A contrative analysis of exclamation in english and vietnamese

Acknowledgements In the process of doing this work, I have received a lot of useful help and advices from my teachers , my parents, and my friends. First of all, I would like to express my great attitude to my own supervisor: Ng« §×nh Ph¬ng (M.A), the Dean of foreign languages Department, whose valuable ideas and advice, encouragement have helped me shape and fulfill the thesis. I also would like to give my deep thanks to all teachers in the foreign languages Department who gave some useful materials and opinions on the thesis . My thanks are also sent to my family and my friends who gave me a lot of good conditions and encouragement to complete the thesis . Finally, my sincere thanks are due to all of you who will give me some comments after reading the thesis. Vinh, May 2004. 1 Table of contents Acknowledgements Table of contents Part A: Introduction 4 I. Reasons of the study 4 II. History of the study 5 III. Aims of the study 5 IV. Methods of the study 6 V. Design of the study 6 Part B: Contents 7 Chapter 1: Theoretical preliminaries 7 1.1. Theory of sentences 7 1.2. Theory standard of speech acts Chapter 2: Exclamations in English and Vietnamese 13 2.1. The concept of exclamation 13 2.2. The English linguists’ conception of exclamation 13 2.3. The Vietnamese linguists’ conception of exclamation 14 2.4. General structures of exclamations in English and its equivalence in Vietnamese 16 2.4.1. The similarities of exclamative structures in English and in Vietnamese 16 2.4.2. The differences of exclamative structure between English and Vietnamese 18 2.5. Indirect exclamations. 29 2.6. The elements used with exclamations 29 2.6.1. Interjection 29 2.6.2. Intonation 31 2.6.3. Exclamation mark 32 2 2.7. Some typical exclamations used in special cases. 33 2.7.1. Exclamations used to express anger. 33 2.7.2. Exclamations used to express surprise, pleasure. 34 2.7.3. Exclamations used to express sympathetic. 35 Chapter 3. Some findings and suggested exercises to practice exclamation37 Part C: Conclusion. 41 References 42 3 Part a: Introduction I. Reasons of the study: It can not be denied that language is means of communication of human beings. Owning to language, people are able to understand each other in the process of working and living. We can use language to express our thoughts, emotion, state and hope to the others. From that deep understanding, human unite to conquer nature and society to make society more developed steps by steps. Up to now, English has become one of the most important international languages. Many countries in the world use English as their first language. In Vietnam, English has not been used as the first or the second language but it is used widely in many fields of life such as in politics, economy, national education system and even in daily life. And we know that both English and Vietnamese people have thoughts and emotion in common. They also have different tone of emotion such as: anger, joy, happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, despair, disgust… However, the ways of expressing it out are different. One can use gestures to show their attitude or feeling because gestures are specific body movements that carry meaning. While the others express their emotions and attitude through facial expressions. For instance: our eyes soften or look thoughtful to show our interest or the pupil can become small because we are angry or it can become large if we are excited. It is said that the eyes are the “window of the soul”. Through the eyes we can feel the emotion, states of another people. But the most basic and important means is language. It is easy to recognize the other’s feelings or attitude through their utterances. People use language to express their shock, surprise, fear, anger, admiration…These utterances are called exclamations. How can we know English people give a compliment on something or show their anger? How can we use exclamations in concrete contexts? 4 We often make confusion in using exclamations both in English and Vietnamese. Because they have syntactic forms that look like statements or question but their usages are quite different. There may be many other reasons leading to the difficulties in learning English exclamation. In the scope of the graduation thesis we want to study English and Vietnamese exclamation to find out the similarities and differences of the 2 languages in definitions, structures and usages. So we decided to choose the topic “The contrastive analysis of English and Vietnamese exclamation" II. History of study: According to “DÉn luËn ng«n ng÷” written by NguyÔn ThiÖn Gi¸p, §oµn ThiÖn ThuËt, NguyÔn Minh ThuyÕt: exclamative theory developed greatly from 18 th to 20 th century. Those who advocated this theory were Humbon, Stundan, Russo said that human’s language derived from the sounds of anger, joy, sadness, anguished cried expressed when we were moved. In some cases, interjections are signals of our emotion and thoughts. In the other one, the relationship between the sounds of words and emotive state of human is considered such as the combination of sound causing the impression in our soul that is similar to the one caused by things. The basic of this theory creats the exist of interjections and the exploitative form in the language. III. Aims of the study: - Showing the similarities and differences in structures and usages of exclamations in English and Vietnamese. - Helping Vietnamese learners of English use exclamations to express their feelings, emotion easily. - Giving out some ways to exclaim in the concrete contexts in English - Creating condition for the study later. 5 IV. Methods of the study: In this thesis we use some methods as following: - Descriptive method - Contrastive analysis - Analyzing - Collecting reference V. Design of the study: This thesis consists of 3 main parts. The first part is the introduction in which we present the reason of the study, the history of the study, the aims, the methods, and the designs of the study. The second part is the content which consists of 3 chapters. Chapter one is theoretical preliminaries which presents the basis of establishing exclamative sentences. Chapter two deals with English and Vietnamese exclamations. Chapter three deals with some findings and suggested exercises to practice English exclamations. The third part is conclusion of the thesis. 