0 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES    V TH YN HNG SEMANTIC FEATURES OF WEATHER PROVERBS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE ĐẶC ĐIỂM NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA CÁC CÂU TỤC NGỮ CHỈ THỜI TIT TRONG TING ANH VÀ TING VIỆT MA. MINOR THESIS (A summary) Field: English Linguistics Code: 60.22.15 HANOI, 2012 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION OF AUTHORSHIP……………………………………………… ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………… ABSTRACT ……………………………………………………………………… TABLE OF CONTENTS…………………………………………………………. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS…………………………………………………… LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES……………………………………………… P ART 1: INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………. 1. Rationale for the research………………………………………………………… 2. Research aims and research questions …………………………………………… 2.1. Research aims…………………………………………………………………. 2.2. Research questions……………………………………………………………. 3. Scope of the research……………………………………………………………… 4. Significance of the research ……………………………………………………… 5. Structure of the research …………………………………………………………… PART 2: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1. Some publications on weather proverbs and some related researches……………… 1.2. Proverbs………………………………………………………………………. 1.2.1. Definitions of proverbs………………………………………………… 1.2.2. Semantic features of proverbs…………………………………………… 1.3. Weather proverbs……………………………………………………………… 1.3.1. Definition of weather proverbs………………………………………… 1.3.2. Semantic fields of weather proverbs…………………………………. CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY……………………………………. 2.1. Sampling………………………………………………………………………… 2.2. Data collection……………………………………………………………………… 2.3. Data analysis……………………………………………………………………… i ii iii iv vi vii 1 1 2 2 3 3 3 4 5 5 5 7 7 8 10 10 11 12 12 12 12 v CHAPTER 3: ………………………………………………………………………… 3.1. Semantic features of EWP and VWP……………………………………………… 3.1.1. Anticipating weather changes………………………………………………… 3.1.1.1. Means of anticipating weather changes………………………………… 3.1.1.2. Weather Conditions……………………………………………………… 3.1.2. Representing weather‟s influence on human life………………………… 3.1.2.1. Weather‟s influence on production………………………………… 3.1.2.2. Weather‟s influence on human health……………………………… 3.2. Similarities and Differences between EWP and VWP ………………………… 3.2.1. Similarities…………………………………………………………………… 3.2.2. Differences…………………………………………………………………… 3.3. Weather proverbs – A reliable indicator or not? PART C: CONCLUSIONS ………………………………………………………… 1. Recapitulation ……………………………………………………………………… 2. Concluding remarks…………………………………………………………………. 3. Pedagogical implications………………………………………………………… 4. Limitations of the study…………………………………………………………… 5. Suggestions for further study……………………………………………………… REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………… APPENDIX 1 APPENDIX 2 14 15 15 15 28 34 35 36 37 37 38 39 41 41 41 42 43 44 44 vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EWP: English Weather Proverbs VWP: Vietnamese Weather Proverbs vii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Figure 1: Percentage of Semantic Fields of EWP and VWP Figure 2: Means of Anticipating Weather Changes in EWP and VWP Table 1: Semantic Fields of Weather Conditions in EWP and VWP Table 2: Weather‟s Influence on Production and Human Health 1 PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale for the research Every language has proverbs. Learning and understanding them is an important aspect of the mastery of language. English language is no exception as it contains a large number of proverbs, which are extensively used as the wisdom of people. English language learners, often struggling with a limited vocabulary, find these memorable proverbs easy to learn and fun to use. Proverbs add familiarity and comfort to an often strange and stressful situation for older English learners. Proverbs can capture a point of view in vivid words. We learn proverbs our entire lives - from our relatives, our teachers, our friends, the media, and our literature. These classic sayings contain folk wisdom gathered through time and experience. They often capture a common human experience across cultures and languages. Hence, using proverbs in the language teaching not only provides learners with rich vocabulary but also equips them with a good basis of cultural knowledge reflected in the proverbs themselves. Through their keen observation of the world, hundreds of human generations have created proverbs and used them. The condensed nature of proverbs allows them to be interpreted repeatedly, across time and in different situations. They are interesting because they not only tap into universal themes in the human condition, such as the physiological rhythms of the human life cycle, but they also vary in ways that appear to reflect specific cultural differences. In the home and in other community settings alike, proverbs are used to pass on rich cultural traditions, to transmit folklore, and to communicate expected codes of behavior. (Matthew S. Kaplan, PhD, 2002, p.1). So far, there have been a large number of researches conducted to investigate different features of proverbs as well as their applicability in language teaching. Yet, most of the studies deal with proverbs in general. In this paper, the researcher would like to focus only on the English weather proverbs, put them in the comparison and contrast with Vietnamese ones in terms of semantic features. 