A study on some english negative structures and their vietnamese equivelents in gone with the wind

For this reason, the study aims at pointing out the syntactic differences and the similarities between negation in Vietnamese and English and analyzing some negative structures from the

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

NGUYEN THI TUYET

A STUDY ON SOME ENGLISH NEGATIVE STRUCTURES AND

THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS IN ‘GONE WITH THE WIND’

NGHIÊN CỨU MỘT SỐ CẤU TRÚC PHỦ ĐỊNH TRONG TIẾNG ANH

VÀ NHỮNG TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG TIẾNG VIỆT TRONG TIỂU THUYẾT

‘CUỐN THEO CHIỀU GIÓ’

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For the completion of this work, I have been fortunate to receive invaluable contributions from many people First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Nguyen Dang Suu for his indispensable assistance, excellent suggestions, expert advice and detailed critical comments, without which the work would not have been complete

In addition, I am greatly indebted to all my lecturers at Hanoi Open University for their constant support and encouragement

I would also like to extend my sincere thanks to my family and my friends for their unconditional support, encouragement and forbearance

Finally, I am all too aware that despite all the advice and assistance, I feel that the project is far from perfect; it is, therefore, my sole responsibility for any inadequacies and shortcomings that the thesis may be considered to have

DECLARATION

I hereby declare that no part of the enclosed Master Thesis has been copied or reproduced by me from any other’s work without acknowledgement and that the thesis is originally written by me under strict guidance of my supervisor

Hanoi, December 30, 2013

Nguyễn Thị Tuyết

APPROVED BY:

ABREVIATIONS

A: adverbial Adj: adjective Aux Auxialiary C: complement Noun: noun NP: noun phrase O: object

S: subject V: verb Pr: Predicate BN: Bổ ngữ CN: Chủ ngữ DT: Danh từ ĐT: Động từ TN: Tân ngữ TrN: Trạng ngữ VT: Vị thể

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

DECLARATION i

ABREVIATIONS ii

ABSTRACT 1

PART A: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY 2

1 Rationale of the study 2

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Research questions 2

4 Scope of the study 3

5 Methods of the study 3

6 Design of the study 4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER ONE: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 5

1.1 Review of the previous studies 5

1.2 Theoretical Background: 6

1.2.1 Overview of negation 6

1.2.2 Characteristics of negation 7

1.2.3 Negation under some linguists’ viewpoint 12

1.2.4 Negation in Vietnamese in brief 15

CHAPTER TWO: THE COMPARISION OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES OF NEGATION BETWEEN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE 19

2.1 Stuctures of negative statements 19

2.1.1 Subject negation: 19

2.1.2 Predicate negation 21

2.1.3 Object negation 29

2.1.4 Complement negation 30

2.1.5 Adverbial negation 31

2.1.6 Clause negation 32

2.1.7 Total negation 34

2.2 Negative questions 35

2.2.1 Negative Yes-No questions 35

2.2.2 Negative Wh- questions 36

2.2.3 Question tags 37

2.3 Negative commands 37

CHAPTER THREE: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION OF THE STRUCTURES OF NEGATION IN “GONE WITH THE WIND” AND THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS 39

3.1 The structures of negations used in ‘Gone with the wind’ 39

3.1.1 The frequency of using the negators in the novel and in translated version 39

3.1.2 The frequency of using “NOT” in the novel 39

3.1.3 The frequency of using “NO” in the novel 43

3.1.4 Negation with NOT … ANY, NOT…… EITHER, NOT ….EVER in the novel 45

3.2 Syntactic features of negative sentences in the source language and the

translated version in the target language 46

3.2.1 Negative statements in the novel 47

3.2.2 Negative questions in the novel 62

3.2.3 Negative commands in the novel 64

3.3 Similarities and differences of English syntactic negative structures in ‘Gone with the Wind’ and their Vietnamese translations 65

