Syntactic features of English noun phrases with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents

TABLE OF CONTENTS PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale English is the most popular language in the world It plays an important role in our socialeconomic life of human beings It is now the main language of books, newspapers, airports, international business and academic conferences, science technology, medicine, diplomacy and advertising In order to speed up the country's economy, and to improve living standards as soon as possible, it is very necessary for scientists, technicians and engineers to learn and acquire English so as to keep up date with the latest developments in technology taking place in the world Learning and teaching English, reading with comprehension or translating material from English into Vietnamese or vice versa, always create difficulties for learners particularly because of the differences between English and Vietnamese Among the five different types of phrases in English (namely noun phrases, verb phrases, adjective phrases, adverb phrases and prepositional phrases), noun phrases are the most common playing various syntactic functions in the sentence and clause structure: subject, object and complement (of various kinds), apposition and attribute.Without knowledge of noun phrases in English, learners could not produce comprehensible sentences In order to find out this issue, in this graduation thesis, I have decided to choose the topic "Syntactic features of English noun phrases with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents" We hope that this study will contribute a small part in teaching and translating noun phrases to Vietnamese learners 1.2 Aims of the research The purpose of this paper is to discuss the English and Vietnamese noun phrases and their impact upon teaching and learning English in Vietnamese situation It is hoped that this contrastive analysis will provide as much information as possible on English and Vietnamese noun phrases With the practical aims, it attempts to state the similarities and differences in noun phrases of the two languages in term of their internal and external structures The study draws attention to the analysis of the heads of noun phrases in the two languages, the pre and post modifications, their positions and functions of English and Vietnamese noun phrase Finally, some teaching implications are made for those who teach English as a Foreign Language to their students At the same time, some kinds of error made by Vietnamese learners due to differences in word order and functions of noun phrases between the two languages will be discussed 1.3 Scope of the research Noun phrase is an important and complicated part of English grammar in English However, due to constraints as well as the framework of a graduation thesis, it is impossible to touch all the differences and similarities in syntactic features of noun phrases of all schools In this research, I only mention some common syntactic features of English noun phrases from perspective of traditional grammar and Vietnamese noun phrases and then find out the similarities and differences between noun phrases in English and Vietnamese 1.4 Research Methods 1.4.1 Major methods and supporting methods 1.4.1.1 Major methods Descriptive research method and comparative method will be used in the study Firstly, the descriptive method is used in the first stage to give the deep and detail deseription of syntagtid features of English noun phrases with reference to Vietnamese equivalents Secondly, the comparative method will be used to find out the similarities and differences between the syntactic features of English noun phrases and Vietnamese noun phrases In this research method, survey questionnaires in form of a written test is used as one of data collection methods to evaluate the participants ability in understanding English noun phrases and translating noun phrases Then statistic method is applied to present quantitative descriptions in manageable form to simplify large amounts of data in a sensible way 1.4.1.2 Supporting methods The analytical method is used to define elements to form an English noun phrase and Vietnamese noun phrase Moreover, this method also helps to analyze syntactic features of English noun phrases with reference to Vietnamese equivalents to point out relations between them The contrastive method is applied to compare English noun phrase with reference to Vietnamese equivalents PART 2: DEVELOPMENT Theoretical background 1.1 Noun phrases in English 1.1.1 Definitions of English noun phrases By traditional, the noun phrase can be defined in many ways; however, most scholars of traditional grammar agree on the following definition which is quoted from A comprehensive grammar of the English language (Quirk and Greenbaum, 1972): "The noun phrase typically functions as subject, object, complement of the sentence and complement of the preposition phrase" It can be inferred from the definition that the functions of noun phrases bring about the recognition of noun phrase And Schmidt (1999)said that: A noun phrase is one or more words which we use in a sentence as subject, direct, indirect object, complement or prepositional complement In addition to, In Quirk and Greenbaum viewpoint(1973),the complex noun phrases cor sist of three components: the head,the premodification,and the postmodification We see that there are many different attitudes about noun phrases because this is studied from different aspects like: the function of noun phrases, role