MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY NGUYỄN LÊ MỸ NỮ A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF TRANSITIVITY SYSTEM IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE WEATHER FORECASTS Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201 Supervisor: Assoc. NGUYỄN QUANG NGOẠN e BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN NGUYỄN LÊ MỸ NỮ SO SÁNH HỆ THỐNG CHUYỂN TÁC TRONG CÁC BẢN TIN THỜI TIẾT TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT Chuyên ngành: Ngôn ngữ Anh Mã số: 8220201 Người hướng dẫn: PGS. NGUYỄN QUANG NGOẠN e i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby declare that I am the sole author of the MA thesis entitled “A comparative study of transitivity system in English and Vietnamese weather forecasts”. The thesis contains no material published elsewhere or written by other people except where reference is made in the text of the thesis.
This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other tertiary institution. Binh Dinh, 2021 Nguyễn Lê Mỹ Nữ e ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude and appreciation to my research supervisor, Assoc. Nguyễn Quang Ngoạn, for his careful guidance and professional, academic advice on my thesis. I am really lucky to receive his great encouragement, enthusiasm, and immense knowledge to finish my thesis in such a limited time.
I am also grateful to all the lecturers of my MA course at the Department of Foreign Languages, Quy Nhon University, for their useful guidance and support and all the staff of the Post - graduate Department at Quy Nhon University for their sympathy and administrative assistance. I would also like to send my special thanks to my friends and colleagues to support me in completing the research and sharing helpful materials and experiences during my study. Next, my sincere thanks to my school management board and colleagues at Nguyen Dinh Chieu High School, whose assistance made it feasible for me to participate in this MA course and fully concentrate on completing my thesis. Finally, I owe my all family a debt of gratitude, especially my parents, who always stand by me and provide me with emotional support and great care while my thesis was in process and have helped me overcome many unexpected difficulties during the course and the thesis.
This accomplishment would not have been possible without them. e iii ABSTRACT The study aims to investigate the processes in English and Vietnamese weather forecasts in light of Halliday’s Functional Grammar. The thesis aims to analyze each kind of process type, analyze the dominant processes found in English and Vietnamese weather forecasts as well as realize participants and circumstances involved in the processes. It also identifies the similarities and differences between the English weather forecasts and the Vietnamese ones.
The data for analysis was taken from ten weather forecasts for each kind of language (English and Vietnamese) with about 20 samples for investigation. The samples were in the form of clauses in English and Vietnamese weather forecasts collected from the official websites of the weather forecast in the United States and Vietnam. The research was carried out based on a combination of a variety of methods such as the analytic method, descriptive, contrastive, and synthetic method. The researcher has carried out this study which is mainly based on the Functional Grammar of Halliday and Matthiessen's theory (2014) to investigate the transitivity system of English and Vietnamese weather forecasts.
Weather forecasts are categorized into clauses are analyzed to determine the distribution of 3 main elements in weather forecasts texts. In English, there are only 5 Processes that are found, but in the Vietnam data, all the six types occur. Material Processes are one of the two crucial processes for both languages. In the total dominant process in English, the rate of 64.04 % belongs to Material Processes, which makes it a dominant type.
Occupying the second position are Verbal Processes. Meanwhile, in Vietnamese weather forecasts, Relational Processes are the prominent ones, followed by Material Processes. It can be said that although the percentages are different, Location is prominent in weather forecasts in both languages. e iv TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP.
iii TABLE OF CONTENT. vii LIST OF TABLES. viii LIST OF FIGURES. AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY.
Aim of the Study. SCOPE OF THE STUDY. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY. STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS.
LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND. Overview of Functional Grammar. Types of Processes. Circumstances as the component of Experiential meta-function.
Overview of weather forecasting. BACKGROUND RESEARCH METHODOLOGY. Criteria for collecting data. Reliability and validity.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. The transitivity systems in English weather forecasts. The most dominant process types. The transitivity systems in Vietnamese weather forecasts.
The most dominant process types. Similarities and differences in transitivity between English and Vietnamese weather forecasts. Six processes types in EWFs and VWFs. Participants in EWFs and VWFs.
Circumstances in EWFs and VWFs. Most dominant types in EWFs and VWFs. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS. Limitations of the study.
Suggestions for further researches. 85 APPENDIX e vii ABBREVIATIONS ABB Full words/ phrases FG Functional Grammar Circ. Process EWFs The English weather forecasts VWFs The Vietnamese weather forecasts SFG Systemic Functional Grammar e viii LIST OF TABLES Table 2. Three lines of meaning in the clause.
Types of sensing, examples and examples of verbs serving as Process in mental clauses. The principal categories of the ‘relational’ clause. Example of verbs as Process in behavioural clauses. Process types, their meanings, and characteristic participants.
Examples of Manner circumstantials. Examples of Cause circumstantials. Examples of Accompaniment circumstantials. Types of circumstantial element.
Names and Official Websites for data collection. Framework for data analysis. Participants used in EWFs. The percentage of Participants in Relational Process.
