Functions: Noun phrase may function as subject. In Vietnamese language, 99% of subject is noun phrase and pronoun. Kì thi

Noun phrase may function as subject.

In Vietnamese language, 99% of subject is noun phrase and pronoun.

Kì thi sắp đến.

The second function of noun phrase is predicate

Cả làng này đều nhà ngói.

The third function of noun phrase is noun modifier. In Vietnamese we call it định ng ữ

Nhà gạch gần công viên.

A noun phrase can also function as object (bổ ngữ)

Cô giáo đọc thơ Hàn Mạc Tử

The final function of a noun phrase is adverbial (trạng ngữ)

Within this paper, I intend to contrast English and Vietnamese noun phrase in three aspects: hierarchy relationships, word order, and co-occurrence restrictions as well as occurrence restrictions of nominal clauses.

1. 
   Hierarchy relationships
   

First of all, the occurrence of English nouns and determiners is obligatory, whereas that of Vietnamese is optional. Therefore, the following sentence is ungrammatical

I buy book

But in Vietnamese, the sentence “Tôi mua sách is grammatical

Furthermore, where the English language is concerned, there can be as many as three determiners prior to the head noun as shown in the following

[The first three] questions

Article- ordinal-cardinal

Secondly, Vietnamese is a classifier language. As such, the use of classifiers is generally obligatory in numerated noun phrases. Thus, expressions like “một cuốn sách” or “hai con mèo is ungrammatical and hai mèo or một sách is unacceptable.

In English, however, we don’t normally use classifiers before nouns. Hence, the following sentences are acceptable in English.

I have two books

The cats are chasing the dogs.

Finally, the optional element- particle CÁI can appear in Vietnamese noun phrase as in

hai CÁI thùng này

In English language, there is no such case.

Another aspect that we need to pay attention to is word order. The order of sub constituents of English noun phrases is more rigid than that of Vietnamese noun phrases.

The first one I want to mention is the order of demonstrative in English and Vietnamese noun phrases. English demonstratives occur before the head noun as central determiners as in “This new dress is expensive.”

Unlike in English, demonstratives occur as the last element in the Vietnamese noun phrases as in “mấy quả cam này củ rồi.”

Similarly, Vietnamese possessives are prepositional phrases beginning with “c ủa”. They follow the head noun and normally occur as the right most position in a noun phrase as in

Những cuốn sách trên kệ của tôi rất quý

That is not the case of English possessives. They are pre determiners in noun phrases thus precede the head nouns as in the following sentence

His brother is very kind.

Then, in Vietnamese noun phrase, noun does not allow any modifying AP to its left.

In English, on the other hand, we can put an AP before the head noun. Thus, it’s acceptable to say “a new dress” in English but we cannot say “một chiếc mới váy” in Vietnamese.

Sometimes we need another noun called noun adjunct to modify the head noun, we normally place it after the head noun in Vietnamese noun phrase. Therefore, this sentence is acceptable in Vietnamese

Tôi thích đọc truyên thiếu nhi.

Unlike in Vietnamese, the noun adjunct precedes the head noun. As a result, this sentence is grammatical in English

I like reading children books.

In addition, in Vietnamese ordinal numerals occur post-nominally and are introduced by the marker thứ ‘order, rank’ as in

Tôi là người con thứ ba trong gia đình.

In the above sentence, we can see that ordinal number follows the head noun. In English, on the contrary, ordinal numbers precede the head noun so the sentence below is grammatical in English.

The second cat is more beautiful.

It’s important to notice that in English noun phrase, it is possible to use quantifiers to function as pre-determiners or post-determiners as in