of noun phrases, or components of noun phrases However, all definitions include some common features such as components and their relationships of noun phrases 1.1.2 Structure of English noun phrases Basic noun phrases Structurally speaking, basic noun phrases consists of pronouns, numerals or nouns with articles (indefinite, definite or zero) or nouns with other closed - system items that occur before the noun head including pre - determiners, determiners and post - determiners Many linguists argue that pronouns are a special class of noun According to Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik(1972), the implication of the name as pronouns is that they replace nouns or rather whole noun phrases, since they cannot normally occur with determiners Not only can basic noun phrases consists of pronouns or nunerals, but they can also comprise a head noun with determiners or determiners modified by pre-determiners and/ or post-determiners.The head noun of a noun phrase is the central element and decisive factor in performing the syntactic functions of the whole noun phrase Complex noun phrases Complex noun phrases contain three components: pre-modification, head noun and postmodification Head noun As in the basic noun phrase, the head noun, first of all is the central element and core component of the complex noun phrase It may be count or mass noun which dictates concord and (for the most part) other kinds of congruence with the rest of the sentence outside the noun phrase Pre - modification The second component of a complex noun phrase is pre-modification, also called premodifiers, including modifiers that stand before the head noun Pre-modifiers can be closedsystem and / or open-class items Closed - system pre - modifiers are optional in the complex noun phrases Meanwhile, open -class pre-modifiers come after the closed-system ones and precede the head noun Post-modification The third important component of a complex noun phrase is post - modification, called post - modifiers, comprising all the items placed after the head These post - modifiers are mainly realized by prepositional phrases, finite clause (or relative clauses), non finite clauses, adjective phrases, noun phrases or adverbial phrases 1.1.2 Noun phrases in Vietnamese 1.2.1 Definitions of Vietnamese noun phrases Noun phrases in Vietnamese, like that of English, play a very important role in sentences English, although being a little inflectional language, has this grammatical phenomenon, especially in number Vietnamese is an un - inflectional and isolating language and the word order in the language is of special importance, relating to the word order in the noun phrase Vietnamese linguist focus on the combination between Vietnamese nouns and other modifications as well as the combination among modifications in the relationship with nouns In Vietnamese, when a noun is used to perform some functions in a sentence, some modification is often added to form a phrase Such phrases in which there is a noun acting as a head are called noun phrases According to Đỗ Thị Kim Liên:"A noun phrase is combination of words in which the noun is a central element and it has one or more subordiaate elements around to supplement gram matical meanings to itself." And in Lê Dũng's viewpoint (2002), “A noun phrase is a group of words which the beginning is a noun and its function is appositive” 1.2.2.Structure of Vietnamese noun phrases In general, a noun phrase in Vietnamese may have two parts, they are: (i) the head taken by noun, in the middle of the phrase (ii) modification is divided into two parts: pre-modification and post-modification The order of modification is never free in Vietnamese noun phrases, occurring either as premodification or post-modification These noun phrases consist of three parts In some cases, such phrases can be seen to have only two parts a.Those with pre-modification and the head b.Those with the head and post-modification Syntactic features of English noun phrases with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents 2.1 Noun phrases in English 2.1.1 Structure of English noun phrases In describing noun phrases we need to distinguish the following constituent parts: The head, the pre-modification and the post-modification 2.1.1.1 The head According to Randolphin Quirk in A comprehensive grammar of the English language, 1972, 1238 "The head, around which (for the most part) of the other constituents cluster and which dictates concord with other parts of the sentences" 2.1.1.2 Pre-modification The pre- modification comprises all the items placed before the head It can be formed by: a Pre-determiners - All, both, half These pre-determiners can occur only before articles or demonstratives but, since they are themselves quantifiers, they not occur with the following “quantitatives” determiners: every, (n)either, some, any, no, enough All, both, and half have of-constructions, which are optional with nouns and obligatory with personal pronouns b Determiners -Article: the, a, an -Possessive adjectives: my, our, their, etc -Interrogative pronouns:which, who, that, etc -Demonstrative pronouns: this, that, etc c Post-determiners -Cardinal numerals: Apart from one, which can co-occur only with singular count nouns, all cardinal numerals (two,three,etc) co-occur only with plural count nouns: E.g.I have one brother and two sisters -Ordinal numerals: except first, co-occur only with count nouns All ordinals usually precede any cardinal numbers in the noun phrase: E.g My classroom is on the second floor -Quantifiers