vietnamese children’s English speaking. A case of the children in an English centre

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES -*** TRẦN LAN HƯƠNG A STUDY ON THE ENTAILMENT OF MERONYMY IN 10-YEAROLD VIETNAMESE CHILDREN’S ENGLISH SPEAKING: A CASE OF THE CHILDREN IN AN ENGLISH CENTRE (NGHIÊN CỨU SỰ KÉO THEO CỦA QUAN HỆ BỘ PHẬN- TỒN PHẦN TRONG CÁCH NĨI TIẾNG ANH CỦA TRẺ EM VIỆT NAM 10 TUỔI: NGHIÊN CỨU TRÊN ĐỐI TƯỢNG HỌC SINH CỦA MỘT TRUNG TÂM TIẾNG ANH) M.A MINOR PROGRAM THESIS Field: English Code: 6014.0111 Supervisor: Dr Do Thi Thanh Ha HANOI, 2015 CERTIFICATION OF ORIGINALITY I hereby certify that the thesis entitled “A study on the entailment of meronymy in 10 year-old Vietnamese children’s English speaking A case of the children in an English centre” is my own study in the fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree of Master at Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi Hanoi, 2015 Tran Lan Huong i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS At the end of my thesis, I would like to express my deep gratitude to all people who have helped and inspired me to finish the graduation paper First, I would like to express my especial thanks to my supervisor, Dr Do Thi Thanh Ha for her invaluable guidance Her expertise, understanding, and patience, added considerably to my research experience I also wish to thank the manager, the students and teachers at Amslink Centre, whose knowledge, experience, and supports directed me through my study A very special thank goes out to my friends, without whose support, motivation and encouragement I would not have such patience and determination in fulfilling this study I would also like to thank my family for the support they provided me through my entire life and especially this hard time of preparation for graduation ii ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the entailment of meronymy in 10 year-old Vietnamese children’s English speaking The data was taken from the observation of 33 Vietnamese students at the age of ten and native teachers The results show two types of the entailment of meronymy in children’s English speaking: the first is breaking the constant principle in the semantic relation of meronymy and the second is the lack of one of properties of meronymy The first one is more popular to cause the entailment of meronymy Moreover, the study also indicates how teachers responded to children’s entailments of meronymy and goes to the conclusion that most of time teachers ignored these or sometimes just gave very simple feedback when what children said was too unreasonable iii TABLE OF CONTENT CERTIFICATION OF ORIGINALITY i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .ii ABSTRACT iii LIST OF TABLES vi PART A INTRODUCTION 1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study Research questions Scope of the research Organization of the thesis PART B DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I LITERATURE REVIEW I MERONYMY Definition of meronymy Characteristics of meronymy 2.1 The constant principle in the semantic relation of Meronymy 2.2 Properties of Meronymy Types 3.1 Component – integral 3.2 Member – collection 10 3.3 Portion- Mass 10 3.4 Stuff- Object 11 3.5 Feature- Activity 12 3.6 Place- Area 12 II CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 13 Language acquisition 13 Teachers’ oral feedback in speaking 15 2.1 The definitions of feedback 15 2.2 Types of feedback 16 iv III RELATED STUDIES 18 Meronymy…………………………………………………………………… Children language acquisition………………………………………………… CHAPTER II RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 23 I THE CONTEXT OF THE STUDY 23 Teaching methodology 23 The students’ learning conditions 23 II PARTICIPANTS 24 III METHODOLOGY 25 Instrument 25 Data analysis methods 26 CHAPTER III RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 28 I THE FREQUENCY OF ENTAILMENT OF MERONYMY 29 The constant principle in the semantic relation of meronymy 29 1.1 The combination of more than one type of meronymy 29 1.2 Non-meronymic relations 33 1.2.1 Attribution 33 1.2.2 Topological inclusion 34 1.2.3 Possession/ Ownership 35 The lack of properties of meronymy- Motivation 36 II TEACHERS’ FEEDBACK 38 The frequency of teachers’ feedback to entailment of meronymy 38 Types of feedback 39 PART C CONCLUSION 42 Recapitulation 42 Limitation 43 Suggestion for further study 43 REFERENCES 45 APPENDIX OBSERVATION DATA 48 v APPENDIX STUDENTS’ LEARNING CONDITION AT AMSLINK CENTRE 54 vi LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Six types of meronymic relation with relation elements …… LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Feedback Types classified by Brookhart (1998)…………… 16 Figure 2: Feedback Types classified by Crane (2006) ……………… 17 Figure 3: The frequency of entailment of meronymy ……… 26 Figure 4: The teachers’ reaction to the students’ use …………… 36 LIST OF PICTURES Picture 1: Classroom’s view ………………………………………… .50 Picture 2: Classroom’s equipments ………………………………… 50 vii PART A INTRODUCTION Statement of the problem and rationale for the study Linguistics, the