2.2.4.1. Adjectives in Vietnamese
As adjectives in English we have just discussed, adjectives in Vietnamese are words that describe a person or thing. More specifically, adjectives are words that indicate characteristics, properties of things, actions, states, for example: yêu, thích, ghét, ngọt....Adjectives can be combined with words đã, sẽ, đang, cũng, vẫn,… to form adjective phrases , for example: vẫn đẹp, đã ngọt, vẫn yêu, etc. Adjectives can be predicates and subjects in sentences; however, the ability to be a predicate of adjectives is more limited than verbs. There are two main types of adjectives:
adjectives of relative characteristics (can be combined with degree words) and adjectives indicating absolute characteristics (cannot be combined with degree words).
For semantic function, adjectives in Vietnamese are nearly as same as those in English. They also describe feelings, things, characteristics, size, shape, measurement, etc. They express a judgment or value, either. For instances: buồn, giận, vuông, tròn, hay, thú vị…
According to Nguyen Huu Quynh (2001) in “Ngu Phap Tieng Viet”, a work is considered as an adjective when it describes characteristics, features, shapes, colours of something or somebody, such as mệt mỏi, cao, xanh, đỏ, vui buồn…
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While as for Nguyen Tai Can (1999) in “Ngu Phap Tieng Viet”, adjectives are words expressing characteristics about quality, property, colour, smell, taste and relationship between noun and pronoun.
According to Nguyen Minh Thuyet at al (2014) in “Tieng Viet 5”, in term of semantic functions, there are two notable types of adjectives in Vietnamese:
Adjectives indicating the general properties without degree (xanh, tím, sâu, vắng,...) and Adjectives indicating properties that determine the level, the highest level such as (xanh lè, tím ngắt, sâu hoắm, vắng tanh,...). He also mentioned that based on the general meaning, adjectives are divided into categories:
Adjectives indicate value:
Adjectives indicate psychological characteristics: hiền, ác...
Adjectives indicate the quality of things: tốt, xấu, hay, dở...
Adjectives indicate physiological characteristics: ốm, yếu, khoẻ...
Adjectives of color: đen, trắng, vàng...
Adjectives indicate physical properties: dẻo, cứng...
Adjectives indicate the taste: thơm, hôi, mặn, ngọt...
Adjectives of size: to, nhỏ...
Adjectives only qualitative: cao, thấp...
For syntactic functions, adjectives in Vietnamese are not so complicate as English, specifically:
Vietnamese adjectives almost always come after nouns.
For examples:
Con mèo ốm Con trăn dài Cục tẩy hồng
Noticeably, Vietnamese adjectives do not occur right after the verb but the subject.
For example:
Chị gái tôi xinh.
23 Cục gôm trắng.
Cô ấy mệt.
In some cases, we can find that a noun also stand before an adjective, for instance, ‘xanh lá cây’ or ‘hươu cao cổ’. In these cases, we have to see that these are adjective phrases with ‘xanh’ and ‘cao’ are the main words. The nouns ‘lá cây’ and ‘cổ’ here are the modifiers of which the main function is to make clear the meaning for the adjectives.
As in English, if there are many adjectives appear in a sentence, they can be followed these suggesting orders:
1) Universal quantifier : tất cả, cả … 2) Numerative: một, hai, đôi, những…
3) Classifier: cái, con…
4) Head noun: bàn tay, trái cam…
5) Subhead noun: thiết bị…
6) Material: thiếc, gỗ…
7) Origin/ Nationality: Trung Quốc…
8) Size: lớn, nhỏ…
9) Shape/ Length: vuông, dài…
10) Age: cũ, mới…
11) Quality/ Opinion: hấp dẫn, hữu dụng…
12) Colour: đen, đỏ…
13) Ordinary number: thứ nhất, thứ hai, đầu tiên…
14) Determiner: đó, kia…
15) Possessive: của tôi, của anh…
For example:
Tất cả những cái thùng thiếc Trung Quốc cũ màu nâu kia đều của tôi.
Position of Adjectives in Vietnamese
Table 3: Position of adjectives in Vietnamese
Measure word + Noun + Adjectives + this ( này)/ that ( kia)
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Let's now capitalise on this knowledge about positions of adjectives to translate the phrase this book cover. Given that cover translates into bìa and we have already known that book translates into sách, this translates into này, what's your translation for the phrase?
If your translation is sách bìa này or quyển sách bìa này or the likes, I believe you understand the materials well so far although it's not the correct answer yet. Let's ask a couple of questions to clarify the translation process: what's the main noun in this phrase? In other words, are we talking about book or cover? It's cover, right?
Then we need to find out the measure word for this principal noun. It's cái.
The next question: book functions like an adjective in that it modifies the main noun cover, doesn't it? Then, our formula right above gives us the following translation:
Translation:
Table 4: Translation for example
measure_word "cover" "book" "this"
Cái bìa sách này
2.2.4.2. Adjective phrases in Vietnamese
2.2.4.2.1. Definition of the phrase in Vietnamese
In Vietnamese, phrases consisting of two or more words and freely associated with each other according to certain apparent grammatical relations and not containing the word relations at the beginning.