There are two small groups of closed-system quantifiers: (1) many, (a)few, and several co-occur only with plural count nouns: (2) much and (a) little co-occur only with non-count nouns: Several is rarely (and much virtually never) preceded by a determiner, and in the case of few and little, there is a possitive/negative contrast according as the indefinite article is or is not used: a few oranges(=several) few oranges(=not many) a little bread(= some) little bread(=not much) d Pre-modification by adjectives E.g: He is a hard worker e Pre-modification by - ing participles E.g - The approaching train is from Liverpool f Pre-modification by – ed participles Most -ed participles have passive meaning, and only a few will easily admit the permanent reference that will permit pre-modifying use.We may contrast the participle of the stative verb with that of the dynamic verb g Pre-modification by nouns In most cases, premodifying nouns correspond to postmodification with prepositional phrases h Pre-modification by genitive The illustration of the genitive as premodifier with restrictive function i Pre-modification by adverb and other phrases Another minor type of pre-modification is the adverb phrase j Pre-modification by sentence 2.1.1.3 Post-modification a Post-modification by finite clauses We distinguish two major types of finite clauses as noun- phrase postmodifiers,relative clauses and appositive clauses b Post-modification by non finite clauses (i) Post - modification by present participle clauses: Post-modification of the noun phrase is possible with all three of the non-finite clause types: -ing participle, -ed participle and infinitive clauses The correspondence between -ing clauses and relative clauses is limited to those relative clauses in which the relative pronoun is subject (ii) Post modification by infinitive clauses (iii) Post modification by past participle clauses: c Post - modification by prepositional phrases 2.1.2 Syntactic functions of English noun phrases Randolph Quirk et al (1980) says "the functions of noun phrases, as subiects, objects, complements or appositive in English sentence structures are diverse" Some other functions of English noun phrases are prepositional complement, adverbial, adjective complement 2.2 Noun phrases in Vietnamese 2.2.1 Structure of Vietnamese noun phrases Noun phrases in Vietnamese, like that of English language, play a very important role in sentences Vietnamese linguists focus on the combination among modifications in the relationship with nouns Like in English, in Vietnamese when a noun is used to perform some grammatical function in a sentence, some modifications are often added to form a phrase Such phrases in which there is a noun acting as the head are called noun phrases In general, a noun phrase in Vietnamese has two parts, they are (i) the head taken by noun, in the middle of the phrase (ii) modification is divided into two parts: pre-modification and post-modification 2.2.1.1.The head The head of a noun phrase in Vietnamese may consist of two parts (head one-hl and head twoh2) Head one is used to denote units, accordingly they are also called unit words whereas head two to express things 2.2.1.2 Pre – modification When one comes to consider the premodification of noun phrases in Vietnamese,three points need special attention.They are the classifiers,quantity words and the order 2.2.1.3 Post – modification The noun phrases in Vietnamese are post - modified by noun, noun phrases, verbs, adjectives, adjectival phrases, ordinal numbers, quantity words and clauses 2.2.2 Functions of Vietnamese noun phrases Vietnamese noun phrases also has the functions of nouns as subject, predicate, adverbial phrase, apposition and complement Comparisons between syntactic features of English noun phrases and their Vietnamese equivalents 3.1 In terms of structure 3.1.1.The heads of noun phrases 1.13 The head of English noun phrases often consists of a word, which is a content word such as a beautiful girl (“girl” is the head) It can be either a noun or a pronoun It can not generally occur with pre-modification although a restrictive pre-modification may sometimes occur On the contrary, a head in Vietnamese noun phrase may consist of two sub-parts (head one and (i) (ii) (iii) head two), and the head of noun phrases may occur with three variants: A form with two parts, head one and head two A form with head one only(head two is absent) A form with head two only (head one is absent) For example: a horse (the head is only one word) but in Vietnamese we have ngựa (the head is two words) “one girl” we can not say “một gái", but we must say “một cô gái” “one fish" we can not say "một cá”, but we must say “một cá” “one book” we can not say "một sách", but we must say "một sách” 3.1.2.Pre-modification We have seen that pre-modification in English noun phrases can be formed by: predeterminers, determiners, post-determiners, adjectives, participles, genitives, noun, adverbial phrases, sentences Now, we compare with Vietnamese ones, we have a comparison about some following typical items Generally speaking, those which are pre-modification in noun phrases in English are post-modifiers in Vietnamese noun phrases, except for types of words, i.e identifier or classifier cái, and quantity markers such as hai= two,vài =some e.g Hai sinh viên (two students) Cái tường (the wall) Vài sách (some books) Adjectives As far as adjectives are concerned, it is worth mentioning that they function as premodifiers in English but as post-modifiers in Vietnamese Firstly, if in a pre-modification