scientific study of language, is of all “the social sciences with the greatest interest in the phenomenon of meaning” (Lyons, 1981: 15) There have been different approaches to investigate meaning and the lexical approach is one of them When the meaning of a lexical item is stated through associations with other lexical items, the theory of lexical semantics is met This approach posits two different, though connected, aspects One aspect relates the linguistic element to the physical world of experience, the world of objects, entities, which is called reference While the other aspect, namely sense, relates to the relations holding between the linguistic elements themselves, particularly, sense or lexical relations Sense relations among words have captured the interest of various brands of philosophers, cognitive psychologists, linguists, early childhood and second language educators, computer scientists, literary theorists, cognitive neuroscientists, psychoanalysts- investigators from just about any field whose interests involve words, meaning or the mind We can access a broad and detailed literature that approaches the topic from a variety of methodological and theoretical perspectives Still, the core semantic relation of every knowledge organization system is hierarchy There are two kinds of hierarchic relations that should be distinguished: hyponymy (is-a relation) and meronymy (part-of relation) In the way meronymy is currently applied in real life, especially by children, different kinds of meronymy are sometimes misleadingly summed up into one general part-whole relation and regarded as always transitive, which can make some types of entailments However, children are not often given a clear explanation about their entailment Moreover, there is no recent study on the entailment of meronymy in children’s English speaking; therefore; the analysis of these in general and in the context of Vietnam in particular is really necessary This study is a theoretical approach to some knowledge of meronymy in general and the transitivity of meronymy in particular to clarify some entailment of meronymy concerning transitivity of Vietnamese children Research questions The study’s primary aim is to investigate the use of meronymy in English communication classes of 10-year-old students And then the researcher will try to analyze the entailment of meronymy in Vietnamese children’s English speaking and investigate how teachers responded to children’s use of meronymy This final goal is specified in the following research questions: What are the entailment of meronymy in Vietnamese 10-year-old children’s English speaking? How teachers respond to students’ entailment of meronymy? Scope of the research Due to the limited time and knowledge, it will be not wise to cover all aspects of meronymy like its relationship with other semantic relations, the benefits of transitive meronymy for the application of automatic semantic query expansion in information retrieval tasks, weighted meronymic relations, application fields in detail, etc Moreover, it is also impossible to discuss all the entailment of meronymy in children’s English speaking Conversely, my study just emphasizes on one aspect of meronymy- transitivity and some outstanding use related to this aspect of meronymy of 10- year- old children Organization of the thesis The thesis consists of three parts: Part A – Introduction comes to the general introduction including the rational, and the purposes of the present study Part B – Development: this part comprises of three chapters:  Chapter 1: Theoretical Background and Literature review covers the overview of the literature in which relevant theoretical background and reviews of related studies concerning meronymy It reviews the research However, the teachers’ using feedback to children’s use related to meronymy just appeared in three conversations: the conversation (1) in Class 5C at 18:46 on Tuesday 10th September in 2013  Student: In my class in school have a friend, he is “trầm cảm”  Native teacher: “Trầm cảm”???  Assistant: It is “depression” in English  Native teacher: How you know, dear?  Student: He never talk anything, always silent  Native teacher: He does not want to talk, sometimes because he is tired or he is busy to something He can have many reasons to keep silent, dear If you not ask him, you cannot jump to the conclusion like that and the conversation (2) in class 5C at 16:04 on Sunday 22st September in 2013  Do you smell something? Kinh khung eo  Dốt quá! Là terrible Huh, you are a dog Nose dog  Come on, dear It is not polite and not true to say like that He is your friend, not a dog You should say sorry to your friend and the conversation (3) in Class 5F - 14:06 Sunday 9th March 2014  Student: Teacher, Kiet stop study here, right?  Teacher: No, he doesn’t Why you think so?  