Elements in a smallest Vietnamese phrase can have the following three common types of syntactic relation:
The relationship between the subject and the predicate about grammar, referred to as subject-predicate relation (quan hệ chủ - vị)
Relationship between the main element and secondary element about grammar, referred to as principal - auxiliary relation (quan hệ chính - phụ)
The relationship between two grammatical equality factors, called the coordinative relation (quan hệ đẳng lập)
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Corresponding to 3 types of syntactic relation, there are 3 types of phrase types:
Subject-predicate phrases (Cụm từ chủ vị)
Coordinative phrases (Cụm từ đẳng lập)
Principal-auxiliary phrases (Cụm từ chính phụ)
Phrases are often named after the word type of the main element in the phrase, in Vietnamese; we may encounter the following types of phrases:
Noun phrases: phrases with nouns as the main elements, for examples::
Những chú công nhân ấy, mấy anh này ...
Verb phrases: phrases with verbs as the main elements, for examples: hãy đưa đây, đã ăn rồi ...
Adjective phrases: phrases with adjectives as the main elements, for examples: rất giỏi, giàu kinh nghiệm…
Number phrases: phrases with numbers as the main elements, for examples:
chừng 5 phút, khoảng 30 tuổi,…
Pronoun phrases: phrases with pronouns as the main elements, for examples:
tất cả chúng tôi đây,...
Each type of phrase, usually, can be divided into 3 distinct elements:
Pre-modifier (Phần phụ trước): precede the main element/ the head.
Head (Phần trung tâm): is the main element/ the head.
Post-modifier (Phần phụ sau): occur after the main element/ the head In its operation, the phrase may be absent the premodifier or the postmodifier 2.2.4.2.2. Definition of Adjective phrases in Vietnamese
In the Vietnamese language, adjective phrases, also known as “cụm tính từ”, are principal-auxiliary phrases with adjectives as the central element and one or some auxiliary elements. For examples: sáng vằng vặc; vẫn có màu đỏ chói, sun sun như con đỉa, chần chẫn như cái đòn càn, bè bè như cái quạt thóc, sừng sững như cái cột đình, tun tủn như cái chổi sể cùn, rất giỏi, giàu kinh nghiệm, etc.
As stated by Diệp Quang Ban, the formation of an adjective phrase is built up from three particular components: “phần trung tâm” (Head), “phần phụ trước (Pre-
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modifier) and “phần phụ sau” (Post-modifier). To sum up, we can illustrate the structure as follow:
Table 5: The formation of an adjective phrase
Phần phụ trước (Pre-modifier) + Phần trung tâm (Head) + Phần phụ sau (Post- modifier)
In fact, the adjective phrase can only have the head and the Premodifier or the Postmodifier
Table 6: The adjective phrase in examples
Pre-modifier Head Post-modifier
đều cao 1m60
sẽ Xinh lắm
rất hay
đẹp quá
2.2.4.2.3. Structure of adjective phrases inVietnamese
The structure of the adjective phrase also consists of 3 parts: the Pre-modifier, the Head and the Post-modifier
Table 7: Full structure of the adjective phrases in Vietnamese Pre-modifier + Head + Post-modifier
The head (Phần trung tâm)
The center of the adjective phrase is the adjective. The adjective subcategories all have the ability to be the central part (the head) of the adjective phrase.
For example:
Vẫn còn nguyên đó Quả bóng đang to thêm Bầu trời hôm nay cao vời vợi Chiếc xe này máy còn tốt lắm.
The Pre-modifier (Phần phụ trước)
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The Pre-modifiers of the adjective phrase are usually from adverds, they can add the meaning of time (đã, sẽ, vừa, mới…), or the meaning of affirmation, negation (không, chưa, chẳng…), or the level meaning (rất, hơi, khá…)
For example:
đang còn mới rất chăm chỉ vẫn xinh đẹp
The Post-modifier (Phần phụ sau)
The Post-modifiers of the adjective phrase can be words, expressions, subject- predicate structure, and coordination. The Post-modifiers of the adjective phrase can indicate the position (này, kia, ấy, nọ,…), the comparison ( như…), the level ( lắm, quá,…), scope or cause of characteristics or properties.
For example:
sâu thăm thẳm đẹp cực kỳ chăm chỉ nhất
2.2.4.2.4. Functions/Roles of adjective phrases in Vietnamese
As with adjectives, adjective phrases can handle various functions in sentences:
Be the predicate (làm vị ngữ), which is the second part of the sentence, describes the state, nature, characteristics, etc. of a person, object or object mentioned in the subject
For example:
Những ngôi nhà ấy rất tiện lợi và đẹp.
Cô ta thông minh.
Ngôi nhà đẹp quá Gỗ vẫn đẹp lắm
Be the adjunct (định ngữ), an auxiliary component of a Vietnamese sentence, is responsible for modifying the noun (noun phrase). The adjunct could be a word, a phrase or a subject-predicate phrase.
For example:
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Bầu trời cao vời vợi và xanh thẳm làm cho không gian như mênh mang hơn.
Be a complement (làm bổ ngữ), is an auxiliary component, which occurs before or after the adjective to add meaning to the adjective and contributes to form the adjective phrase.
For example:
Hải Chi múa đẹp như diễn viên chuyên nghiệp Anh tôi hát hay như ca sĩ chuyên nghiệp
Be the subject (Làm chủ ngữ), the first part of a sentence to identify the person or thing that owns the incident.
For examples:
Tốt gỗ hơn tốt nước sơn
Hấp tấp là nhược điểm của nhiều học sinh Chăm chỉ là đức tính tốt