VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES -------- NGUYỄN THỊ ÁI ANH STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL FEATURES OF FRONTING IN ENGLISH VERSUS VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS Đặc điểm cấu trúc và chức năng của khởi ngữ trong Tiếng Anh và tương đương trong Tiếng Việt M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.01 HANOI, 2014 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES -------- NGUYỄN THỊ ÁI ANH STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL FEATURES OF FRONTING IN ENGLISH VERSUS VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS Đặc điểm cấu trúc và chức năng của khởi ngữ trong Tiếng Anh và tương đương trong Tiếng Việt M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60. Huỳnh Anh Tuấn HANOI, 2014 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com DECLARATION I certify that all the material in this minor thesis which is not my own work has been identified and acknowledged, and that no material is included for which a degree has already been conferred upon me.
i TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I could not complete my thesis without the great help and useful advice from my teacher, my family as well as my friends. Firstly, I would like to express my great thanks to my supervisor, Dr. Huynh Anh Tuan for his useful lectures. Without his informative lectures, advice and enthusiasm in teaching, I could not have completed my assignment.
Secondly, I would like to express my deep thanks to all the lecturers in the post- graduate faculty for giving me enthusiastic advice. Finally, my thanks are also sent to my family and my colleagues and my friends for their encouragement and help during the course. To everyone, thank you very much. Hanoi, July 2014 Nguyen Thi Ai Anh ii TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com ABSTRACT Fronting seems to be a new concept for English learners and teachers although it can be used unconsciously in daily life.
Research into fronting in English and “khởi ngữ” in Vietnamese are numerous; however, no research has been done into the similarities and differences in this linguistic phenomenon in the two languages. This research is carried out to provide a more comprehensive understanding of “fronting” in English and “khởi ngữ” in Vietnamese. The analytical data include 50 fronted sentences in English and 50 sentences with “khởi ngữ” in Vietnamese collected from books and newspapers since 1945. In the research, “fronting” in English is compared and contrasted with “khởi ngữ” in Vietnamese in terms of their structure and function.
The result of the research shows that there are similarities and differences in both structure and function of “fronting” and “khởi ngữ”. iii TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS. iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS………………………………………………………….
Aims and Objective of the study. Research questions of the study………………………………. Scope of the study. Methods of the study.
Design of the study. 4 Chapter 1: Literature Review. Review of previous studies. The concepts of canonical and non-canonical constructions…………………….
Fronting in English………………………………………. Definition of Fronting. Realizations of Fronting…………….The differences between Fronting and the other non-canonical constructions …………………………………………………. Fronting and Left-dislocation……….
Fronting and Argument reversal……. Fronting and Cleft-sentence………………. Fronting and Post-posing……. Fronting and Right-dislocation.12 iv TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.
Fronting and Conversing………………. Fronting and presupposition in Topic-Comment Articulation (TCA)………………. Structural features of Fronting………. Functional features of Fronting ……………………………….
Vietnamese sentence structures and sentence elements…………………. The notion of fronting in Vietnamese……………………………. Structural features of "Khởi ngữ" in Vietnamese…………. Functional features of "Khởi ngữ" in Vietnamese.
Distinction between "khởi ngữ" and Adverbial in Vietnamese .23 Chapter 3: Data analysis and Discussions. The structures of Fronting and “Khởi ngữ”. Fronted elements in English. Sentence elements as “Khởi ngữ”.
Percentages of English fronted elements and Vietnamese “khởi ngữ” in contrast. Realizations of Fronting and “Khởi ngữ”. Functions of Fronting and “Khởi ngữ”. 37 v TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.
Limitations of the study. Suggestions for the research .I vi TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS A : Adverbial Adj : Adjective AdjP.: Adjective Phrase C : Complement Cs : Subject Complement Co : Object Complement Cprep. : Preposition Complement Conj. : Conjuction N : Noun O : Object Od: Direct Object Oi: Indirect Object Prep.
: Pronoun S : Subject V : Verb Vaux : Auxiliary Verb vii TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure put forward a very influential view in linguistics. He argued that a language is best viewed as a structured system, with each element in it defined chiefly by how it is related to other elements. In this view, he might not have taken into consideration the fact that people are social entities; they live in a society with many social relations and language is one of the means they use for different purposes.
Of course, English and people using it are not exceptional. For language use, word order is changed in many ways. English at its simple description is a Subject Verb Object (SVO) language (Tomlin, 1986). However, it is not limited to SVO order.
Clefts, pseudo-clefts, inversion, left dislocation and various types of fronting are instances of deviation from SVO order. The term „non-canonical constructions‟ is used to refer to such constructions which do not begin with a grammatical subject (Ward and Birner, 2001). Those constructions are found not only in literary writing but also in colloquial speech (Quirk et al, 1985). An interesting question arising is what functions these structures perform.
