structural and functional features of fronting in english versus vietnamese equivalents = đặc điểm cấu trúc và chức năng của khởi ngữ trong tiếng anh và tương đương trong tiếng việt

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES -------- NGUYỄN THỊ ÁI ANH STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL FEATURES

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES



NGUYỄN THỊ ÁI ANH

STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL FEATURES

OF FRONTING IN ENGLISH VERSUS VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

Đặc điểm cấu trúc và chức năng của khởi ngữ trong Tiếng Anh

và tương đương trong Tiếng Việt

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: Engl sh Linguistics s

Code: 6 2 0 0 1

HANOI, 2014

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES



NGUYỄN THỊ ÁI ANH

STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL FEATURES

OF FRONTING IN ENGLISH VERSUS VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

Đặc điểm cấu trúc và chức năng của khởi ngữ trong Tiếng Anh

và tương đương trong Tiếng Việt

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: Engl sh Linguistics s

Code: 6 2 0 0 1

Supe visor: Dr Huỳnh Anh Tuấn

HANOI, 2014

Secondly, I would like to express my deep thanks to all the lecturers in the graduate faculty for giving me enthusiastic advice

post-Finally, my thanks are also sent to my family and my colleagues and my friends for their encouragement and help during the course

To everyone, thank you very much

Hanoi, July 2014

Nguyen Thi Ai Anh

ABSTRACT

Fronting seems to be a new concept for English learners and teachers although it can be used unconsciously in daily life Research into fronting in English and “khởi ngữ” in Vietnamese are numerous; however, no research has been done into the similarities and differences in this linguistic phenomenon in the two languages This research is carried out to provide a more comprehensive understanding of “fronting” in English and “khởi ngữ” in Vietnamese The analytical data include 50 fronted sentences in English and 50 sentences with “khởi ngữ” in Vietnamese collected from books and newspapers since 1945 In the research, “fronting” in English is compared and contrasted with “khởi ngữ” in Vietnamese in terms of their structure and function The result of the research shows that there are similarities and differences in both structure and function of “fronting” and “khởi ngữ”

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS……… v

PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims and Objective of the study 2

