MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY PHUNG THI MAI HUONG WORD ORDER OF SENTENCE COMPONENTS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE SVA STRUCTURE (A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS) TRẬT TỰ TỪ CÁC THÀNH PHẦN CÂU TRONG CẤU TRÚC SVA TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT (PHÂN TÍCH ĐỐI CHIẾU) M.A. THESIS Field: English language Code: 60220201 Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Pham Thi Tuyet Huong, Ph.D HANOI, 2013 DECLARATION I hereby declare that no part of the enclosed Master Thesis has been copied or reproducted 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 05- 11- 2013 Candidate Phung Thi Mai Huong APPROVED BY i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to all those who gave me the possibility to complete this thesis. I am deeply to my supervisor Pham Thi Tuyet Huong (Ph.D) whose endless guidance, stimulating suggestions and encouragement helped me in all time of the research. In addition, I thank for the co-operation of the students who actively participated in this study to help me complete the thesis successfully. I would like to thank my family and my friends. They helped me and encouraged me so much during researching. I also thank deeply all people who took part in achieving this work. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS A = adverbial C = complement Cs = subject complement Cp = prepositional complement O = object Od = direct object Oi = indirect object Op = prepositional object P = predicate S = subject V = verb iv PART I: INTRODUCTION 1. RATIONALE OF THE STUDY Nowadays, the need of learning foreign languages, especially learning English in our society is in great demand because of the integration of Vietnam in globalization. It plays also essential role in education and training. However, as an English teacher, in process of teaching English, I realized that one of the big problems Vietnamese students often encounter when they learn English is to translate the sentences that do not have basic word order from English into Vietnamese and vice versa. Since the learner often transfers the habits of his native language structure to the foreign language word by word, there is a majority of difficulty in learning a structure of a foreign language. Therefore, the study of sentence structure is considered to be very important. A sentence structure is the way in which all of the elements of a sentence are put in order. So knowledge of the basic word order of a language is important because it has been found to correlate with other grammatical properties of the language. The word order is a universal concept of sentence structures in English as well as in Vietnamese. In the previous researches of linguists, the word order of sentence structure is paid much attention. However, the word order of components of SVA structure in English and Vietnamese has not been paid much attention to. Especially the changes of position of elements in SVA structure have not been written about. It describes what part of the sentence will go first, second and third. The basic elements of SVA structure are the subject (S), the verb (V) and the adverbial (A). The SVA structure is one of the basic structures in English grammar which students are taught at the beginning level. Therefore, it plays an important role both in teaching and learning of English. Moreover, I do contrastive analysis with Vietnamese so as to find out similarities as well as differences between two languages. For all the reasons, I would like to carry out my research on the topic: “Word order of sentence components in English and Vietnamese SVA structures”. 1 This thesis hopes to help students to overcome the difficulties in the process of their learning and translating. 2. AIM OF THE STUDY The main aims of the thesis are to: - Present main features of sentence components in English and Vietnamese SVA structures - Describe the word order of sentence components in English and Vietnamese SVA structures - Give a systemic description of the word order in English and Vietnamese SVA structures. - Try to point out some similarities and differences between sentence components in English and Vietnamese SVA structures. - Predict common errors of students when using English SVA structure and suggest a set of exercises for teaching and learning the word order of English SVA structure to Vietnamese learners. 3. OBJECTIVE AND SCOPE OF THE STUDY - The objective of the study is the word order of sentence components in English and Vietnamese SVA structures. - This thesis will limit itself within English and Vietnamese SVA structures in simple sentences only, especially in statements. And the adverbial in this structure is both obligatory and optional. 4. METHOD OF THE STUDY - The main methods of this thesis are description, comparison and contrastive analysis. - We have considered English as the basic language of the study and Vietnamese is the language to be compared. 5. RESEARCH QUESTIONS - What is the basic word order of English and Vietnamese SVA structure? - What are the changes of word order of sentence components in English and Vietnamese SVA structures? 2 - What are the syntactic and semantic functions of sentence components in English and Vietnamese SVA structures? - What are some similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese SVA structures? - What is the frequency of using SVA structures in literature of both languages and the causes? - Which errors do students often make when using SVA structure in English as well as in Vietnamese? 6. DESIGN OF THE STUDY The study consists of three parts: - Part I: Introduction This part consists of aims and objectives, scope and methodology and also the design of the study. - Part II: Development: It includes four chapters: + Chapter 1: Literature review This chapter looks at the theoretical preliminaries, the study of word order in English and Vietnamese deals with books, research work and articles and presents some basic concepts about word order and basic simple sentence, syntactic and semantic functions of components in SVA structure. + Chapter 2: Sentence components in English and Vietnamese SVA structures and their word orders This chapter presents the basic word order of components sentences and the changes of word order of sentence components in English and Vietnamese SVA structures. + Chapter 3: Contrastive analysis of the word order of sentence components in English and Vietnamese SVA structures. This chapter presents the similarities, the differences in English and Vietnamese SVA structures and the frequency of using SVA structure in English and Vietnamese literature, also points out the reasons of these uses. 3 +Chapter 4: A research on common mistakes in using word order in English SVA structure. This chapter presents some common mistakes of students in using SVA structure, especially, in translation. From that, the research gives some solutions and suggestions for teaching and learning English. This study is conducted with third- year students at Hanoi Open University. - Part III: Conclusion The concluding part summarizes the main findings of the study. At the end of the thesis, references are included. 