MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY M. THESIS A TRANSITIVITY COMPARISON OF EXPERIENTIAL MEANINGS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE LINGUISTICS ARTICLES Nghiên cứu so sánh trên bình diện chuyển tác của nghĩa trải nghiệm trong các bài báo ngôn ngữ tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt ĐINH THỊ HƯƠNG Field: English Language Code: 8.01 Hanoi, 10/ 2022 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY M. THESIS A TRANSITIVITY COMPARISON OF EXPERIENTIAL MEANINGS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE LINGUISTICS ARTICLES Nghiên cứu so sánh trên bình diện chuyển tác của nghĩa trải nghiệm trong các bài báo ngôn ngữ tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt ĐINH THỊ HƯƠNG Field: English Language Code: 8. Lê Phương Thảo Hanoi, 10/ 2022 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitled “A TRANSITIVITY COMPARISON OF EXPERIENTIAL MEANINGS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE LINGUISTICS ARTICLES” submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in English Language.
Except where the reference is indicated, no other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis. Hanoi, 2022 Đinh Thị Hương Approved by SUPERVISOR (Signature and full name) Supervisor: Dr. Lê Phương Thảo Date:…………………… i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude and appreciation to my research supervisor, Dr. Lê Phương Thảo, Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University for her careful guidance and professional, academic advice on my thesis.
I am really lucky to receive her 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 Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University, for their useful guidance and support and all the staff of the Post - graduate Department at Hanoi Open 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. 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. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii TABLE OF CONTENTS iii ABSTRACT vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 1. Aim and objectives of the study 2 1. Scope of the study 3 1.
Significance of the study 3 1. Structure of the study 3 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 5 2. Overview of systemic - functional grammar 9 2. Functions of language 11 2.
Summary 19 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 20 3. Criteria for collecting data 21 3. Reliability and validity 23 CHAPTER 4: TRANSITIVITY IN ENGLISH LINGUISTICS ARTICLES 24 4. Verbal Process 26 iii 4.
Circumstances of Location 35 4. Circumstances of Cause 36 4. Circumstances of Manner 36 4. Circumstances of Angle 37 4.
Circumstances of Accompaniment 37 4. Summary 39 CHAPTER 5: TRANSITIVITY IN VIETNAMESE LINGUISTICS ARTICLES 40 5. Circumstances of Location 53 5. Circumstances of Cause 53 iv 5.
Circumstances of Manner 54 5. Circumstances of Stance 54 5. Circumstances of accompaniment 55 5. Circumstances of contingency 56 5.
Circumstances of matter 56 5. Circumstances of extent 57 5. Circumstances of role 57 5. Summary 58 CHAPTER 6: SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE EXPERIENTIAL MEANINGS ARE EXPRESSED IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE LINGUISTICS ARTICLES 59 6.
In terms of process types 59 6. In terms of participants 60 6. In terms of circumstances 62 6. Summary 63 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION 65 7.
Limitations of the study 69 7. Recommendations and suggestions for further research 70 REFERENCES 71 IN ENGLISH 71 IN VIETNAMESE 73 ENGLISH SOURCES 73 VIETNAMESE SOURCES 74 v ABSTRACT The study aims to help learners of English to understand experiential meanings in English and Vietnamese linguistics articles from a perspective of systemic- functional grammar. 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 (2004) to investigate the transitivity system of English and Vietnamese linguistics articles.
As the main aim is to compare how the experiential meanings expressed between the linguistics articles as a whole in the two languages, the corpora include ten research articles from English and Vietnamese linguistics articles. However, since the similarities and differences are considered from the transitivity angle, the unit of analysis and comparison is the English and Vietnamese clauses. The comparison is then made in terms of percentages due to the differences in the number of clauses in the two corpora. The data for analysis was taken from five linguistic articles for each kind of language (English and Vietnamese) for investigation.
The samples were in the form of clauses in English and Vietnamese linguistic articles collected from the official websites of the linguistics articles in the United Kingdom and “NGÔN NGỮ & đời sống”, the journal of linguistic society of Vietnam. The findings show that linguistics scholars in English and Vietnamese construct experiential meanings in their texts in mostly similar ways. The differences are also found in the two corpora; but they are mostly reflected in specific percentages of each process type, participant type, and circumstantial type in the two corpora. vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Circ.: Circumstance ELAs: The English Linguistics Articles FG: Functional Grammar FL: Foreign language Pro.: Process RA: Research article SFG: Systemic Functional Grammar VLAs: The Vietnamese Linguistics Articles vii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Figure 3.
Types of Processes in ELAs 17 Table 3. Participants used in ELAs 21 Table 3. Circumstances involved in the Processes in ELAs 25 Figure 3. The Percentage of Circumstance Types in ELAs 27 Figure 4.
Types of Processes in VLAs 32 Table 4. Participant Functions used in VLAs 37 Table 4. The percentage of Participants in Relational Process in VLAs 41 Table 4. Circumstances involved in the Process in VLAs 42 Figure 4.
