Verb use in vietnamese texts written by vietnamese german adolescents

However, the combination between German root and Vietnamese tendency of monosyllablization in hybrid forms provides more evidence for Moro et al.’ s language mixing model 2017 and the ar

Verb Use in Vietnamese Texts Written by Vietnamese-German Adolescents

Tr ần Thị Minh1

Abstract

The current study examines Vietnamese-German adolescents’ (15-16 years old) use of Vietnamese verbs The results show that majority of verb errors in their heritage language is derived from cross-linguistic influence (CLI) The most important finding is the strategy of simplification in their use of verbs, i.e., using basic verbs instead of specific verbs The study also shows that infinitival form of verbs appears more frequently than mixed form of loanwords However, the combination between German root and Vietnamese tendency of monosyllablization in hybrid forms provides more evidence for Moro et al.’ s language mixing model (2017) and the argument of Alexiadou (2017) about “mirror asymmetry” implied in the combination in verb use between the societal language and the heritage language

1 Introduction

Vietnamese is the heritage language of about four millions of Vietnamese abroad over the world (Ministry of Foreign Affairs Vietnam 2012) Studies on Vietnamese as a heritage language have been taken into consideration since beginning of the 21st century (Đào Mục Đích 2012; Hồ Đắc Túc 2003; Phan Ngọc Trần 2017, 2018; Tang Giang 2007; Thái Duy Bảo 2007, 2011, 2014; Trần Thanh Bình Minh 2006)

There are about 160,000 individuals with a Vietnamese migrated background in Germany with various reasons of migration The Vietnamese community is considered a “visible minority” and socio-culturally “distant” from so-called native Germans (GIZ 2015; Schoor et

al 2017) In recent years, Vietnamese as a heritage language in Germany has also been received more attention (Konig 2014; Siedmund/Lechner 2015; Schnoor et al 2017)

Verb use has been often focused in research in language learning, because verbs are more difficult to learn than object labels and one of the reasons is the wide variety of relations between events depicted by verbs (Maguire et al 2010) Hồ Đắc Túc (2003) and Phan Ngọc Trần (2017, 2018) are among the only few studies investigating Vietnamese as a heritage language that have briefly discussed the use of Vietnamese verbs Given that little existing literature, this paper is one of the first attempts to examine how such building verb patterns in Vietnamese as heritage language feed linguistic theory Particularly, it contributes to the discussion of the argument on simplification of grammar in heritage language (Danzak 2011),

for example, the frequency of basic verb use (Viberg 2002); and the mixing between languages

in building verb in language mixing varieties (Alexiadou 2017, Hồ Đắc Túc 2003)

2 Data source

The Vietnamese written data for the present study was partly collected within LiMA Panel Study (LiPS)2 which investigated language development of bilingual children and adolescents

in Hamburg In addition, some written texts were collected through a translation test conducted

as part of my doctoral dissertation The participants in LiPS were chosen randomly from Hamburg households, while the participants in the translation test are also from other cities in Federal Republic of Germany due to the limitation of participants in Hamburg Children of the bilingual group have both or at least one parent, had to be born in Vietnam

In the writing test, out of 25 participants at the age of 15-16 years old, there are two participants were older than three- to six-year-old (late bilingualism) and one participant

acquired only German starting at birth (simultaneous bilingualism) All of them have never being learnt Vietnamese neither in the school nor with a tutor at home

For the translation test, out of total 20 participants at the age of 15-16 years old, four participants were older than three- to six-years-old when they started learning German (late

bilingualism) Four participants attended Vietnamese class organized by their community for a short time

The control group consists of 40 Vietnamese monolingual participants who also went through the same writing (in Vietnamese) and translation tasks The participants in this group are from Hanoi and Nghe An as well

The analysis was conducted on 25 written texts from LiPS and 20 texts from the translation test The writing test includes two tasks The first task comprised the instruction to make a boomerang that was developed by German educationists within the model program

Förderung von Kindern und Jugendlichen mit Migrationshintergrund (FörMig) aiming at investigating so-called Bildungsprache (language of schooling) (Döll&Dirim 2011:161-162)

In this task, the participants were asked as follow: “Now please write the article that explains how the boomerang is made On the next page you will find a set of pictures that you have to describe in your article Your article needs to be understandable without the pictures“(see full exercise and pictures in appendix 1) The task requires the activation of certain sub-skills: the use of a specialized vocabulary, the active reproduction of a type of text (instructions), the

ability pictures to read and translate in a written text (visual literacy)

