VIETNAM NA TIONAL UNIVERSITY - HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES ENGLISH INVERTED DEClARATIVES ANALYSIS AND SUGGESTED TEACHING IMPLICATIONS A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (TESOL) Submitted by CAO THT PHUONG DUNG Supervisor: TO MINH THANH, Ph. D HO CHI MINH CITY, AUGUST 2006 THtf~IEW OtlKtiXH& NV TI'.ilt}cHi MINH :. ---------' CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY OF MASTERS' THESIS I certify my authorship of the Masters' Thesis submitted today entitled: ENGLISH INVERTED DECLARATIVES ANALYSIS AND SUGGESTED TEACHING IMPLICATIONS In terms of the Statement of requirements for Theses in Masters' programs issued hy the Higher Degree Committee of Department of English Linguistics and Literature, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University of Ho Chi Minh City. HCMC, September, 2006 CAO THI PHUONG DUNG RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS I hereby state that I, CAO THI PHUONG DUNG, being a candidate for the degree of Master of Arts (TESOL) accepted the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Masters' Thesis deposited in the Library.
In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my Masters' Thesis deposited in the Library should be accessible for purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for care, loan and reproduction for theses. Ho Chi Minh City, September, 2006 Signature. CAO THI PHUONG DUNG ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis supervisor. To Minh Thanh, for her guidance and support in my looking for appropriate documents and materials for my thesis.
Under her constant enthusiastic guidance. I confidently accomplish the thesis, step by step. Her valuable comments and advice has played a significant role in the preparation and completion of the thesis. My special thanks are also sent to all the professors and lecturers of the graduate program who have provided me with useful material in TESOL and help me to come up with new concepts in methodology.
My special thanks must go to Dr. Sidsel Millerstrom who encouraged and ga ve me useful advice in times of trouble during the time I was writing the thesis. I particularly express my heartfelt thanks to Mr. Truong Hon Huy, Mr.
Nguyen Minh Duc, and Ms. Pho Phuong Dung for their enthusiastic guidance and advice. In addition, Ms. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Dung was of great help in searching for materials and her relevant references.
Last but not least, I would like to thank my beloved family for their love, care, and support that help me complete my study in general and this M.A thesis in particular. ABSTRACT The thesis aims at analyzing and comparing inversion constructions in English and Vietnamese declaratives. Being used in the thesis is a historical research' the source of data for which plays an important role in accomplishing the M. Materials related to the thesis are collected, processed and presented in an ana lytic and classifying way to draw out some comment on general rules governing inversion as well as on potential similarities and differences in English and Vietnamese inversion constructions, both being further applied for pedagogical purposes.
especially for teaching translation to Vietnamese learners of English. especia Ily English-majored students at DELL, USSH: (I) There is no one way of translating a sentence from Vietnamese into English and vice verse, despite its so-called equivalent form; (2) As for teaching grammatical structure in general and inversion in particular, there should be an integration of the three dimensions namely form, meaning and use; (3) Only some particular types of verbs can appear in inversion constructions; (4) The application of the constructions must satisfy both the principle of end- weight and the information principle. I A historical research is defined a studying process of information and event during which the researchers deal with collected materials to describe, analyze and interpret a relevanl issue. 1993, as quoted in Methods of educational and social science research by va Thi PhiJong Anh] ABBREVIATIONS Add Additive AdjP Adjective Phrase AdvP Adverb phrase ASV Auxiliary subject verb Corr Correlative CWO Canonical word order DELL Department of English Linguistics and Literature FI Full inversion GfB Ground-before-Figure N Noun Neg Negative NP Noun Phrase P Predicate PP Preposition Phrase Pro Pro-form SAl Subject-auxiliary inversion SV Subject - Verb SVO Subject - Verb - Object SVX Subject - Verb - Complement USSH University of Social Sciences and Humanities V-2 Verb-second V-3 Verb-third V-F Verb-final VP Verb Phrase VS Verb - Subject WO Word order TABLE OF CONTENTS Certificate of originality.I Retention and use of the thesis JI Acknowledgement .IV Abhreviations V Table of contents VI INTRODUCTION I 0.1 An overview of English inverted declaratives 2 0.1 Types of inversion 3 FI :i SAl 5 0.2 Diachronic aspects of inversion 7 0.3 Functions of inversion .2 Information-packaging II 0.4 Semantic meaning expressed by inversion 13 0.1 Semantic choice: inverted vs.
