Nominalization in the non fiction book sapiens a brief history of humankind and its vietnamese translation danh từ hóa trong sapiens a brief history of humankind và bản dịch tiếng việt

HUE UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES --- NGUYEN BUI THUY MINH NOMINALIZATION IN THE NON-FICTION BOOK “SAPIENS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMANKIND” AND

HUE UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

-

NGUYEN BUI THUY MINH

NOMINALIZATION IN THE NON-FICTION BOOK

“SAPIENS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMANKIND”

AND ITS VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION

MA THESIS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts,

University of Foreign Languages and International Studies, Hue University

THUA THIEN HUE, 2022

HUE UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

-

NGUYEN BUI THUY MINH

NOMINALIZATION IN THE NON-FICTION BOOK

“SAPIENS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMANKIND”

AND ITS VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION

MA THESIS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE

CODE: 8220201

SUPERVISOR: TRUONG BACH LE, PH.D

THUA THIEN HUE, 2022

ĐẠI HỌC HUẾ TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ

-

NGUYỄN BÙI THÙY MINH

DANH TỪ HÓA TRONG “SAPIENS:

A BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMANKIND”

VÀ BẢN DỊCH TIẾNG VIỆT

LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ NGÔN NGỮ ANH

MÃ SỐ: 8220201

NGƯỜI HƯỚNG DẪN KHOA HỌC: TS TRƯƠNG BẠCH LÊ

THỪA THIÊN HUẾ, 2022

STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP

The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted for a degree in any university I certify that, to the best of my knowledge and belief,

my thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself

Signed: ……… Nguyen Bui Thuy Minh

Date: ……/……/………

ABSTRACT

This thesis aims to investigate the tendency for explicitation in translating English

nominalization in the non-fiction book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” into

Vietnamese Following Biber’s definition of English nominalization as a product of

derivational morphology, this study categorizes English nominalization into deverbal and deadjectival forms and describes their characteristics The findings reveal that the majority of nominalizations found in the corpus are verb-derived Moreover, it was discovered that certain derivational bound morphemes vastly outnumber other suffixes in the corpus

Explicitation, which is a universal characteristic of translated texts, is highly pertinent

to the discussion of nominalization in translation owing to the disparity in their natures While a nominal structure depicts the state of affairs in a subtler and more implicit manner, explicitation is the inclination to spell out rather than leave things implicit in the translation Therefore, explicitation in translating nominalization has been selected as the research’s primary focus

By adopting the corpus-based contrastive approach, the thesis supports the existence

of explicitation in the Vietnamese translation via a number of surface manifestations The results of the research indicate that explicitation in the translation manifests in a relatively wide pattern, with seven categories used by the translator to increase explicitness It is also worth mentioning that explicitation in the translation of English nominals found in the corpus frequently occurs at the lexical level

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

While a complete master’s thesis bears the single name of the principal researcher, it would never have been achievable without the generous support, advice and collaboration of various people Hence, it is my privilege to express my sincere gratitude towards all of them

At the outset, I would like to express my deepest thanks and appreciation to my research instructor, Truong Bach Le, Ph.D., for giving me the opportunities to work under his guidance As my supervisor, he has constantly supported me by offering not only extensive professional advice but also the much-needed encouragement throughout this research His knowledge and dedication clarified a lot of my questions and gave me the inspiration to pursue my goals What my supervisor has given me was much more than I could ever give him credit for

In addition, thanks should be bestowed upon my colleagues at the Faculty of English, Hue University of Foreign Languages and International Studies, who have shared my

workload and encouraged me all throughout

Finally, I acknowledge my gratitude to everyone who has directly or indirectly helped

me accomplish my master’s thesis

List of Tables

Table 2.1 Noun suffixes (Biber et al., 2002) 16

Table 2.2 Six types of nominalizations 22

Table 2.3 Gumul’s (2017) taxonomy of surface manifestations of explicitation 43

Table 3.1 The taxonomy of surface manifestations of explicitation adopted in the study (adapted from Gumul’s model, 2017) 54

Table 4.1 Deverbal nominalizations in the English corpus 58

Table 4.2 Deadjectival nominalizations in the English corpus 59

Table 4.3 Nominalizations with untraceable bases in the English corpus 61

Table 4.4 Frequencies of explicitating shifts found in the corpus 67

List of Figures

Figure 3.1 Sketch Engine’s main screen 53

Figure 3.2 Sketch Engine’s parallel concordance 53

Figure 4.1 Distribution of shifts involving meaning specification (tokens) 68

Figure 4.2 Distribution of shifts involving replacing nominalizations with verb phrases or other structures (tokens) 72

Figure 4.3 Distribution of shifts involving adding plurality (tokens) 73

Figure 4.4 Distribution of shifts involving disambiguating lexical metaphors (tokens) 75

Figure 4.5 Distribution of shifts involving lexical specification (tokens) 77

Figure 4.6 Distribution of explicitating shifts involving the addition of modifiers (tokens) 79 Figure 4.7 Distribution of shifts involving the provision of descriptive equivalents and additional explanatory remarks (tokens) 83

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Statement of Original Authorship i