3 Research questions of the study……….…………3

4 Scope of the study 2

5 Methods of the study 2

6 Design of the study 3

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT 4

Chapter 1: Literature Review 4

I Review of previous studies 4

II Theoretical background ……….4

1.1 The concepts of canonical and non-canonical constructions……… 4

1.2 Fronting in English……….……… 5

1.2.1 Definition of Fronting ……… …….……….……… 5

1.2.2 Realizations of Fronting……… ….……… ……… 7

1.2.3.The differences between Fronting and the other non-canonical

constructions ……….….………7

1.2.3.1 Fronting and Left-dislocation……… …… ……….…… 7

1.2.3.2 Fronting and Argument reversal…… … …….……… 8

1.2.3.3 Fronting and Cleft-sentence……… … ……….10

1.2.3.4 Fronting and Post-posing…….………… ……… 11

1.2.3.6 Fronting and Conversing……… ……… 12

1.2.4 Fronting and presupposition in Topic-Comment Articulation (TCA)……….12

1.2.5 Structural features of Fronting……….……….……… 13

1.2.6 Functional features of Fronting ……….……….14

1.3 English vs Vietnamese sentence structures and sentence elements……… 15

1.3.1 The notion of fronting in Vietnamese……… ……….19

1.3.2 Structural features of "Khởi ngữ" in Vietnamese………….……….……….19

1.3.3 Functional features of "Khởi ngữ" in Vietnamese 20

1.3.4 Distinction between "khởi ngữ" and Adverbial in Vietnamese …… 21

Chapter 2: Methodology 22

2.1 Research questions 22

2.2 Research methods 22

2.3 Data collection 23

2.4 Data analysis 23

Chapter 3: Data analysis and Discussions 24

3.1 Data analysis 24

3.1.1 The structures of Fronting and “Khởi ngữ” .24

3.1.1.1 Fronted elements in English 24

3.1.1.2 Sentence elements as “Khởi ngữ” 26

3.1.1.3 Percentages of English fronted elements and Vietnamese “khởi ngữ” in contrast 27

3.1.2 Realizations of Fronting and “Khởi ngữ” 28

3.1.3 Functions of Fronting and “Khởi ngữ” 30

3.2 Discussions 33

3.2.1 Similarities 33

3.2.2 Differences 34

PART 3: CONCLUSION 37

1 Conclusions 37

2 Limitations of the study 38

3 Pedagogical implications… ……… 39

4 Suggestions for the research 39

REFERENCES 40

APPENDICIES……….I

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Od: Direct Object

Oi: Indirect Object

PART 1: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure put forward a very influential view in linguistics He argued that a language is best viewed as a structured system, with each element in it defined chiefly by how it is related to other elements In this view, he might not have taken into consideration the fact that people are social entities; they live in a society with many social relations and language is one of the means they use for different purposes Of course, English and people using it are not exceptional For language use, word order is changed in many ways English at its simple description is a Subject Verb Object (SVO) language (Tomlin, 1986) However, it is not limited to SVO order Clefts, pseudo-clefts, inversion, left dislocation and various types of fronting are instances of deviation from SVO order The term „non-canonical constructions‟ is used to refer to such constructions which do not begin with a grammatical subject (Ward and Birner, 2001) Those constructions are found not only in literary writing but also in colloquial speech (Quirk et al, 1985) An interesting question arising is what functions these structures perform Numerous studies in linguistic literature have attempted to provide answers to the question: to change the discourse focus; to help the speaker/writer to construct a discourse representation; to create coherent and cohesive representations of texts for better understanding of existing representations on part of the listener/reader (Sidner, 1978; 1983; Grosz, 1978; 1981)

In an attempt to investigate one of those constructions to better understand it and

to help Vietnamese learners of English use it more appropriately and efficiently in

communication, I have decided to carry out my research into “Structural and functional features of fronting in English and khởi ngữ in Vietnamese”

2 Aims and Objectives of the study

Aims of the study

This study is to help Vietnamese learners of English better understand the structural and functional features of English Fronting and Vietnamese “Khởi ngữ” so that they can use the construction more pragmatically appropriate in their communication with English speaking people

Objectives of the study

The study, as entitled, focuses on English fronting construction in comparison to its Vietnamese equivalent “khởi ngữ” not only about the structures but also about the functions Thus, the study attempts to:

- Identify and point out the structural and functional features of Fronting in English and “Khởi ngữ” in Vietnamese

- Find out the similarities and differences in the structural and functional features

of fronting in English and “Khởi ngữ” in Vietnamese

3 Research questions

The study is carried out in order to answer two main questions as follow:

(1) What are the structural and functional features of Fronting in English and

“Khởi ngữ” in Vietnamese?

(2) What are the similarities and differences in the structure and function of Fronting in English and “Khởi ngữ” in Vietnamese?

4 Scope of the study

In order to answer the two research questions, this study is restricted to describe, analyse and contrast the structural and functional features of fronting constructions in English and “Khởi ngữ” in Vietnamese The analysis is based on 50 samples

containing Fronting structures in English and 50 samples containing khởi ngữ in

Vietnamese selected from British, American and Vietnamese stories, novels, and political, educational, economic newspapers and magazines since 1945

5 Method of the study

Due to the main aims of the study, a systemic descriptive and contrastive analysis on the structural and functional features of English fronting and its Vietnamese equivalents is carried out throughout the study The thesis uses English as the source language and Vietnamese as the target language In order to serve the targets stated before, a linguistic contrastive analysis is carried out mainly on the sentential level of the data

6 Design of the study

This study consists of three parts

Part one, Introduction, consists of the rationale, the aims and objectives, the research questions, the scope of the study and the method of study

Part two, Development, is the heart of the study which deals with Fronting in

English and “Khởi ngữ” in terms of their structural and functional features It also

introduces a literature review about researches related to the study and the concepts of

Fronting and Khởi ngữ by different authors

The last part is the conclusions as well as some suggestions for implementation achieved from all the discussion in the thesis

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Review of previous studies related to the research area

Among the pre-eminent authors who discuss fronting in great details are Quirk

et al (1985); Ward and Birner (2001); and Erteschik-Shir (2007) Discussions about one or the other aspect of fronting can be found in Halliday (1994); Thompson (1996) Huddleston (1995), and Brown (1983) Fronting (Quirk et al, 1985), which is also referred to as pre-posing (Ward and Birner, 2001) or topicalization (Erteschik-Shir, 2007; Brown, 1983)

In Vietnamese grammar, this phenomenon has also been discussed for quite a long time; however, until now it has not been thoroughly and satisfactorily solved There have been several disagreements among Vietnamese linguists concerning the term First and foremost, on considering using the term in Vietnamese, Nguyen Kim

Than (1997) used the term “Khởi ngữ”; Diep Quang Ban (2004) used the term “đề

ngữ” when referring to this grammatical construction Hoang Trong Phien (1980)

mentioned it as Thành phần khởi ý whereas Nguyen Huu Quynh (2001) called it “Khởi

