MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING NGUYEN THI THAO PHENIKAA UNIVERSITY GRADUATION PAPER AN INVESTIGATION INTO ENGLISH WH-QUESTIONS IN “AN IDEAL HUSBAND” WITH REFERENCE TO VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS Nghiên cứu câu hỏi có từ hỏi tiếng Anh trong truyện “Một Người Chồng Lý Tưởng” của Oscar Wilde và những tương đương trong tiếng Việt. Student: Nguyen Thi Thao ENGLISH LANGUAGE Student ID No: 20010058 Course: 2020 – 2024 Field: English Language Mode of study: Full-time Supervisor: Assoc. Nguyen Dang Suu Ha Noi – 2024 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING PHENIKAA UNIVERSITY GRADUATION PAPER AN INVESTIGATION INTO ENGLISH WH-QUESTIONS IN “AN IDEAL HUSBAND” WITH REFERENCE TO VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS Nghiên cứu câu hỏi có từ hỏi tiếng Anh trong truyện “Một Người Chồng Lý Tưởng” của Oscar Wilde và những tương đương trong tiếng Việt. Student: Nguyen Thi Thao Student ID No: 20010058 Course: 2020 -2024 Field: English Language Mode of study: Full-time Supervisor: Assoc.
Nguyen Dang Suu Ha Noi – 2024 DECLARATION I, Nguyen Thi Thao - 20010058, certify that no part of the above report has been copied or reproduced from any other person’s work without acknowledgements and that the report is originally written by me under strict guidance of my supervisor. Hanoi July 1st, 2024 Supervisor Student Assoc. Nguyen Dang Suu Nguyen Thi Thao i ACKNOWLEGEMENT First of all, I would like to take this opportunity and express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Assoc. Nguyen Dang Suu, whose valuable support and guidance have been instrumental throughout this research.
His insightful comments and thoughtful suggestions have contributed to the successful completion of this study. I am deeply thankful to all the teachers of the Faculty of English at Phenikaa University for their passion and committed teaching over my four years of studies. Their passion for teaching and commitment to nurturing their students have significantly contributed to shaping my academic journey and achieving the accomplishments I celebrate today. Last but not least, I would like to send my deepest thanks to my friends and my family for their support and encouragement which has motivated me to improve and finish my graduation paper.
ii ABSTRACT Communication is fundamental to our everyday lives, serving to establish and maintain relationships, express feelings, attitudes, and judgments, and understand others. Wh-questions, a key sentence pattern in English, play a crucial role in communication by enabling effective questioning and information gathering. Despite their importance, many students at Phenikaa University struggle to properly use Wh-questions, leading to communication failures. This study aims to enhance understanding and usage of Wh-questions by analyzing their structural and semantic features in English and comparing them with their Vietnamese equivalents as found in the story "An Ideal Husband." The study finds that while Wh-questions in both languages serve similar functions and inquire about similar content, their structural placements differ significantly.
English Wh-questions place the interrogative word at the beginning of the sentence, whereas Vietnamese questions can position these words at various points in the sentence. Ultimately, these findings provide valuable insights for learners, helping them improve their translation skills and communication abilities in both languages. iii Table of Contents PART I. Rationale of the study.
Aims and objectives of the study. Aim of the study. Objectives of the study. Scope of the study.
Methods of the study. Significance of the study. Structure of the study. 4 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW.2 Overview of questions in English.1 Definition of question .2 Classification of question.3 Yes-No question.3 Features of English Wh question .1 Structural features of English Wh question .3 Other forms of wh-questions .2 Semantic features of English Wh question.
21 CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISSCUSSION .1 Preview of Vietnamese wh-question .2 The features of English wh-question and their Vietnamese equivalents.1 Wh-questions asking about things and action.2 Wh-questions asking about alternatives .3 Wh-questions asking about reason .4 Wh-questions asking about location or direction of movement.5 Wh-questions asking about time .7 Wh-questions asking about possession .8 Wh-questions asking about the manner of action or characteristic of an object.3 Wh-question in the bilingual play “An Ideal Husband” by Oscar Wilder .1 Wh-questions asking about things and action.3 Wh-questions asking about reason .4 Wh-questions asking about time .6 Wh-questions asking about the manner of action or characteristic of an object.4 The similarities and differences between Wh – question in English and their equivalent expressions in Vietnamese. 51 vi LIST OF TABLES Number of Title of table Page table 1.1 Structure of tag question 6 1.3 Types of wh-question 9 vii LIST OF ABBREVIATION Abbreviation Definition A Adverbial Aux Auxiliary C Complement O Object S Subject 1 PART I. Rationale of the study It is undoubted that communication is at the heart of our everyday life. The purpose of verbal communication is to establish and maintain our relationship with other people, to express our feeling, attitudes and judgements, and to understand what other people think.
Conversation also enables us to take role on asking and answering questions to achieve communicational goals. Wh-questions, one of the most important English sentence patterns of speech, play such a crucial role in English speakers’ communications. It is also one of the interrogative sentences in English. Learning and understanding Wh-questions enable learners to understand more about this special structure, thus enhancing the ability of language users to translate Wh-questions into Vietnamese and vice versa.
