MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY  - TRAN THI HUONG WORD ORDER IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE SVC STRUCTURES (A contrastive analysis) TRẬT TỰ TỪ TRONG CẤU TRÚC SVC TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT (Phân tích đối chiếu) M.A. THESIS Field: English language Code: 60220201 Supervisor: Pham Thi Tuyet Huong (Ph.D) HANOI - 2013 DECLARATION I hereby declare that no part of the enclosed Master Thesis has been copied or reproduced by me from any other’s work without acknowledgement and that the thesis is originally written by me under strict guidance of my supervisor. Hanoi, 30 - 10 - 2013 Candidate APPROVED BY ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe deep gratitude to my supervisor: Ms. Pham Thi Tuyet Huong, (Ph.D) whose endless guidance and insightful assistance helped me throughout the writing of this research. Additional thanks go to the students who actively participated in this study and willingly shared their experiences with me. My heartfelt thanks and a special debt of gratitude go to my family and my friends for their love and support to a daughter, a friend whose mind was not always free to give the attention they needed. I would like to thank all people who took part in achieving this work. TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I: INTRODUCTION 1 1. Rationale of the study 1 2. Aims of the study 2 3. Research question 2 4. Scope of the study 3 5. Methods of the study 3 6. Design of the study 3 PART II: DEVELOPMENT 5 CHAPTER 1 5 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 5 1.1.Review of the previous study 5 1.2. Theoretical background 9 1.2.1. Definition of word order 9 1.2.2. Definition of simple sentence 9 1.2.3. Basic English and Vietnamese simple sentence structure 10 1.2.3.1. Basic English simple sentence structure 10 1.2.3.2.Basic Vietnamese simple sentence structure 12 1.2.3.2. Summary 16 CHAPTER 2WORD ORDER IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESESVC STRUCTURES 18 2.1. Word order in English SVC structures 18 2.1.1. English SVC structure 18 2.1.1.1. Syntactic features and semantic roles of Subject (S) 18 2.1.1.2. Syntactic features and semantic roles of intensive verb (V) 24 2.1.1.3. Syntactic features and semantic roles of Complement (C) 25 2.1.2. The variants of word order in English SVC structure 29 2.1.2.1. The variant of word order: CSV 29 2.1.2.2. The variant of word order: CVS 35 2.1.2.3. Summary 38 2.2.Word order in Vietnamese SVC structure 39 2.2.1. Vietnamese SVC structure 39 2.2.2. The variants of word order in Vietnamese SVC structure 42 2.3. The similarities and differences of word order between English and Vietnamese SVC structure 43 2.3.1. The similarities of word order between English and Vietnamese SVC structure 43 2.3.2. The differences of word order between English and Vietnamese SVC structures 45 2.4.Summary 45 CHAPTER 3MAIN REASONS OF THE CHANGES OF WORD ORDER IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE SVC STRUCTURES 47 3.1. The speaker/writer wants to emphasize the topic of the sentence 47 3.2. The speaker/writer wants to express his/her feelings 50 3.3. The speaker/writer wants to give the cohesion of content in the discourse 54 3.4. Summary 57 CHAPTER 4IMPLICATION OF THE STUDY 59 4.1. Prediction of some types of errorsin the study of word order and causes of these errors 59 4.1.1. Definition of error 59 4.1.2. Some mistakes of learners in translating English into Vietnamese and vice versa 60 4.2. Some suggestions for learning and teaching word order in SVC structures to Vietnamese students and teachers 64 4.3 Some suggested exercises for teaching word order to Vietnamese students 65 PART III: CONCLUSION 69 1. Recapitulation 69 2. Limitations of the study 71 3.Suggestions for a further study 72 REFERENCES 73 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS A = adverbial Adj = adjective C = complement Cs = subject complement Co = object complement O = object Od = direct object Oi = indirect object P = predicate Ps = subject predicate Po = Object predicate S = subject V = verb Vintens = intensive V PART I: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale of the study Nowadays, learning and teaching English play an essential role in education and training. When we study any foreign language, the study of grammatical structure in general and sentence structure in particular is very important, no matter how much the rules change, as it is what makes it possible for us all to communicate and understand what we see, and what we say. The English language is made up of structures such as Subject – Verb – Object, Subject – Verb – Complement, Subject – Verb – Indirect object – Direct object, etc. Technically, one needs to know these structures in order to write and speak English well. In the study of grammar structure, the word order is universal concept of linear structure in any analytical languages such as English. Word order in general term is used in linguistics and literature to refer to the arrangement of words in a given linguistic structure. It is one of grammatical means that attracts the attention from many English linguists. Moreover, the word order in English sentence structure in general and SVC structure in particular is one of the most important parts in English grammar. Beside word order, the reasons of the changes of word order in English SVC structure have not been paid much attention to. And hence the similarities and differences of word order in English and Vietnamese SVC structures have not been written about. In addition, word order in English sentence structure is a difficult topic for teachers and students to teach and learn in English grammar. Therefore, some teachers and students have omitted or have notprovided fully necessary knowledge for this kind of structure. On the other hand, in process of teaching English, we realize that Vietnamese students often make mistakes when using the word order in English SVC structure. In order to overcome this situation we need to distinguish the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese SVC structures. We hope the results of this study will help learners write and speak both languages effectively; especially they will have a good knowledge about word order of SVC structures. For this reason, I would like to carry out my research on the topic: WORD ORDER IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE SVC STRUCTURES. (A contrastive analysis) 2. Aims of the study The main aims of the thesis are to: • Present word order in English SVC structures and the main reasons for the changes of word order. • Present word order in Vietnamese SVC structures and the main reasons for the changes of word order. • Point out some similarities and differences between the word order in English and Vietnamese SVC structures. • Predict some errorsin the study of word order in English SVC structures and give solutions. • Give some suggestions in learning and teaching English SVC structure including: How to learn and teach SVC structure and some suggested exercises for teaching word order to Vietnamese learners. 