Luận văn a study on the entailment of meronymy in 10 year old vietnamese children’s english speaking a case of the children in an english centre

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the entailment of meronymy in 10 year-old Viehurns: of 33 Vietnamese students at the age of ten and 3 native teachers The results show two types of the ent

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOL

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES,

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES

TRAN LAN ITUONG

ASTUDY ON THE ENTAILMENT OF MERONYMY IN 10-YEAR-

OLD VIETNAMESE CHILDRE!

ENGLISH SPEAKING: A CASE

OF THE CHILDREN IN AN ENGLISH CENTRE

(NGHIÊN CỨU SỰ KÉO THEO CỦA QUAN HE BO PHAN- TOAN PHAN TRONG CACILNO! TIENG ANI CUA TRE EM VIET NAM 10 TUOL:

NGHIEN CUU TREN DOI TUONG Hoc SINH CUA MOT TRUNG TAM

TIÉNG ANH)

M.A MINOR PROGRAM THESIS

Field: English Code: 6014.0111 Supervis

ir Do Thi Thanh Ha

HANOI, 2015

CERTIFICATION OF ORIGINALITY

T hereby certify that the thesis cutifled “4 study on the entailment of meronymy in 10 year-old Vietnamese children’s English speaking A case of the children in an English centre” is my own study in the fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree of Master at Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies, University of Languages and Intemational Studies, Vietnam National University,

Hanoi

Hanoi, 2015

Tran Lan Huong

L also wish to thank the manager, the students and teachers at Amslink

Conte, whose knowledge, experience, and supporls dircuted me through ty study

A very special thank gocs out to my friends, without whosc support, motivation and cneouragement 1 wonld not have snch pationae anu determination in fulfilling this study 1 would also like to thank my family for the support they provided me through my entire life and especially this hard time of preparation for

graduation

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the entailment of meronymy in 10 year-old Viehurns:

of 33 Vietnamese students at the age of ten and 3 native teachers

The results show two types of the entailment of meronymy in children’s English speaking: the first is breaking the constant principle in the semantic relation

Iildren’s English speaking The data was taken from the observation

of meronymy and the second is the lack of one of properties of meronymy The first

one is more popular to cause the entailment of meronymy

Moreover, the study also indicales how teachers responded to children’s

entailments of meronymy and goes to the conclusion that most of time teachers

ignored thesc or sometimes just gave very simple feedback when what children said

was too unreasonable

iti

TABLE OF CONTENT CERTIFICATION OF ORIGINALATY

3 Scope of the research

A, Organization of the thesis

2, Teachers’ oral feedhack in speaking

2.1 The definitions of feedlack

IN RELATED STUDIES

1.Meronymy

2 Children language acquisition

CHAPTER D RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

1, THE CONTEXT OF THE STUDY

2, Data analysis methods

CHAPTER DI RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

1 THE FREQUENCY OF ENTAILMENT OF MERONYMY

1 The constant principle in the semantic relationt oŸ rnererrymy 28 1.1 The combination of more than one type of meronymy

APPENDIX 2 STUDENTS’ LEARNING CONDITION AT AMSLINK

vi

w

LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Six types of meronymic relation with relation elements

LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Feedback Types classified by Brookhart (1998) 16 Figure 2: Feedback Types classified by Crane (2006) 17 Figure 3: The frequency of entailment of meronymy 26

Figure 4; The teachers’ reaction to the shudents' tise 36

LIST OF PICTURES

vii

PART A INTRODUCTION

1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study

Linguistics, the scientific stuly of language, is of all “the social sciences

with the greatest interest in the phenomenon of meaning” (Lyons, 1981: 15), There

have been different approaches to investigate meaning and the lexical approach is

one of them When the meaning of a lexical item is stated through associations with other lexical items, the theory of lexical semantics 1s met, This approach posits two

different, though connected, aspects One aspect relates the linguistic element to the physical world of experience, the world of objects, entities, which is called reference While the other aspect, namely sense, relates to the relations holding

between the linguistic clements themselves, particularly, sense or lexical relations