Student: He absent a week  Teacher: He can have many reasons for being absent May be he is so busy with his midterm test in the school Based on the classification of Crane, there are five types of feedback: Confirmative/ Corrective/ Explanatory/ Diagnostic/ Elaborative In these cases, conversation (1) and conversation (3) use the same type of feedback Both of the teacher used explicit explanatory to correct students’ use and include relevant information about the context of the correct response For example, in conversation (1), the teacher explained: “He does not want to talk, sometimes because he is tired or he is busy to something He can have many reasons to keep silent, dear” and 40 the teacher in conversation (3) said “He can have many reasons for being absent May be he is so busy with his midterm test in the school” The teachers’ answers seem to be helpful and more persuasive when they give the appropriate explanation On the contrary, the teacher in conversation (2) just informed the learner that his response was incorrect with knowledge of the correct or desired response “It is not polite and not true to say like that He is your friend, not a dog” Therefore, the teacher’s feedback seem to be hard to satisfy students In short, most of time children’s making entailment result of meronymy is the combination of meronymy and attribution, which is made by part of understanding meronymic relations that derives from the fact that meronymy is easily confused with other semantic relations However, children are not always given the direction or correction from the adult 41 PART C CONCLUSION Recapitulation Meronymy is a semantic relation between an object corresponding to a “part” and to its corresponding “whole” If an entity X is the meronym of another entity Y, then sentences of the form “Xs are parts of Y” or “Y has Xs” are valid when noun phrases X and Y are interpreted generically Recently, several research efforts geared towards automatically identifying meronymy patterns from texts have been proposed However, the long- standing challenge of resolving pattern ambiguity has not yet been adequately addressed Pattern ambiguity arises when an expression encodes meronymy only when it occurs within specific contexts The study was conducted as an attempt to prove that entailment of meronymy of 10-year-old Vietnamese children are rather popular and worthy getting much more attention from adults and address some pattern ambiguity issues when using meronymy of 10-year-old Vietnamese children in the context of the English class in Amslink centre There are generally two types for the entailment of meronymy in children’s English speaking The first type is breaking the constant principle in the semantic relation of meronymy with two kinds of breaking (1) The combination of more than one meronymic relation (2) Non-meronymic relations The second reason is the lack of one of properties of meronymy in which the results show one kind which is the lack of the last property- Motivation or called the notion of functional domain Of these three types, there is no new type of use as comparison with other previous studies, however, the percentage of each type was counted on to show that the first type is the most popular to cause the entailment of meronymy, which can be used as the guide for adults to understand the basis of use to have their own way to explain for children To summarize, the findings of this study provide an insight into a semantic relation- meronymy in a specific context- meronymy in 10-year-old Vietnamese children’s English speaking These are believed to serve for further studies on the solutions to the entailment that apply in certain special cases that have been used to 42 illustrate the entailment in the literature, and then move on to present more general solution that applies in all cases, a solution that exploits children’s knowledge of the semantics of downward entailing expressions Limitation Due to various constrains and scope of the study, the present research displays certain limitations First, the small target population (33 students and teachers) might have affected the results of the findings and implications of the study The results of the study would have been more persuasive if the research had involved more participants Second, due to the shortage of time of observation in doing the research, the number of data gained is limited (39 situations) so that collected data could not provide a better insight into the real situation Suggestion for further study First, it must be clear that our data set represents too small a sample to be definitive The limitation and the scope of the study leave the gaps for other researches which should be carried out on larger samples Second, some possible solutions that might be applied to deal with the entailment of meronymy should be studied It is very difficult to suggest that adults directly advise children of the unavailability of certain utterances However, the researcher assumes that adults may well object to utterances produced by children that they consider false and it is explained how such factual objections may provide evidence to the child that a particular interpretation is not actually available Third, teachers and students of semantics who work in the field of contrastive studies, translators and theorists of translation should have a clear idea about the nature of meronymy in the languages specified, and then, as well, ought to design exercises that best shows various aspect of meronymy Last, psychologists should not overlook the need to provide a theoretical description of meronymy in order to account for people’s ability to: (a) verify instances of meronymy relations (b) Express meronymy with common words and 43 phrases (c) Discriminate meronymy from more similar relations (d) Perceive and create novel meronymic relations./ 44 REFERENCES Anyon,D.