The Percentage of Circumstance Types in VLAs. Six process types of English and Vietnamese Linguistics Articles 50 Table 5. Participants’ frequency of occurrence and percentage in ESLAs and VSLAs. Circumstances in linguistic articles in English and Vietnamese 53 viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.
Rationale The history of linguistics has seen many different grammatical approaches, such as traditional grammar, structural grammar, and transformational- generative grammar, each of which defines its own objectives. Of the grammatical approaches, traditional grammar sees grammar as a set of rules which specify all grammatical structures of the language. In this approach there is a main focus on making a distinction between grammatical and ungrammatical sentences. Sentences are considered as the largest units in the grammatical system of a language and they are used to illustrate different grammatical rules.
The primary concern of this approach is on the forms of grammatical structure rather than their meanings or uses in contexts. Because of its earlier foundation, traditional grammar has greatly influenced linguistics and language teaching. Another approach that also has a great influence on language research and teaching is functional grammar. The theory of functional grammar was originally introduced by M.
Halliday in the early 1960s. Systemic functional linguistics sees language as a system of communication and analyses grammar to discover how it is organized to exchange meanings. The primary concern is with the function of structures and with their meanings in context. All languages take place in the context.
Rather than studying the distinction between grammatical and ungrammatical forms, the focus of this approach is on the appropriateness of a form in a particular context. Functional grammar has been studied by many grammarians like Halliday, M. The Language of Science; Bloor, T and Bloor, M. The Functional Analysis of English (1994), Eggins, S.
An Introduction to Systemic Functional Linguistics., Thomson (1996), Introducing Functional Grammar, etc. In Vietnamese there are some functional studies that should be counted are Cao Xuân Hạo (2004) Tiếng Việt: sơ thảo ngữ pháp chức năng; Diệp Quang Ban. Câu đơn tiếng Việt. Hà Nội; Hoàng Văn Vân (2008).
về vị trí và tổ chức của Đề ngữ trong cú đơn, cú phức và trong các đơn vị chuyển tiếp. 1 Personally, the writer finds systemic- functional grammar very interesting as it offers a full study on language and language teaching which focuses on communication. This is a very useful way to teach and learn English. The intention of this study is to illuminate the characteristics of grammatical subjects in English and to compare it with Vietnamese language to have a full understanding of this term.
However, due to the limitation of time, the writer is not able to cover all aspects of grammatical subject in the two languages. What the writer would like to do is to study experiential meanings in English and Vietnamese linguistics articles from a perspective of systemic-functional grammar. It’s hopeful that this study will contributes to facilitation of the teaching and learning of English 1. Aim and objectives of the study The overarching aim of this study is to compare experiential meanings in English and Vietnamese linguistics articles from a perspective of systemic-functional grammar, using Halliday’s transitivity model as the theoretical framework to point out the similarities and differences between the ways the English and Vietnamese researchers employ transitivity resources to construct linguistics knowledge in their research.
In order to gain the above aim, the following objectives are put forward: ⮚ To explore what transitivity resources are employed to construct experiential meanings English and Vietnamese linguistics articles and how they are employed. ⮚ To compare the two data sets to establish the similarities and differences between them in terms of experiential meanings. Research questions In order to reach the target, the following research questions are posed: 1. What transitivity resources are employed to construct experiential meanings in English linguistics articles, and how are they employed? 2.
What transitivity resources are employed to construct experiential meanings in Vietnamese linguistics articles, and how are they employed? 3. What are the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese linguistics articles in terms of experiential meanings? 2 1. Scope of the study Given the aim and the objectives, this study is confined to exploring and comparing the experiential meanings in English and Vietnamese language and life articles. The analytical framework employed for the analysis of the two data sets is the transitivity model of Halliday’s systemic functional grammar.
Systemic functional grammar views a clause as a combination of three strands of meaning: experiential, interpersonal, and textual realized in a single wording. This means that the interpersonal and textual meanings, though they may be mentioned at some points in the research, are not the focus of the study. Given the scope of this research, however, only 10 research articles in the field, five in English and five in Vietnamese, have been selected as research data. Significance of the study Finding and analyzing the transitivity system in English and Vietnamese linguistics articles create some contributions: Firstly, the study helps anyone interested in linguistics articles know how to create linguistics articles effectively and helps hearers and readers understand them clearly.
Second, based on Halliday & Matthiessen's theory, this study provides learners with information on how to use the Transitivity System in linguistics articles, particularly six process categories (Material process, Mental process, Relational process, Verbal process, Existential process, and Behavioral process). Thus, the learners know many sorts of Transitivity systems and how to deal with transitivity system elements for their purposes. Lastly, the study offers a minor contribution to Halliday & Matthiessen’s systematic functional grammar in applying the Transitivity system in linguistics articles. From that, I can demonstrate the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese linguistics articles.