Sense relations among words have captured the interest of various brands of

philosophers, cognitive psychologists, linguists, early childhood and second

language educators, computer scientists, literary theorists, cognitive neuroscientists,

psychoanalysts- investigators from just about any field whose interests involve

words, meaning or the mind We can access a broad and detailed literature that

approaches the topic from a variety of methodological and theoretical perspectives SUH, the core semantic relation of every knowledge organization syslem is

Iierarchy Thete are two kinds of hierarchie relations that should be distinguishc:

lyponyiny @s-a relation) and weronymy (parl-of relation)

In the way meronymy is currently applied in real life, especially by children,

different lands of meronymy are sometimes misleadingly swmmed up into one general part-whole relation and regarded as always transitive, which can make some

types of entailments However, children are not often given a clear explanation

about their entailment Moreover, there is no recent study on the entailment of

meronymy in children’s English speaking, therefore; the analysis of these in general

and in the context of Viemam in particular is really necessary This study is a

theoretical approach to some knowledge of meronymy in generat and the

transitivity of meronymy in particular tp clarify some eniailment of meronymy

cơnccming transitivity of Victnamesc children

2 Research questions

The study’s primary aim is +o investigate the use of meronymy in English

communication classes of 10-year-old students, And then the researcher will try to

analyze the entailment of meronymy in Vietnamese children’s English speaking and

investigate how teachers responded to children’s use of meronymy

This final goal is specified in the following research questions:

1 What are the enlailment of meronymy in Vieinamese 10-year-old children’s English speaking?

2 How do teachers respond to students’ cntailment of mcronymy?

3 Scope of the research

Due to the limited time and knowledge, it will be not wise to cover all

aspects of meronymy like its relationship with other semantic relations, the benefits

of transitive meronymy for the application of automatic semantic query expansion

in information retrieval tasks, weighted meronymic relations, application fields in detail, etc Moreover, itis also impossible to discuss all the entailment of meronymy

in children’s English speaking Conversely, my study just simphasizes on one aspect

of meronymy- tansitivily and some ontstandmg use tolated ta this aspect of meronymy of 10- year old children,

4 Organization of the thesis

The thesis consists of three parts:

Part A — Introduction comes to the general introduction including the rational, and the purposes of the present study

Part B — Development: this part comprises of thse chapters

© Chapter 1: Theoretical Background and Literature review covers the overview of the literature in which relevant theoretical background and reviews of related studies conceming meronymy It reviews the research

Part © — Conclusion recapitulates the major findings of the study and then it

discusses the limitations of the present study and pnts forward some suggestions for the further stndy on meronymy

PART B DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I LITERATURE REVIEW

I MERONYMY

An interesting and crucial type of semantic relation, expressed in language,

“iy the relation between the paris of things and the wholes which they comprise”

(Winston et al 1987:417) This semantic relation has been lexicalized in many Janguages and can be used appropriately in some contexts and not in others (Chaffin

1992:258) Moreover, meronymy or part-whole relations turn out not to be simple,

probably because there is no single meronymic relation bt there are several

different ones and each having their own semantic properties instead

The natime of meronyiny has been, and still, puticularly controversial

Sometimes it is treated as fundamental, sometimes it is treated as a complex relation

derived trom other relations, and sometimes ignores altogether The present chapter

is an attempt to present a complete picture, as much as posable, of meronymy in

English by adopting the appropriate model that best explicates its nature, more

specifically the transitive nature of meronymy

1 Definition of meronymy

In terms of etymology, the term meronymy stems from the Greek “mero”

which means “part” (The Oxford University Dictionary TMlustraled, 1968: 1237) The tenn meronytoy is nol part of the available tudilional resomees of sermanticist

Perhaps this tenn was first uscd by Miller and Jolmson- Laird (1976.242) while

‘Winston et al (1987) recommended another tenn “partonymy’” Although it can be

named in different ways, the detinition of meronymy is not new and it has long

been regarded as one of the constitutive principles in the organization of the vocabulary of all languages

