VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST — GRADUATE STUDIES OFS STG S88 8 4 248 248 28 I OK đc li 28 OI OK Es OE Kk oo NGUYEN THI VIET HOA A STUDY ON THE PROSODIC FEATURES IN RESPONSES VIA ENGLISH AND THE EQUIVALENT EXPRESSIONS IN VIETNAMESE tiếng Anh và sự thể hiện tương đương trong tiếng Việt) MA Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.15 HANOI - 2010 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST — GRADUATE STUDIES đk ES oe fe fe 3 3 of of oe fe fe fe si 2fe of of ois ois os fe oe 2k 2k ok NGUYEN THI VIET HOA A STUDY ON THE PROSODIC FEATURES IN RESPONSES VIA ENGLISH AND THE EQUIVALENT EXPRESSIONS IN VIETNAMESE tiếng Anh và sự thé hiện tương đương trong tiếng Việt) MA Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.15 Supervisor: Nguyén Thi Bich Ngoc, M.A HANOI - 2010 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DECLARATION. cece cceeceeeecesecseeeceeescesecsecsecsaeesesecsessecsaaaesesaecseesecsaeereaecseeseesaseneeaes i ACKNOWLEDGPEMENTT.- --- + 1n nh HT HT HT HH TH TT TH Hư ii ABSTRACT uu. iv LIST OF SYMBOLS 115. Vili PART A: INTRODUCTION.- Án HH HT HT TH HH HT HH HH 1 lo.
Aims Of the Stud yn. Scope of the Stud 2 2. Method of the Stud y. Structure Of the SEUỲY.- - SH HH TH ng HH HH TH TH ch 2 PART B: DEVELOPMENT.- Sàn HH HH TH HH HT HH nàng4 CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND.
nen He 4 II v00. Response as an UIYE€TATIC€.- - 5 n1 TT 9T ng HH TH 6 1. Speech Acts oe. Classification of speech aCfS.-- --- + +5 + k1 vn vn ng HH tr 7 1.
Response as an act Of SDe€CH.- ác kg TH HT HH rệt 9 IENxo ao dan. Definition of Intonation. eee s6 6 11191910991 9 1v ng nh nh ngàn rệt 10 1. Structure Of 1nfOTAfIOT.
The falling tune 0. The first rising tune 20. The second rising tUne. The falling rising fune.-- --- se + xxx ng ng it 15 1.
Functions Xoài on. The attitudinal ÍunCtIOH.- - c - cv vn ng ng ng 16 1. The accentual ÍUICfIOH.- 5 - + 5c 1E St E is reee 16 1. Grammatical ẨUnICf1OH.
The discourse ẨU'ICfIOH.-- <5 <5 S3 1n ng rệg 17 Ih ` T. xa 0i TU dd. on cố ốc e. Differences in responses between teachers and studenfs.
Agreeing samples via English and equivalent expressions in Vietnamese. Teacher towards sfud€nfs.- c6 vn HH nhe, 23 3. Students towards t€aCeT. -- + + St Sàn HH gưệt 24 3.
Disagreeing samples via English and equivalent expressions in Vietnam. The functions of intonation in reSPONSES. Intonation of aðT€€TN€TI. The attitudinal fUnction.
The accentual funCtIOH. The discourse funCtIOn. Intonation of disagreeMent. The attitudinal function.
The accentual ÍunCfiOT. The discourse ÍUnCtIOH. Grammatical fInCf1OH. -- + se + £ + sx£sveeeese 34 So an .- TH HH“ HH HH HH TT ng 35 In i5 0P.
Limitations and suggestions for further stUdYy. oie ố ốố ee. I 9 LIST OF SYMBOLS 1. Symbol of stress: 2.
Symbols of intonations - The glide down: - The glide up: 4 - The take - off: _. - The Dive: Nz 3. Tonic syllable: Underlined part in an utterance. Utterance is pulled: ————> 10 LIST OF TABLES Table Page Table 1.
Agreeing samples of teachers towards StUd€TIfS. Agreeing samples of students towards teachers. ----- eee cesses teeeeeeneees 25 Table 3. Disagreeing samples of teachers towards studeniS.-- c5 se << ses2 27 II PART A: INTRODUCTION In this part, the rationale which explains the reasons for choosing this topic, the aims of the study which illustrates typical goals, the scope of the study which narrows down the research scale and the structure of the study which builds up a frame are established clearly.
Rationale Prosody plays an important role in communication. Through prosody, people can express their emotion state or sentiment tone. People can use prosody to show their attitudes such as happiness, sadness, anger, love or hate. However, during communicative process, it is easy to recognize that many speakers cope with problems in using prosody.
They sometimes do not know exactly how to use prosody in speaking and even in some cases not understand the real meaning of utterances from speakers. Consequently, understanding and choosing suitable prosodies will fill in the gaps in communication. Moreover, choosing fitted prosodic features is necessary because this will help speakers in reaching their aims in communication. For example, speakers may raise their tone at the end of the utterance in asking instead of using question words as in: "While the teacher is teaching, students can talk”.