The second task named “Boomerang in park” requires the participants to narrate

activities in park as follow: “The editors where you are working want to publish a review for the boomerang test in the next issue Please narrate what happened to the editorial staff by testing in the park” (see appendix 1)

In both writing tasks, the participants are required to write about an instruction of building a boomerang and a test review of checking the function of a boomerang in a teenager journal From cognitive perspective, the language performance of both tasks are expected to

accord to “high language cognition” (Hulstijn 2015:231) - the language production which

contains the low-frequency lexical items and grammatical structure From educational

perspective, the requirement of language performance in these tasks are “cognitive/ academic language proficiency” (Cummins 1979:198) - the dimension of language competence which is performed by academic and literacy skills (see more discussion of these terms and their

meanings in section 3.1.2) The LiPS tasks require both “high language cognition” and

“cognitive/academic language proficiency”, because the completion of these tasks need

technical vocabularies – the low frequency lexical items In addition, journalist writing has a specific style, which also appears unfrequently in daily life language (Perrin/Ehrensberger-Dow 2006:340) The knowledge of vocabulary and writing strategies can only pertain through learning in a formal instruction

In order to collect more linguistic data, the translation test was conducted If

“Boomerang test” principally requires “high cognition language” performance, this test askes for “basic language cognition” (Hulstijn 2015:230) which contains frequent lexical items and frequent grammatical structures The source language of the translation test is English (see appendix 2), because the control group cannot translate from the German source The instrument of the translation test was developed by finding a familiar topic of teenagers in English textbooks in Germany and Viet Nam

3 Data analysis

This analysis was mainly carried out at the lexical level based on Ringbom’s classification (1987:117): loan translation, semantic extension, cognate, hybrid, and complete language shift (hereafter CLS)

In terms of errors of verb use in the written data and the translated data, cross-linguistic influence (hereafter CLI) errors appear to be more frequent Other errors often have relations

with the strategy of using “basic verbs” Table 1 and Table 2 show the number of errors in verb use in both data types:

Table 1: Errors in verb use in written texts (appendix 3)

Non- CLI

4 1

Table 2: Errors in verb use in translated texts (appendix 4)

Non- CLI

3.1 The use of basic verb instead of specific verb

Table 1 and Table 2 shows that errors in verb use in both written texts and translated texts occur frequently because of CLI: 70% in written texts and 80% in translated texts The non-CLI errors mostly appears in the use of basic verbs rather than specific verbs Additionally, out of all CLI errors, around 68% in written texts, and almost 80% in translated texts are semantic extension

It is necessary to note that most verbs in semantic extension can be seen as basic verbs Examples (1) and (2) illustrate the semantic extension of verb use:

(1) làm một cái lỗ

make one CL hole

Eng.: make a hole

Ge.: ein Loch machen

Ein Loch machen (make a hole) is an accepted phrase in German language The phrase is

directly translated in Vietnamese into làm một cái lỗ hay làm lỗ Làm lỗ is also an

ungrammatical phrase in Vietnamese, but it is related to noun phrase, therefore this error is not

discussed here In the collected data, there are 11 texts including the phrase làm một cái lỗ/ làm

l ỗ Comparing to the German texts of the same writers, there are only two where the phrase ein Loch machen (make a hole) was used, while the others used the verb bohren (drill) to describe

more specifically that the drill was used to make a hole in this case In both written texts and

translated texts, basic verb làm (make) was used as 17 tokens, making up for around 21% errors

in verb use

(2) Anh làm màu đỏ

He make color red

He makes red color

Example (2) is translated from the English sentence He painted it red which should equal to Anh s ơn nó màu đỏ in Vietnamese The use of a general/basic verb as làm (make) is a

generalization strategy to compensate for the lack of knowledge of specific verbs

Example (3) is another demonstration of a semantic extension of basic verb làm (make):

(3) làm cho chặt trên bàn

make for fix on table

make it on the table tighly

In this example, in German texts, most participants used the verb befestigen (fix) to describe this scene The correspondent Vietnamese verb of befestigen (fix) is gắn However, the writer chose the verb làm (make), because maybe he/she did not know the specific Vietnamese verb

(4) Tôi vui vì tôi nhìn bạn của tôi

I happy because I see friend of I

I am happy because I see my friend

The verb see in English can be translated into Vietnamese as nhìn, nhìn thấy, thấy, gặp, or xem Majority of monolingual (about 74%) use gặp to translate see in this case Gặp, therefore, is

considered the specific verb that should be chosen However, around 30% bilingual informants

used basic verb nhìn (7 tokens)

Another example for the use of a basic verb instead of a specific verb due to CLI is in