Meronymy is also defined as a structural sense/ semantic relation holding Delween lexical items denoting parts (meromyms) and thal denoting their

corresponding wholes (holonyms) Many linguistics supported this mentioned

notion of meronymy such us Lyons (1977 311-314), Rikaneyer& Reiser (1981 134), Halliday (1985: 312), Grains & Redman (1986:29), Sa’ced (1997:70), Keams (2000:131-133), Finelr (2000: 169), Murphy (2003: 218) Cruse (1979, 1986, 2000) also defended the same conception “(7 is a meronymy of (¥) if and only if sentences of the form A (Vj has (X)s/ an 1X} and An () is a part of (¥) are normal when the noun phrases interpreted generically” However, with this definition, Cruse digged up deeply extracting test-tiames to pin down a cohesive core group of relations comprising an ideal, or central meronymtic relation which is too restricted,

As for Winston et all (1987), they demonstrated that it can express meronym

relations using the word part or its derivation, including any of the following test- frames: (X) is a part of (Y), (¥} is partly (X), (Js are parts of (Y)s, and so on

Croft & Cruse (2004) took the “construal and constraints” approach in which,

meronymy is regarded as a relation between contextually construed meanings or

more precisely, by preaneamings created Ly boundary coustrual This approach presents the following charavterization of meronymy, “If is a meronym of Bina

parncular context then any member of the extension of A either maps onto a specific member of the extension of B of which it is consirued as a@ part, or it stands

poientially in a intrinsically construed relation of part to sume actual or potential

member of B” (Croft & Cruse, 2004: 160) From the viewpoint of this approach, the

problem with meronymy originates from the fact that the part- whole relation does

not hold between construed classes of elements, but between specific individuals

belonging to those classes Furthermore, in the case of meronymy, unlike

hyponymy, a part-whcle relation between two entities is itself a construal, subject to

ignal and contextual constraints

arange ufo

Tt seems that every part has ils own story, and all the above-mentioned

notions arc not false as cach notion is valid to some cxtents It can be said that

imeronyiry is the lexical relation between œ lexieal ilem denoting a part and that

denoting the corresponding whole This will be considered as the working definition

for this study Meronymy teflects the result of division of analysis of an entry into

parts or components in that the relation between the whole and its component is called Meronomuc relation

2 Characteristics of meronymy

2.1 The constant principle in the semantic relation of Meronyury

In order to construct a well-built meronymy, the principle of type

consistency of Croft & Cruse (2004: 153) should be counted: “The relevant notion

of type is difficult to pin down here One aspect is usually called ontological type There’s no agreement on a basic ontology, but the sort of thing refered to by Jakendoff (1983), namely, THING, STATE, PROCESS, EVENT, TIME, PLACE,

and so on seems relevant to parts” It means that the parts of a period of time should themselves be periods of time, the parts of an event should be sub-events

Meronymy is the semantic relation existmg between a lexical item denoting a part

and an item denoting the corresponding whole Thersfore, the relationship among

cloments in Meronym is also in the seme general type Tf one element in a nicronyy denvies a cobesive physical object, then the other items in the sel must too For instance, “weight” of a “bedy” does not figure among its parts In addition,

if one item refers to geographical area, all the others must do (hence Westminster Abbey is not a part off London); if one item is abstract noun, the others must be as well (e.g “high” is impossible to be a part of “body”)

The rule of type consistency justifies the existence of numerous limited meronomies, instead of a single one, with universe as its origin and at the lower bounds some sort of subatomic particle or particles This phenomenon is also linked

to bomdiy ikemareation of ultimate whales & part

The division of parts into segmental and systernic is another dimension of

consistency illustrated by Croft & Cruse (2004:154) If a whole is divided into

separable, spatially or pereeplually cohesive parts, these will be referred to as

segmental parts In such a division, items ofa lexical hierarchy correspond to real-

life objects which stand in a relation of segmental parts to the whole An altemative

approach is a division into systemic parts, which “have a greater functional unity, a

greater consistency of internal constitution, but they are spatially inter-

penetrating” (Cruse, 1986) Divisions of this kind are not so easily perceptually accessible, bul hey are as valid as the former type Every guod taxonomic hierarchy must keep a constant principle of hierarchy and avoid mixing them Thus a plant