Abstract ii

Acknowledgements iii

List of Tables iv

List of Figures v

List of Abbreviations vi

Table of Contents vii

Chapter 1: Introduction 1

1.1 Background and rationale for the research 1

1.2 Research objectives and research questions 2

1.3 Significance of the research 3

1.4 Structure of the thesis 4

Chapter 2: Literature Review 5

2.1 Chapter overview 5

2.2 Nominalization 5

2.2.1 English nominalization 5

2.2.1.1 Jespersen’s approach to English nominalization 6

2.2.1.2 English nominalization and Mathesius’ complex condensation 8

2.2.1.3 Lees’ transformational approach to English nominalization 10

2.2.1.4 Chomsky’s lexicalist approach to English nominalization 12

2.2.1.5 Biber’s approach to English nominalization 15

2.2.1.6 Langacker’s cognitive approach to English nominalization 17

2.2.1.7 Halliday’s systemic-functional approach to English nominalization 21

2.2.1.7.1 Nominalization as a part of grammatical metaphor 21

2.2.1.7.2 Classification of nominalization 22

2.2.1.8 Summary of subsection 2.2.1 24

2.2.2 Vietnamese nominalization 25

2.2.2.1 The addition of nominal classifiers 26

2.2.2.1.1 Verbal derivatives 27

2.2.2.1.2 Adjectival derivatives 29

2.2.2.1.3 Clausal derivatives 30

2.2.2.2 Conversion 31

2.2.2.3 Summary of subsection 2.2.2 34

2.3 Explicitation in translation 35

2.3.1 Definitions of explicitation 36

2.3.2 Taxonomies of explicitation 38

2.3.2.1 Klaudy’s typology of explicitation 38

2.3.2.2 Perego’s typology of explicitation 40

2.3.2.3 Pápai’s explicitation strategies 41

2.3.2.4 Gumul’s taxonomy of surface manifestations of explicitation 42

2.3.2.5 Summary of subsection 2.3.2 46

2.4 Previous studies on explicitation in translating nominalization 46

Chapter 3: Research Methodology 49

3.1 Chapter overview 49

3.2 Research design 49

3.2.1 Method 49

3.2.2 Data 50

3.3 Data processing and analysis 51

3.3.1 Data alignment 51

3.3.2 Data extraction 52

3.3.3 Data analysis 53

3.4 Reliability and validity 56

Chapter 4: Findings and Discussion 57

4.1 Chapter overview 57

4.2 Nominalization via suffixation in the English version 57

4.2.1 Deverbal nominalizations 61

4.2.2 Deadjectival nominalizations 64

4.2.3 Summary of Section 4.2 66

4.3 Explicitating shifts in the translation of English nominalization into Vietnamese 66

4.3.1 Meaning specification 68

4.3.2 Replacing nominalizations with verb phrases 71

4.3.3 Adding plurality 73

4.3.4 Disambiguating lexical metaphors 75

4.3.5 Lexical specification 77

4.3.6 Adding modifiers 79

4.3.7 Providing descriptive equivalents and additional explanatory remarks 82

4.3.8 Summary of Section 4.3 86

Chapter 5: Conclusions and Implications 89

5.1 Chapter overview 89

5.2 Conclusions 89

5.2.1 Characteristics of English nominalization in the non-fiction book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” 89

5.2.2 Explicitating shifts in the translation of English nominalizations into Vietnamese 90

5.3 Implications of the research 91

5.3.1 Theoretical implications for linguistics and translation studies 91

5.3.2 Practical implications for translation teaching and practice 92

5.4 Limitations and recommendations for further research 93

References 94

Appendices 109

Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 Background and rationale for the research

Nominalization has been widely regarded as a type of lexical and grammatical resource that plays an important role in language activities and garners significant attention in academic circles (Lei & Yi, 2019) Having said that, understanding its meaning, structure, and

functions remains a stumbling block among generations of linguists due to its trans-categorial status (Roy & Soare, 2011) With its complicated nature, nominalization might pose

challenges to translators who come from linguistic backgrounds where this phenomenon does not exist or is less widespread This reality necessitates a growing number of studies into translating nominalization (e.g., Sayfouri, 2010; Jalilifar & Shirali, 2014; Hu & Gao, 2019; Milić & Erdeljić, 2019; Khalil, 2020), many of which place great emphasis on transfer

operations and shifts stemming from this translation process Among various deviations from the source text (ST), explicitation, which is a universal characteristic of translated texts (Blum-Kulka, 1986; Baker, 1993), is the primary focus of the current research Explicitation

is highly apposite to the discussion of nominalization in translation due to the discrepancy between their natures While a nominal structure describes the state of affairs in a more sophisticated and implicit manner (Kazemian & Hashemi, 2014), explicitation is the tendency

to spell things out rather than leave them implicit in the translation (Baker, 1996) In the same vein, Marshall (2019) noted that explicitation is the inclination towards clarity when

translating, in contrast to the implicitness present in nominalizations’ compressed structure This disparity raises the question of whether translators show a propensity to explicate in the target text (TT) what is subtly conveyed in the nominalization in the ST In fact, several attempts have been made by researchers over the last decade to shed light on the tendency for explicitation in rendering nominal structures and different ways in which this phenomenon is

manifested in translation (e.g., Južnič, 2013; Le, 2014; Vesterager, 2017; Nguyen, 2018; Marshall, 2019) Having said that, the discussion in this area is far from sufficient and thus should be further investigated in different language pairs to provide a more complete picture

of the issue at hand Under such circumstances, this study endeavors to probe into

explicitation in the translation of English nominalization into Vietnamese with a view to narrowing down this research gap

Among a vast array of genres, this research has chosen to focus on English

nominalization in the non-fiction discourse since English nominalization appears more

frequently as a standard feature of some special functional registers of language use

(Radovanovic, 2001), such as non-fiction works Furthermore, of the existing studies into explicitation in translating nominalization, most of their objectives are specified to explore the scientific, legal, political, and literary discourses Therefore, an investigation into non-fiction material will contribute to the expansion of the current body of literature on

nominalization in translation These aforementioned reasons have prompted this research to explore explicitation in translating English nominalization found in the non-fiction book

“Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” into Vietnamese via the lens of a corpus-based contrastive approach

1.2 Research objectives and research questions

The present research paper aims to explore the tendency for explicitation in translating

nominalization from English to Vietnamese in a parallel corpus of the said languages To start with, this study aims to gain insights into the characteristics of nominalizations found in the non-fiction book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” Furthermore, special

importance will be given to the question of whether explicitation occurs as a by-product of the translation process, as well as different explicitating shifts identified in the Vietnamese

translation Additionally, this study attempts to investigate the situations in which each type

of explicitating shift arises, and the various lexical, syntactic, or stylistic effects observed in the translated text as a result of explicitation

In order to achieve the aforementioned objectives, the study seeks to address the following research questions:

1 What are the characteristics of English nominalization in the non-fiction book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind”?