ý” for short Truong Van Chinh and Nguyen Hien Le (1963) used the term “Chủ đề”, Nguyen Tai Can (1975) suggested a compound term “Từ-Chủ đề” According to Nguyen Lan Trung, when any part of sentence is placed at the beginning of the sentence comparing with its normal position (it may be repeated or not), this part can

be regarded as Khởi ngữ in Vietnamese From my point of view I reckon “Khởi ngữ” is

the most suitable

1.2 Theoretical background

1.2.1 The concepts of canonical and non-canonical constructions

Canonical constructions in English are those which begin with a grammatical subject (Halliday & Mathiessen, 2004; Quirk et al, 1985) A grammatical subject is a part of the sentence followed by the predicate According to Quirk et al (1985:721),

there are seven canonical clause patterns They are SV, SVC, SVO, SVA, SVOO, SVOC, and SVOA

Otherwise, clause patterns not beginning with a grammatical subject are called non-canonical constructions in English except for conversing, a process by which nominal clause elements can equally take either initial or final position in the sentence,

as exemplified in the following example:

An uncle, three cousins, and two brothers benefited from the will

In the above example both sentences with convertible orders are acceptable That is the reason why both convertible sentences are considered as bearing a non-canonical pattern even though they begin with a grammatical subject

In English, there are 7 non-canonical constructions (Ward & Birner, 2001; Quirk et al, 1985): Fronting, Left-dislocation, Argument reversal (inversion & passivization), Cleft structure, Post-posing (existential there- and presentational there-sentences), Right-dislocation and Conversing In general, the difference between canonical and non-canonical constructions is that the latter make available contexts in which to embed current discourse Canonical construction can be considered a device for creating coherent and cohesive representations of text and for changing discourse focus (Sidner, 1978; 1983; Grosz, 1978; 1981)

The focus of this thesis is on Fronting, distinguishable with other non-canonical constructions in terms of structure and function

1.2.2 Fronting in English

1.2.2.1 Definition

Fronting (Ross, 1967; Postal, 1974; Parlmutter, 1979; Culicover, 1976; Winter, 1982; Quirk et al, 1985; Ward and Birner, 2001) is a process in which a constituent that normally appears in some position within a sentence is pushed toward the initial position (the front) of the sentence, leaving a gap in its normal position, as in:

This subject I enjoy

where „This subject‟ is fronted leaving a gap in its normal position after the verb

„enjoy‟

Fronting has been described in literature from different perspectives and is referred to in different terms: Pre-posing (Ward and Birner, 2001), or Topicalization (Erteschik-Shir, 2007; Brown, 1983; Jackendoff, 1972)

Quirk et (1985) describe fronting in term of the markedness of the initialized (fronted) elements Markedness, in this sense, is a concept used to refer to departure from the norm Thus, fronting is "… the achievement of marked theme by moving into initial position an item which is otherwise unusual there" Quirk et al (1985: 1377) In this respect, James (1980:110) affirms that marked theme can be simply achieved by transposing object, verb or even adverb to sentence initial position

Chomsky (1975) states that fronting is optional, having the effect of representing in the significant first place of a clause something other than the subject Karris (1982) expresses fronting in terms of 'linearization' or rather 'alternative linearization‟ Elgin (1979) thinks that fronting is one of the rules used to mark a particular constituent of a sentence as the focus of that sentence Leech (1975) holds that moving another element to the front of the sentence gives the element a kind of psychological prominence Davison (1984) refers to fronting as a matter of linguistic performance that relates to the sentence-planning and the order in which its constituents are processed Quirk et al (1972: 411-12) think it “quite common, especially in informal speech, for one element to be fronted with nuclear stress and thus to be 'marked' (given special emphasis) both thematically and informationally” The authors describe the pragmatic function of fronting as to point a parallelism between two elements in the clause concerned and two related elements in some neighbouring clauses, contrast in meaning, especially in rhetorical and heightened language

1.2.2.2 Realizations of fronting

The fronted item is in most cases an entire clause or an entire clause element, e.g.:

Od: These steps I used to sweep with a broom

The Od can be a Wh-Finite clause, as in:

How we are going to get there in time I don‟t really know (Downing & Locke

1992:230)

Cprep: Our daughter we are proud of

V: Sing I can‟t very well

Cs: Rich I may be (Emonds, 1976:35)

A: Willingly, he will never do it (he will have to be forced) (Quirk et al, 1985:

946)

1.2.2.3 The difference between Fronting and the other non-canonical constructions (Tuan, 2013)

1.2.2.3.1 The difference between Fronting and left-dislocation

Superficially, left-dislocation is rather similar to pre-posing in that an item is

pre-posed, i.e moved leftwards in the construction, for example “The cheese they made

there, they sold most of it to the miners (Brown, 1983:321)