Although WH-questions represent multi-functionality and a diversity of meaning, during the four years of studying at Phenikaa University, I myself realize that a majority of students do not obtain the relatively understanding of the use and the usefulness of this question type. They are not able to to use it properly, which results in the failure in communication in certain situation. All those afore-said reasons have created the motivation for me to carry out the current topic on English Wh-questions in “An Ideal Husband” with Reference to Vietnamese Equivalents. I hope that this research can serve as a contribution to bilingual studies especially ones related to language comparison or translation, thus leading to learners’ proper comprehension and usage of Wh- questions.
Aims and objectives of the study 2. Aim of the study The study aims to provide a deeper understanding of the structural and semantic characteristics of English Wh-questions and their Vietnamese equivalents, facilitating better comprehension and utilization of this question type in everyday communication. Objectives of the study To give a better understanding of the structural and semantic characteristics of English Wh-questions and basic knowledge of other types of questions, the objectives of the study include: a. Finding out the structural and semantic characteristics of English Wh-questions; b.
Identifying the similarities and differences between Wh-question in English and their equivalents in Vietnamese in “An Ideal Husband”. What are the structural characteristics of English Wh-questions? ii. What are the semantic characteristics of English Wh-questions? iii. What are the similarities and differences between English Wh-questions and their Vietnamese equivalents in “An Ideal Husband”? 4.
Scope of the study This study is limited within the area of Englsh Wh-questions with reference to Vietnamese equivalents in “An Ideal Husband” especially of the structural and semantic features of this type of questions. The data collected for the study are chosen from the bilingual novel “An Ideal Husband”. The analysis not only demonsstrates the similarities and differences of Wh-questions in English and Vietnamese but also finds out the mistakes in question form and meaning of the two languages. “An ideal husband” is one of the most serious social comedies published by Oscar Wilde.
It contains bold political tinges, ironically and pessimistically looking at the current political background. To facilitate a thorough comparison of Wh-questions between English and Vietnamese, the Vietnamese translation titled "Một người chồng lý tưởng" by Hoang Nguyen, published by World Publisher in 1998, was chosen for this study. Methods of the study The study mainly exploits the descriptive and contrastive methods. The descriptive is employed to analyze forms, contents and other features of Wh-questions.
Likewwise, the contrastive is used to contrast the similarities and differences of English Wh-questions and their Vietnamese equivalents. Significance of the study The research for English Wh-questions and Vietnamese equivalents is to determine the basic specific type of the syntax and pragmatic. The results of the research will be referenced and used for learning English languge effectively. Accordingly, the graduation paper will show the ability to combine words from questions of both languages on level of the relationship between forms and meanings.
It also, therefore, helps seeking some appropriate solutions to the problems of learning English Wh-questions. Structure of the study The Graduation paper consists of three parts: Part one is the Introduction: It includes the rationale for choosing the topic, the aims, scope, research questions and design of the study. Part two is the Development which includes 3 chapters; Chapter 1: Literature review. This chapter provides theoretical foundations for the study, including definition and classification of question, and an in-depth analysis of the syntactic and semantic characteristics of English wh-questions.
This chapter details the research methods and approaches used in the study. It describes the procedure used in collecting data and also explains the analytical techniques employed to compare and contrast the structural and semantic features of Wh-questions in both languages. Chater 3: Findings and discussion. This chapter presents the findings of the study, focusing on the description of the Vietnamese equivalent expressions of Wh- questions found in the translated version of "An Ideal Husband" by Oscar Wilde.
Then, it discusses the similarities and differences between the two languages in terms of Wh-questions. Part three is the Conclusion: The conclusion summarizes the key findings of the study and suggestions for further study. DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Previous studies Wh-question is a focal point of many linguistics studies. Wh-questions play a boundless role in everyday conversations to seek information, and to ask about time, people, ownership, reason, or places.
The study titled "The Acquisition of WH Question by EFL Students' Learning English as a Foreign Language" [1] by Ellen Andriyani examines the development of Wh-questions in English among junior and senior high school students. The research highlights patterns and progress in students' learning of Wh-questions in English. There are also many studies comparing English questions with those in learners' native languages. "Comparative and Contrastive Studies of Information Structure" [2] by Edward Göbbel and Carsten Breul includes detailed discussions on the syntactic and pragmatic aspects of questions in English and Frech, including Wh-questions.
It explores how different languages handle the structure and function of these questions, providing valuable insights into cross-linguistic variations and commonalities in information structure. The article "Yes-no Questions and Wh- questions in English and Albanian Spoken Discourse: Focus on Political Debates" [3] examines the use of Yes-No and Wh-questions in English and Albanian during political debates. It highlights differences and similarities in how these questions are employed to influence discourse, emphasizing their role in argumentative strategies and speaker interaction. In Vietnamese, Nguyen Dang Suu [4] conducted a study of English question in contrast with Vietnamese ones.
In detail, the author figured out the features of questions in both English and Vietnamese to have a clear understanding about ways to form a questions and their equivalent meaning in the two languages. Then, the author studied and compared the pragmatic-semantic structure. Le Dong [5] carried out a study on the view of semantic and pragmatic and provided some theoretical background about questions and their common characteristics based on different aspects, in which Wh-question is mentioned. 5 However, the number of comparative studies which investigate the similarities and differences in terms of Wh-questions between English and Vietnamese are limited.
As a result, the current study is carried out with the aim to compare and contrast Wh-questions in English and Vietnamese equivalent expressions in a translated version of a very famous novel “An ideal husband” by Oscar Wilde.2 Overview of questions in English 1.