2 What types of explicitating shifts occur as a result of translating English nominalization into Vietnamese?

1.3 Significance of the research

The findings of this study will expound on several aspects of explicitation in the Vietnamese translation of English nominalization, hence benefiting various stakeholders listed below To begin with, translation students and novice translators can be equipped with the necessary knowledge regarding nominal patterns and expressions in the English language, thereby preparing them for future encounters with these structures Furthermore, by providing an insight into the explicitating shifts that might occur as a result of translating nominalization, this study can raise translation practitioners’ awareness of the importance of explicitation in translation and thus assist them in developing their strategies for dealing with nominalization Second, the results of this study can provide translation course designers and teachers with the necessary information about the realistic picture of how different explicitation strategies are employed by translators to improve their translation quality As a result, training modules and guidance can provide students with more practical knowledge and translation strategies needed when students embark on the professional translation career path Finally, the current

study test different theoretical and analytical frameworks to ensure their applicability to the research topic, hence informing future researchers of the needed information to carry out further research into the topic of explicitation in the translation of nominalization

1.4 Structure of the thesis

This thesis is comprised of five chapters organized as follows Following this introduction, Chapter 2 will give a literature review on English and Vietnamese nominalization In

addition, the most prevalent definitions of explicitation and different taxonomies from the existing academic literature will be provided Chapter 3 is concerned with the research

methodology of the study It addresses a variety of issues associated with the implementation

of the research It assesses the utility of the corpus-based approach in contrastive linguistics and translation studies In addition, a description of text alignment, data extraction, and data analysis processes is introduced These methods rely on two fundamental frameworks for recognizing English nominalizations and explicitating shifts in translation Chapter 4 includes findings and discussion It begins with a summary of the quantitative findings on English nominalization and then describes the characteristics of deverbal and deadjectival nominals in the corpus Additionally, the quantitative analysis of surface manifestations of explicitation in the Vietnamese translation will be presented, followed by the qualitative examination of selected examples falling under the category of each explicitating shift Chapter 5 provides the core findings regarding the three research questions, discusses the implications of the whole research, as well as pointing out potential areas for further research

Chapter 2: Literature Review

2.1 Chapter overview

This chapter serves as a solid theoretical underpinning of this research by selectively

presenting the current status of knowledge and studies relevant to the research objectives set out in Chapter 1 First, a historical review of how various schools of linguistics have

perceived and categorized English nominalization will be presented In addition, two key nominalizing processes will be examined to provide a quick introduction to Vietnamese nominalization Afterward, this chapter proceeds to focus on the concept of explicitation by providing some of its most prevalent definitions from the current literature A substantial part

of this chapter is also dedicated to examining different taxonomies of explicitation that have been employed by various researchers in their studies on explicitation The chapter concludes with the discussion of the previous studies into explicitation in the translation of

nominalization, thereby highlighting the necessity for future investigation

2.2 Nominalization

2.2.1 English nominalization

First proposed by the traditional linguist Jesperson in 1924, the concept of

nominalization has piqued the interest of scholars from various schools of linguistics

Although innumerable attempts have been made to decipher its meaning, structure, and functions over the last decades, nominalization remains a tough nut to crack due to its trans-categorial operation (Roy & Soare, 2011) It is, therefore, of the essence to probe into this linguistic phenomenon through the lens of prominent figures from different linguistic

schools, encompassing structural linguistics, transformational-generative linguistics,

systemic-functional linguistics, cognitive linguistics, and so on

2.2.1.1 Jespersen’s approach to English nominalization

At the time when modern linguistics was only in its infancy, Otto Jespersen, “a

distinguished representative of an older school of grammarians” (Lyons, 1968, p 134)

showed his profound insights into the functions of language in general and grammar in

particular (Aarts, 2016) His far-reaching scientific endeavors such as the “Growth and

Structure of the English Language” (1905), “Philosophy of Grammar” (1924), “Essentials of English Grammar” (1933), “Analytic Syntax” (1937), and “Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles” (1965) have laid the common ground for not only traditionalists but also linguists of different schools of thought, including the household names like Chomsky and Halliday (Haislund, 1943; Hou, 2011) Additionally, Jespersen is renowned for his

inventive grammatical terminology and transparent grammatical annotation system to clarify sentence structure and meaning (Aarts, 2016) While the progressiveness of his approach stirred up considerable debates in his day, his work soon gained widespread acceptance in linguistic research and since then has become a source of wisdom for generations of linguists, language philosophers, and linguistic students (Haislund, 1943; Thomas, 2013)

During his honorable linguistic career, the coinage of the term “nexus-substantive” is one of his revolutionary contributions to grammatical theory While the term “substantive” was preferably used by traditional linguists to denote persons and things, the term “nexus” was proposed by Jespersen to indicate “a combination implying predication and as a rule containing

a subject and either a verb or a predicative or both” (1965, p 5) “Nexus” is further categorized into independent nexus and dependent nexus While an independent nexus constitutes “a

complete piece of communication (a sentence)”, a dependent nexus functions as “only a part of

a sentence”, taking the form of a simple collocation, a nexus-substantive, a gerund, an

infinitive, or a clause (Jespersen, 1933, p 251) The term “nexus-substantive”, hence, is

acknowledged as a distinct class of word that performs the typical functions of a substantive while also manifesting the elements of either a verb or a predicative (Jespersen, 1933, p 257) When representing verbal expressions, a nexus-substantive has a verb as its core, as in:

(1) I saw the Doctor’s arrival (arrival = the act of arriving)

A predicative nexus-substantive, on the other hand, has an adjective or a substantive

as the basis of a predicative, as in:

(2) I doubt the Doctor’s cleverness (cleverness = being clever)

(3) He has announced his candidacy for the Presidency of the United States

(candidacy = being a candidate; Presidency = being a president)

In explaining the purposes behind nexus-substantives, Jespersen noted that their value stems from the ability to create “handy expressions of complex thoughts” and convey “ideas with greater precision and adequacy”, thereby avoiding “clumsy expressions” (1924, p 137-139) In addition, the emergence of nexus-words results in a shift in the rank of many

constituents, in which a verb or a predicative is elevated to the level of a nexus-substantive, and the subordinate members are accordingly elevated to a higher plane (1924) Take for example (4) and (5):