4 PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1. The study of word order in English and Vietnamese. 1.1.1. The study of word order in English The study of word order is important because it can make indications about other features of the language, such as the placement of adjectives, adverbs and subordinators. Greenberg (1966) discussed 45 “universal” tendencies relating to word order that carry across all languages. These universals relate to basic word order typologies, syntax, and morphology. These universals were pioneering and influential in the study of word order because they allow us to make inferences about the properties of a language based on its word order. Quirk, R and Greenbaum, S (1976) also pointed out clause types with their word order such as: SVA, SVO, SVC, SVOC, SVOA, SVOO and SV. They stated “The order in which the elements appear is common but by no –means fixed.” D. Crystal (1987. p98) stated that more than 75% of all languages in the world have SVO word order, including both English and Vietnamese. Both of them use word order to be mean of top important grammar. Moreover, in both of languages, word order has relative fixity. It is expressed in moving of components in the sentence and some sentence structural models are not considered more basically than typical SVO model. Beside some modern English grammarians and linguists, such as Thomas, O (1967), Jacobs, R.A et al (1968) Palmer F (1978), Quirk R and Greenbaum, S (1990) discussed about word order. Leonard Bloomfield (1997) also stated “word order” is one part of syntax. According to him, the order of words in a sentence cannot but to be to some extent indicative of their syntactic relations, just as all the words of a sentence, to begin with, form an uninterrupted sequence. In many 5 [...]... is the order in which words come in clauses and sentences So, word order is the arrangement of words coming in phrase, clause and sentence According to Verma (1996, p1) the word order refers to the order in which words appear in sentences across different languages The traditional perception of word order is based on the description of syntax that is an arrangement of words in sentences In English. .. (Tr) In this thesis, we would like to research the word order of sentence components in SVA structure more deeply I hope this thesis will be useful for both teaching English to Vietnamese learners and Vietnamese to English learners They can gain some experiences in using SVA structure in learning and translating from English into Vietnamese and vice- versa and hence understand deeply the changes of word. .. CHAPTER 2 23 SENTENCE COMPONENTS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE SVA STRUCTURE AND THEIR ORDERS 2.1 The basic word order of sentence components in English SVA structure According to R.Quirk and S.Greenbaum (1976) the sentence including three components S, V and A is one of seven English basic sentences and it is the first structure in seven basic sentences In English SVA structure, the only verb that allows... (2008)), he points out one of the similarities in both languages is a certain number of basic sentence patterns Seven basic sentence patterns in English are completely equivalent in Vietnamese In the study on the word order in English and Vietnamese verb phrases, Pham Thi Tuyet Huong (2001), carried out comparing and analyzing the arrangement of words in typical syntactic structures- English and Vietnamese. .. According to statistic material, in English ASV structure, “here” is an adverbial appearing at the initial of sentence This variant has the largest number in total of all sentences of ASV structure It includes 41 sentences of 105 ones and accounts for 7,5% in total 550 sentences which have the change of word order in SVA structure (in which there are 105 sentences of ASV structure and 445 sentences of. .. considered English as the basic language of contrastive analysis; Vietnamese is the language to be compared In the thesis, she gave a systemic description of the word order in English and Vietnamese verb phrase After describing the word order in English and Vietnamese verb phrases, she pointed out some main striking similarities and differences between them The trend of formalization in Vietnamese. .. expression In “The sentence components of Vietnamses” (2004, p.70) , according to Nguyen Minh Thuyet and Nguyen Van Hiep word order in Vietnamese is the important procedure expressing syntax functions of word Besides, it also is used to express actual division, emotion and feeling of speaker and writer Depending on the structure of real division and the need of expression in the sentence, a component can stand... S.Greenbaum stated word order is the order of components in a phrase, clause or sentence According to Nguyen Tai Can (1999), order relations are used to distinguish the compounds, the fixed combinations and freedom combinations A part from that, Nguyen Kim Than (1963) considered word order is one of means of syntax expression According to him, using of word order is principled arrangement of a language... word order of sentence components in SVA structure 1.2 Some basic concepts 1.2.1 Word order When discussing about the word order, some linguistics gave some own views According to the view of F.Palmer (1971) stated that word order is the combination between words in a phrase such as nouns with adjectives in noun phrase, verbs with adverbs in verb phrase D.E Rozental and M.A Telenkova (M, 1972) defined... that different ways of grouping words may result in different meanings And categoriality is that words have different distributions based on their categories 1 Linearity Sentences are produced and received in a linear way It means that words are spoken (or written) and listened (or read) in a sequence with respect to other words in the sentence; words are ordered from left to right in English A sequence . the changes of word order of sentence components in English and Vietnamese SVA structures. + Chapter 3: Contrastive analysis of the word order of sentence components in English and Vietnamese SVA structures. . changes of word order of sentence components in English and Vietnamese SVA structures? 2 - What are the syntactic and semantic functions of sentence components in English and Vietnamese SVA structures? -. are to: - Present main features of sentence components in English and Vietnamese SVA structures - Describe the word order of sentence components in English and Vietnamese SVA structures - Give