canonical word order 14 0.2 Subjectivity in inversion I (i 0.5 Inversion and stylistic variety in discourse 18 0.1,5,1 Spoken and written mode 18 0. literary styles II) 0.2 An overview of Vietnamese inverted declaratives 2e 0.1 Types of inversion 21 0.3 DEFINITION OF KEY TERMS 25 0.4 LIMITATION AND DELIMITATION 26 0.5 RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY 2(: 0.6 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 28 0.7 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY. 2R Chapter 1: ENGLISH INVERTED DECLARATIVES :;0 1.1 With an opening adverbial :;0 1.1 With an opening adverbial of place :; I 1.2 With an opening adverbial of time :;2 1.3 With an opening adverbial of other types :1:\ 1.2 With an opening subjective complement :;4 1.:; With a fronted ed- or ing- predicate :;6 1.4 With reported speech :;7 1.5 With the existential there :;8 1.6 With the dummy subject it 41 1.1 With an opening expression of strong wish 45 1.2 With an opening expression of partial negation 46 1.:; With an opening expression of affirmation 46 13 EITHER FULL OR PARTIAL INVERSION 47 1.1 With an opening subordinate adverb clause of condition 47 1.2 With an opening subordinate adverb clause of concession 47 1.3 With an opening subordinate adverb clause of comparison 4R 1.4 With an opening expression of true negation 4R 1.5 With an opening expression of degree 49 1.6 Without an opening in the appended clause 49 1.4 CASES IN WHICH INVERSION IS NOT APPLIED IN ENGLISH 50 1. 5:; Chapter 2: EQUIVALENT EXPRESSIONS IN VIETNAMESE DECLARATIVES 54 2.1 With an opening adverbial 54 2.1 With an opening adverbial of place 54 2.2 With an opening adverbial of time 58 2.3 With an opening adverbial of manner 60 2.2 With an opening subjective complement 6l 2.2 CASES IN WHICH INVERSION IS NOT APPLIED IN VIETNAMESE DECLARATIVES 6.3 SUMMARY 72 Chapter 3: SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN TYPES OF INVERSION IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE DECLARATIVES 711 3.4 Summary 80 Chapter 4: SOME SUGGESTIONS ON HOW TO TEACH VARIOUS TYPES OF INVERSION IN ENGLISH DECLARATIVES TO VIETNAMESE LEARNERS S2 4.1 Factors that have influence on inversion 82 4.2 Uses of inversion 83 '4.1 Inversion for emphasis X4 4.2 Inversion for literary effects S4 4.4 Pedagogical implications and suggestions on teaching English inverted constructions 86 4.5 Summary 89 Ch~pter 5: CONCLUSION 9~ Bibliography 92 INTRODUCTION 0.1 BACKGROUND Inversion seems to be a haunt to even full-time students of the Department of English Linguistics and Literature (abbreviated to DELL) at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities (abbreviated to USSH).
The students do not find it difficult to understand English inverted sentences; however, they are uncertain of when and how to use inversion in order to express themselves properly and naturally. Up to now, the students have dealt with inversion mainly due to their experience, getting vaguely aware of some special effects from such a syntactic structure. In other words, they can hardly come up with the diversity of inversion and its expressive power in both speech and writing. It might be not quite easy for the students to translate (I) into English, resulting in (2): (I) "CMu moi mc1t cha," chu be vita kh6c tuc tti<'1i vita run rify trong b6ng t6i.
(2) "I've lost my daddy," cried the little boy, shivering in the dark. It is a much more demanding task to give (3) a satisfactory English version since the Vietnamese sentence may have two translated versions which are marked (4) and (5). (3) Chi di bQ 5 phut la toi khach s:;tn. (4) You only have a five-minute walk from the beach to the hotel.
(5) It takes you only five minutes to walk from the beach to the hotel. Quite often, the students fail to apply inversion in translating (3) into (6): (6) A five-minute walk from the beach IS the hotel. Identifying inversion in the English language and I I. proper y app ymg the special structure in both English-Vietnamese and Vietnam E I· h.
ese- ng IS translation IS what this MA thesis aims at. 2 Hopefully, the thesis will contribute something to the successful teaching of English inverted dec1aratives to Vietnamese learners of English in general and to full-time students at DELL, USSH in particular.2 LITERATURE REVIEW This section consists of a historical overvIew of inversion found firstly in English and then in Vietnamese. Both the discourse function and the basic usage of inversion found in English decLarativei will be dealt with before their Vietnamese equivalents are discussed, based on a number of Vietnamese linguistics' view points. The review establishes a theoretical background for further discussion of how to apply inversion in teaching English to Vietnamese learners.1 An overview of English inverted declaratives Considering that "linguistic differences among genre (or style) are likely to be larger than differences between British and American English of the same genre" [Biber et aI, 1999: 116], the thesis presents only the so-called commonly accepted syntactic constructions of inversion in English.
Green's definition of inversion 11985: 122] covers full inversion (abbreviated to FI) and partial inversion (abbreviated to prJ) constructions4 , which appear to "have almost nothing in common beyond the relative order of subject and first verb." The author intentionally treats them together, even though, from a synchronic perspective, FI and PI are in many respects functionally different. All inversions introduced involve the sentence-initial 1 Declarative is a sentence which is in form of a statement and mayor may not ha ve the function of a statement. [Richards, 1985: 97] 3 Partwl illversioll (PI) can also be referred to as subject-auxiliary-inversion (SAl) by a number of English grammarians. 4 Illversioll cOllstructiolls can also be shortened to as inversions.
3 placement of some sentence element. With a few exceptions, this element would canonically stand elsewhere in the sentence, and it triggers or is optionally followed by inversion. She argues that at times it is cognitively efficient to present a ground before a figure. Inversion is seen as a linguistic instantiation of this model: the pre-verbal constituent of inversion represents the ground, the post-verbal subject NP denotes the figure.
By such a linear order of presentation, inversion directs the hearer's attention to the ground first. Moreover, based on this model, "inversions will be seen as a radial category, with its prototype and extensions from the prototype.1 Types of inversion Inversions have been classified differently by different authors. One has been done for FI by Bimer [1992], who classified inversions by the syntactic category of the preposed constituent. PI, by contrast, is classified into broader categories on the basis of a combination of semantic and syntactic criteria.
Below is Green's coverage of inversion types [1985], which is closest to Dorgeloh's [1997]. The first type: FuUinversion "Full inversion denotes all those constructions in which the subject follows all of its verb phrase, i. a full (= lexical) verb or copula be s.