A study into words, idioms denoting 'richness' and 'poorness' in enghish and their vietnamese equivalents

1.1.1.1.1 VINH UNIVERSITY FOREIGN LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT NGUYỄN VĂN THIÊNG A STUDY INTO WORDS, IDIOMS DENOTING ‘RICHNESS’ AND ‘POORNESS’ IN ENGLISH AND THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS (NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC TỪ VÀ THÀNH NGỮ TIẾNG ANH CHỈ SỰ GIÀU, NGHÈO VÀ SỰ TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG CỦA CHÚNG TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT) GRADUATION THESIS FIELD: SEMANTICS Vinh, 2010 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to great supports from my lectures, my family and my friends, therefore I could complete my thesis. First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Vo Thi Hong Minh (M.A), who gave me valuable advice, guidance and suggestion in process of my writing, without which my thesis would have still remained uncompleted. I would also like too express my sincere thanks to all of my teachers in the Foreign Language Department of Vinh University for their Lectures on the area, which enable me to get a lot of theoretical as well as practical knowledge. Finally, I am very grateful to my parents and my friends who are always by my side in order to help and encourage me. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ……………………………………………………. I TABLE OF CONTENTS……………………………………………………… Ii ABBREVIATIONS……………………………………………………………… V PART A : INTRODUCTION………………………………………………… 1 1. Rationale to choosing the subject……………………………………………… 1 2. Aims of the study………………………………………………………………. 1 3. Subjects of the study…………………………………………………………… 2 4. Methods of study………………………………………………………………. 2 5. Design of the study…………………………………………………………… 2 PART B : INVESTIGATION… 4 CHAPTER 1 : THEORETICAL BACKGROUND………………………… . 4 1.1 Word………………………………………………………………………… 4 1.2 Word formation………………………………………………………………. 4 1.2.1 Definition…………………………………………………………………… 4 1.2.2 Types of word formation…………………………………………………… 5 1.2.2.1 Inflection…………………………………………………………………. 5 1.2.2.2 Derivation ……………………………………………………………… . 6 1.2.2.3 Compounding ……………………………………………………………. 6 1.3 Word meaning……………………………………………………………… 6 1.3.1 Grammatical meaning……………………………………………………… 7 1.3.2 Lexical meaning……………………………………………………………. 8 1.3.2.1 Denotation ……………………………………………………………… 9 1.3.2.2 Connotation………………………………………………………………. 9 1.4. Polysemy…………………………………………………………………… 10 1.5. Synonymy……………………………………………………………………. 11 1.5.1 Definition…………………………………………………………………… 11 1.5.2 Types of synonymy………………………………………………………… 11 1.6 Antonymy…… ……………………………………………………………… 12 1.6.1 Definition…………………………………………………………………… 13 1.6.2 Classification……………………………………………………………… 13 1.7 Collocation…………………………………………………………………… 14 1.8 Idioms………………………………………………………………………… 15 1.9 Summary…………………………………………………………………… 16 CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY INTO WORDS, IDIOMS DENOTING RICHNESS AND THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS……………… 17 2.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………… . 17 2.2 The investigation into the word ‘rich’……………………………………… . 17 2.2.1 Grammatical Features of ‘rich’…………………………………………… 17 2.2.1.1 Syntactic Function……………………………………………………… 17 2.2.1.2 Morphological features…………………………………………………… 18 2.2.2 Semantics of ‘ rich’………………………………………………………… 19 2.2.2.1 Having a lot of money……………………………………………………. 19 2.2.2.2 Yielding large returns productive or fertile………………………………. 20 2.2.2.3 Having an abundant supply………………………………………………. 20 2.3 The investigation into other words denoting ‘richness’……………………… 21 iii 2.3.1 Adjectives denoting richness (ADRs)……………………………………… 21 2.3.1.1 Having a lot of money……………………………………………………. 21 2.3.1.2 Having a lot abundant supply…………………………………………… 24 2.3.2 Nouns Denoting Richness (NDRs)…………………………………………. 26 2.3.3 Verbs Denoting Richness (VDRs)………………………………………… 31 2.4 Idioms denoting richness (IDRs)…………………………………………… 32 2.5Summary……………………………………………………………………… 33 CHAPTER 3: THE STUDY INTO WORDS , IDIOMS DENOTING POORNESS AND THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS……………… 35 3.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………… . 35 3.2 The investigation into the word ‘poor’……………………………………… 35 3.2.1 Grammatical features of ‘poor’…………………………………………… 35 3.2.1.1 Syntactic functions……………………………………………………… 35 3.2.1.2 Morphological features…………………………………………………… 36 3.2.2 Semantics of ‘poor’………………………………………………………… 37 3.2.2.1 Lacking the money……………………………………………………… 37 3.2.2.2 Lacking resources or the means of subsistence…………………………………………… 38 3.3 The investigation into other words denoting ‘poorness’…………………… . 38 3.3.1 Adjectives denoting ‘poorness’ (ADPS)…………………………………… 38 3.3.1.1 Lacking the money………………………………………………………. 