The canonically constructed sentence would have been:

They sold most of the cheese they made there to the miners

Ward and Birner (2001), Erteschic-shir (2007), and Prince (1997) pointed out the following structural and functional differences between the two constructions:

Structurally, while in pre-posing the canonical position of the item is left unoccupied, in left-dislocation a resumptive co-referential pronominal element appears

in the marked constituent‟s canonical position

In the above example, co-referential with the sentence-initial item the cheese

they made there is the direct object pronoun it

In terms of function, left-dislocation is also distinct from posing In posing, the pre-posed constituent consistently represents information standing in a contextual relationship with information either discourse-old or evoked or inferable based on prior discourse

pre-However, left-dislocated item introduces discourse-new (or maybe hearer-new) information In the above example, „the cheese they made there‟ has never before appeared in the discourse Regarding dislocation, Gundel (1977) suggests that the structures underlying left-dislocation sentences are derived by simply reversing the order of topic and comment in these structures Thus, the sentence “It was a great place, Babylon” is derived from “Babylon, it was a great place‟, which is, in its turn, derived from “Babylon was a great place” (cf Gundel 1977)

1.2.2.3 2 Fronting and argument reversal

Argument is a structural-functional term used to indicate a phrase (mainly but not exclusively nominal) required by a verb as its complementation (Ward and Birner, 2001) In the reversing process, one clause element is pushed to the sentential initial position resulting in another element normally occupying that position being pushed towards the sentential final position

Argument reversal exists in two constructions: inversion and by-phrase passives, both subject to the same discourse constraint in which they both place relatively familiar information before unfamiliar information while performing a linking function That is, the pre-verbal constituent conveys information interlocked in

a linking relationship with a previously evoked or inferable item in the discourse

While comparing the two constructions, Ward and Birner (2001:130) claim that

„passivization and inversion represent distinct syntactic means for performing the same discourse function in different syntactic environments‟

The inversion process involves the logical subject appearing after the main verb, while other elements, canonically appearing after the main verb, occupy preverbal position Birner (1994) while examining 1778 naturally occurring inversions found out

that in 78% of the tokens, the pre-posed constituent represented discourse-old information while the post-posed constituent represented discourse-new information

He also argued that felicitous inversion in English depends on the „discourse-familiar‟ status of the information represented by the pre-posed and post-posed constituents For instance:

We have complimentary soft drinks, coffee, Sanka, tea, and milk Also

complimentary is red and white wine We have cocktails available for $2.00 (Ward

and Birner, 2001:129)

In the italicized part of the example, the discourse-old item „complimentary‟ is pre-posed to provide linkage with the previously mentioned „complimentary‟ However, there are cases in which both the pre-posed and post-posed constituents represent discourse-old information In these cases it is the recency of being mentioned that appoints which element to be pre-posed, for example:

Each of the characters is the centerpiece of a book, doll and clothing collection The story of each character is told in a series of six slim books, each $12.95 hardcover and $5.95 in paperback, and in bookstores and libraries across the country More than 1 million copies have been sold; and in late 1989 a series of activity kits was introduced

for retail sale.… Complementing the relatively affordable books are the dolls, one for

each fictional heroine and each with a comparably pricey historically accurate wardrobe and accessories (Ward and Birner, 2001:129)

Though the dolls have been evoked in prior discourse, the reason for their being post-posed is that they are less recently evoked than the books

English by-phrase passives are sub-categorized with inversion as argument

reversal because both constructions involve the reversing of the canonical order of two arguments In such sentences, the logical subject is mentioned in a by-phrase, e.g.:

The device was tested by the manufacturers (Quirk et al, 1985: 1389)

In this example, „the device‟ is pre-posed for linking purpose, thus preserving the continuity of the topic/theme in the discourse (the previous sentences in the

discourse have „the device‟ as their topic/theme) „The manufacturers‟, according to Quirk et al (1985) is the focus according to the principle of end-focus

1.2.2.3.3 Fronting and Cleft-sentence

The cleft structure (Quirk et al, 1985), or focus construction (Brown, 1983), is a construction aimed giving an item more prominence by cleaving the sentence into two parts The outcome of this process is a cleft sentence, which is the general term for both „it-cleft‟ and „wh-cleft‟ (or „pseudo-cleft‟)

Cleft structure can be said to have two simultaneous functions: focusing and contrasting, the contrasting one often rectifying participants‟ wrong assumptions or propositions, e.g.:

It-cleft: It was the rain that destroyed the crops (Widdowson, 1978:35)

Wh-cleft: What I need is a good holiday (Richards and Schmidt, 2002:75)