3.3.1 Similarities 65

3.3.2 Differences 67

PART C – CONCLUSION 68

1 A brief summary of the thesis and main conclusions 68

2 Limitations of the study 68

3 Suggestions for further studies 69

REFERENCES 70

TABLES AND FIGURES

Table1 The frequency of using modal verb with ‘not” in negative structures

in the novel 42

Table 2 The frequency of using negators “không” and “chẳng” in translated version 46

Table 3 Negative structure in the source language text and the target source one 46

Figure 1 The frequency using “not” in different parts in the sentence 43

Figure 2 The frequency of using “no” in different parts in the sentence 44

Figure 3 The frequency of using negators in translated version 45

Negation is present in all human languages; it is one of the prevalent and

fundamental features of any human languages As Larry Horn observes in his “A

Natural History of Negation” that all human systems of communication contain a representation of negation No animal communication system includes negative utterances, and consequently none possesses a means for assigning truth value, for lying, for irony, or for coping with false or contradictory statements

(Horn2001: iii) In English, especially in the novels, negative sentences account for not a small proportion Much attention has been paid to the patterns and semantic of negative sentences However, there has been no investigation into a particular literal work so far For this reason, the study aims at pointing out the syntactic differences and the similarities between negation in Vietnamese and English and analyzing some negative structures from the novel “Gone with the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell and its equivalents in the translated version by Duong Tuong in an attempt

to clarify the negative structures in English and Vietnamese equivalents

PART A: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY

1 Rationale of the study

Negation is a topic that is widely discussed within semantics, pragmatics, morphology, and syntax In general, English and Vietnamese have similar features

in terms of expressing negation However, a profound analysis shows that each language has its own chracteristics making some differences in comparison with other languages Negative syntactic structures in English and Vietnamese are considered to be one of the most interesting and difficult issues that require a great attention in learning English as a foreign language.It is the structures that may cause difficulties for learners in communicating English and Vietnamese Therefore, this study describes, analyses and compares negation between English and Vietnamese

in terms of structures In addition, the investigation into negation in “Gone with the Wind” and its Vietnamese version translated by Duong Tuong is conducted in an attempt to demonstrate how negative sentences are formed in this novel Hopefully,

it will benefit people who have an interest in this thesis

2 Aims of the study

This study mainly focuses on:

Describing and classifying how negative structures of English and Vietnamese are built and used in details Making a comparison of English negation with Vietnamese one Carrying out an investigation into the structures of expressing negation in the novel

“Gone with the Wind” by American writer Margaret Mitchel and its translated version “Cuốn the chiều gió” by Duong Tuong

3 Research questions

The following are the four research questions:

-What are the brief features of negation in English and Vietnamese?

- What are the syntactic similarities and differences between negative structures in English and Vietnamese?

- How are negative ideas expressed in the novel “Gone with the Wind” and its translated version?

4 Scope of the study

Firstly, the theoretical background of the study focuses on some fundamental issues

in negation, which is of vital importance of the study

Secondly, the research focuses on negation equivalence in the novel: “Gone with the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell and the Vietnamese translated version by Duong Tuong The research questions in the preceding part have already implied that the research is focused on negation in the novel “Gone with the Wind” rather than in the other literary works To be more specific, the study will examine the similarities and differences between negation in English and Vietnamese However, since negation is a very big issue, this study mainly examines syntactic features of English negative sentences that contain the formal makers of negation such as

not, no, nobody/no one, nothing, nowhere, none, never, neither/nor in the novel

“Gone with the Wind” and their Vietnamese equivalents in translated version

“Cuốn theo chiều gió”

Beside the novel “Gone with the Wind” by Margaret Mitchel and its translated version “Cuốn theo chiều gió” by Dương Tường”, the sources of data are also taken from the other novels such as: The Vanity Fair by Tharkeray and its Vietnamese translated version Hội chợ phù hoa by Trần Kiêm , The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway and the translated version “ Ông già và biển cả” by Huy