Numerous studies in linguistic literature have attempted to provide answers to the question: to change the discourse focus; to help the speaker/writer to construct a discourse representation; to create coherent and cohesive representations of texts for better understanding of existing representations on part of the listener/reader (Sidner, 1978; 1983; Grosz, 1978; 1981). In an attempt to investigate one of those constructions to better understand it and to help Vietnamese learners of English use it more appropriately and efficiently in communication, I have decided to carry out my research into “Structural and functional features of fronting in English and khởi ngữ in Vietnamese”. 1 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Aims and Objectives of the study Aims of the study This study is to help Vietnamese learners of English better understand the structural and functional features of English Fronting and Vietnamese “Khởi ngữ” so that they can use the construction more pragmatically appropriate in their communication with English speaking people.
Objectives of the study The study, as entitled, focuses on English fronting construction in comparison to its Vietnamese equivalent “khởi ngữ” not only about the structures but also about the functions. Thus, the study attempts to: - Identify and point out the structural and functional features of Fronting in English and “Khởi ngữ” in Vietnamese. - Find out the similarities and differences in the structural and functional features of fronting in English and “Khởi ngữ” in Vietnamese 3. Research questions The study is carried out in order to answer two main questions as follow: (1) What are the structural and functional features of Fronting in English and “Khởi ngữ” in Vietnamese? (2) What are the similarities and differences in the structure and function of Fronting in English and “Khởi ngữ” in Vietnamese? 4.
Scope of the study In order to answer the two research questions, this study is restricted to describe, analyse and contrast the structural and functional features of fronting constructions in English and “Khởi ngữ” in Vietnamese. The analysis is based on 50 samples containing Fronting structures in English and 50 samples containing khởi ngữ in Vietnamese selected from British, American and Vietnamese stories, novels, and political, educational, economic newspapers and magazines since 1945. 2 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Method of the study Due to the main aims of the study, a systemic descriptive and contrastive analysis on the structural and functional features of English fronting and its Vietnamese equivalents is carried out throughout the study.
The thesis uses English as the source language and Vietnamese as the target language. In order to serve the targets stated before, a linguistic contrastive analysis is carried out mainly on the sentential level of the data. Design of the study This study consists of three parts. Part one, Introduction, consists of the rationale, the aims and objectives, the research questions, the scope of the study and the method of study.
Part two, Development, is the heart of the study which deals with Fronting in English and “Khởi ngữ” in terms of their structural and functional features. It also introduces a literature review about researches related to the study and the concepts of Fronting and Khởi ngữ by different authors. The last part is the conclusions as well as some suggestions for implementation achieved from all the discussion in the thesis. 3 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com PART 2: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.
Review of previous studies related to the research area Among the pre-eminent authors who discuss fronting in great details are Quirk et al (1985); Ward and Birner (2001); and Erteschik-Shir (2007). Discussions about one or the other aspect of fronting can be found in Halliday (1994); Thompson (1996) Huddleston (1995), and Brown (1983). In Vietnamese grammar, this phenomenon has also been discussed for quite a long time; however, until now it has not been thoroughly and satisfactorily solved. There have been several disagreements among Vietnamese linguists concerning the term.
First and foremost, on considering using the term in Vietnamese, Nguyen Kim Than (1997) used the term “Khởi ngữ”; Diep Quang Ban (2004) used the term “đề ngữ” when referring to this grammatical construction. Hoang Trong Phien (1980) mentioned it as Thành phần khởi ý whereas Nguyen Huu Quynh (2001) called it “Khởi ý” for short. Truong Van Chinh and Nguyen Hien Le (1963) used the term “Chủ đề”, Nguyen Tai Can (1975) suggested a compound term “Từ-Chủ đề”. According to Nguyen Lan Trung, when any part of sentence is placed at the beginning of the sentence comparing with its normal position (it may be repeated or not), this part can be regarded as Khởi ngữ in Vietnamese.
From my point of view I reckon “Khởi ngữ” is the most suitable. The concepts of canonical and non-canonical constructions Canonical constructions in English are those which begin with a grammatical subject (Halliday & Mathiessen, 2004; Quirk et al, 1985). A grammatical subject is a part of the sentence followed by the predicate. According to Quirk et al (1985:721), 4 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com there are seven canonical clause patterns.
They are SV, SVC, SVO, SVA, SVOO, SVOC, and SVOA. Otherwise, clause patterns not beginning with a grammatical subject are called non-canonical constructions in English except for conversing, a process by which nominal clause elements can equally take either initial or final position in the sentence, as exemplified in the following example: An uncle, three cousins, and two brothers benefited from the will. The will benefited an uncle, three cousins, and two brothers. In the above example both sentences with convertible orders are acceptable.
That is the reason why both convertible sentences are considered as bearing a non- canonical pattern even though they begin with a grammatical subject. In English, there are 7 non-canonical constructions (Ward & Birner, 2001; Quirk et al, 1985): Fronting, Left-dislocation, Argument reversal (inversion & passivization), Cleft structure, Post-posing (existential there- and presentational there- sentences), Right-dislocation and Conversing. In general, the difference between canonical and non-canonical constructions is that the latter make available contexts in which to embed current discourse. Canonical construction can be considered a device for creating coherent and cohesive representations of text and for changing discourse focus (Sidner, 1978; 1983; Grosz, 1978; 1981).
The focus of this thesis is on Fronting, distinguishable with other non-canonical constructions in terms of structure and function.