must be cithcr divided into scgmental parts, such as root, stem, lcaves (further

divisible into a leaf stalk or petiole, and a blade or lamina), flower, ete., ox into systemic parts, such as the vascular tissue (mainly xylem and phloem), stele or vascular cylinder, cortex, stem cambium, epidermis, endodermis, photosynthetic

tissue, and other specialized cellular systems

2.2 Properties of Mcronymy

Cruse stated in his book (2000) that there are four properties of Meronymy

Necessity: sume paris are ecessary for the wholes and some are optional:

the more prototypical the meronyms is

Motivation: parts have an identifiable function of their own with respect to their wholes: c.g the handle is for grasping and opening and dosing the door, the

whi are for the car tu move smvothily, ete.

3 Types

Mcronymy also divided into differcnt kinds Cruse (1986) distinguished two

sublypes of Meronymy: necessary Meronyrms (car-body) and optional Meronyis (beard-thee) to show some object were the direet parts of the whole, while some were attached parts, Additionally, Chaffin & Hermann (1987) explored the relation elements and suggested six types of Meronymy Winston et al 987) considered the function, homeomeria and separability to interpret the types of meronymy relation, which is shown in the following table

Table 1: Six types of merony mic relation with relation clements

paying- shopping

dating-adolescence

Everplades- Florida

oasis-desert

Note: Fuwietional (-)/ Nonfimetional (J: Parts are/are not in a specific

spatial‘temporal position with respect to each other which supports their

fimctional role with respect to the whole

Homeomerous (+)/ Nonhomeomerous (-): Parts are similar/dissimilar to each other

and ta the whole to which they belong

Separable (+j/ Inseparable (-) Parts can/cannot be physically disconnected, in

principle, fram the whole to which they are connected

The differences among the six types of meronymic relations are indicated by the values of three relation elements that surmuarize characteristic properties of the

relations Meronymic relations differ in three main ways: whether the relation of part

to the whole is functional or not, whether the parts arc homeomerous or not, and

whether the part and whole are separable or not Functional parts are restricted, by their function, in their spatial or temporal location

3.1 Component — integral

This is the relation between the components and the objects they belong to

‘The components are in a specific spatial/temporal position with respect to each

other which supports their functional role with respect to the whole However, they are dissimilar to each other and to the whole to which they belong and

carmot, be physically discoungetzd, in prineiple, fom the wholz 1o which they

are cơmieetcd

For example:

© The brake isa part ofa car

© The cupboard is a part of the kitchen

©) The roof isa part of a house Tntggral objects always display some types of cerlain organizations or

structures Their components are also paliemed and often have particular structural

and functional connection with one another and to the wholes that they belong to

The specific characteristics of integral wholes are detined by these structural

relationships and it is net able to randomly arrange their components- components

Dut snost pat then ino a certain patterned organization within the wholes which

they comprise

3.2 Member — collection

Memiber- collection type corresponds the membership in a collection

Members are parts that do not play any functional part with regard to their whole, but they cannot be splitted from collection

«A tree is part of forest

© A juroris part of a jury

© This ship is part of'a fleet

Membership in a collection is not similar to componenthood because 1t does not require a specific fimetion or structural arrangement of member performance in relation to each other and to their whole

Collection whose members are determined by social connection are

generally referred as “group” This relationship is often expressed by the phrase

“athe member of, For example

* Vietnam is the member of Asian

«China is atacimber of WTO

3.3 Portion- Mass

Portion-Mass is a type of meronymy which is both homeomerous and

seperable Among extensive wholes, that is, physical objects, it can distinguish

“portion” from “components of objects and members of collections Although these three tyes are all separable, unlike components and members, partions of mass is

“homeomcrous” Tt means that they have parts which are similar to cach other and

to the whole which they belong fo while components and members can be different

from cach other and dissimilar to the wholes which they comprise For cxample,

This slice is a part of the pie

© Ayardisa pat ofa mile

© Te gave me a pat of his orange

As can be seen from the example, every portion is the oramge is “orange” and

is the same as cach other part and to the whole orange while a window is also a part

of the house, however, it is not similar lo the other components of the house and of course, not like the house