Phương

5 Methods of the study

The contrastive method is mainly used in the thesis to analyze the ways of expressing negative ideas in English and Vietnamese

The main research methods include three techniques namely (1) description, (2) translation and (3) deduction The descriptive and deductive approach is applied in the theory revision to come to the nature of negation in English and Vietnamese Data randomly collected are qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed on the basis of grammatical and pragmatic theories

6 Design of the study

The study is divided into three parts

Part A is the Introduction of the study It includes the rationale for choosing the topic, the aims, the methods and design of the study

Part B consists of three chapters: Chapter one presents some theoretical background

on negation in which the contrastive study of negation in English and Vietnamese is described Chapter two presents the comparision of syntactic negative structures between English and Vietnamese Chapter three investigates how negative structures are used in the novel “Gone with the Wind” and its translated version Part C gives out a review of the study and some suggestions for further study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER ONE: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1.1 Review of the previous studies

Jesperson (1917) in “Negation in English and Other Languages” paves the ways for studies of negation later He provides the readers with general tendencies of negation, strengthened and weakened negatives, indirect and incomplete negation and the meaning of negation He also shows that negation can be complete with

nuclear negators like not, no, never, or incomplete with semi-negations as hardly,

scarcely, little, few Among them “NOT” is followed by auxiliary verbs to negate the whole sentence

Klima’s (1964) supplies a wide variety of sentences that are superficially quite

distinct “negative” words such as “not”, “none”, “never” He is trying to show

several criteria for differentiating a class of “negative sentences” His approach is a syntactic approach aimed at grammatical correctness and proper use of the negation Lake off (1965) was another linguist who looked at negation syntactically and differed from Klima in certain areas He raised some main objections, but his finding or proposition are not as far reaching or all encompassing in relation to negation and a bit ambiguous

Tot Tie (1991) puts forward a classification of the uses of negatives in both oral and written language in “Negation in English Speech and Writing” Pagan (1990) shows the pragmatic perspective of “Negatives in Written Text” Horn, Laurence,

R and Yasuhiko Kato (2000) in “Negation and Polarity Syntactic and Semantic Perspectives” give out the syntactic features and scope of negation Mazzon in “A History of English Negation” concerns about an extensive study of negation that combines both synchronic and diachronic complementary analyses Vietnamese grammarians and linguists have investigated into negation from difference perspectives but mainly focus on traditional, structural or logical perspectives such

as Hoàng Trọng Phiến (1980), Nguyễn Đức Dân (1996), Đỗ Thị Kim Liên (1999) Diệp Quang Ban (2004, 2006), Mai Ngọc Chu, Vũ Đức Nghiệu In addition,

Nguyen Quang has also investigated negative sentences in English and Vietnamese

on a contrastive analysis in his master thesis Especially, Tran Van Phuoc in his doctoral thesis “Phân tích đối chiếu câu phủ định tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt trên bình diện cấu trúc ngữ nghĩa” systemized the syntactic-semantic features both in English and Vietnamese declarative sentences as well as analyzed the differences and similarities of syntactic-semantic features in the two languages He suggests 17- negative sentence structures and 61 variations in English as well as 64 variations in Vietnamese Then Ms Tran Phuong Thao from Danang University conducted “An Investigation into English Lexical Devices Denoting Negation versus Vietnamese Equivalents” (2010), in which the ways that express the conception of negation in English and Vietnamese equivalents are clarified All those books and studies have revealed typical and very interesting features of negation in general as well as negation in English and Vietnamese in particular However, there has been no investigation on a particular novel so far Therefore, the investigation into negation

in “Gone with the Wind” is conducted in an attempt to prove how syntactic negative structures are used and translated into Vietnamese by Duong Tuong

“contradicting the meaning or part of the meaning of sentences.”