39 3.3.1.2 Lacking resources or the means of subsistence………………………… 40 3.3.2 Nouns denoting poorness (NDPs)…………………………………………. 43 3.3.3 Verbs denoting poorness (VDPs)………………………………………… 46 3.4 Idioms denoting poorness (IDPs)……………………………………………. 48 3.5 Summary……………………………………………………………………… 48 PART C : CONCLUSION… ………………………………………………… 50 1. Recapitulation…………………………………………………………………. 50 2. Implications of the study ……………………………………………………… 51 2.1 To EFL teaching and learning……………………………………………… . 52 2.2 To translation from English into Vietnamese and vice versa………………… 52 3. Suggestions for further studies………………………………………………… 53 REFERENCES………………………………………………………………… 54 APPENDIX………………………………………………………………………. 56 iv ABBREVIATIONS adj : adjective adv : adverb ADRs : Adjectives denoting richness ADPs : Adjectives denoting poorness EFL : English as a Foreign Language E.g : For example IDRs : Idioms Denoting Richness IDPs : Idioms Denoting Poorness n : noun NDRs : Nouns denoting richness NDPs : Nouns denoting poorness v : verb VDPs : Verbs denoting poorness VDRs : Verbs denoting richness E-V DICT: English – Vietnamese Dictionary WDRs: Words Denoting Richness WDPs : Words Denoting Poorness v PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale of choosing the subject English has become the world’s global language. Around one in five of the world’s population speaks English, and English has become the language of inter national commerce, popular culture and the internet. English has played a very important role in bringing people from different countries closer and closer, thus yielding great mutual understanding. The vocabulary of English consists of several hundred thousand words, and without an extensive English vocabulary, communication in English just can not occur in a meaningful way. In addition, a good understanding of English is essential for the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language. In fact, the status of vocabulary on a curriculum has been considerably entranced, partly as a result of the development of the communicative approaches to language teaching and partly through the stimulus of comprehension based methods. Also, with respect to the translation work from English into Vietnamese or from Vietnamese to English, the author believes that the choice of English words is crucial value for creating equivalence on the translation. The translators are primarily concerned with communicating the overall meaning of a stretch of language. To achieve this, they need start by decoding the units and structures which carry the meaning, of which the words are the smallest units that can stand on their own and possess individual meanings. Together with the importance of vocabulary in communication, language teaching and learning and translation, one more reason for the research is that ‘richness’ and ‘poorness’ are the popular daily topics and maybe expressed in different ways so the author would like to find out the ways of the English WDRs and WDPs in using in particular situation. The above reason has inspired us to choose the subject entitled “ A study into words, idioms denoting ‘richness’, ‘poorness’ and their Vietnamese equivalents”. 2. Aims of the study The first aim of this study is to provide readers, especially English learners, with fundamental understandings about real-life using of words, idioms denoting ‘richness’ and ‘poorness’ . 1 The second aim is to study the meanings of words, idioms in English and their Vietnamese equivalents. The third aim is that through this study, we do hope to be able to offer some possible types of exercises to improve the learners’ understanding and using words, idioms referring to ‘richness’ and ‘poorness’. 3. Subjects of the study a. Words, idioms b. English words, idioms denoting richness and poorness c. Their Vietnamese equivalents. 4. Methods of study To achieve the above-mentioned aims, the author uses following methods: - Collecting words, idioms referring to richness and poorness in English from different dictionaries and then sorting them out. - Searching, reading and reviewing books, materials related to the study. - Classifying words, idioms according to their semantic features using systematic method. - Giving some applications and suggesting a number of exercises. 