Because the portions of masses are flexible, means of standard measures can

be used ta divided and apportion masses such as inches, ounces, gallons, hours and

soon As Behr et al., 1986 note, the portion- mass relation thus forms the basis for the arithmetic operation of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division

3.4, Stuff Qhject

Stuff Object is the only type of meronymic relation that has none of three

Telation clements that summarize characteristic propertics of relation Stuffs arc not

part by virtue of any fimetional contribution te the whole, the parts are not homeomerous and the part and the whole are not separable This type is most often

expressed using the “is partly” frame, as in;

® The table is partly wood

* The cake is partly cggs

This frame is expresses the idea that a particular type of substance constitutes

a portion of the total stuff of which something is made, When something is made of

a single stuff, “is partly” cannot be tised, Instead, the relation nmust be expressed by

“made of” as in;

* The lens is made of glass

© The lens is partly glass The stuét object type is different from the component- object type based on the popular argument standard The component is the answer for the question

“What are its parts?” while the stuif is used to answer the question “What is 1t made of?” However, in some cases, it is not easy to distinguish shufis trom components, especially when the object is a homogeneous mixture, for example, salad, Is lettuce

a component or one of the stufts of the salad? The values of three-relation element

can be helpfid in these cases The companents ean be physically separaled fom an

object without altcring its identity, whereas the stuff of which a thing is made can

not because the lettuce is possible to be removed from a salad, itis not a stuff, if is a component,

3.5 Featurc- Activity

Features are in a special spatial/ temporal position with respect to each other

that supports their functional role with respect to the activity However, features are

dissimilar to each other and to the whole activity to which they belong to and features œammol be physioally disconnected, in principle, from the whole to which

they are connected

The cxistence of this fifth type of meronymic relation is indicated by the use of

“part” to designate the features or phrases of activities and processes, for example;

« Paying is part of shopping

© Testis part of studying

©) Dating is part of adolescence Cruse( 1986: 160- 165) detensines that unlike the types of weronymy discussed

thus far, sentences of the type “X has Y” and similar locutions can not be used to

reveal the feature- activity relation, suchas;

© Shopping has paying

© Studying has test

«Adolescence has dating

3.6 Place Area

The last type of meronymy is the relation between areas and special places

and locations within them, for instance;

«© Hanoi isa part of Victnam

* Amoasis isa part of a desert

« _ The baseline is part of a tennis comt

Parts in this type are not in a special spatial’ temporal position with respect to

each other that supports their fictional role with respect to the whole like the

member of collection In addition, similar iu the portion tass relation, the arca-

place relation is homogencous; every place within an arca is relatively similar to

every other and to the whole area, Neverth

places cannot be set apart from the areas of which they are a part

In general, each relationship differs from the other basic types of meronymy,

s, dk ferent fiom portions of masses,

though it does give one kind of answer to the question “What are its parts?” because

of the nature ot the variation of the connection between a whole and its parts The

variation is captured by the three elements that were used in Table 1 to summarize the

differences between the types of meronymy The comection af part to whole differs

depending on whether the part is functional, homogeneous, and separable In this

papor, the Winston classification is used as a criterion for building the training carpus

to provide a wide coverage of such subtypes of part-whole relations

IL CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

1, Language acquisition

Language learning is one of the most fascinating aspects of human development, hence undoubtedly attracts much scientific attention Following are

three central theoretical positions: the behaviorist, the imnatist, and the interactionist

views on lamguage acquisition

The hehuviorist position: Behaviorists belivves that children lea language

thvough imitation and habit formation Accurding to them, the quality and quantily

of the Language input to which the child is exposed have an influence on the child’s

language development processes which include imitation and practice This view

otters a partial understanding of how children learn simple aspects of language

However, the behaviorists failed to give a rational explanation for the more

complex grammatical structures

‘The innatist position: Noam Chomsky views the ability to leam language as

an innate one Ie claims “children are biologically programmed for language”