A loaf of bread is what we chiefly need (Halliday and Mathiessen, 2004:70)

What happened to the crops was that they were destroyed by the rain (Widdowson, 1978:38)

As shown in the examples above it-cleft involves the pushing of an item towards

the front of the sentence after the structure “it + to be‟ A cleft consists of a nominal clause which can come first or second in the sentence The other part of a wh-cleft can be a nominal phrase or clause (e.g that-clause or wh-clause)

wh-The difference between the two is in their structural features While the focused item is always in the first part of the sentence after „it + to be‟ in „it-cleft‟, in the pseudo-cleft, it can be in either sentence initial or final position For this reason, Halliday and Matthiessen (2004:70) call the pseudo-cleft construction a „thematic equative‟ because in this construction, there is the equated proportion of the two parts

of information in the sentence: the Theme and the Rheme

Other constructions, e.g fronting are non-equative, in which elements rather than the subject can be the theme Cleft structure (it-cleft and wh-cleft) differs from other non-canonical structures as follows:

Whereas the cleft structure functions as a means of focusing, the others (fronting, e.g with the exception of existential there-sentences) functions as a means of topicalizing (Erteschik-Shir, 2007) Jackson (1982) states that the cleft construction is used particularly in written English because it marks unambiguously the focus of information that can usually be done in speech by means of contractive stress and intonation, as in:

It was Demy that Jim found last night

In terms of the given/new distribution, while most of the other constructions (fronting, e.g.) set their items a very clear status, it is not so fixed with the cleft structure when viewed in the whole discourse, though it is always explicitly clear within the sentence

1.2.2.3.4 Fronting and Post-posing

As opposed to pre-posing, post-posing is an information movement tendency in which an item is dislocated from its canonical position towards the typically (but not exclusively) final position in the sentence, either emptying its canonical position or allowing it to be occupied by „there‟ (Birner and Ward, 1996)

In terms of the given-new contrast, post-posing distinguishes itself from posing in that while pre-posing enables the marked constituent to represent discourse-old information; post-posing enables the marked element to represent new information There are two frequent post-posing constructions with the logical subject post-posed,

pre-leaving the expletive there in the canonical subject position… traditionally known as existential there and presentational-there sentences, e.g.: Existential there-sentence:

“There’s a warm relationship, a great respect and trust” between [United

Airline]‟s chairman, Stephen M Wolf, and Sir Colin Marshall, British Air‟s chief executive officer, according to a person familiar with both sides (Ward and Birner, 2001:126)

1.2.2.3.5 Fronting and Right-dislocation

As we have seen and as suggested by the terms used to indicate the constructions, left-dislocation (LD) stands in a close relationship with pre-posing, in terms of their structural and functional features, especially when it comes to the discourse constraints that regulate their communicative operations The same scenarios

of similarities and differences exist between right-dislocation and post-posing

Structurally, both constructions involve the non-canonical placement of a complement of the verb in post verbal position The difference lies in the given-new status of the information expressed by those non-canonically positioned elements, specifically, in right-dislocation, the post-verbal noun phrase bears no requirement to represent new information In other words, the right-dislocated constituent represents information that has been either explicitly or implicitly evoked in the prior discourse

1.2.2.3.6 Fronting and Conversing

Conversing is a process by which nominal clause elements can equally take either initial or final position in the sentence The process is made possible due to the reciprocal meaning of some verbal, prepositional, or adjectival phrases Often it is the context e.g., the given-new status of information that decides which position is optimal

1.2.2.4 Fronting and presupposition in Topic-Comment Articulation (TCA)

Many linguists correlate 'fronting' with 'presupposition' They depart from the

idea that the fronted element is to be presupposed first Gundel (1977) is among those

who think that 'topic' refers to what is already presupposed, while 'comment' refers to

the new information, predicated about the topic Tranicek (1967:160) adopts similar opinion stating that "the notion of topic is that sentence element which the speaker has

in mind as his object of thought and from which his sentence precedes." Leech (1975:176) states that in fronting, “it seems as if the speaker says the most important thing in his mind first, adding the rest of the sentence as an afterthought." In a similar vein, Davison (1984) pinpoints that unless the speaker plans his choice of lexical verb

in advance, he may find that he himself has blurted out an inappropriate NP as subject;

however, Winter (1982) holds that in front-and-end position, there are significant changes of contextual meaning for the topic which effects the meaning, especially that

of the adverbial clause with respect to its main clause since it is known that 'topic' constitutes the frame of the clause about which the sentence is, and since it is known that a text is divided into units of information