6 Part b: Contents Chapter 1: Theoretical preliminaries The basis of establishing exclamative sentences 1.1. Theory of sentences The sentence is probably the most familiar of all grammatical terms . We are introduced to it in our early school years , and it quickly becomes part of our linguistic awareness . We imagine we speak in sentences , and we teach children to write in them , making sure that they put in all the periods . It might therefore be thought that sentences are early things to identify and define . Those who learned some traditional grammar will remember the old definition of a sentences as “ a complete expression of a single thought” . It is obvious , as we look through the pager number of sentences patterns in English . These patterns can be grouped into two main types , on the basis of whether they are formed in a regular or irregular way . Regular sentences are often referred to as a major sentences , irregular ones as minor sentences . The major sentences are ones which can be broken down into a specific and predictable pattern of elements . For example: I/give/the/letter/to/Mary Minor sentences are no constructed in irregular way . They use abnormal patterns which can not be clearly analysed into a sequence of clause elements as can major sentences . minor sentences do not follow all the rules of grammar . We have some minor sentences types as follow : 1. Formulae for stereo typed social situations , such as Hello , How do you do ? Thanks and cheers! 7 2. Emotional or functional noises ( traditionally called interjections) , many of which do not follow the normal pronunciation patterns of the language such as Eh ? Ugh ? Ow? Tut tut and shh! 3. Proverbs or pithy sayings such as Easy come , easy go; 4 . Abbreviated forms used in postcards instructions or commentaries as in Wish you were her! ; Mix will ! 5. Words and phrases used as exclamations , questions and commands such as: Nice day !; Taxi ? and All abroad ! If we divided sentences into 2 types. Exclamation belongs to minor sentences . That are frequently used in every day conversation and look quite complex because they have no grammatical rules. The speaker of any language can accomplish a great many communicative tasks with the sentences of their language : They can start a conversation , order someone to do something, narrate a tale, ask for information, promise to do something at some future time, report what they know or have heard, express surprise or dismay at what this going on the about them, suggest a joint action, give permission for someone to do something, make a bet, offer something to someone and so on. For some of these uses of sentences a language will have specific syntactic constructions, or even specific forms. Such a coincidence of grammatical structure and conventional use we call a sentences type. If we consider sentences in syntactic aspect sentences may be divided in to four major syntactic classes whose use correlates with different communicative functions. a. Statements are sentences in which the subject is always present and generally precedes the verbs. They are used to confirm the existence of things or the characteristics, actions or states of things . Ex: He will come today 8 b. Questions are sentences which seek information . They fall into three main types, depending on the kind of reply they expect and or how they are constructed. Ex: - Are they ready? - Where are you going? - Will you lie travelling by train or by bus? c. Commands are sentences which instruct someone to do something. They have no overt grammatical subject and whose verb is in the imperative: Ex: - Sit down! - Don t laugh!’ d. Exclamations are sentences which have an initial phrase introduced by “what” or “how” without inversion of subject and operator. Exclamations are used to express the degree of emotion, attitude of speakers towards things or phenomenon. Ex: - What a beautiful day! Basing on syntactic, exclamation is one of four kinds of sentence that have communicative functions. And in communication, exclamation are used to express story feeling. Traditional grammars recognized four types of sentence function: Statement, question, command and exclamation some modern grammarians, especially those which work within a frame work of speech acts recognize a much larger range of functions. 1.2. Theory of speech acts: As we seen, successful communication takes place when speakers share knowledge, beliefs and assumptions and when they adhere to similar rules of cooperative interaction. Language, however is not only a vehicle to exchange 9 thoughts and ideas, we often use utterances in order to perform social actions and functions. If a teacher in a class room tells a student” I will have to inform your parents about your behaviour” ,it usually is not only a statement that imparts information, it may also have the power of a threating act. By making this statement, the teacher may also have performed a threating act. Similarly, when one friend tells another “ you look great today”; this utterance serves not only a description but functions mainly as a “compliment”. It is possible to say that since the publication of J.L Austin’s “ How to do things with words”(1962) speech act has attracted an enormous amount of attention, from linguists, philosophers, psychologists .And they come to agree that speech act theory is theory of language action that means “ speech act theory has to do with the functions and uses of language, so in the broadest since we may say that speech acts are all acts we perform through speaking all things we do when we speak” ” ”( Richard W. Schmidt and Jack C. Richards- The context of language teaching-101). According to Austin (1962), an utterance includes 3 types of speech act. What is said, the utterance, can be called the locution. What the speaker intends to communicate to the addressee is the illocution. The message that the addressee gets, his interpretation of what the speaker says is the perlocution. If the communication is successful, the illocution and the perlocution are alike or nearly alike. Speech acts can be classified according to how they affect the social interaction between speakers and hearers. The most basis categorization (Searle,1979) consists of 5 different types of speech acts: declaratives, representatives, directives, commissives, and expressives. - Declaratives (also called performatives) are speech acts that “change the world”, as a result of having been performed. - Representatives are speech acts that enable speaker to express feelings, beliefs, assertions, illustrations and the like. 10 . exclamative mood which is involved in the fifth kinds of speech act. 12 Chapter 2: Exclamation in English and in Vietnamese 2.1. The meaning of exclamatory. structures in English and in Vietnamese. a. Exlamatory structures formed by interjections. In both English and Vietnamese, interjection itself can be an exclamation