(4) The Doctor arrived extremely quickly and examined the patient uncommonly carefully; the result was that she recovered very speedily

(5) The Doctor’s extremely quick arrival and uncommonly careful examination of the patient brought about her very speedy recovery

(Jespersen, 1933, p 257)

As asserted by Jespersen, the three ideas portrayed in (4) like “pearls on a string” are combined into “one organic whole” Furthermore, this reconstruction entails a situation in which the verbs “arrived”, “examined”, and “recovered” in (4) are raised to the position of substantives “arrival”, “examination”, and “recovery” in (5), the adverbs “quickly”,

“carefully”, and “speedily” in (4) are consequently raised to become adjectives “quick”,

“careful”, “speedy” in (5)

The employment of nexus-substantives in a sentence to represent concepts that are typically expressed by finite verbs, however, can make our language become “not only more abstract, but more abstruse” due to the disappearance of “the life-giving elements of the verb (time, mood, person)” in the verbal substantives Therefore, the nominal style may sometimes accomplish nothing more than “disguise simple thoughts in the garb of profound wisdom” and thus fail to serve “the purposes of everyday life” (Jespersen, 1924, p 139)

2.2.1.2 English nominalization and Mathesius’ complex condensation

As the co-founder of the Prague Linguistic School, the Czech linguist Vilém

Mathesius inspired generations of scholars who acknowledged the diversity of functions performed by a language as well as the impact of a language’s characteristic functions on its structure (Chovanec, 2014) One of Mathesius’ influential functional analyses of language under the tenets of Prague School philosophy was his introduction of complex condensation

as a recurrent phenomenon in the English language in his unpublished lectures By this term,

he meant the inclusion of a nominal element or phrase in a sentence as a replacement for the finite verb of a subordinate clause, thus allowing the said sentence to dispense with the

clausal structure (Vachek, 1955) This tendency is well manifested by means of the

synchronic method in which data from two or more genetically different languages are

brought into comparison, as proven by Mathesius’ work (Chovanec, 2014) His thorough analysis of modern English and modern Czech demonstrates the preponderance of

complicated nominal, verbless constructions in English to substitute dependent clauses, as opposed to Czech’s strong tendency towards the use of finite verbs when performing the same function (Vachek, 1955) English sentence structures, therefore, are found to be more syntactically compact in comparison to their Czech counterpart (Mathesius, 1975) Regarding the means of condensation, or condensers, Mathesius identified the gerund, the infinitive, and the participle as the most widely employed in English contexts Such a sophisticated

condensation process might be illustrated by examining the comparable data from English and Czech

(6a) ENG: He was nervous for having never before spoken in public

(6b) CZ: Byl nervózní, protože ještě nikdy nemluvil na veřejnosti [ENG: He was nervous because he never before spoke in public.]

(7a) ENG: I don’t believe him to have behaved like that

(7b) CZ: Nevěřím, že by se byl takhle choval [ENG: I don’t believe that he would have behaved like that.]

(8a) ENG: Not having seen me for many years, he did not recognize me

(8b) CZ: Protože mne mnoho let neviděl, nepoznal mne [ENG: As he had not seen

me for many years, he did not recognize me.]

(Mathesius, 1975, p 149-151)

While nominal expressions derived from verbal bases exist in Czech, they appear to

be less functionally and linguistically versatile than their English counterparts English

gerund, for instance, principally presents itself in a wide variety of forms that are found utterly lacking in Czech such as the object, the passive gerund, and a special form for past references, as in example (6a) The infinitive and participle in English also exhibit different nuances of meaning that the Czech equivalents are incapable of conveying, as shown in examples (7a) where the infinitive establishes the accusative-infinitive construction, and (8a) where the participle expresses causal relationship (Mathesius, 1975)

2.2.1.3 Lees’ transformational approach to English nominalization

Within the realm of transformational-generative grammar, the linguistic phenomenon

of nominalization is characterized by a confrontation of innumerable theories, the earliest of which belongs to the eminent linguist Robert B Lees Inspired and influenced by Noam Chomsky’s influential book “Syntactic Structure” (1957), Lees applied the transformational approach to address emerging English grammatical issues, including the constructions of English nominalization (Schachter, 1962) In his theory, Lees treated nominalization as a transformation process where noun phrases are syntactically derived from the underlying structures which allegedly govern the semantic meaning of the said noun phrases (Hou, 2011) To illustrate, a relationship between certain types of nominalizations and full

sentences can be observed below

(9a) His car’s collision with another vehicle

(9b) His car collided with another vehicle

(10a) Mike’s refusing the offer

(10b) Mike refused the offer

Nouns “collision” in (9a) and “refusing” in (10a) are assumably transformed versions

of their source verbs “collide” in (9b) and “refuse” in (10b); accordingly, the whole noun phrases (9a) and (10a) are derivatives from the corresponding sentences (9b) and (10b)

In addition, according to Lees’ classification, there is a great variety of nominalization constructions, which are presented below

Factive-That Clause That he was tired was obvious

Factive-Question Word Clause Who he was was obvious

Action-Transitive His handling of the case was brilliant

Gerundive His handling the case is unlikely

Agentive John is an avid reader of magazines

Infinitival-Copulative For her to go there is strange

Infinitival-Purpose-Adverbial The food is for us to eat

Abstractive His willingness to go surprised me

Reduced relative What bothered me was his attitude

Nominal modifier A man with a green hat was there

(Schachter, 1962, p 142)

While the vast majority of Lees’ analyses of the aforementioned constructions are insightful and sophisticated, not all of his explanations are equally sufficient As Jacobsen (1978, p 403) pointed out, “nominalization is blocked if the source sentence contains a

modal verb or aspect, if it is negated, or if it contains -ly adverb”, as shown in the following

ungrammatical noun phrases

(11) The enemy’s (*will) destruction of the regiment

(12) The enemy’s (*has) destruction of the regiment

(13) The enemy’s (*not) destruction of the regiment

(14) The enemy’s (*certainly) destruction (*cruelly) of the regiment

Furthermore, Jacobsen attached great importance to positing “hypothetical

lexical items” (1978, p 403) to achieve the highest degree of generalization For

example, the two missing verbs must be presumed to exist in the underlying structures

of the following sentences:

(15) The reviewer’s critique of the book was penetrating

(16) The enemy’s aggression was stopped

(Hou, 2011, p 37)

2.2.1.4 Chomsky’s lexicalist approach to English nominalization

Prior to 1970, nominalization in the light of transformational-generative grammar was characterized by being “deverbal” and “desentential” (Newmeyer, 2005, p 26) This

viewpoint, nevertheless, shifted dramatically after the publication of Chomsky’s “Remarks on Nominalization” (1970), which approached nominalization from both syntactic and lexical perspectives (Alexiadou, 2010) He proposed the two most salient types of nominalization in English among many others, namely gerundive nominals (17b) and derived nominals (17c) Despite his approval for applying the transformationalist hypothesis to the gerundive

nominals, Chomsky asserted that derived nominals, which neither occur implicitly in

complete sentences nor are they transformed from verbs, should be analyzed via the lexicalist hypothesis (Chomsky, 1970; Newmeyer, 2005)

(17a) John criticized the book

(17b) John’s criticizing the book

(17c) John’s criticism of the book

According to Chomsky (1970), there exist numerous distinctions between these two types of nominalization, the most noticeable among which are “the productivity of the

process in question, the generality of the relation between the nominal and the associated proposition, and the internal structure of the nominal phrase” (p 16)

With regard to the matter of productivity, while gerundive nominals can be created quite freely from propositions of subject-predicate form, the formation of derived nominals is subject to several limitations (Chomsky, 1970) In other words, all sentences can be

transformed into gerundive nominalizations, while this is not always the case with derived nominalizations (Spencer, 1991)

In terms of semantic relations, the meaning of the gerundive nominalization can be deduced straightforwardly from that of the underlying verbal element in the deep structure Derived nominalizations, on the other hand, always appear to add some component of

meaning, which is often unanticipated The relationships between the related propositions and derived nominals, therefore, are quite “varied” and “idiosyncratic” (Chomsky, 1970, p 16) For instance, the single nominal “amusement” in the following examples has two distinct individual meanings, hence two varied semantic relations to the base form While the former refers to “the state resulting from being amused”, the latter refers to “equipment designed to provide amusement in a fairground, etc.” (Spencer, 1991)

(18a) Tom’s stories provided endless amusement

(18b) The children spent all their pocket money on the amusements

The third discrepancy between gerundive and derived nominals is that the latter have more nominal qualities, in the sense that their internal structure resembles that of a simple noun This is demonstrated by their capacity to accept a prepositional phrase as a complement (19a), pluralize (19b), occur with a wide variety of determiners (19c), and be modified by prenominal adjectives (19d) (Chomsky, 1970; Alexiadou, 2010)

(19a) the proof of the theorem

(19b) John’s three proofs of the theorem

(19c) several of John’s proofs of the theorem

(19d) the concrete proof of the theorem

(Adapted from Chomsky, 1970, p 21-22)

In addition, the derived nominals cannot contain adverbs, negation, or auxiliaries, as illustrated correspondingly below

(19e) *the concretely proof of the theorem

(19f) *the not proof of the theorem

(19g) *the have proof of the theorem

Another class of nominalization introduced by Chomsky (1970) is called mixed

nominals such as (20) and (21) since all of its members have the suffix -ing like gerundive

nominals yet share many properties with derived nominals

(20) John’s refusing of the offer

(21) John’s proving of the theorem

His treatment of this particular category, however, is rather sparse, owning to his skepticism towards the pertinence of the lexical hypothesis to the construction He

proclaimed that these nominals “are curious in a number of respects, and it is not at all clear whether the lexicalist hypothesis can be extended to cover them” (1970, p 60)

2.2.1.5 Biber’s approach to English nominalization

In “Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English” (2002), which

represents a large-scale corpus-based grammatical description of English, Biber et al

regarded nominalization as a product of derivational morphology Throughout this

transformational process, certain types of derivational suffix are attached to the base words (verbs and adjectives) to produce nominalized expressions, which are mostly abstract nouns

In addition to changes in parts of speech, the pronunciation or spelling of the base words can

also undergo modifications; for instance, when we add the suffix -cy to “infant”, the entire

word is spelt as “infancy”, not “*infantcy” Among a wide range of suffixes found in English, while certain suffixes serve the sole purpose of indicating nouns, some are more ambigious in that they can signal more than one part of speech (Biber et al., 2002), as illustrated as follows

In the list below, the symbols V and A indicate whether the noun is derived from a verb or an adjective

Table 2.1 Noun suffixes (Biber et al., 2002)

-al action or instance of V-ing arrival, burial, denial, proposal

ance,

-ence

action or state of V-ing, assistance, resemblance, experience

state of being A dependence, difference, ignorance

-ant, -ent

a person who V-s assistant, consultant, student

something used for V-ing coolant, intoxicant, lubricant

-cy state or quality of being A/N accuracy, adequacy, infancy, lunacy

-ee a person (various meanings) absentee, devotee, employee, trainee

-er, -or a person/thing that V-s actor, driver, filler, teacher, visitor

-ery, -ry (various non-personal

meanings)

bakery, bravery, refinery, robbery

-ing

action/instance of V-ing, feeling, meeting, reading, training

place or material building, crossing, landing, lining

-ism ideology, movement, tendency atheism, criticism, capitalism, Marxism

-ist follower of N/A-ism, specialist atheist, capitalist, racist, physicist

-ity state or quality of being A ability, activity, density, insanity

-ment action or instance of V-ing argument, movement, statement, treatment

-ness state or quality of being A blindness, darkness, fairness, happiness

-tion action or instance of V-ing communication, education, production

-ure action or instance of V-ing closure, departure, exposure, pressure

With the exception of -er, the most frequently employed derivational bound

morphemes found in the list (-tion, -ity, -ness, -ism, -ment) are used to denote abstract ideas

They are, therefore, significantly more common and productive in academic writing than in other registers (Biber et al., 2002)