According to Chomsky, imilation and practice cannot huitd up language system

sfilly because children arc oflon exposed to the language cnviromnont filled

with confasing information or even insnflicient language souree Parcntal conetions arc inconsistent with a focus on meaning Therefore, he claims that children bave an inmale ability called a language sequisition device af first or laler

on Universal Grammar to derive the rules of a language system themselves other

than their mere imitation, practice, and reinforcement Universal Grammar is

considered to consist of a set of principles which are common to all languages If

the children are bom with unrversal grammar, they just have to learn how the

principles work in their mother tongue and in foreign languages that they are learning (Chomsky 1981) Chomsky’s ideas are supported by biological studies and the critical period hypothesis which suggests that the language acquisition in

particular and biological functions in gencral only works perfectly only when it is

timely stimulated in a certain period

Vygotsky’s social development theory Lev Sentyonovich Vygotsky was a Soviet

psychologist, the founder of a theory of human cultural and bio-social development commonly referred to as cuitural-historical psychology, and leader of the Vygotsky Circle At the core of Vygotsky’s theory (also known as Cultural-Ilistorical theory)

is the idea that child development is the result of interactions between children and

their social envionment These interactions involve people—pare

precedes developmen, He states, "Every function i the child's cultural

development appears twies: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level, first, between people (interpsyehological) and then imside the child (intrapsycholopical)"

Vygotsky also posited a concept of the Zone of Proximal Development, which is the distance between a student's ability to perform a task under adult guidance and/ or with peer collaboration and the student's ability solving the problem independently According to Vygotsky, leaming occurred in this zone

Three points of view mentioned above have explained a differcil aspeel of

the scvomd deals with the acquisilion of cumnplex grammar, and the last one explains

the way how children can relate form and meaning, how they interact, and hew they

use language properly

Of all these points of view, the social development theory has been adopted

to shed light for the study Unlike other approaches, this emphasizes the role of social interaction between the developing child and linguistically knowledgeable

adults, reinforcement and feedback in language acquisition These are the base and

the light for the research when investigating children’s use during communication with each other Specifically it asserts What much of a child's linguistic growth

stems from modeling of and interaction with parents and other adults, who very

ficquently provide instructive comcetion

2 Teachers’ oral feedback in speaking

2.1 The definitions of feedback

In the context of teaching and leaming languages, there are a large number of feedback definitions Littlewood (1981) and Lewis (2002) both equaled feedback with telling leamers about their progress and showing them their errors in order to guide them to areas for improvement, Different in words but similar in nature, Ur (1996, p.242) proposed, “Feedback is information thal is given to the leamer about lris or ler performance of a leaning task, usually with the objective of tmproving

this performance.” It is clearly scen thal these two definitions tealed this terms

under a broad paint of view since they just indicated that leamers are the ones to

receive feedback without showing who are the ones to give it However, in Ferris (1999), feedback was viewed as “any response a teacher may give his or her students” (cited in Do, 2009, p.16)

Obviously, the point that all the above-mentioned definitions have in common is the purpose of praviding feedback, i.e for leamer’s improvement Accordingly, there

are two matters loomed Firstly, question of quality af feedback cames into

durable concem The s

eon cond thing is the distinction between feedback and

criticism as Robert (2003) proposed in his study: “Pecdback should only ever be used

as a lusis for improvernent [t should nol be mistaken for negative criticism and vice

versc.” (p.12) Supporting Robert (2003)’s idea, Bound (2000) pointed out significant

In another way, as opposed to feedback that is aimed to give sincere input to someone in order for him’ her to improve him/herself, criticism is given for the negative purpose andl in improper way Tn the nutshell, feedback provision can be among peers or between teachers and students; howsver, feedback concemed in this study is viewed in the notion of teachin

2.2, Types of feedback

arming act between teachers and slurtents

So lầu, the researcher could find various ways of categorizing feedback types Firstly, ftom the viewpoint of Brookhart (1998), feedback falls into four general types that are shown in this following chart:

Use criteria- Tell students Suninarize Encourage and based phrase ta whal lo students’ support

describe the improve, how achicvernent students to

strengths and to correct their and measure il make Lhem

weaknesses af reasoning, and with score of feel good

students’ work how Lo move grade

and gel forward in the

students to use iearning

the suggested process

strategies

independenlly

‘on future work

Figure 1: Feedback Types classified by Brookhart (1998)

Another way of classifying feedback that is shown in the graph below is

fixmadin Crana’s study (2006)

Simply Inform the Corrcet and Explain the Provide

learuer the their response relevant incorreat information

AccMacy ofa was incorrect information response by designed to

respanse with the about the with omeaoa enhance and

Figure 2: Feedback Types classified by Crane (2006)

Apart ftom corrective and evaluate feedback shown clearly above, there are

some other related names shown as the followings

Positive vs Negative/ Corrective feedback

As for McNamara (1999) snd Anyon (2001}, posilive feedback shows

students thal teachers are inte

jedin whal they say and af the same tim

TICOUTdEC

them In contrary, negative one expresses teachers’ displeasure, frustration or

involves some kinds of punishment, Comective teedback, as it name tells, is used to correct students’ mistake

Dircctfcxplicif vs Indirect/ implicit feedback

In Bitchener et al (2005), it was stated that direct or explicit feedback means

that teachers identifies an error and provides the correct form, while indirect or

implicit feedback refers to the situation when teachers point cnt an error without correct forint provision

Verbal vs Non-verbal feedback

Tn Lamg (1996), verbal feedback which is presented in a forma that is spoken

or capable of being spoken concems not only phrases uscd but also tone of voice

Acvordingly, non-verbut feedback refers to the one in silence with cues Tike

facial expressions, For example, question mark can be shown in both teacher’s face and voice

S: I go yesterday

T: (7 tums face to the side a bit and frowns) 20?

S: Oh, Yes, I went yesterday.(Adapted from Nguyen et al., 2003)

Clearly enough, the format one (turn face to the side a bit and frowns) is non-verbal feedback whereas the later (“go” with rising tone) is oral Simply put,

feedback which can be called oral must be in utterances

Basically, there are no distinctive differences among those types of feedback However, to see clearly how teachers give feedback in this thesis, the researcher

will use the viewpoint of Crane as the working classification which seems to be

more detailed

IIL RELATED STUDIES

1 Meronymy

Tlistorieally, part-whute or meronymy relations have played an important

role in Tingnistic, philosophy and psychology mainly because a clear understanding

of purl whole relations requires a deep interaction of logic, semantivs and pragmatics as they provide tools needed for our understanding of the world The part-whole relation has been considered a fundamental ontological relation since the atomists Plato, Aristotle and the Scholastics They are the first to give a systematic characterization of parts and wholes However, most of the investigations of part-

whole relations have been made since the beginning of the 20" century

The logical philosophical studies of meronymy were concemed with formal

theories of parts, wholes and their relation in the context of formal ontology This

a single, universal and transitive part-of relation uscd

Simon (1986) criticized this

school of though! advocat

for modeling various domains snch as time and spa

standard extensional view and praposed a more adequate acconnt that offers am axiomatic representation of the part-of relation as a strict partial-ordering relation,

The axioms considered wer

existence GA isa part of B then both A and B exist),

axymmetry (if A 1s a part of B then B is not a part of /A), supplementary (if A is a

part of B then B has a part C disjoint of A), and transitivity (if A is a part of B and

B is a part of C then A is a part of C) In 1991, Simon (1991) added two more axioms: extensionality (objects with the same parts are identical) and existence of

mere logical sum (for any number of objects there exists a whole that consists exactly of those objects)

Linguistics researchers focused on different part-whole relations and their

Tole as scmantic primitives Winston, Chaffin and Hennann (1987) determined six

types of part-whole relation and proposed three relation elements (functional, hornogeneous and separable) to further classify these types This classification was

used in the article of Morton E, Winston, Roger Chatlin (Trenton State College) and Douglas Hermann (Hamilton College) in Cognitive Science number 11 in

