The Structure of Noun Phrase in English and Vietnamese
adjective demonstrative
Contrastive Analysis
| adjective
|
|
demonstrative |
All the analysis and comparison is futile unless it serves a meaningful purpose. The intensive study of the structure of English and Vietnamese noun phrase provides us with food for thought in terms of implications for language teaching and language learning.
Firstly, Vietnamese nouns do not have the same mechanism with English nouns when it comes to the plural form, so Vietnamese tend to “forget” the morphemes “-s” or “-es” after a plural noun. For example, they may say two book instead of two books because in their mother tongue they can safely say một quyển sách (singular) and hai quyển sách, những quyển sách, các quyển sách (plural). The instance indicates that Vietnamese nouns remain unchanged despite the change in the plurality and that Vietnamese people use the plural markers “những”, “các” to convey plurality. That’s why they may produce ungrammatical English phrases. Moreover, Vietnamese people are very unfamiliar with the concept of countable and uncountable nouns. Consequently, they may overgeneralize the rule and not be aware that we cannot add “-s” or “-es” to an uncountable noun. For example they may use an advice/ advices and an information/ informations without knowing that advice and information are uncountable nouns; therefore, we cannot add “-s” or “-es” to advice and information. This raises a problem to Vietnamese because in our language, we say một/ nhiều lời khuyên, một/ nhiều thông tin. These examples show clearly how the mother tongue can interfere in the process of learning English. Therefore, teachers should draw students’ attention to the issue of singular/ plural nouns and countable/ uncountable nouns.
Secondly, Vietnamese people find it difficult to recognize the head noun in long and complicated noun phrases such as a beautiful young girl who is standing by the window. It’s a fatal weakness if students cannot point out the head noun. Because an English noun phrase can function as a subject of a sentence, it is vital that English learners can identify the head noun and match it with the main verb. It is obvious that subjects and verbs are the fundamental elements of a sentence. Therefore, unless students can make subjects accord with main verbs, they cannot produce correct sentences. In order for students to deal with this problem, teachers should guide them through the process of describing the organization of English noun phrases. If students can successfully identify the head noun, they will not make subject-verb agreement mistakes.
Thirdly, adjectives are very important in modifying head nouns. In terms of English structure, they usually come before head nouns. That is something I have presented above. The problem here is sometimes we need more than one adjective to describe the head noun. In such an occasion, English learners are often confused because they do not know how to put a string of adjectives into a right order. While native speakers can use many adjectives to describe things without difficulty, English learners find this a real challenge. For example, English people can say a long series of adjective with ease: a charming small round old brown French oaken writing desk. Fortunately, Jackson has suggested a rule: 1. epithet (charming) 2. size (small) 3. shape (round) 4. age (old) 5. color (brown) 6. origin (French) 7. substance (oaken) 8. present participle (writing) (Jackson, 1982, p.13). I have to admit that we do not have many sequences of adjectives like this in real life. However, these are very common in writing and knowing how to arrange adjectives in a natural order is an advantage. As a result, teachers should remind students of how to use adjectives to make their description as detail and correct as possible, especially in writing.
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