VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES VOÕ HOÀNG NHAÄT A contrastive analysis Between English-Vietnamese nominal groups And some suggestions to teach Vietnamese- English nominal group translation (SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF TESOL) SUPERVISED BY: NGUYEÃN TIEÁN HUØNG, PH. D HO CHI MINH CITY – 2006 Certificate of originality I certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled: “A contrastive analysis between English and Vietnamese nominal groups and some suggestions to teach Vietnamese- English nominal group translation” in term of the statement of requirements for Thesis in Master’s Programs issued by the Higher Degree Committee. Hoà Chí Minh City June 30, 2006 Voõ Hoàng Nhaät 2 Retention and use of the thesis I hereby state that I, Voõ Hoàng Nhaät, being a candidate for the degree of Master of Arts (TESOL), accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s thesis deposited in the University Library. In term of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for care, loan, or reproduction of theses.
Hoà Chí Minh City June 30, 2006 Voõ Hoàng Nhaät 3 Acknowledgements First, I would like to express sincere thanks to my supervisor, Dr. Nguyeãn Tieán Huøng, whom I own a great debt of gratitude. His sympathy and invaluable instructions have given me confidence and determination to overcome all obstacles of the topic complexity. In addition I would like to thank the teachers and classmates at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, whose willingness and enthusiasm have supported me so much in thesis fulfillment.
Also, I would like to show my deepest gratitude to my father, father-in-law, my wife who make me sometimes asking myself why such a push and support from them still exist in this current state of practical life. And again, back with my turn, the thesis is my strong hope to be an example of hard work that my children may such follow. 4 Abstract I would like to start the abstract with a feeling of sympathy to the primitive stage of Vietnamese linguistics and of deep gratitude to leading Vietnamese linguists, educators whose contribution has been shining proudly in the darkness of the current learning, teaching and researching environment in which almost everything is virtually insufficient for academic researches. Beginning with the question which topic to be chosen for the final thesis of TESOL Master Program organized by the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, about linguistics or one of the four language skills, I put myself in a very uneasy state of hesitancy to face a dilemma: a thesis about language skill is easier but could be repetitive, about linguistics is so difficult but could be interesting.
What makes it difficult is not just the topic nature itself but the archive system of linguistic research. The University and City Libraries aren’t places to search linguistic studies of Vietnamese and English nominal groups. Most of my scattered Vietnamese linguistic references is searched from http:// ngonngu.net, http://www.org, http://dactrung.net, http://www.vn but only one article about Vietnamese noun phrase haït döa, moät haït döa is searched, whereas a huge amount of information, data, no way to read them all, can be quickly searched from overseas websites. Now with the fulfillment of this linguistic study of Vietnamese and English nominal groups, I believe that it may contribute as one of its smallest part to the field.
5 Table of contents 1 INTRODUCTION.1 REASONS FOR THE TOPIC .2 CONTENT AND STUDY SCOPE .4 SCIENTIFIC AND PRACTICAL SIGNIFICANCE.1 PUBLISHED STUDY ABOUT ENGLISH NOMINAL GROUPS .2 PUBLISHED STUDY ABOUT VIETNAMESE NOMINAL GROUPS. 20 Cao Xuan Hao. 20 Nguyen Kim Than. 24 Diep Quang Ban.
27 3 DISCUSSION AND RESULTS.1 CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS BETWEEN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE NOMINAL GROUPS.1 Expressing the experience of “things”. 30 The head element. 31 The determining element. 32 The modifying element.
33 The qualifying element. 34 The pronoun it as pronominal head. 35 The pronouns this, that, these, those as pronominal heads. 36 Substitution head one/ones.
37 Substitution by the same. 38 Substitution by such .2 Presenting “things” as mass, countable, indefinite and definite. 40 The notions of “mass” and “count”. 40 Grammatical markers of countability.
40 The systems of definiteness. 42 Indefinite nominal groups. 43 Definite nominal groups. 44 Discourse functions of the system of definiteness.
46 Generic statements about “things”.3 Selecting and particularising “things”. 50 The system of determination. 50 Demonstratives: this, that, these, those. 53 Non-specific deictic determinatives.
54 WH-deictic determinnatives, such. 59 Determintatives used as elliptical heads .4 Expressing intrinsic features of “things”. 64 Intrinsic features of “things”. 66 Words that have dual functions .5 Expressing extrinsic features of “things”.
69 Communicative functions of qualifier. 69 Nominal groups as qualifiers. 71 6 Nominal that-clauses as qualifiers. 71 Nominal wh-clauses as qualifiers.
72 Adverbial group qualifiers. 73 Prepositional group qualifiers. 74 Adjectival group qualifiers. 75 Relative clause qualifiers (situational ).
76 Infinitive / -ing / -en clause qualifiers .6 Organising and communicating the experience of “things”. 79 Summary of experiential structure of NGs. 79 Logical structure of English and Vietnamese NGs. 81 Recursive realisation of the head element.
82 Recursive realisation of the classifier. 82 Recursive realisation of the epithet. 83 Recursive realisation of the determiner. 84 Recursive realisation of the qualifier .2 TROUBLES IN TRANSLATING FROM VIETNAMESE INTO ENGLISH NOMINAL GROUPS.
87 Culture and text. 88 Pragmatics and text. 90 Lexis and text. 92 Semantics and text.
94 Syntax and text .1 Principles of Vietnamese-English NGs translation. 99 The principles of translation. 100 The principles of equivalence. 103 Overview of translation tasks.