2.2.1.6 Langacker’s cognitive approach to English nominalization

Within the paradigm of cognitive linguistics, nominalization is viewed as a pervasive and salient trans-linguistical phenomenon that needs to be examined from the view of human cognition Ronald Langacker, as one of the prominent figures in the cognitive linguistic school, perceived “nominalization as a process of prominence in conceptualization” (1987, p 49) In his work “Foundations of Cognitive Grammar Volume II” (1991), three central

concepts emerged from his description of nominalization, namely “kinds”, “periphrasis”, and

“predictability”

First, Langacker (1991) investigated typical patterns of nominalization pursuant to two distinct parameters Along the first parameter, nominalization patterns differ in terms of “which facet of the underlying relational predication is selected for reification and profiling” (p.23) The most basic form of nominalization in this dimension simply changes the profile (the

foregrounded expression) of a verb into a nominal entity evoked as part of its inherent

structure Among a vast array of possibilities, the verb stem’s internal subject (trajector), as in

“complainer”, “dancer”, and “blender” and internal object (landmark), as in “supervisee”,

“advisee” are the most common profiled features Another type of nominalization put forward

by Lanagacker (1991) is episodic nominalization, which has a distinct conceptualization from the first type Such a nominalization denotes a single episode of process profiled by what he called a perfective verb, as is seen in the following pairs of sentences

(22) a Perfective verbs:

He will walk to the market

He will throw the ball to first base

He will shout the signal to the players

b Episodic nominalizations:

He will go for a walk to the market

He will make a throw to first base

He will give a shout to the players

(Inglis, 2004, p 7)

In compliance with the second parameter, Langacker (1991) posited another set of nominalizations, as in (2), which can be profitably examined from the perspective of “the internal organization of the relational predication, in particular whether it represents the conception of a process type or a specific instance of that type” (p 23)

(23a) Zelda’s reluctant signing of the contract

(23b) Zelda’s reluctantly signing the contract

(23c) That Zelda reluctantly signed the contract

(Langacker, 1991, p 31)

In light of the previous generative studies (Lees, 1960; Chomsky, 1970) into the called “action” nominals such as (23a), “factive” (or “gerundive”) nominals such as (23b), and that-nominals such as (23c), Langacker (1991) concentrated on the internal functional organization of such nominal expressions, pointing out that the structural differences between them stem from three distinct “levels of organization in the assembly of a finite clause”, including a verb stem, an “intermediate processual structure” and a “finite clause” (p 33) According to his analysis, the “action” nominalization (23a) is classified as a “type”

so-nominalization since the so-nominalization process entails the reification of a verb stem “sign” into a noun (signing), whose “semantic function is limited to specifying a type” (Langacker

1991, p 33, as cited in Heyvaert, 2003) Conversely, the “factive” nominalization (23b) is asserted to appertain to a higher-level structure which was regarded by Langacker (1991) as

“a processual expression that has all the ingredients of a finite clause except an explicit subject and a grounding predication” (p 32) Finally, that-nominals are descended from a grounded instance or a finite phrase, the internal structure of which is preserved in the nominalization

What is more, as no previous research was found on the emergence of the so-called

“grammatical markers” in certain structures of nominalization, Langacker (1991) focused his

attention on three morphemes of, by, and ’s, all of which are commonly employed in noun

modifiers (e.g., the role of the teacher; the performance by the ballerina; the woman’s hat) In his analysis, Langacker (1991) qualified these morphemes as periphrasis expressions and made the case that each of them “should be assigned a meaning that represents its grammatical

purpose and is organically related to the values it assumes in other uses” (p 35) These

periphrastic morphemes all profile simple atemporal relations, which license the indirect

specification of the processual participants which, once the process in which they are involved has undergone nominalization, cannot be specified directly (Szawerna, 2010) In addition to their shared function, Langacker (1991) highlighted the semantic discrepancies between these periphrastic variants He described the preposition “of” as signifying “an intrinsic relationship between its trajector and landmark” (1991, p 37) In most cases, the trajector is an inherent subpart of the landmark, as in (24a) In another variation, the landmark indicates the material from which the trajector is fabricated or an element that gives it its basic features, as in (24b) Besides, it is also used with relational nouns such as “mother” and “leader” in (24c), where its landmark denotes the entity with respect to which the relationship is reckoned

(24a) the tip of the tongue; the corner of the room

(24b) a necklace of gold; a moment of joy

(24c) the mother of the child; the leader of the explorers

(Adapted from Langacker, 1991, p 37)

The preposition “by”, on the other hand, bears semantic similarity to the variant used

in passives and the one used to designate the author of an artistic work (e.g., a song by The Beatles; a painting by Monet) This periphrastic morpheme, therefore, is claimed to be more contentful than the periphrastic “of” due to its capacity to identify its object as the trajector of the nominalized verb” and further suggest “that its role is active to some degree” (Langacker,

1991, p 40-41) Finally, possessive inflection can be adopted in nominal periphrasis, with the chief purpose of specifying the trajector of the underlying process (e.g., Zelda’s signing of the contract), as well as occasionally for its landmark (e.g., Lincoln’s assassination)

Lastly, Langacker (1991) postulated that any plausible description of nominalization must address a number of fundamental observations First, in opposition to the previous studies which depict the patterns of nominalization as something chaotic and idiosyncratic, Langacker believed there are patterns to be recognized and classified Additionally, nominalization

patterns differ in terms of their productivity For instance, nominal expressions that end in -er are far more abundant and freely coinable than those created with -ee Furthermore, despite

seemingly instantiating a nominalization pattern, many expressions have unanticipated

semantic characteristics To illustrate, that a “grinder” in yachting refers to a crew member on a yacht rather than the act of grinding anything cannot be forecast by any rules Moreover,

Langacker suggested that nominalization serves a dual purpose by characterizing established expressions and permitting the computation of novel instantiations As a final observation, the

relationships between the morphological and semantic components of nominalization are thought to be inconsistent A single morphological pattern can be used to represent numerous

semantic correlations For example, a deverbal noun ending in -er can represent the agent,

instrument, or location of the verbal process (e.g., investor, rocker, skyscraper)