(5) where the basic verb nói (talk) is used:

(5) Chúng tôi nói nhiều về Φ nghỉ hè

We talk lot about Φ vacation summer

We talk a lot about the summer vacation

The verb talk in the source English text can be translated into Vietnamese as nói, nói chuyện, trò chuy ện, or kể However, nói might be used more often than other verbs when indicating the act of speaking Bilingual informants, therefore, used nói (talk) for their translation more frequently than other specific verbs In contrast, monolinguals chose specific verbs such as nói chuy ện, trò chuyện, kể

The frequency of errors in verb use in Vietnamese of Vietnamese-German adolescents strongly supports the findings in Lenon (1996) and Viberg (2002) They found that second

language learners frequently used the universal nuclear verbs such as go, take, make, put, and get instead of specific verbs A particular example is the high frequency of the verb gå (go) used by L2 learners instead of specific verbs hoppa (jump) and flyga (fly) to describe the video

clip situation in which a little bird was afraid of flying and went to the nest and then jumped to the ground instead of flying

3.2 Direct translation as a reason

Although other CLI, such as hybrids, loan translation, and CLS do not appear frequently in the collected data, there were common errors and also typical errors that can contribute to the theories and practices Example (6) demonstrates a common loan translation which can also be seen as a semantic extension:

(6) Bây giờ tôi đi trường được

Now I can go to school

In the source text, the sentence Now I could go to school should be translated into Vietnamese

Bây gi ờ tôi có thể đi học được The compound verb đi học (go study – go to school) is created

based on the aim of act In Vietnamese, there are compound verbs such as đi làm (go work –

go to work), đi chơi (go play – visit somewhere), đi buôn (go sale - sale), and đi họp (go meet – go to meeting) The loan translations such as đi trường (go school) or đi lớp (go class) appear

frequently in the translation texts (9 tokens, about 26% of total errors)

Moreover, some informants also translated some unessential verbs, especially the

copula verb be as seen in (7):

(7) Tôi là vui

I am happy

I am happy

Example (7) is ungrammatical in Vietnamese The correct form should be Tôi vui (I happy – I

am happy), because vui (happy, fröhlich) is vị từ (verbum) in Vietnamese, which can be

independently placed in predicate (Cao Xuân Hạo 1989) Fröhlich (happy) in German is viewed

as an adjective which is always placed behind the copula verb sein Because of the inextricable

combination of this copula and adjectives in German and English, bilingual participants translated the copula into Vietnamese language

3.3 Infinitival form and the interaction between languages in borrowings

Hybrids and CLS appears in the collected data infrequently More than 90% of those are CLS

It means the form of verbs (infinitival form) in the source language (i.e., German) was not modified when it was borrowed in Vietnamese texts as in Example (8):

(8) Cái boomerang fliegen

CL boomerang fly

The boomerang flies

Fliegen (fly) - infinitival form was used to compensate for the lack of verb bay (fly) in

Vietnamese In addition, participants borrowed English verbs with infinitival forms (see in appendix 3, 4)

In a study on building verb in Greek-German mixed variety, Alexiadou (2017) found that language mixing frequently occurs due to the borrowing of lexical meanings That means only the infinitival form of verbs in source language is borrowed in the target language Example (8) can be completely support for this argument

Regarding Vietnamese mixed variety, in a study on language mixing in communication among Vietnamese immigrants in Australia, aged 18-55, who came to Australia as adolescents and adults, Hồ Đắc Túc (2003) also proposes the lexical element in Example (9):

It is extended by an additional store

(Hồ Đắc Túc 2003:62)

In addition, the borrowing of verb in the societal language (i.e., German) in the heritage language (i.e., Vietnamese) can create hybrids which embed the interactions between two languages which is exemplified in (10):

(10) Để bau cái bu mơ rang

Previous studies like Viberg (2002) or Keim (2008) have reported the generalization by the use

of the basic verbs such as get, make, put, ect., especially, the use of verb machen (make) in the German language of Turkish-German adolescents (isch mach disch krankenhaus (I beat you up

so bad that you have to go to the hospital) Our data provides more evidence for this argument