104 Competence development in translation.1 ACRONYMS AND NOTATIONAL SYMBOLS.2 LIST OF DIAGRAMS. 116 7 INTRODUCTION Each people has their own way in expressing ideas, notions, thoughts… through their own language. Vietnamese and English possess own ways in structuring these language components in order that those ideas, notions, thoughts… are uniquely generalized. Whereas a beautiful long blond hair makes sense, long beautiful blond a hair doesn’t.
The same discipline (in term of language structure) is applied to Vietnamese as in: Moät taâm hoàn giaø nua beänh hoaïn but not giaø nua taâm hoàn beänh hoaïn moät. The emerging issues here are: (1)What is the language discipline of those expressions? (2)Do they share any similarities and differences? (3) What are linguistic features that affect the meaning and structures of those NGs? (4) What can help with the Vietnamese-English translation of NGs? (5) How learners can gain competences to translate Vietnamese-English NGs? In fact nominal group structure is one of the most difficult issues in grammar. Compared with its equal levels in sentence structure (verbal groups, adjectival groups…), nominal group is perhaps more complicated than its grammatical unit neighbors since it relates to all ‘things’ and ‘entities’, abstract or concrete…, that human brain can perceive and experience. As we can observe, nominal groups exist in almost all sentences.
The study about NGs is consequently hard job in study. In the current availability of research references, it seems even harder, and results so much efforts and time to work with the study.1 REASONS FOR THE TOPIC First, the study aims at examining the linguistic and paralinguistic features of English and Vietnamese nominal groups. The study will be carried out thoroughly enough until an overall picture of a contrastive analysis between English and Vietnamese nominal groups emerges. 8 Second, foreseeable troubles (from the analysis) and solutions are to be suggested in order that interferences from mother tongue in the course of translation of NGs from Vietnamese to English can be overcome.
The study also helps with some hints for teachers and learners in translation classes, hopefully with worthwhile implications. This master thesis, as a requirement for the master program in TESOL of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, is a chance to have a systematic and thorough understanding of Vietnamese and English nominal groups in a contrastive overview. Additionally, which practical implications can be withdrawn from the study to serve in pedagogical settings of teaching Vietnamese- English translation.2 CONTENT AND STUDY SCOPE The study is guided by the following questions: a) What are the linguistic features of English and Vietnamese nominal groups? b) Do they share any similarities and differences ? c) Which troubles impede Vietnamese learners in their course of translation NGs from Vietnamese into English ? d) What are some of teaching implications for Vietnamese- English translation? The study also discusses a number of English and Vietnamese grammatical subjects, strongly emphasizes to syntactical aspects as well as provides some discourse analyses circulating the thesis content.3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY The study methodology is based on a fully qualitative approach. Analyses are withdrawn from careful observation of contemporary 9 languages with high level of distribution, both in Vietnamese and English.
The study possesses well-selected data which appear in naturally communicative settings so that an authentic state of “real life” nature is maintained. The richness of selected data nested in real contexts, covering all aspects of the topic complex, also helps create strong and convincing impacts on readers. The qualitative approach orients a full description in words, then explores significance from each prescribed situation to structure the study as it naturally proceeds 1.4 SCIENTIFIC AND PRACTICAL SIGNIFICANCE Vietnamese and English NGs appear in various distribution and discipline that cause much troubles in teaching and learning the language translation. Scientifically, there appears a need to have a systematic contrastive analysis between the Vietnamese and English NGs in order to equip teachers and learners with a contrastive overview when facing with issues relating to NGs, especially in translation.
Practically, problems and solutions in translating Vietnamese- English NGs help the English teaching and learning with some hints. Moreover, if compared with other educational fields, there are so few teaching and learning materials related to NGs and translation. Eventually, there also appears a need to have such a thesis.5 THESIS PLAN The study is divided into six major sections. Section 1 as you are reading is a general introduction of the thesis content.
Section 2 reviews all relevant literature from past researches related to the thesis title, general guiding signposts to study English and Vietnamese nominal groups. Section 3 discusses, analyses 10 contrastively the two NGs and gives out findings, at the same time some foreseeable troubles emerging in teaching Vietnamese-English translation will be highlighted. Section 4 works with teaching solutions. Section 5 is for bibliography and 6 the appendices.1 PUBLISHED STUDY ABOUT ENGLISH NOMINAL GROUPS The term “nominal” generally refers to “things” or human experiences of “things”.
Nominal groups refer to all syntactical units which semantically express whatever human brain can perceive as “things”, concrete or abstract. Angela Downing Angela Downing (1995) defines “things” as: (1) concrete entities such as persons, objects, places, institutions and other “collectives”; (2) abstractions such as thoughts, experience; (3) relationships such as friendship, obedience; (4) quality as beauty, speed; (5) emotions as anger, excitement; (6) phenomena as thunder, success… She also defines the head element as a central element of a nominal group structure which refers to a substantive entity experienced as “thing”, and it is realized typically by: (1) a noun as in a concert; (2) a pronoun as in Technology has solved many age-old problems for us, but it has also created many new ones; (3) an elliptical head as I like white roses but I prefer red; (4) a substitutive head as Holidays are always too short. Such is life! She also explains pre-head, post-head, modifier, determiner, qualifier as followed: Prehead or pre-modification consists of modifier or/and determiner. Posthead or post-modification plays the role of the noun head’s qualifier.
Modifier is a modifying element, describing the inherent, more permanent quality of the entity itself.