1987 They explained the ordinary Lnglish-speakers’ use of the term “part of” and its cognates Meronymic relations ore further distinguished from other inclusion

relations, This taxonomy is then used to explain cases of opponent intran

Recently, meronymy has got more attention when there have been more researches related to meronymy in a specified language For example, in 2000, Hamiet E Manelis Klein at Montclair State University wrote the article “Meronymy

or Part-whole relations on indigenous languages of lowland South America” in which he provided examples of how these part-whole relations were expressed in eighteen languages, belonging to eleven families, all of which were found in the

Eoo- political arcas of Arguntina, Chilo, Paraguay, Bravil, Colombia, Veneancla and

Peru Dr Misbah M 1D Al-Sulaimmaan & Amal Y Muhammed conducted the

research “Meronymy im Arabie- A semantic study” whieh dealt with data set taken

from Arabic to test hypotheses concerning the nature of mcronymy in English

The previous studies are good reference to see the nat of meronymy ard

Mmeronymy in different languages However, in these researches, the data was not

taken from real conversations but just examples related to meronymy were

analyzed In this study, the researcher would like to investigate meronymy and its

transitivity in real life, especially in Vietnam but not on theory

2 Language acquisition

The early studies of classroom language shared a number of common assumptions, drawn ftom work in sociolinguistics For example, sociclinguists hold

that differences in oral coummunication reflect social variables, such as gender,

ethnicity, social class, and age When children enter school, their mode of oral communication has been intluenced by these factors; they also already work within

a communication system, which consists of language structure (sound structure,

inflection, syntax), content (meaning), and use (purposes of communication,

appropriate forms of communication) Knowledge about meaning, language

functions {pragmatics}, discourse genres, and more complex syntax continue to

develop during schooling and into adulihwod (Scott, 1995)

Continuity between language use in school and at home is also an is

children’s de

snc in clopment of classrvom gornmunicative compelonec Most of the

research on emergent literacy has been conducted with children from printich

homes that identify with the dominant, school-oriented culture, where parent-child

interactions provide experiences simular to classroom interactions Through these

experiences, children are motivated to leam about literacy events, functions, artifacts, forms (e.g., sound and letter names), and conventions before they lear to read and write (Morrow, 1993, van Kleeck, 1990, 1995, 1998: van Kleeck &

Schiele, 1987, Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998) And, just as formal schooling

facilitates students’ acquisition of academic information, curly parent-child communivation typically involves information exchange (sec, ¢.g., Cherry, 1979;

Rrvin-Tiipp, 1977) though white Ieachers typically evaluate students” responses,

parents do not often đo so (Cherry, 1978)

Thus, some children enter schoul knowing how 1o usc language for a varicly

of school-like purposes They have expectations about classrooms But not all

students know the rules of the game, and some have difficulty leaming how to participate appropriately These children may also have less experience with a

variety of literacy functions and forms Since participation in school activities (such

as reading aloud, question-and-answer exchanges with teachers, or evaluation of

discourse contributions) determines access to learning, educational failure may result for students who lack or have difficulty acquiring classroom communicative

dominated sociolinguistic research in the United States Studies focused on

« Second-language (L2) acquisition and its impact on literacy learning (e.g August & Hakuta, 1997 [online document], 1998 [online document]; Gutierrez- Clellen, 1998)

© Aftican American dialeet differences and effects of vanations on trading,

wiiting, and classroom participation (c.g., Delpit, 1988, 1992, Scott & Rogers

1996, Seymour, Bland-Stewart, & Green, 1998; Seymour & Roeper, 1999; Tharp, 1994)

© Promoling literacy learning in children and youlh with atypical language

development, including 12 leames (c.g Palinesar & Klenk, 1992, 1993,

Palincsar, Parecki, & MePhail, 1995: Ruiz, 199$, Wallach & Buller, 1994)

To minimize the possibility of mistaking differences in discourse styles and

dhalect use for cognitive and linguistc problems, teachers and other education

professionals need to pool their expertise The research suggests that students’

developinent as competent learners and communicators tequires thet educators understand discourse and dialect differences and the social and cultural practices that children from culturally and linguistically diverse groups bring lo schoot