2 Weather, as we know, has been closely associated with us since we appeared in the world. Our life, our work, our feelings are often influenced by weather. In the past, before modern scientific weather forecasts existed, people whose lives and livelihood depended on the weather relied on weather proverbs to predict weather changes. Nowadays, even with our access to sophisticated weather prediction techniques (such as satellites, weather balloons, super computers, Doppler radar, and a complex communications network) for production of reasonably accurate daily weather forecasts, many people still utilize common knowledge of the weather through weather proverbs because it is a simple way for them to predict the weather conditions by themselves. The reason for the researcher‟s choosing weather proverbs is that more than any other kind of proverbs, they illustrate the process human beings explore the natural world and form their world-view as well as gain experience in dealing with nature, serving their need of economic development. If you know many proverbs, and have a little understanding of how weather systems work, you may conclude that proverbs tell you much about the weather. Even if the proverbs are not ideally accurate, they will remind us about a weather system and help us learn and remember how weather system works. More importantly, weather proverbs make us much more aware of our environment so we can observe and appreciate the many wonderful and intricate things going on in our natural surroundings. Proverbs can help us understand and table out various weather situations. In addition, studying English weather proverbs (EWP) and Vietnamese weather proverbs (VWP) plays an important role in interpreting and using this type of proverbs. All the points mentioned above are fundamental impetuses that stimulate the researcher to conduct this study. 2. Research aims and research questions 2.1. Research aims First of all, through the investigation into the semantic features of weather proverbs, the researcher aims at discovering linguistic values underlying the literal words. 3 Secondly, the study is to compare and contrast semantic features of weather proverbs in English and in Vietnamese. Thirdly, the study is to equip learners with rich knowledge on Vietnamese proverbs and English proverbs in general and on weather proverbs in particular. In addition, some suggestions for teaching and learning English proverbs are also mentioned. 2.2. Research questions 1. What are the semantic features of EWP and EWP? 2. What are the similarities and differences between EWP and EWP in terms of their semantic features? 3. Scope of the research As proverb is a very broad topic, under the constraint of time, experience and shortage of materials, the researcher cannot cover all kinds of proverbs but focus on weather proverbs only. In addition, the researcher only concentrates on semantic features although the study would be of greater success if it deals with other linguistic and non-linguistic features of weather proverbs such as pragmatics, culture and syntax. However, some aspects of culture are used to explain some different elements between two languages when it is necessary. 4. Significance of the research It is obvious that proverbs occupy a large part in almost every language. It is hoped that along with the understanding of the semantic features of proverbs in general and those of weather proverbs in particular, the findings of the study can help learners employ weather proverbs more regularly, spontaneously and effectively. Language learners can exploit them as a source of language units to enrich and color their writing and speaking in both academic and daily settings. As regards the teaching process, this thesis can also provide such a great reference source in the subject of semantics. It can help to improve teachers‟ awareness of the importance of proverbs as an inseparable unit of the linguistic system and the need to include them into the curriculum. 4 5. Structure of the research The study is composed of three parts: Part A, Introduction, includes the rationale, aims, research questions, scope of the research, significance of the research, and structure of the research. Part B, Development, includes three chapters. Chapter 1, Literature Review, reviews some publications on weather proverbs and previous studies as well as establishes the theoretical background for the study as the firm foundation with definitions of proverbs and weather proverbs. The distinctive and remarkable characteristics of these phenomena will also be unearthed in order to provide a clear concept from the beginning. Chapter 2, Research Methodology, deals with the research design and procedures. In this chapter, description of the sampling, instruments, the procedure of data collection and analysis for implementing the thesis are mentioned. Chapter 3, Major Findings and Discussions, is the main part of the research, which includes a generalization about the semantic features of weather proverbs in both languages - English and Vietnamese - and in what ways they are similar to or different from each other. The latter discusses some weather proverbs that are not reliable in both languages. Part C, Conclusions, summarizes the main content of the research and draws out conclusions. This part also gives implications for teaching and learning PDW. Moreover, a statement of limitations and suggestions for further research are also indicated in this chapter. Apart from that, references and appendices are enclosed for those who are interested in studying the same issues. 