in an English noun phrase, there is one adjective, it mostly stands right before the head The situation in Vietnamese is quite opposite, since such modifiers stand right after the head The pattern found in Vietnamese seems to be more typical of S-V-O Vietnamese languages than that found in English Participles In the case of premodification by participles in English, they correspond to structures of post-modification in Vietnamese We can see the parallel order in the two languages In English, participles are placed before heads of noun phrases used as adjectives (i) With present participles, in Vietnamese, there is a word “đang"–"ing- form" which is often added between the head and the modification E.g A sleeping child (Một đứa trẻ ngủ) (ii) With past participles, there are two situations a If modification involves only one word, one-to-one parallelism can be seen in the two languages, i.e past participles which stand before a head in English correspond to a form placed after a head of a noun phrase in Vietnamese b If the modification consists of two words in English noun phases, the corresponding modification is placed after the head of the noun phrase in Vietnamese, but the order may vary Genitives One type of pre-modification in English is in the genitive case English noun phrases in genitives are marked by an's added to the final word (not necessarily the head) to indicate possession In Vietnamese, however, there is no case comparable to this It has to used the word “của”- “of” instead Nouns As to modification by nouns, we can see that this occurs in both languages The difference is once more position of modifier in relation to the heads of noun phrases In English, they stand before the head While in Vietnamese, they are placed after the head However, it is easy for learners to learn the order because it is paralleled in the two languages Quantity In English as well as in Vietnamese, cardinal numbers and quantifiers, are used as premodification E.g The two children (Hai đứa trẻ) At the same time, we see that the order of words in these noun phrases is the same in the two languages E.g The four cats (Bốn mèo) But one point should be mentioned here In English,“every” and “all" can not co-occur However, in Vietnamese, the two equivalent forms: tất cả-“all”, mọi-“every” are used together E.g Tất người phải học Ordinal numbers, on the other hand, in the two languages are quite different In Vietnamese, they are always placed after the head when modifying it whereas in English, in a noun phrase, ordinal numbers always have the preceding position E.g Tầng thứ hai = The second floor In short, in comparing English pre-modification of noun phrases with their Vietnamese equivalents, one can see that Vietnamese pre-modification is much more widely used than English ones It is much more varied than the English pre-modification in its meaning and its positions 3.1.3.Post-modification 10 Relative clauses In two languages, relative clauses or dependent clauses are used as post-modification of noun phrases and they are also similar in structure The only difference lies in the use of relative pronouns There are many cases where relative words must be used in English, whereas in Vietnamese, they are optional.This is true to restrictive relative clauses with relative words as subjects Let us have a look at the following example: This is the girl who is teaching my daughter Đây cô gái (mà) dạy học However, when restrictive clauses with relative words as objects or adverbials are used as post-modification of noun phrases, the relative words can be omitted in both languages In non-restrictive clauses, on the contrary, relative words are compulsory in both English and Vietnamese Yet, in Vietnamese, this dependent clause is often replaced by an apposition Non - finite clause Non-finite clauses in both languages serve as post-modification of noun phrases, however, they are used in different ways And as a matter of fact, non-finite clauses are much more common in English than in Vietnamese In Vietnamese, passive voice can be found and to indicate where it is used,"bị" or "được" is called for "Bị" shows that the action implies bad will and it is affected by the objective reason while "được” means good will However,Vietnamese people have a preference for active voice.Therefore, even when they have to use the passive voice, they often include active voice E.g The booked published by First News = Cuốn sách First News xuất For many linguists, they would not call this type of clause "non- finite" as there is no such term in Vietnamese In fact, this is one example of adjective dependent clause or relative clause in which the relative pronoun is omitted Prepositional phrases as post-modification Prepositional phrases, as postmodifiers of noun phrases, in both languages are quite similar in meaning and structure Tourists from America (Khách du lịch từ Mỹ đến.) Yet, there is still a difference as prepositions in English have the purely syntactic function of relating verbs, adjectives, and nouns to their objects or complements Prepositions in Vietnamese, on the other hand, are different In some cases, no prepositions are used and the choice of prepositions is also different, especially to the "of-genetive" In Vietnamese, the word "của" has the tendency to be omitted 3.2 In terms of function Both English and Vietnamese noun phrases have functions as subject, complement and adverbials 11 a Both English and Vietnamese noun phrases function as subject: In English : The girl in red dress is my sister.(S) In Vietnamese: Con người Việt Nam tốt bụng.