(2001) The role of negative and positive feedback in the secondlanguage acquisition of the passe compose and impartfait The Modern Language Journal,85, pp.226-238 Bitchener, J., Young, S., & Cameron, D (2005) The effect of different typesof corrective feedback on ESL student writing Journal of Second Language Writing,14, pp.191–205 Boud,D (2000) Sustainable assessment: Rethinking assessment for thelearning society Studies in Continuing Education, 22 (2), pp.151-167 Brookhart, S (1998) How to give effective feedback to your students ELT Journal,63 (3), pp.35-37 Chaffin, Roger (1992) The Concept of a Semantic Relation, in Adrienne Lehrer & Eva Feder Kittay (eds.) Frames, Fields, and Contrasts, Hillsdale, New Jersey Law- rence Erlbaum Associates, pp 255 Crane,H.(2008) Feedback in the context of spoken language: Student'sfeedback on learning Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 73, pp.397-398 Croft, W and D.A Cruse (2004) Cognitive Linguistics Cambridge University Press Cambridge Cruse, D.A (1979) On the Transitivity of the Part- Whole Relation Journal of Linguistics, Vol.15, No.1, pp.29-38 Cruse, D.A (1986) Lexical Semantics Cambridge University Press Cambridge 10 Cruse, D.A (2000) Meaning in Language: An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics Oxford University Press Oxford 11 Eikmeyer, Hans- Jurgen and H.Rieser (1981) Meanings, Intentions, and Stereotypes A New Approach to Linguistic Semantics, in Eikmeyer, HansJurgen and H Roeser (eds.) Words, Words and New Contexts: New Approaches in Word Semantics Walter de Gruyter Press Berlin 45 12 Finch, Geoffery (2000) Linguistic Terms and Concepts Macmillan Press Limited New York 13 Grains, R and S Redman (1986) Working with Words: A Guide to Teaching and Learning Vocabulary Cambridge University Press Cambridge 14 Halliday, M.A.K (1985) Functional Grammar Hodder and Staughton Press Hong Kong 15 Kearns, K.(2000) Semantics Macmillan Press Limited London 16 Littlewood, W (1981) Communicative language teaching Cambrige University Press Cambridge 17 Long, M (1996) The role of linguistic environment in second languageacquisition ELT Journal, 1, pp.26-28 18 Lyons, J (1977) Semantics Vol.1 Cambridge University Press Cambridge 19 Lyons, J (1981) Language, Meaning and Context Fontana Press Singapore 20 Mc.Namara, E (1999) Positive Pupil Management and Motivation: Asecondary Teachers’ Guide David Fulton Publishers London 21 Murphy, Lynne (2003) Semantic Relations and the Lexicon Cambridge University Press Cambridge 22 Miller, G A and P N Joghnson- Laird (1976) Perception and Language Cambridge University Press Cambridge 23 Nguyen, B., et al (2003) BA Upgrade: English Language Teaching Methodology Van Hoa-Thong Tin Publisher Ha Noi 24 Saeed, J.I.(1997) Semantics Blackwell Publisher Oxford 25 The Oxford Universal Dictionary Illustrated (1968) Great Britain: Oxford University Press, London 26 Ur, P (1996) A course in language teaching Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Cambridge 27 Winston, M., R Chaffin and D Herrmann (1987) A Taxonymy of Part- Whole Relations Cognitive Science, Vol.11, pp 417-444 46 47 APPENDIX OBSERVATION DATA No Class Time Conversation Student: My family has person: father, mother, I Class 5F 14:06’ Sunday and my mother us have a baby in stomach 3th November Teacher: Great! A boy or a girl? 2013 Student: I not know I not care I not like it You know, baby neighbor always crying I hate it Teacher: Who is the one you love most in your family? Student 1: No one Teacher: No one? 2-4 Class 5C 18:28’ Tuesday 5th November 2013 Student 1: Yes, no one love me My mother, father shout me often Student 2: Me too Me too No one love me too They just love my brother Never shout him Student 3: Only my mum My father always work My father go home, don’t want talk to me Only mother love me Student 1: My teacher at school is not good I am not understand anything Student 2: My teacher is very good I always has 5- Class 14 5A 19:04 Wednesday 6th score high Student 3: My teacher is ugly She always punish November 2013 me Like my parents at home Student 4: My class is best in Hanoi A my friend has highest in Olympic in Hanoi Student 5: Your friend is a doctor in the future 48 Student 6: Doctor? No, must a science like Mr.Ngo Bao Chau Student 7: You not know what What is science? Your friend must live in America in the future Student 8: Mr Ngo Bao Chau learn in my school Thuc Nghiem school, you know Student 9: Oh, your school is sure very good Student 10: You are sure good too Student: In my class in school have a friend, he is “trầm cảm” Native