1.2.2.5 Structural features of fronting

Structurally speaking, fronting is considered a process of sentential arrangement

in which any element can be shifted to the most-left position to be the topic Parlmutter (1979) points out that there are two important facts about English sentences Firstly, each sentence contains a 'gap' since there is a constituent missing somewhere in the sentence, as in the example below where the element 'Many delegates' is missing; and

as so it is considered ungrammatical

Many delegates we received at the airport

* We received at the airport yesterday

Secondly, this gap should be semantically and/or pragmatically filled in the way that makes it easy for the user of language to realize and understand it Accounting for such sentences in English, Parlmutter (1979) suggests three hypotheses: the Phrase Structure Hypothesis, the Deletion Hypothesis, and the Movement Hypothesis In Wason (1977) and Culicover, Wason and Akmajian (1977), fronting is visualized as a grammatical process that gives the configuration of movement It is a device which yields this configuration Winter (1982) adopts the adjunction and a way in which such

a phenomenon would be formulated in the landing notation mentioned above In the contrary, Bakir (1979) proposes that a transformational relation between both the deep structures and the surface structures is obtained through the application of a 'movement' transformation

In fronting, the fronted parts may be prosodically marked as marked themes and may be any of a wide range of grammatical units such as direct object, prepositional

complement, subject complement, object complement In the following examples, the italicized are fronted elements

Od: The cheese they sold mainly to the miners (Brown, 1983:322)

Cprep: Others I have only that nodding acquaintance with and some are total

strangers (Birner and Ward, 1998: 4)

Cs: Rare indeed is the individual who does not belong to one of these groups

(Sinclair, 1990: 429)

Co: … and traitor we shall call him (Quirk et al, 1985: 1378)

V: Work I must, and for money (Biber et al, 1999: 906)

1.2.2.6 Functional features of fronting

Often it is the context that urges the speaker to resort to fronting, either to thematize an item previously brought into the discourse providing direct linkage with what has gone before, or to initially introduce what the context most requires Although English is a subject-prominent language (Li and Thompson, 1976), sentences with fronted elements are very common both in colloquial speech and in formal written style, particularly in journalism (Quirk et al, 1985)

Leech and Svartvik (1994), indicates three different effects of fronting as follows:

Emphatic: giving the fronted element, in formal conversation, double emphasis,

e.g.:

Fatin her name is

Contrastive: dramatically pointing to contrast between two things mentioned in

neighbouring sentences or clauses which often have parallel structures, e.g

E.g: Iraqi my nationality is; so Iraqi you might call me

'Given' topic: found in more formal, especially in written English, as in:

Most of these problems a computer could solve easily

In the last example, “Most of these problems” is fronted as given topic in the sense that it “relates to an entity already introduced into discourse and activated at the

moment of speech” Hannay (1991:137)

Davison (1984) holds that topicalizing is both a semantic and pragmatic property of fronting Elgin (1979) states that the fronted element in the sentence is the one with the greatest semantic prominence, at least for the speaker, as in:

Squid, I hate

Attention will undoubtedly be drawn to the word „squid‟ to the effect that it may have highest semantic prominence

The majority of examples concerning the so-called “Given Topic” coincide with

the notion of linking with previous discourse because the Topic of the clause undergoing fronting process normally refers to something that has been mentioned

before This may be illustrated in the fact that many occurrences of fronting have a demonstrative pronoun “this” and “that” as a topic, which makes reference to something previously introduced The following example represents a fronted element functioning as a Given Topic:

Instinctual knowledge is leaking away under the impact of continual

urbanization That I believe It is not in conflict with my own doctrines

1.2.3 English vs Vietnamese sentence structures and sentence elements

Tran Huu Manh (2008), on comparing English and Vietnamese sentence structures and sentence elements, finds out the following similarities and differences between them They share the same sentence elements although the elements are termed differently: Subject (S), Verb (V), Object (O), Complement (C), and Adverbial (A) in English and Chủ ngữ, Động từ, Tân ngữ, Bổ ngữ và Trạng ngữ in Vietnamese (Trần Hữu Mạnh, 2007: 394) Both languages have a certain number of basic sentence structures (7 in English) Furthermore, verbs in both languages decide sentence structure and can be categorized into 5 groups Subject (S), Object (O), Complement (C) in English and Chủ ngữ, Tân ngữ, Bổ ngữ in Vietnamese are nouns, noun phrases

or pronouns Subjects (S) stand at the beginning of the simple sentence Objects normally appear after subjects and verbs in the pattern SVO in English and NP1 + V + NP2 in Vietnamese in which NP1 is subject and NP2 is object

In the case that there are two objects (direct object and indirect object) in the sentence, the English pattern is S V Oi Od and the Vietnamese pattern is NP1 + V + NP2 + NP3 (NP1 is the subject, NP2 is the indirect object and NP3 is the direct object)