5. Design of the study. The study consists of three main parts: Part A: Introduction This part includes the rationale, aims, subjects, methods and design of the study. Part B: Development This part comprises three chapters. Chapter 1, as implied by the title “Theoretical background’, provides the theoretical notions necessary for and relevant to the scope of the study, covering a series of concepts ranging from words, word-formation, word- meaning, polysemy, synonym, antonym, collocations and idioms. Chapter 2 and 3 make up more specifically focused part of the study. Chapter 2- “The investigation into the words, idioms denoting ‘richness and their Vietnamese equivalents’” and chapter 3 –“The investigation into the words, idioms denoting ‘poorness and their Vietnamese 2 equivalents’” are concerned with the grammatical features including syntactic functions and morphological features; the semantic structures of ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ contain in chapter 2 and 3. The idioms denoting ‘richness’ and ‘poorness’ and their Vietnamese equivalents are also provided in chapter 2,3. Part C: Conclusion In this part, the author provides the recapitulation, implications of the study to EFL teaching/ learning and to translation from English to Vietnamese and vice versa and some suggestions for further studies. 3 PART B: INVESTIGATION CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1. Word The term “word” appears to be a simple concept, but the question “what is a word?” is extremely difficult to define. In fact, many definitions of words in different approaches have been defined by famous linguists. Some linguists refer to orthography; some refer to syntactic; some refer to semantics and others refer to phonology to define the word, but they all are not satisfactory. A word has been syntactically defined as “a minimum free sentence” by Bloomfield (1933 : 178, quoted in Van Lam 2002 : 7). According to Arnold (1986), “the word has many different aspects. It has a sound form because it is a certain arrangement of morphemes, it has its morphological structure, being also a certain arrangement of morphemes, when used in actual speech, and it may occur in different word forms, different syntactic functions and signal various meanings”. The definition that seems to be the most satisfactory is as in Hoang Tat Truong (1993 :11), stating that “A word is a dialectal unity of form and concept, independent units of language to form a sentence by itself”, for example, book, bookish, unlucky, run, go, white - wash, etc. 1.2. Word formation 1.2.1. Definition According to Hoang Tat Truong (1993: 15), “word–formation is the process of building new words from the material already existing in the language according to certain structural and semantic patterns and formulate.” “Word formation is that branch of the science of language which studies the pattern on which a language forms new lexical units, i.e. words. Word formation can only be concerned with composites, which are analyzing both formally and semantically.” (Marchand, 1969: 2) The subject matter of word-formation is of course not simple words but the ones that are analyzable structurally and semantically. There are some types of word formation such as compounding, shortening, borrowing, conversion, etc. 4 1.2.2. Types of word formation According to Hoang Tat Truong (1993:14), morpheme can be divided into two types: root morpheme and affixational morpheme. The root morpheme is also called the lexical morpheme or simply the root. It is the primary element of the word and conveys its essential lexical meaning. He also states that “root morpheme are, in general, free morphemes because they can function independently”. Affixational morpheme falls into two types: inflectional and derivational morphemes. We will discuss these types in turn: 1.2.2.1. Inflection According to Nguyen Thi Van Lam (2002:13), “inflectional morpheme help to produce from the root of a given lexeme all the word-forms of that lexeme, with are syntactically determined.” “Inflection is a general grammatical process which combines words and inflectional affixes (always suffixes in English) to produce alternative grammatical forms of words. (Howard Jackson, 2002:70) The addition of an inflectional morpheme to the root cannot result in a new lexeme or a change in grammatical categories (noun, verb, adjective or adverb). For example, the addition of different inflectional morphemes such as s (third person present singular), -ing (present particular participle) and –ed (past tense) to the root of the lexeme ‘work’ can create different word-forms of that lexeme: works, working, and worked, respectively. These word-forms are still verbs with different aspects of the grammatical function. There are some characteristics of inflection, which can be attached to adjective and some adverbs (-er; comparative, and – est; superlative), nouns (-s; plural and-’s: possessive), verbs (-s: third person present singular, -ing: present participle, -ed: past tense and-ed/ -en: past participle). One of most important characteristics of inflectional suffixes is that they tend to lend themselves to paradigms that apply to the language as bellow: Nouns: Base form Stem + plural Stem + possessive Plural + possessive 5