3.3. The underlying reasons for the differences in linguistic realizations of
3.3.3. The underlying reasons for the differences in linguistic realizations of deverbal
The most prominent difference between deverbal nominalization in the two languages concerning linguisticrealizationsis that though both employ nominalizers to form deverbal nominalization, in general, the English language uses affixation, specifically suffixes like “-ing”, “-ion”, “-ment” to add to the end of the verb, whereas the Vietnamese language uses separate words such as “việc”, “sự”… to add to the beginning of the verbs. What lies at the root of the difference is the fact that while English is a kind of synthetic language in which a word is often composed of multiple morphemes; Vietnamese is an isolating language with almost all words consisting of only one morpheme. Thus, a new English word of the different or even the same word class can be formed by adding a suffix or a prefix to the root word, but in order to form a new Vietnamese word, another or other words are added before or after the original one. In some cases, a Vietnamese verb can be used as a noun without any addition of any other word. Such difference between deverbal nominalization in English and Vietnamese accords closely with what Tran Ngoc Them (2008, retrieved from http://www.vanhoahoc.vn/nghien-cuu/van-hoa-hoc- ung-dung/van-hoa-giao-tiep/497.html?task=view) stated that English grammar‟s focus of attention is form while Vietnamese grammar lays emphasis on meaning.
This difference in terms of linguistic realizations between English and Vietnamese may pose a real challenge to Vietnamese learners.
Besides, as can be seen from tables 1 and 2, the number of deverbal nominalization cases in English sample articles is nearly twice as much as that in Vietnamese corpus. Specifically, the number of deverbal nominalization cases found in English and in Vietnamese sample articles are 233 and 137 respectively. This agrees with Talmy‟s view (2000:43) that in terms of conceptualization, languages belong to two “typological categories”, object-dominant languages and action-
dominant ones. This is also in accordance with what Tran Ngoc Them stated in his article of April 19th, 2008 that the Vietnamese language tends towards flexibility and action, which is expressed clearly through its grammar system. That is demonstrated through the fact that verbs and active voice tend to be used much more frequently than noun structures and the passive voice. In contrast, western languages, including English, are likely to employ more noun phrases and the active voice. Tran Ngoc Them also affirmed that the source of such distinction of the two grammatical tendencies between the Vietnamese language and languages used in western countries is due to the interrelationship between language and culture. To put it another way, culture has a great influence on how people of that culture use their language, and the culture of the country or a specific territory is also partly showed through the way the language used there. Therefore, a conclusion can be drawn that English, which is in favour of nouns, is a representative of object-dominant languages. This dissimilarity between the two languages requires that Vietnamese learners be aware of this characteristic of English grammar when they learn English so that they can get better results when they do their writing tasks.
Moreover, according to Talmy (2000:43), deverbal nominalization is a process which represents conceptual conversions between time and space. The data about the kinds of deverbalized countnouns and mass nouns found in the two groups of sample articles from tables 3 and 4 also shows that English tends towards the conceptualization of things in space, which involves the state of being unchanging (Talmy, 2000:42). However, Vietnamese, with less than half of deverbal nominalization cases compared to that of English, is likely to be in favour of conceptualization of things in terms of time - the only domain that is, according to Talmy (2000:42), basically connected with progression. Therefore, in terms of cognition, deverbalized nouns English and Vietnamese are perceived differently in relation to the concepts of space and time respectively.To put it another way, English deverbalized nouns are conceptualized as being constant, while Vietnamese ones are perceived as being in progress.
In summary, based on the analysis of the linguistic realizationsof deverbal nominalization in English and in Vietnamese in the previous part, a contrastive
analysis of deverbal nominalization between the two languages has been made. For similarity, on the whole, both of the two languages employ nominalizers in order to form nouns from verbs. Two different lists of nominalizers have been made based on the data about deverbal nominalization in the sample articles. Besides, deverbalized nouns in the two languages are similar in the sense that most of them refer to instance, process or action of the verbs, and there are certain nominizers to indicate such meanings such as “-ing” and “-ion” in English and “việc” and sự” in Vietnamese. In addition to that, a clear distinction between the linguistic realizations of deverbal nominalization in English and in Vietnamese has been drawn. First, deverbalized nouns are formed with different system of nominalizers in the two languages: suffixes in English and separate words in Vietnamese. This difference is derived from the fact that English is a synthetic language, but Vietnamese is an isolating language. Additionally, the results of the research also indicate that deverbal nominalization is more common in English than in Vietnamese. What‟s more, more deverbalized nouns in English count nouns than mass nouns, but deverbalized nouns in Vietnamese are mostly perceived as mass nouns. That also proves that Vietnamese deverbalized nouns tend to be perceived in terms of time- indicating the state of being in progress, but English ones are likely to be conceived in terms of space-indicating the state of being unchanging. The similarities and differences found between the linguistic phenomenon of deverbal nominalization in English and in Vietnamese will be the basis for the discussion and conclusion drawn in the next chapter.