Oi usually stands before Od Sometimes, Oi stands after Od and is separated by preposition to or for Verbs (V) in English and Động từ in Vietnamese stand after the Subject Complements (C) in English and Bổ ngữ in Vietnamese are also presented by adjectival phrases (English complements can be noun phrases) They follow the subject

in the pattern S V C in English and NP1 + Adj in Vietnamese Adverbials (A) in

English and “Trạng ngữ” in Vietnamese are often adverb or prepositional phrases

They usually stand at the end of the sentence in the pattern S V A and S V O A in English and NP1 + V + NP2 + Prep + NP3 in Vietnamese in which NP3 is Adverbial ( Trạng ngữ) The position of adverbials in English as well as “Trạng ngữ” in Vietnamese is very mobile; they can get initial, medial or final position in affirmative simple sentence

According to Tran Huu Manh (2007: 388), seven patterns in English are equivalent to those in Vietnamese

You can put the dish on the shelf Bạn có thể để cái đĩa lên giá đó

In English as well as in Vietnamese, when speakers want to emphasize some parts of the utterance without adding any other elements, they often put the verb, object, adverbial and complement before subject

In Vietnamese, there is the pattern NP1 + Adj This pattern is often changed into Adj + NP1 in which Adj is emphasized It is very popular in Vietnamese written texts

or poems This pattern is similar to the patterns CVS or CSV in English, but this pattern requires verbs, e.g.:

Bleak and barren is the moon (W.M Thackeray)

C (AdjP) V

Vietnamese equivalents:

Bạc phơ mái tóc người cha

C (AdjP) S (NP1)

Moreover, we have also patterns NP1 + V + NP2 inverted into NP2 + V + NP1

or NP2 + NP1 + V in Vietnamese and SVO inverted into OVS or OSV in English This

is to get much more attention to the object (or NP2) than to the subject,

Adverbial of position, e.g.:

At the top of the hill stood the tiny chapel

There are also differences in the structures of noun phrases, adjectival phrases, adverbial phrases, noun clauses, adjectival clauses, adverbial clauses, finite clauses and non-finite clauses in English and Vietnamese

In English, Complements (C) express characteristics or names Meanwhile, these functions in Vietnamese are provided by Predicate (S + Adj = Predicate and S +

N = Predicate) There are also differences in semantic structure

1.2.3.2 The notion of fronting in Vietnamese

In the Vietnamese language, there exists a similar process of moving an element toward the initial position of the sentence as in the English language The element

undergoing this process is often termed as “thành phần khởi ngữ” or “khởi ngữ” for

short (Nguyễn Minh Thuyết and Nguyễn Văn Hiệp, 1998; Nguyen Kim Than, 1997;

Nguyen Lan Trung, 2009) The process has been referred to in various terms by

different authors: “đề ngữ” (Diep Quang Ban, 2004), “thành phần khởi ý” (Hoang

Trong Phien, 1980), “khởi ý” (Nguyen Huu Quynh, 2001), “chủ đề” (Truong Van Chinh and Nguyen Hien Le, 1963), or “từ-chủ đề” (Nguyen Tai Can, 1975)

According to Nguyen Lan Trung (2009), any part of a sentence displaced from its normal position toward the beginning of the sentence whether it is repeated or not

can be regarded as Khởi ngữ in Vietnamese

1.2.3.2.1 Structural features of “Khởi ngữ” in Vietnamese

“Khởi ngữ” in Vietnamese are coincident or partially coincident with the

subject, predicate, or complement of the sentence (Nguyen Van Hiep, 2009); Nguyen Kim Than, 1997; Nguyen Lan Trung, 2009) According to Nguyen Lan Trung (2009),

“Khởi ngữ” can be classified into two main types depending on whether or not it plays

a role as sentence element in the sentence In term of syntactic features, most of “khởi ngữ” structures are realized with Noun Phrases, Adjective Phrases and Verb Phrases

They usually stand independently or separately from the other sentence elements They can be followed by a comma or not In some cases, adding a comma to separate it from

the other elements is acceptable as the following examples:

Học, thanh niên cũng phải làm đầu tàu (Hồ Chí Minh)

Đối với cháu, thật là đột ngột (Lặng lẽ Sa Pa – Nguyễn Thành Long)

Nguyen Thi Hoang Thuy (2006) mentions the following form of “khởi ngữ”:

“Khởi ngữ” + “nó” + Predicate

- Nói vớ vẩn nó quen đi!