(S) b Both English and Vietnamese noun phrases function as complement: In English: She is a good student (C) In Vietnamese: Tơi có hai chị gái (C) c Both English and Vietnamese noun phrases function as adverbial: However, there are some differences between the functions of English noun phrases and Vietnamese noun phrases English noun phrases can function as object but in Vietnamese it is complement For example: In English: My mother has just bought a new car.(O) But in Vietnamese: Mẹ vừa mua xe mới.(C) The function of English noun phrases as subject complement but in Vietnamese, this function is predicate Eg: In English: Lan is a beautiful girl (Cs) In Vietnamese: Lan cô gái xinh đẹp ( Predicate) Applications 4.1 For teachers teaching and translating noun phrases It is obvious that the knowledge of English noun phrases is important and necessary in studying English, especially in terms of translation in order to help students overcome the possible mistakes when they learn English noun phrases and translate English noun phrases Apart from careful explanation on the structure, the word order and the syntactic function of English noun phrases, the similarities and differences between the syntactic features of English noun phrases and Vietnamese noun phrases, the teacher may suggest some types of exercises with the hope that it will help students to practice using the English noun phrases and translating English noun phrases more effectively 4.2 For students Vietnamese students sometimes spend a lot of time to find the English equivalents for the expressions of Vietnamese head such as "cái, con, chiếc, " This is due to the difference between the heads of the noun phrases of the two languages, in which Vietnamese head may consists of two head: head one and head two, whereas English head consistsof only one word Therefore, it should be made clear to Vietnamese noun phrases have two parts,and in which cases head in Vietnamese noun phrases have two parts,and in which cases head consist of one.It is worth being done of Vietnamese as well for any translator 4.3 Error analysis 12 Firstly, Vietnamese students may omit the articles “a/ an”or “the”in the English noun phrases Errors of this type are very typical because in Vietnamese there are not articles.That's why it is one of the focal points the teachers to take much concern in their teaching tasks so that the learners can be made free from any confusion of articles in English noun phrases Secondly, they may produce sentences with wrong words order This may be caused by the interference between Vietnamese and English It is the fact that in a pre-modifier in English noun phrases, adjectives mostly start right before the head, but the situation in Vietnamese noun whose adjectives are situated right after the head is opposite.The reason why students make this mistake is that they use grammar or vocabulary incorrectly Because of the negative transfer of their mother tongue in the use of noun phrase,they translate word by word What's more, they not master the orders of words to form noun phrases in English, so they have difficulty in using them and therefore they make mistakes in translating English noun phrases into Vietnamese and vice versa PART 3: CONCLUSION English and Vietnamese noun phrases are very important in sentences However, they often make learners or users to be troubled in using them, particularly in translating noun phrases This paper has implemented detailed description and analysis on the syntactic features of English noun phrases with reference to Vietnamese equivalents My study has pointed out the similarities and differences between the syntactic features of English noun phrases and Vietnamese noun phrases Theoretically, the study provided a comprehensive and useful knowledge about the syntactic features of English noun phrases with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents Moreover, the similarities and differences between syntactic features of English and Vietnamese noun phrases are very helpful Practically, the study has some useful suggestions in teaching and translating English noun phrases for teachers and students because there are some differences in the use of English noun phrases and Vietnamese noun phrases References Betty Schrampfer Azar (2005) Understanding and using English grammar Longman Fromkin, V.et al (1990).An Introduction to Language.2nd edition London Halliday, M.A.K (2004) An introduction to Functional Grammar Oxford university press Jacobs, A.Roderick (1995) English Syntax-A Grammar for English Language Professionals Oxford: Oxford University Press Leech, G & Svartvik, J (1975).A communicative Grammar of English Singapore: Longman Nguyen Hoa Lac An Outline of Syntax- HCMC University of Education –English 13 Noams Chomsky (1957) Syntactic Structures Mouton Publisher The Hague-Paris – New York Quirk, Greenbaum et al (1972) A comprehensive grammar of the English language, Longman 14 ... used to define elements to form an English noun phrase and Vietnamese noun phrase Moreover, this method also helps to analyze syntactic features of English noun phrases with reference to Vietnamese. .. "Syntactic features of English noun phrases with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents" We hope that this study will contribute a small part in teaching and translating noun phrases to Vietnamese. .. common features such as components and their relationships of noun phrases 1.1.2 Structure of English noun phrases Basic noun phrases Structurally speaking, basic noun phrases consists of pronouns,