5 PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1. Some publications on weather proverbs and previous studies Up to now, there have been many books and dictionaries on proverbs, especially on weather proverbs, but most of them focus on explaining the meanings as well as the equivalents in other languages. The books entitled “Weather Proverbs: How 600 Proverbs, Sayings, and Poems Accurately Explain Our Weather” written by George Freier was very informative and still applies. In this book, the author defines and classifies weather proverbs. He also mentions weather proverbs in terms of semantic fields as well as troubles with some proverbs. “Weather proverbs” is the book written by H. H. Dunwoody in 1977, including Popular Weather Prognostics by Ralph Abercrombie & William Marriott and Proverbs Relating to Animals by Dr. C. C. Abbott. Proverbs are classified into semantic fields relating to birds, clouds, dew, fish, fog, frost, insects, the moon, plants, rain, rainbows, reptiles, stars, snow, sun, thunder and lightning, trees, wind, years, seasons, months, weeks and days, and general prognostics. The collection “Weather lore; a collection of proverbs, sayings, and rules concerning the weather" by Richard Inwards comprises only those proverbs, sayings, or rules in some way descriptive or prophetic of the weather and its changes, and does not for the most part include those in which the winds, sun, and clouds are only brought in for purposes of comparison and illustration. While weather proverb books have been published by foreign grammarians, writers, dictionary compilers and linguists, there have not been any Vietnamese books focusing on weather proverbs only. We can find weather proverbs in some Vietnamese books as “Thành ngữ-tục ngữ Việt Nam” by Thùy Linh, “Ca dao tục ngữ Việt Nam” by Thu Phuong. Weather proverbs are also collected and explained their meanings in some dictionaries such as “Từ điển thành ngữ, tục ngữ Việt Nam” (2000) by Vũ Dung, Vũ Thúy Anh, Vũ Quang Hào, “Từ điển thành ngữ tục ngữ Việt Nam” (2006) by Nguyễn Lân, etc. [...]... investigation into English and Vietnamese idioms containing words denoting weather with the aim at comparing and contrasting the syntactic and semantic features of this type of Đỗ Thị Minh Ngọc‟s graduation paper (2010) studies weather proverbs in English and Vietnamese, but the study limits the investigation to weather proverbs in English and Vietnamese with the aim of finding out the cultural similarities and. .. crawling in the sunny weather announce a water-soaked rice field.) It can be seen that in most of weather proverbs expressing sunny weather, both sunny and rainy conditions are mentioned in one proverb In addition, the weather proverbs containing sunny and rainy conditions are very popular in Vietnamese + Fair ● In English “Thunder in December presages fine weather. ” (24: p.33) ● In Vietnamese “Bồ câu. .. (English versus Vietnamese) ” investigates some similarities and differences in English and Vietnamese proverbs which are in the form of parallelism Some studies focus on proverbs denoting different semantic fields and their characteristics, but there have not been studies on weather proverbs For example, the thesis “An investigation into linguistic features of money related proverbs in English and Vietnamese ... comprised of two steps: Step 1 is called the collection of weather proverbs in both English and Vietnamese In this step, the researcher refers to a number of English and Vietnamese proverbs dictionaries and linguistic books as well as some linguistic websites which contain a list of proverbs in order to pick out all the weather proverbs needed for the study Step 2 is carried out with the aim of collecting... examples:  In English “When rheumatic people complain of more than ordinary pains in the joints, it will rain.” (24: p.86)  In Vietnamese “Tháng Ba bà già chết rét” (33: p.502) (Cold weather in March is dangerous to old people) 14 Based on the statistics, we can demonstrate the percentage of English weather proverbs and Vietnamese weather proverbs in the following figure: Figure 1: Percentage of Semantic. .. behaviors with 17% in English and 22,7% in Vietnamese Weather proverbs based on the observation on time rank the third, with 15% in English and 22,1% in Vietnamese Vegetative reactions rank the fourth with 4,9% in English and 6,1% in Vietnamese The last group with the smallest number of weather proverbs is the one holding the weather proverbs built based on the experience in observing others‟ reactions... announce a coming rain.) Shape of the clouds occurs more in EWP Here is an instance:  In English “The fish (hake) shaped cloud, if pointing east and west indicates rain; if north and south, more fine weather ” (24: p.59) Height of the clouds are also much referred in both EWP and VWP However, in EWP, if high-flying clouds are in the sky, this is a sign of fair weather while in VWP, the highflying clouds... color in the morning or in the evening For instance, a red sky means rain or dry weather according to the time of the day it occurs: a red sky in the evening signals fair weather to follow while a red sky in the morning predicts bad weather We illustrate this in most of the following examples: ● In English “Red sky in morning, Sailors take warning 22 Red sky at night, Sailors' delight (25: p.270) ● In Vietnamese. .. the reason why I choose to investigate weather proverbs in English and Vietnamese, and more particularly, in terms of semantics to make a contrast and a comparison between the two languages 1.2 Proverbs 1.2.1 Definitions of proverbs There are numerous definitions of proverbs According to the standard dictionary definition, a “proverb” is “a short saying in common use that strikingly expresses some obvious... and dew, so on contribute to predict weather changes Lightning and thunder are also signs of weather When the lightning appears, it indicates a coming rain In addition, the appearance of thunders sometimes foretells good or bad weather  In English “Thunder in December presages fine weather. ” (16: p.135)  In Vietnamese “Chớp đằng Đông, mua dây mà tát.” (33: p.478) (The flashes of chain lightning in . with the understanding of the semantic features of proverbs in general and those of weather proverbs in particular, the findings of the study can help learners employ weather proverbs more regularly,. situations. In addition, studying English weather proverbs (EWP) and Vietnamese weather proverbs (VWP) plays an important role in interpreting and using this type of proverbs. All the points mentioned. not been any Vietnamese books focusing on weather proverbs only. We can find weather proverbs in some Vietnamese books as “Thành ngữ- tục ngữ Việt Nam” by Thùy Linh, “Ca dao tục ngữ Việt Nam” by