2.2.1.7 Halliday’s systemic-functional approach to English nominalization

2.2.1.7.1 Nominalization as a part of grammatical metaphor

Within the theoretical framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics, Halliday

proposed a novel approach for analyzing nominalization, which is considered more

systematic and in-depth than the earlier linguistic schools’ works (Lei & Yi, 2019) From his view, nominalization is identified as one pattern of a wider construct known as grammatical metaphor, which implies “a substitution of one grammatical class, or one grammatical

structure, by another” with the regular involvement of lexical variation (Halliday & Martin,

1993, p 97; Halliday, 1994) He noted that nominalizing is the single most powerful resource for generating grammatical metaphor Via this device, processes and properties, which would otherwise be congruently phrased as verbs or adjectives respectively, are metaphorically reworded as nouns With regard to its semantic function, instead of operating as Process or Attribute in the clause, nominalization serves as Thing in the nominal group (Halliday, 1994) The following constructions indicate how the process of nominalizing is realized

(25a) Mike sent flowers to his mother

(25b) Mike’s sending flowers to his mother surprised her

The nominalized structure in (25b) is referred to as a grammatical metaphor since it alludes to a process (25a), as the definition of grammatical metaphor suggests As a result, grammatical metaphor entails a particular metaphorical movement in which the nominalized form preserves the clause’s meaning

2.2.1.7.2 Classification of nominalization

As the theoretical underpinning of nominalization is grammatical metaphor,

specifically ideational metaphor, Halliday classified nominalization in agreement with the latter concept According to his work in “Reading Science: Critical and Functional

Perspectives on Discourses of Science” (2005), there are thirteen types of grammatical

metaphor, six of which are nominalizations They are derived from quality (adjective),

process (verb), circumstance (preposition), relator (conjunction), zero (none), and entity (various), correspondingly Each type of nominalization encompasses not only the variation

in lexicogrammatical classes but also the grammatical and semantic functions, as summarized

in the following table

Table 2.2 Six types of nominalizations

Semantic functions Grammatical functions Lexicogrammatical class

1 quality → entity epithet → thing adjective → noun

2 process → entity i event → thing

ii auxiliary → thing verb → noun

3 circumstance → entity minor process → thing preposition → noun

4 relator → entity conjunctive → thing conjunction → noun

5 zero → entity zero → thing none → noun

6 entity → expansion head → modifier noun → various

It can be seen from Table 2.2 that they all are categorized as nominalizations Process nominalization is often realized by transferring a verb to a noun, as in (26) Quality nominalization is used to indicate any nominalized word or phrase formed from an adjective,

as in (27) Circumstance nominalization, a type of additional minor process, is often realized

by transferring a preposition or a prepositional phrase to a noun, as in (28) It is therefore complicated to transfer circumstantial elements to nominalization Relator nominalization is

used to indicate any word or phrase formed from a conjunctive, as in (29) Zero nominalization is often realized by transferring zero to a noun, as in (30) Entity nominalization describes the expansion of the Head modifying noun, as in (31) Take (26) for example, the metaphoric shift from “unstable” in (26a) to “instability” in (26b) signifies a change from “construed as quality” to “construed as entity,” from “adjective” to “noun,” and from the traditional role of Epithet to (in this case, in the nominal group) that of Thing

(26a) Pakistan is politically unstable

(26b) The political instability of Pakistan leads to economic crisis

(27a) The abandoned dock transformed into a city-center cultural venue

(27b) The abandoned dock’s transformation into a city-center cultural venue took almost four years

(28a) I was astounded at the quality and quantity of modernist architecture in Singapore

(28b) I was astounded at the quality and quantity of Singaporean modernist architecture

(29a) The road in front of the hostel was flooded because it rained heavily

(29b) The road in front of the hostel was flooded due to the heavy rain

(30a) Human beings are vulnerable to this virus

(30b) The fact that human beings are vulnerable to this virus is predictable

(31a) Glass fracture occurs when the tensile strength of the glass pulls the surface apart and thereby surpasses the elastic limit

(31b) The fracture of glass occurs when the tensile strength of the glass pulls the surface apart and thereby surpasses the elastic limit

(Adapted from Halliday, 2005, p 208-210)

2.2.1.8 Summary of subsection 2.2.1

To date, numerous studies have been conducted on nominalization from diverse perspectives, addressing aspects of its form, meaning, and usage One of the earliest attempts

to examine nominalization belongs to Jespersen (1924, 1933, 1956) who viewed this

phenomenon as a “nexus substantive” and categorized it into two types, namely verbal

nominalization, and predicative nominalization His groundbreaking work has been a source

of inspiration for later transformational-generative linguistics Within the framework of transformational-generative grammar, different approaches have been adopted to address the question of whether the formation of nominalization should be analyzed from a syntactic or lexical perspective In his influential work “Remarks on Nominalization” (1970), Chomsky postulated that while gerundive nominals are derived via transformation from the associated sentence, derived nominals are formed lexically, and hence should be handled differently Another simple yet straightforward approach to English nominalization belongs to Biber, who claimed that nominalizations are basically abstract nouns created from verbs or

adjectives by means of derivational morphology This viewpoint, however, is thought to be relatively constrained and superficial as it still hinges on the lexical level, and the

transformational process is limited to verbs and adjectives (Banks, 2005) What is more, cognitive linguistics, which is a relatively new linguistic paradigm, reckons that the dispute over whether nominalization belongs “in the syntax” or “in the lexicon” is “meaningless” Alternatively, cognitive linguistics “posits for lexicon, morphology, and syntax an array of symbolic units that range continuously along such parameters as specificity, entrenchment,

and symbolic complexibility” (Langacker, 1991, p 44) Finally, from the standpoint of

systemic-functional grammar, Halliday (1994, 2005) advanced a more structured and embracing theory, which takes into account both grammatical transformation and a wide range of context-specific functions of nominalization Various empirical studies under the tenets of this school have been carried out to probe into the functions of nominalization in different discourses, thereby exerting practical influence over a vast array of disciplines

all-In this subsection, I have sought to demonstrate how the century-old linguistic

phenomenon of nominalization has been handled from different perspectives While the extensive research on this topic cannot be fully reflected in this thesis, the most significant stages of the theory’s evolution have been addressed Of all the mentioned approaches,