3. Research question • What are word orders of English and Vietnamese SVC structures? • What are the similarities and differences of word order between English and Vietnamese SVC structures? • What are the main reasons for the changes word order in English and Vietnamese SVC structures? • What are the common errorsof learners in using SVC structures? • What are some suggestions for learning and teaching English and Vietnamese SVC structures? 4. Scope of the study The study focuses on SVC structures in both languages in simple sentences. The basic word order and the changes of word order in English and Vietnamese SVC structures will be presented in the examples of the literature works from 19 th century up to now. 5. Methods of the study The main methods of this thesis are description, comparison and contrastive analysis. The study will take English as the basic language and Vietnamese is the language to be compared. The data used for this study come from some English and Vietnamese novels and poems. All the data are classified and organized in different groups of their syntactic structure. In addition, the translation exercises are chosen to identify what are some errors of students in the studying of word order? The research is done on more than 100 Hanoi Open University students to find the result. 6. Design of the study This thesis is divided into three parts: Part I: Introduction This chapter provides an overview of the research by firstly presenting rationale of the study, the aims and the research questions of the study. Then, the scope of the study is pointed out. Next, the methods of the study and the organization of the thesis are outlined. Part II: Development (consists of four chapters) Chapter 1: Theoretical background [...]... study of word order in English and Vietnamese, including definitions of word order, definition and types of basic English and Vietnamese simple sentence structure in general and SVC structure in particular Chapter 2: Word order in English and Vietnamese SVC structures The study will emphasize on the changes of word order in English and Vietnamese SVC structures The word order variations in SVC structures. .. be found and analyzed in literature examples According to the word order variations, the study will analyze the similarities and differences of word order between English and Vietnamese SVC structures Chapter 3: Main reasons of the changes of word order in English and Vietnamese SVC structures The study will present some main reasons of the variants of word order in English and Vietnamese SVC structures. .. chapter predicts some problems in the used of word order in SVC structures and suggests some solutions and exercises for students and teachers in learning and teaching English in general and word order in SVC structures in particular Part III: Conclusion This part will give a brief summary of the thesis and some main conclusions of the thesis It also includes the limitations and suggestions for further... studies in English and Vietnamese are only investigations into the word order in general or in SVO, verb phrases, or inversion particularly Although considerable research has been devoted to the study of word order in English and Vietnamese sentence structure, less attention has been to the variants in word order of SVC structure In this thesis I would like to study the word order in English SVC structure... đáng (34: 133) CHAPTER 2 WORD ORDER IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE SVC STRUCTURES 2.1 Word order in English SVC structures 2.1.1 English SVC structure In English, SVC is one of seven basic sentence structures In this structure, the complement is subject complement According to Quirk, R and Greenbaum, S (1976, 1985), subject complement is in a copula relationship with the subject and the verb is copula (64)... the inversion in English declarative sentences and also examined three functions of English inversion: the presentational function, the emphatic function, and the cohesive function Inversion is a syntax process and it makes the changes of word order in a sentence In her thesis, the change of word order in SVC structure in full inversion into CVS structure was presented Generally, most of studies in English. .. suggestions for teaching and learning languages According to Nguyen Thi Quynh Hoa (2004) with Doctoral thesis: “Structure and Meaning in English Inversion versus Vietnamese , the nature of English inversion on the domains of syntax, semantics and pragmatics was classified The thesis studied English inversion in declarative sentences The thesis emphasized on the word order in types of inversion in both languages... variations in word order She examined in the SOV languages and found not only the basic order SOV but also OSV, SVO, VSO and VOS On the other hand, in SVO languagesshe also found the word order variation including: VOS, VSO, SOV, and OSV Finally, in VSO languages she found some variations: VOS, SVO, OVS, and OSV In addition, Laura Caballero Benito (2009) researched on topic: Objective and Complement Fronting... Summary After studying Vietnamese sentence theory of some linguists, we found that: - Vietnamese is anisolated and non-inflectional language - Word order and functional grammatical words have an important role in making Vietnamese sentence - Word order in Vietnamese sentence is very strict, but the word order can be changed It depends on the intentions of speakers or writers According to the classification,... authors studying about word order such as: Pham Thi Tuyet Huong (2001) studied on the word order in English and Vietnamese verb phrases She carried out a contrastive analysis in the syntactic aspect English is the basic language and Vietnamese is the language to be compared The thesis gave a systemic description of the word order in English and Vietnamese Verb phrases For example, in English Verb phrases . Chapter 2: Word order in English and Vietnamese SVC structures The study will emphasize on the changes of word order in English and Vietnamese SVC structures. The word order variations in SVC structures. problems in the used of word order in SVC structures and suggests some solutions and exercises for students and teachers in learning and teaching English in general and word order in SVC structures. of word order in English and Vietnamese, including definitions of word order, definition and types of basic English and Vietnamese simple sentence structure in general and SVC structure in