Horn (2010) gives out the definition about negation: “In many ways, negation is what makes us human, imbuing us with the capacity to deny, contradict,

misrepresent, lie, and convey irony.” Lindstadd (2007,1) argues, “Negation is a

language universal, found in all known languages, and unique to human languages” A further uniform characteristic is that sentential negation (including

what could be termed “clausal negation‟) always involves “the addition of an overt morpheme to an affirmative clause” (Lindstad 2007; p.24) The function of negation

is fairly straightforward: it negates parts of or the entire sentence or clause

And Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, published in 1994 shares the

same and adds some more information that “Negation is the act of stating that

something does not exist or is untrue”,furthermore the Vietnamese Dictionary, published in 1998 by the Centre of dictionary and Danang Publishing House says that negation is the act of rejecting the existence, the necessity of something; the opposition of affirmation Collins Cobuilt (Collins Cobuild, 1990, p.206) concludes,

“Negation is used when you want to say something is not true, is not happening, or not the case”

Although there is wide variety of definition of negation, I myself totally agree to some main points as follows:

Negation is a part of people’s cognition activity and communication process It is a basic category of thinking, of formal logic It is the opposition of the affirmative category

1.2.2 Characteristics of negation

Huddleson and Pullum (2002) provide a very clear description on the characteristics

of negation in English

Unlike affirmation, negation can be identified by words (e.g., not, no, never) or

affixes (e.g., dis, un-) Negation can interact with other words in special ways For

example, negated clauses use more different connective adjuncts than positive

clauses do: neither, nor instead of either, or The so-called negatively oriented

polarity-sensitive items (Huddleston and Plum 2002) contain among many others,

words starting with any-(anybody, anyone, anywhere, etc.), the modal auxiliaries

dare and need and the grammatical units at all, much and until Negation in verbs usually requires an auxiliary; if “none” is present, the auxiliary do is inserted (I

read the paper vs I didn’t read the paper)

1.2.2.1 Scope of negation

Negation is exclusive to humans and can be used for different purposes: reverse the

polarity of a statement (eg She didn’t see him), emphasize how great or extreme something is (eg “It was nothing less than a disaster”) or make weaker claims (eg

Her husband character is not good) Negated statements often carry positive meaning beneath the direct meaning and detect precious knowledge For instance,

Peter didn’t go to Moscow to relax, a reader will interpret that Peter went to Moscow but his purpose is not to relax

Huddleston and Pullum (2002) state that the scope is made up with the part of the meaning that is being negated and the focus is that part of the scope that is most prominently or explicitly negated

“The scope of the negation normally extends from the negative word itself to the end of the clause, or to the beginning of a final adjunct” (Quick, p.187)

In the view of Eagleson, the part of a sentence or clause that is controlled by “not”

or other negative words is called the scope of negation

The scope of negation is mentioned to indicate the stretch of language over which the negative has its effect The relation between negative words and non-assertive words that they govern will happen in scope of negation (that is part of language that the negative meaning operates through) The scope of negation formally extents from the negative words to the end of the clause or to the beginning of a final adjunct The subject and any adjuncts occur before a final predication often lies outside it Hence, the operator can be within or outside the scope Some following examples are given for illustration:

E.g.: I definitely didn’t speak to him (1)(Quirk,p.188)

Versus I didn’t definitely speak to him (2) ( Quirk, p.188)

In (1), the scope of negation stretches from “not” to “him”, subject (I), adjunct

(definetely), operator (did) are excluded, the predication takes full negative effect

(1) = It’s definite that I did not speak to him

Sentence (2) “I” and operator “did” are put outside while adjunct is inside, negative meaning extends from negative word to the end of the clause It’s not definitely that

I did

The scope of negation also extends to the beginning of a final adjunct

E.g.: She did not arrive at school in the morning (3)

Versus : She did not arrive at school in the morning (4)

In two examples above, final adjunct as adverbial maybe within and outside scope:

(3) It is not true that he arrived at school in the morning

(4) In the morning, she did not arrive at school

However, when an adverbial is in the final position, it may or may not lie outside the scope

eg I wasn’t listening all the time ( ie I listened none of the time)

and I wasn’t listening all the time (ie I listened some of the time)