Biber’s stance on nominalization will serve as the theoretical foundation of the present

research The exhaustive description of derivational suffixes forming English nominalizations proposed by Biber and his colleagues (2002) was based on a large, balanced corpus of spoken and written texts Additionally, the corpus includes authentic examples demonstrating how real people use real language, hence providing a solid foundation for the investigation of grammatical patterns With regard to register variation, the corpus covers a variety of

frequently encountered language registers and thus offers a more all-encompassing view of language Owing to the authenticity and extensiveness of the corpus, the aforementioned classification has been widely accepted and adopted in a large number of studies into

nominalization (e.g., Shinichiro, 2009; Guz, 2009; Montero-Fleta, 2011; Marshall, 2019)

2.2.2 Vietnamese nominalization

Since the early twentieth century, the phenomenon of nominalization has been one of the focal points in both theoretical and empirical linguistic studies in Vietnam (Nguyen, 2003) It is regarded as one of the prevalent techniques for word formation in an analytic

(isolating) language like Vietnamese, which largely communicates relationships between words in sentences through the use of helper words and word order In contrast to English nominalization, there is a general consensus among scholars and practitioners about how to classify nominalizations According to Tran and Dang (2014), there exist two major

nominalizing processes that entail external (or explicit) and internal (or implicit) changes in parts of speech They are believed to differ considerably not only in their operating

mechanism but also in their final nominal products

2.2.2.1 The addition of nominal classifiers

During the external modification, verbs, adjectives, or clauses can be nominalized by adding some specialized elements known as nominal classifiers (sometimes called nominalizers

or noun formation agents) such as “việc”, “sự”, “tính”, “cuộc”, “cái”, “nỗi”, “niềm”, “cơn”,

“trận”, “chuyến”, “những”, “mỗi”, “một”, “mọi” (Le & Nguyen, 2018) While this process is predominantly employed in word formation in Vietnamese, an agreement on its valid label has yet to be reached among linguists In the book “An Introduction to Linguistics” (1999), Vu laid emphasis on the similarities between this derivational process and affixation used in inflective languages This argument appears to be justified due to the fact that they both involve the insertion of linguistic elements that generate new words while not usually communicating any meanings His view, however, was challenged by Pham and Le (2016), who doubted the

adequacy of classifying lexical words like “sự”, “việc”, “cuộc” in Vietnamese as affixes

Despite performing the same functions, nominal classifiers are stand-alone words preceding verbs, adjectives, or clauses, whereas affixes are bound morphemes added to the beginning or end of a root word, as illustrated in the following examples

(1) Vietnamese English

nhà (nominal classifier) + đầu tư (verb) →

nhà đầu tư (noun)

invest (verb) + -or (suffix) → investor (noun)

sự (nominal classifier) + trình diễn (verb)

→ sự trình diễn (noun)

perform (verb) + -ance (suffix) → performance (noun)

2.2.2.1.1 Verbal derivatives

In Vietnamese, an extensive system of nominal classifiers like “việc”, “sự”, “cuộc”,

“cái”, “nỗi”, “niềm”, “chuyến”, “trận”, “cơn”, etc., can be added before a verb to convert it into a noun The choice of these modifiers is significantly influenced by the meanings they denote as well as their combination with the subsequent verbs In accordance with the studies conducted by Nguyen (2003), Nguyen (2013), and Doan (2016), a brief discussion on such devices is presented as follows

- The combination of “việc” and a verb often shows an action or an ongoing process

in general, as in “việc mua bán” (“business”), “việc tổ chức” (“organization”) This

combination is often adopted by speakers to implicitly emphasize the validity of the

conveyed message

- The combination of “sự” and a verb is adopted mainly for denoting abstract entities such as “sự đàm phán” (“negotiation”), “sự thành lập” (“establishment”), “sự tiến bộ”

(“advancement”) The materials that make up these entities are fabricated through the

abstraction and generalization of the features of the processes expressed in the stem verb It is also noteworthy that the verbs following “sự” function as intransitive verbs since they require

no direct object to communicate a whole thought

- The combination of “cuộc” and a verb often shows abstract actions performed by a group of people, as in “cuộc tranh tài” (“a competition”), “cuộc thảo luận” (“a discussion”) Due to its rather specific meaning, this morpheme is not widely employed in the

nominalizing processes

- “Cái” often goes exclusively with a group of verbs expressing activities related to body parts, such as cognitive verbs Some typical examples of this combination are “cái bắt tay” (“a handshake”), “cái nhìn” (“a look”), “cái ôm” (“a hug”)

- The duo of “nỗi” and “niềm” is often added to verbs expressing different levels of emotions While “nỗi” is used to nominalize verbs denoting “dark” (negative) sentiment such

as “nỗi phiền muộn” (“sorrow”), “nỗi ám ảnh” (“obsession”), “niềm” is used to nominalize verbs denoting “bright” (positive) sentiment such as “niềm hi vọng” (“hope”), “niềm tin” (“faith”) (Nguyen, 2003, p 13) Moreover, “nỗi” and “niềm” can modify verbs that express human desires with great intensity, as in “niềm đam mê” (“passion”), and “nỗi khát khao” (“aspiration”) Although these verbs express abstract entities, the output of nominalizing process always denotes a more concrete, even countable, entity

- “Chuyến” often goes exclusively with a group of verbs expressing motions, as in

“chuyến đi” (“a trip”), “chuyến viếng thăm” (“a visit”), and “chuyến du lịch” (“a tour”)

- “Trận” often goes with a group of verbs expressing actions performed by a group of individuals or actions that occur frequently and intensely, as in “trận đá bóng” (“a football match”), “trận đánh” (“a battle”), and “trận phục kích” (“an ambush”)

- “Cơn” often goes with a group of verbs expressing mental conditions, often in a short period of time, as in “cơn thịnh nộ” (“a fit of rage”), “cơn giận dữ” (“a fit of anger”), and “cơn mê sảng” (“a fit of delirium”)