- Rẻ nó cũng chả rẻ hơn là mấy

The word nó in the above examples is a dummy subject which is a functional

word rather than a lexical word denoting a real object (Nguyen Minh Thuyet)

However, we should distinguish “nó” in the following sentence:

Con tôi nó đi chơi rồi

“Nó” in this case is repeated to indicate the same creature in front of it

Therefore, when analyzing the form „Khởi ngữ + nó + Predicate‟, we should pay

much attention to the function of the word “nó” If it is a dummy subject, the sentence

element in front of it may be considered to become khởi ngữ Otherwise, it is a

functional-grammatical element to repeat its preceding element

1.2.3.2.2 Functional features of Khởi ngữ

“Khởi ngữ” is used to set focus on the part which is pushed to the initial position

of the sentence or to raise the topic of the sentence The two functions of “khởi ngữ”

usually overlap and interact with each other (Nguyen Lan Trung, 2009)

In terms of the semantic function, “khởi ngữ” has meaning relationships with the whole sentence in general The connotation (the additional meanings that a word or phrase has beyond its central meaning) or denotation (that part of the meaning of a word or phrase that relates it to phenomena in the real world or in a fictional or possible world) of “khởi ngữ” are used to limit effect and value of what the statement indicates In other words, the connotation and denotation of “khởi ngữ” compared to the other elements in the sentence are not coincident but they interact with the sentence meaning Because of this Nguyen Tai Can terms fronting as “từ - chủ đề” In order to raise the topic sometimes it is explicitly used with conjunct words such as "về", "còn",

"với", “đối với” to start “khởi ngữ” With the usage of these conjunct words, “khởi ngữ” localizes and determines the area of certain circumstances, where something happened or will happen In particular communicative situations, supported by the context and other communication conditions, the conjunct words can be omitted

1.2.3.2.3 The distinction between Fronting (“Khởi ngữ”) and Adverbials in

Vietnamese

Adverbials and “Khởi ngữ” are usually present at the beginning of the sentence and separated from its core by a comma The two elements distinguish from each other

in function and in structure as follows:

In terms of function, Adverbials are used to complete the sentence meaning on the following dimensions: time, place, means, reason, manner, and purpose whereas

Fronting (Khởi ngữ) are used to raise the topic of the sentence containing it

In terms of structure, before the adverbials there are such words as “trong” to indicate time, "ở" to indicate place, “bằng" to indicate means, and "để" to indicate

purpose In the case of Khởi ngữ, we can add such words as “về, còn, đối với” before

“Khởi ngữ” and it can be followed by the word “thì”

CHAPTER 2 METHODOLOGY

The purpose of this study is to examine Fronting construction in English and

“Khởi ngữ” in Vietnamese regarding their structures and functions and then find out the similarities and differences between them The purposes of this chapter are to (1) reintroduce the research questions (2) describe the research methods of this study, including the procedure used in collecting the data, and an explanation of the statistical procedures used to analyze the data

(2) What are the similarities and differences in the structure and function of

English Fronting and Vietnamese “khởi ngữ”?

Vietnamese

With the purpose of making a descriptive and contrastive analysis of the structural and functional features of fronting in English versus its Vietnamese equivalents, this study was intended to follow both quantitative and qualitative

approach in analyzing the data in different subsections dealing with the functions and

structures of fronting in English and khởi ngữ in Vietnamese

2.3 Data collection

50 sentences in English containing the fronting structure and 50 sentences in

Vietnamese containing khởi ngữ were selected to be samples of the thesis The sources

of the data are from British, American and Vietnamese stories, novels, and several sports or political newspapers and magazines

2.4 Data analysis

The data analysis consisted of frequency distributions and descriptive statistics Frequency tables and descriptive statistics were constructed to display results with

respect to each of the two research questions Samples containing Fronting and Khởi

ngữ were categorized into functional and structural groups

In the functional group, samples containing fronting were categorized into four

minor groups: Linking with previous discourse, Focusing, Topicalizing and

Contrasting The percentages of each function were illustrated in a table and a chart so

Samples containing Khởi ngữ were classified into three minor groups: Topicalizing,

Focusing and Other functions, also illustrated in a table and a chart The differences

and similarities between the functions of English fronting and Vietnamese khởi ngữ

were shown in a chart

In the structural group, the classification was more complex in which the samples were categorized according to sentence components such as Direct Object, Subject Complement, Object Complement, Verb, Preposition Complement, and Adverbials, and parts of speech such as Noun Phrase, Verb Phrase, Adjective Phrase, Verb Phrase and Prepositional Phrase The percentage of each component or part of speech part was examined, calculated and put in a table and a chart All the special

cases of Vietnamese Khởi ngữ were shown in a separate table