When assertive forms are used, it must lie outside the scope

Eg.I didn’t listen to some of the speakers (ie I listened to some)

I didn’t listen to some of the speakers (ie I listened to none)

The negative clause that has adjunct is ambiguous to interpret.Since adjuncts are optional elements and they have no fixed positions, the listeners may understand the negative meaning in their own ways

The scope of negation only works with non-assertive forms In the negative with assertive forms, the scope does not include them It is because the assertive forms

do not exert negative effect

E.g.: He did not do some exercises ≈ He did some exercises

He did not do any exercises ≈ He did no exercises

A negative with assertive-form implies another affirmative or is regarded as “partial negative”

Apart from adverbials, the ambiguity is also made by an operator in a negative, here, operator is not a normal auxiliary expressing grammatical function, but a modal auxiliary With a negative modal auxiliary, verb phrase falls into a situation

that the negation belongs to main verb or auxiliary, the interpretation of the negative depends on the negative meaning of modal auxiliaries themselves

1.2.2.2 Focus of negation

Beside the scope, the focus of negation is also needed to incorporate Focus of negation places a stress on particular part of a negative clause, which helps to make the notice of the contrast of meaning implicited in the negative, at the same time indicates the rest of the clause in the positive The focus in a negative clause may be the subject, the main verb, the object, the complement, the adjunct or any words or phrases under the constrative stress In other words, the focus of negation is to place effect on single word, which belongs to either open-class item in clause Grammatically, the focus of negation in English is devided into two types: end- focus and contrastive focus

E.g.: She wasn’t in her office ≈ (She was somewhere, not in her office)

They haven’t been to Ho Chi Minh City ≈ (They have gone somewhere, but not to Ho Chi Minh City)

Contrastive-focus

Special or contrastive focus may be placed at earlier points and falls on any of the non-final elements of the clause or final item, which belongs to closed-system items (prepositions, pronouns, etc ) Using contrastive focus, only one item is negated and the rest of clause is understood in positive sense

E.g.: “John did not phone Jane yesterday”

≈ (Someone phoned Jane yesterday not John)

John did not phone Jane yesterday

≈ (John phoned someone yesterday, but not Jane.)

The contrastive focus indicates which element is negated in a clause to contrast it with something or somebody already mentioned Contrastive focus falls on a final item, but not end-focus

E.g.: “She is not waiting for `me” ≈ (She is waiting for someone, not me)

His father was not `out ≈ (He was in)

Operator also gets a contrastive focus, which places contrastive emphasis on tense

E.g.: “She `didn’t study English two years ago” (Now, she is learning

“ Did you go out last night?” “No, I `didn’t.” ≈ (I didn’t go out last night)

The participation of end focus and a contrastive focus makes the focus of negation not as ambiguous as the scope of negations they also have a certain contribution to finding appropriate account for ambiguity in the scope of negation

1.2.2.3 The relationship between scope and focus of negation

The scope and focus are so interrelated that the scope must be inside the focus Scope is connected to all elements whose individual falsity would make the negated statement strictly true Focus is the element of the scope that is intended to be

interpreted as false to make the overall negative true In other words, they are interconnected in such a way that the scope must include the focus In an independent clause the scope of negation covers all the negative effect.The extent of the scope is identified by the position of the focus Indeed, since the scope of negation is often not clearly signaled, “we can indicate it by where we place the information focus”(Quirk,188) The following is an example of the scope of negation which is extended to include a subordinate clause of reason, with a contrastive fall-rise to emphasize this:

“I didn’t leave HOME because I was afraid of my FATHER”

(Quick, P.189)

(The information focus is on “ didn’t leave home”

(= Because I was afraid of my father, I didn’t leave home.)

“I didn’t leave HOME because I was a afraid of my FATHER”

(The information focus is on “didn’t leave home because I was a afraid of my father” (It means I left home, but it wasn’t because I was afraid of my father.)