teacher: “Trầm cảm”??? Assistant: It is “depression” in English 15 Class 5F 15:46 Sunday th 17 November 2013 Native teacher: How you know, dear? Student: He never talk anything, always silent Native teacher: He does not want to talk, sometimes because he is tired or he is busy to something He can have many reason to keep silent, dear If you not ask him, you cannot jump to the conclusion like that Student 1: Do you smell something? Kinh khung eo 16 Class 5F 16:04 Sunday Student 2: Dốt quá! Là terrible Huh, you are a dog 22rd September Nose dog 2013 Teacher: Come on, dear It is not polite and not true to say like that He is your friend, not a dog You should say sorry to your friend 17 Class 5A 18:46 Student 1: I want borrow a chair teacher? Wednesday 20th Student 2: No My class, my chair No borrow November 2013 Student 1: The chair is of the centre, not you 49 Teacher: Well, dear There are so many available chairs in our class Student 1: I want borrow a chair teacher? 18 Class 5A 18:46 Student 2: No My class, my chair No borrow Wednesday 20th Student 1: The chair is of the centre, not you November 2013 Teacher: Well, dear There are so many available chairs in our class Student 1: Teacher, Tung take my pen 19 Class 5C 18: 58 Tuesday 26th November 2013 Teacher: Tung, her pencil right? Student 2: How I know No name here, teacher I just know it on my table It is of class, not she So I can use Teacher: Now, come on Give it back to her, dear 20 16:30 Sunday Student 1: Là la Tung love Thanh, Thanh love Class 1st December Tung 5F 2013 Student 2: How, how? Student 1: They doing exercise together You see? Student: Teacher, Đức Anh break this of the centre 21 Class 5C 19:45 Tuesday (pointed to the handle of the door of the class) 10th December Teacher: This is called the handle 2013 Student: Yes, he broke the handle of the centre, teacher Student: Teacher, Kiet stop study here, right? 22 14:06 Sunday Teacher: No, he doesn’t Why you think so? Class 15th December Student: He absent a week 5F 2013 Teacher: He can have many reasons for being absent May be he is so busy with his midterm test in the school 23 Class 14: 52 Sunday Student 1: Nguyen is very bad English 50 5F 19th January 2014 Student 2: Really? Student 1: His score is “3” again Three “3” Very bad Student 1: Teacher, Minh is so lazy, He 24 Class 5F 15: 16 Sunday Student 2: No, I not, I 9th March 2014 Student 1: No? Today you not your homework again You never your homework Student 2: Lie Two times is not never 19:01 Tuesday 25 Class 11th March 5C 2014 Student 1: Teacher, Minh Anh is copy my exercise Student 2: No, I Student 1: So why you looking at my book? Teacher: Come on, please focus on your exercises Student: Teacher, you know that centre is not good 26 Class 5C 14:34 Tuesday Teacher: Really? 18th March 2014 Student: There are many students in our centre But I see no many there Teacher: Maybe, you might say that Teacher: Now, the whole class, you will describe one person in our class, then the class will guess his or her name Ok? 27- Class 28 5F 16: 01 Sunday 13th April 2014 Student 1: This is a girl She is in white now She is very rich Her mobile phone is very, very “xịn” expensive You know, she lives in Royal City Royal City is very rich Student 2: This is a boy He not careful His writing is very ugly 29 Class 5A 19: 01 Student 1: Hey, near my house have a Miss “Tây” Wednesday 23th very beautiful 51 April 2014 Student 2: Miss Tây Student 1: Yes, her hair are yellow Student 2: Uh, Tây must have hair yellow, blue eyes and very tall Student 1: Lan Thanh, could you help us this sentence? Is it correct? 19:01 30 Class Wednesday 14th 5A May 2014 Student 2: Of course Let me see Students 3: No, no see Lan Thanh Student 1: I asking Lan Thanh, not you Not touch in Student 3: Lan Thanh in my group One her nail also our group Lan Thanh, not help them We have our tasks Focus Student 1: Where are Lan Thanh study? Student 2: She is studying in Thuc Nghiem school Student 1: She must very good speaking English Student 2: Sure Our group will win with her Student 3: Sure We too have Kiet He learn at 31- Class 36 5A 18:37 Doan Thi Diem, you know Doan Thi Diem too Wednesday 21th good May 2014 Student 4: Yes, we have Thuc Nghiem, Doan Thi Diem and I am in Vinschool, I am good too Student 5: Sure I know that group Minh Anh in Tu Liem school Not good Student 6: And Phuong in a private school They are not good at English We will sure win 37 Class 5C 19:01 Tuesday Student 1: I see your mother take you class Your 30th May 2014 mother is beautiful Student 2: Yes The nose my mother is so high 52 When I grow, I will like my mother My nose is also grow high Student 1: I don’t think so You should looking at the mirror Student 1: Last weekend, I meet Bao Thy You 38- Class 39 5A 18:45 know Bao Thy, she is beautiful I am her fan Wednesday 11th Student 2: I not like her Stars is very kiêu ngạo June 2014 Student 3: Sure And she is not beautiful really All stars are use cosmetic and surgery \ 53 APPENDIX STUDENTS’ LEARNING CONDITION AT AMSLINK CENTRE Picture 1: Classroom’s view Picture 2: Classroom’s equipment 54