One more reason for choosing responses as the topic of the study is that response is a factor in communication that helps speakers or hearers go on the conversation, depending on the way they response to the others. We hope that the study not only contributes a small part in the success of each conversation but also can be considered as the ground stage for further researches. Aims of the study Due to the study is limited in the context of classroom in general and prosodic features in responses between the teachers and students in particular as stated in scope of the study, therefore, the goals of the study are as follows: * To find out the similarities and differences in the responses between teacher and students in context of a class. * To look at the way how teachers and students express their responses showing agreement and disagreement in classroom context.
12 * To find out the prominent intonation strategies preferably used in agreeing and disagreeing responses by teacher and students. Scope of the study The study investigates responses in the level of speech acts. There are many kinds of responses such as responses to a letter, responses to a question, responses to an invitation and so on. Nevertheless, this study focuses on responses of teachers and students in showing agreements and disagreements.
In addition, the study examines chiefly prosodic features in which intonation in utterances will be paid attention. Moreover, due to the limitation of time, ability as well as knowledge, the research context chosen is in English classes in grade 11 at Ischool Hatinh where the researcher observes and describes mostly the actions and responses between teacher and students. Method of the study The study bases on quantitative research, which is to determine the relationship between one thing and another. Quantitative research designs are either descriptive or experimental, which means that we use personal observation and facts to form general rules.
The participants of the study include teacher and students at Ischool Hatinh high school. Structure of the study The study is divided into three main parts: Introduction, Development and Conclusion. Introduction: As many other studies, this part introduces briefly the rationale, aims, the scope, methods and organization of the study. Development This part includes three chapters: * Chapter 1: Theoretical background This is an overview of the related theories.
It also concerns the previous works and issues on speech acts and prosodic features. In each part, there are many sub-terms that explain Speech Acts theory, sentence and utterance, similarities and differences in the 13 responses between teacher and students, response as an utterance, definition of intonation, structures and functions of intonation. This chapter introduces quantitative method as the main method for the research. In particular, it describes the research questions, participants, data collection and data analysis framework.
* Chapter 3: Findings This chapter presents findings on intonation in agreeing and disagreeing responses of teacher and students in class context. Conclusion The last part will summarize the over all of the study and provide limitation and suggestions for further study. 14 PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND All the related theories are covered in this chapter. Sentence, utterance and response are the foundation for Speech acts and Prosodic Features.
Sentence and Utterance 1. Sentence According to Crystal (1980: 319-320) "sentence is an expression in natural language, often defined to indicate a grammatical unit consisting of one or more words that generally bear minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it". A sentence can include words grouped meaningfully to express a statement, question, exclamation, request or command. As with all language expressions, sentences may contain both function and content words, and contain properties distinct to natural language, such as characteristic intonation and timing patterns.
Sentences are generally characterized in English by the presence of a finite verb for example in the following sentence "She gives me a dollar", "give" is a finite verb. Crystal (1991: 321) classified sentence into four main types basing on their structure: * Simple sentence consists of a single independent clause with no dependent clauses. The sentence below has one independent clause, which contains one subject: baby, and one predicate: cried. Eg: "The baby cried".
* Compound sentence consists of multiple independent clauses with no dependent clauses. These clauses are joined together using conjunctions, punctuation, or both. Eg: "Do you want to stay here or go shopping with me?". * Complex sentence consists of at least one independent clause and one dependent clause.
As we can see in the following example: Eg: "I ate the meal that you cooked". "Tate the meal" is an independent clause and "that you cooked" 1s a relative clause. * Complex-compound sentence (or compound-complex sentence) consists of multiple independent clauses, at least one of which has at least one dependent clause. 15 Eg: “The dog lived in the backyard, but the cat, who knew he was superior, lived inside the house".
Basing on their purpose, sentence are divided into five types, exclamative, imperative, informative, declarative and interrogative sentences (Crystal. 1991: 322) * Exclamative sentence: An exclamative or exclamatory sentence expresses the speaker's emotion. Eg: “LH never finish this paper in time!" * Imperative sentence: An imperative sentence gives anything from a command or order, to a request, direction, or instruction. Imperative sentences require audiences, as their aim is to get the person spoken to either do or not do something.
Eg: "Look at me". * Informative sentence is more for the mutual benefit of both the listener and the speaker, and, in fact, requires more of an interaction between both parties involved. Eg: "We are going to school now" * Declarative sentence is the most common kind of sentence in language, it states an idea (either objectively or subjectively on the part of the speaker) for the sheer purpose of transferring information to the receiver. In writing, a statement will end with a period.
Eg: "The earth goes around the sun". * Interrogative sentence asks a question and, therefore, ends with a question mark. Eg: "What do you want?" In general, "sentence is neither a physical event nor a physical object. It is, conceived abstractly, a string of words put together by the grammatical rule of language”.
Utterance Hurford & Heasley (2003: 15) stated, "An utterance is used by a particular speaker, on a particular occasion, of a piece of language such as a sequence of sentences, or a single phrase or even a single word". Utterance is certainly used in speaking not in writing because an utterance is a natural unit of speech, a complete unit of talk. Hurford & Heasley (2003: 15), moreover, explained the way to express sentence and utterance: "We adopt the convention that anything written between double quotation marks represents an utterance 16 and anything italicized represents a sentence or part of sentence such as a phrase or a word." Eg: "Help" represents an utterance "The postillions have been struck by lightening" represents a sentence (Hurford & Heasley. Following the ideas of Hurford and Heasley, from the beginning to the end of the study, all utterances and sentence will be illustrated in the form above.