Contrastive Analysis Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Vu
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4A06 Nguyen Kim Phung The Structure of N
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- Contrastive Analysis Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Vu December 29, 2009
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Running head: the word order in noun phrase The Word Order in Vietnamese and English Noun Phrase: A Contrastive Analysis Le Huynh H a Van 4 A 06 HCMC University of Pedagogy Contrastive Analysis Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Vu December 29, 2009 The Word Order in Vietnamese and English Noun Phrase: A Contrastive Analysis Introduction Once I was doing the assignment my teacher gave me, I came across this title on the webpage http://khoaanh.net/ “How many ways can we say the sentence, “Sao bảo nó không đến?” By jumbling the order of only five words “sao”, “bảo”, “nó”, “không”, “đến”, we can make various sentences with different meanings such as “Sao không bảo nó đến”, “Bảo sao nó không đến”, or “Sao không đến bảo nó”,etc. At that time, one question came into my mind, “Can we do the same in English, by changing the word order?” This interesting idea encourages me to find out similarities and differences of word order in English and in Vietnamese. Within this paper, I focus on contrasting and analyzing English and Vietnamese word order in noun phrase. Then, some implications for language teaching will be discussed in the second part. I hope that the information in this paper will be useful to Vietnamese learners in their language learning as well as in reducing problems in translation. The general order in a noun phrase Basically, a phrase, according to Nguyen (2004), consists of three main parts: specifier, head and complement. Expressing the main meaning of a phrase, the head may be a noun, a verb, an adjective or a preposition, etc. On the left of the head is the specifier. Specifier including determiners, auxiliaries, and degree verbs helps express the main meaning of a phrase more exactly. The complement is attached to the right of the head, providing information about entices and locations of the head. This order is clearly illustrated in the following figure: (pp. 22-26) X P Specifier X Complement Head X stands for N, V, A, or P Figure 1: The phrase structure template E.g: a story about the paternal love. Specifier Head Complement Similarly, Mai, Vu & Hoang (2006) stated that the general order of a basic phrase is pre-modification (phần phụ trước) – head (phần trung tâm) – post-modification (phần phụ sau) (p.275). For instance, the verb phrase “Đã lấy chồng” has the verb “lấy” as the head, “đã” as pre-modification and “chồng” as post-modification. Both Nguyen (2004) and Mai et al. (2006) define a noun phrase as “a group of words with a noun or pronoun as the main part” (Head) (Nguyen 41). Jackson (1980) added that the noun or pronoun is “the minimal requirement for the occurrence of a noun phrase. The other two parts such as pre-modification, post-modification are optionally occurring” (p.12). Therefore, the order of a noun phrase in English and Vietnamese can be generalized like this: Pre-modification + Head + post-modification (1) (2) (3) E.g: a/ that lovely new dress of Jack 1 2 3 b/ The floating market in Can Tho 1 2 3 c/ The thin woman, old and weak, is slowly walking on the road. 1 2 3 d/ The beautiful doll that my daughter has maimed 1 2 3 e/ George Washington is the first person to be appointed as the president of the U.S.A. 1 2 3 f/ Những bông hoa đỏ thắm trong vườn Bác 1 2 3 g/ Tất cả những con tắc kè màu xanh màu đỏ ấy 1 2 3 h/ Ba con mèo nhỏ xíu đáng yêu 1 2 3 Word order in English noun phrase As we can see in the example above, pre-modification and post-modification may contain other elements. That creates differences between the word order in English and Vietnamese. Basing on the theory of noun phrase of Howard Jackson (1980, pp.12-16) and Nguyen Hoa Lac (2004, pp. 41-52), we can arrange those elements of an English noun phrase into details as in the following table:
Table 1: The word order in English noun phrase Here are some illustrations for the order in the table above: a. One-third of the lazy students a b d f b.The first few hours b c c f c. The second five days b c c f d. Several thousand people c c f In the examples above, we see that the elements in post-determiner can combine with each other. However, they aren’t arbitrarily combined but obey a definite rule: ordinal numeral +indefinite (the first few hours), ordinal + cardinal (the second five days), indefinite quantifier + cardinal numeral (several thousand people) (Nguyen, 2004, p. 44). f. A charming small round old brown French oaken writing desk b epithet size shape age color origin material p.p f g. The company engineer b e f h. This delightful old gentleman’s scruffy bowler hat Noun phrase genitive d e f i. The man who came here yesterday b f g (relative clause) j. This will be a day to remember. b f g (non-finite clause: to –inf.) k. the beautiful girl standing by the window b d f g (non-finite clause: present participle) l. …the greatest masterpiece written by Ernest Hemingway b d f g (non-finite clause: past participle) m. The mysterious sight in Sapa… b d f g (prepositional phrase) n. a girl good at literature… b f g (adj phrase) o. The day before the storm… b f g (adv) p. Barrack Obama, the incumbent president, f g (appositive noun phrases) tải về 149 Kb. Chia sẻ với bạn bè của bạn:
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