Circumstances involved in the Processes in EWFs. Material Processes,Verbal Processes and other Processes in EWFs. The percentage of Participants in Relational Process in VWFs. Participant Functions used in VWFs.
The percentage of Participants in Relational Process in VWFs. Circumstances involved in the Process in VWFs. Relational Process, Material Process and other Processes in VWFs. Participants’ frequency of occurrence and percentage in EWFs and VWFs.
Circumstantial Elements frequency of Occurrence and Percentage in EWFs and VWFs. Most dominant Processes in EWFs and VWFs. 78 e ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2. The grammar of experience: Types of processes in English.
Type of Processes in EWFs. The percentage of Participants in the Material Process. The Percentage of Circumstance Types in EWFs. The Percentage of the most dominant types in VWFs.
Types of Processes in VWFs. The percentage of Participants in Material Process in VWFs. The Percentage of Circumstance Types in VWFs. The Percentage of the most dominant types in VWFs.
6 Process types of English and Vietnamese weather forecasts. 73 e 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The researcher presents an overview of the study in this chapter, as well as the rationale for selecting the research area. This chapter aims to discuss the aim and objectives of the study, and in detail, it also presents the research questions. Besides, the scope of the study, the significance of the research and the structure thesis are all presented in this chapter.
RATIONALE Weather forecasting uses science and technology to forecast atmospheric conditions for a specific location and time. People have sought to predict the weather systematically since the nineteenth century. Weather predictions are based on the collection of quantitative data about the current condition of the atmosphere at a specific location and the use of meteorology to project how the atmosphere will evolve in the future. Nowadays, human beings apply science and technology to predict what conditions of the atmosphere for a given location and time are like within the near future, a weather forecast.
Foretelling consists of predictions of changes on Earth’s surface caused by atmospheric conditions like snow, ice cover, storm tides, tornadoes, thunderstorms, and floods. Early warnings are provided to humans about natural disasters, so weather forecasts help people at large scale back damage caused and increase public awareness for coming disasters in order that people can protect life and property. The wants for weather prediction are popular around the world, so it has played an essential role in humans and affected a good range of aspects of day-to-day life. Especially, there is an ever-increasing demand for more accurate weather survival and forecasts.
e 2 All kinds of mass media like newspapers, magazines, television, radio, the net, etc., recommend weather forecasts that are usually given within the type of text. Text is going to be analyzed, which attempts to explain the language in actual use and its contexts, either culture or situation, to assist readers in grasping them more profoundly and clearly from the linguistic perspective in light of Functional Grammar (FG). In FG, a transitivity system could be a system that deals with the content expressed in language: all doing, sensing, being, saying activities that happen within the world. The Transitivity system provides the lexicogrammatical resources for constructing a quantum of change as a figure - a configuration of elements centred on a process within the flow of occurrences.
Consistent with the theory of Halliday & Matthiessen (2014), there are six different types of processes: Material, Mental, Verbal, Relational, Behavioral, and Existential; and three components have consisted in each process as the Process itself; the Participant; and Circumstances. The process is the basic type of the clause as representation and is employed as a tool to explain the sector of the situation- what is being talked about. There have not been sufficient studies of transitivity system in weather forecasts. Especially, an overall comparative study between English and Vietnamese in transitivity system at the component of experiential meta- function seems to be untouched.
This makes my decision to hold out this detailed analysis: "A comparative study of transitivity system in English and Vietnamese weather forecasts" as the topic of my master thesis. This study is conducted with the hope that the results will probably provide some useful knowledge of transitivity systems of text, particular texts on weather forecasts for Vietnamese readers and learners of Functional Grammar in English, especially for those that have an interest in the weather forecast field. AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY 1. Aim of the Study The study is aimed to analyse the type of processes of transitivity system in English and Vietnamese weather forecasts.
The study aims to spot the similarities and differences of the transitivity system in both languages through these analyses. Objectives The following subsequent objectives are fulfilled to realize the aim: 1. To explore the varieties of processes of the transitivity system used in English and Vietnamese weather forecasts. To search out the foremost dominant types of process used in English and Vietnamese weather forecasts.
To compare and contrast the similarities and differences of the transitivity system in English and Vietnamese weather forecasts. RESEARCH QUESTIONS From the aim and objectives raised above, the core research questions that guided this study can be stated as follows: 1. What are the varieties of processes of the transitivity system used in English and Vietnamese weather forecasts? 2. What are the primary dominant types used in English and Vietnamese weather forecasts? 3.
What are the similarities and differences of the transitivity system in English and Vietnamese weather forecasts? 1. SCOPE OF THE STUDY The study mainly uses Halliday & Matthiessen’s (2014) systemic functional grammar to examine features of the transitivity system employed in weather forecasts. The Transitivity system has six central processes, and this study works at processes in the light of Functional Grammar. Each process e 4 includes three elements, namely the Process itself, the Participants, and Circumstances.
A clause is the mainspring of grammatical energy, and it has meaning as a presentation of the analysis of the clause.