The overgeneralization of the verb làm (make) in Vietnamese texts by Vietnamese-German adolescents is consistent across many texts For example, làm một cái lỗ (make a hole) was used instead of khoan một cái lỗ (drill a hole) These results are likely to be related to the

common strategy of language learners to cope with the lack of language knowledge

The way of using the verb làm (make) in this case can be also explained by the transfer effect from German to Vietnamese In the German language, the phrase ein Loch machen (make

a hole) is viewed as a conventional case In comparison to the German texts of these bilinguals,

the specific verb bohren (drill) is used more frequently The possible explanation for this

outcome is the difference of language proficiency Because of incomplete acquisition of heritage language (Benmamoun et al, 2013, Montrul 2016), bilingual adolescents cannot find

the specific verb khoan They, therefore, find a strategy of translation and semantic extension from phrase ein Loch machen to describe this action in Vietnamese texts The generalization of verb use by using làm is represented consistently in other contexts, for example làm cho chặt (make for fix), làm màu đỏ (make (it) red) instead of sơn màu đỏ (paint (it) red) Other verbs such as nhìn (see) and nói (talk) as general verb were used instead of specific verbs in the context of translation task as gặp (meet) and nói chuyện, trò chuyện, or kể Semantic extension

is a process of adding more meanings to a lexical form in the target language due to the lack of perception of restrictions of lexical meanings (Ringbom 2007, Bardel 2015) Polysemy and homonymy in languages is maybe a source of semantic extension transfer (Bardel 2015) Moreover, it is possible, that participants use “simplification” strategy when using verbs in the weaker language (Danzak 2011:501)

Another important finding is that in borrowing/transfer of form, both types described

by Alexiadou (2017) in German-Greek mixed variety, were found in our data: the infinitival form and the combination between two languages The common use of infinitival form of loan verbs borrowing also accords with the earlier observation in Hồ Đắc Túc’s (2003) study on Vietnamese as heritage language in Australia Further explanation is the morphological typology of Vietnamese: “As an isolating language, Vietnamese has potential of getting access

to other linguistic resources without marking the morphological structure of the target language” (Hồ Đắc Túc 2003:59)

The use of only a German root (bau – build) is an evidence of the monosyllabilization

process that occurs frequently in the Vietnamese language in the combination of Vietnamese and German It is likely that there is a connection between these findings and the hypothesis proposed by Moro et al (2017) about the interaction between two or more languages of bilinguals Alexiadou (2017) already found that the building verb in mixed variety between a German root and a Greek affix is a “mirror asymmetry”, because it is easy to find the combination between German roots (German as societal language) and Greek affixes (Greek as heritage language), but not vice versa Because of typological difference between both heritage languages, Vietnamese and Greek, in the Vietnamese-German mixed variety, a German root combines with zero affix However, in Vietnamese-German mixing variety and maybe Vietnamese-English mixing variety, it is also assumed that there might be frequent occurrence

of the monosyllablization of German and English root in Vietnamese language use, but there might not be the combination of Vietnamese verb and the German affixes for indicating tenses and aspects Typological difference and also the role of dominant language can account for this phenomenon

In general, the strategies of verb building in both languages can be explained by either the “simplification” strategies or cross-linguistic influence of bilinguals in the use of the weaker language (Danzak 2011:501) One universal characteristic of verb use is the frequent use of basic verbs instead of specific verbs

In sum, these findings may help us understand Vietnamese-German adolescents’ verb use in Vietnamese as heritage language Additionally, these findings can make some

contribution towards the development of Vietnamese heritage language teaching programs In those language programs, the use of basic verbs instead of specific verbs should be paid attention to Therefore, teaching staffs or textbook developers need to design the specific and suitable materials to train learners to use specific verbs

4 Conclusion and Outlook

The purpose of the current study is to examine Vietnamese-German adolescents’ verb use in Vietnamese, their heritage language This study has shown that majority of errors in their use

of Vietnamese verbs is raised from CLI The most important finding is the strategy of simplification where basic verbs were used instead of specific verbs This study has also shown that infinitival form of verbs appears more frequently than mixing form in borrowings However, the small sample size requires us to interpret the findings with care Notwithstanding the limitation, the study certainly offers some insights into the written performance in Vietnamese heritage language of Vietnamese bilingual adolescents Nevertheless, more information on verb use in Vietnamese heritage language would help us to establish a greater accuracy of this matter Further experimental investigations are needed to estimate the difference in verb use by bilinguals at different ages or in different host countries such as English- or Chinese-speaking countries Moreover, examining daily life language like facebook, email and daily life conversations is also very important

References

Alexiadou, Artemis (2017) “Building Verbs in Language Mixing Varieties” Zeitschrift für

Sprachwissenschaft, 36:1, 165-192

Bardel Camilla (2015) “Lexical Cross-Linguistic Influence in Third Language Development”

In: Peukert, H (ed.) Transfer Effects in Multilingual Language Development,

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Benmamoun, Elabbas et al (2013): “Heritage Languages and Their Speakers: Opportunities

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dục

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