In this case, intonation may be crucial in making the extension of the scope backwards to include the subject: an occasional phenomenon found in subjects which contain one of the “universal” terms “all’ and “every”

ALL cats don’t like WATER ( i.e.” All cats dislike water”)

(In this case “don’t like water” is emphasized.)

ALL cats don’t like WATER (not all cats like water) (The negative meaning operates “ALL cats don’t like WATER”( Quirk, p.187)

1.2.3 Negation under some linguists’ viewpoint

1.2.3.1 According to the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics:

The dictionary shows that “The main negator (negator is a word that makes a

negative sentence”) is “not”, often in its contracted form “n’t” and combined with

an auxiliary, for example:

isn’t going/ hasn’t gone/ didn’t go/ doesn’t want to go

But there are other negators such as: “hardly ever”, “never”, “seldom”, “neither”,

“nothing”

Eg Although he lived quite close, he never visited us

Besides, negation can be expressed by negative pronouns, e.g :

“There was nobody there”

Or by negative affixes,e.g.:

“That was unkind!”

Some varieties of English may be DOUBLE NEGATIVE, such as:

“I haven’t done nothing”

Double negation is merely used for emphasis Often double negation is frowned on

as being non-standard However, it is typically used in a number of English Dialects and it follows a definite pattern, e.g the use of no instead of any in the following example:

“We didn’t hurt nobody!”

In recent grammatical theory, interest has been shown in the scope of the negator, that is, how much of the sentence is actually negated and in what way the meaning

of the sentence can change if the negator is put in a different place, for instance, two

sentences: “She didn’t think he could do it” and :“ She thought he couldn’t do it”

do not really mean the same

1.2.3.2 In “Negation in English” by Klima

Klima (1964), presents certain criteria in identifying negative structures His

emphasis was on the transitional “not” He determined over some patterns of the

negative and exemplified as below:

Pattern1: Superficial negatives: not, none, never

Pattern2: Not+ negative word: didn’t, no one, was not

Pattern3: Tag questions+ falling intonation on the tag:

E.g.: “You have been to New York, haven’t you?”

“Mary isn’t going to school today, isn’t she?”

Pattern4: Not- even tags permissible in only negative sentences:

“No one ate the food, not even the dog”

Pattern5: Either- conjoining sentences:

“I didn’t see Mary this morning and Tom didn’t either”

Pattern6: Neither tags: “The children shouldn’t take that medicine, and neither

should she”

Pattern7: Incomplete negative: hardly, scarcely, rarely, seldom

1.2.3.3 Halliday and Hassan

Halliday and Hassan (1976) looked at the issue of negation and polarity They pointed out that polarity is normally expressed at the beginning of the verbal group

A negative verbal group will have “n’t” or “not” attached to the first word if it is finite e.g “could not come” If it is non-finite, it has not; it usually appears as the first word e.g not having eating, not to have eaten Other negative adverbs like

“never’, hardly”, hardly ever” may occur in place of “not”

According to their findings, the category of negative is not clearly defined, but is revealed by the choice of tag

1.2.3.4 Quirk et al (1973)

Quirk et al (1973) keeps the opinion of negative sentences entailing the

operator, requiring the insertion of “not” (or in its contracted form “n’t”) between

the operator and the predication His makes intensive contributions to the study of negation He discovers the ambiguity in negation as well as the similarity between questions and negations Quirk et al also states that questions like statements can be positive or negative

Moreover, negative preposition such as from, off, out of were also identified

According to Quirk et al, those prepositions may be defined by simply adding the

word “not” to the corresponding positive preposition

E.g.: “She was away from work for a week”

= “She was not at work for a week”

Especially, Quirk et al are among the few who have looked into this area and they

say most disjuncts can be modified and several can be premodified by “not”, especially “surprising” and some with negative prefixes (unexpectedly,

unreasonably, unwisely, unusually)

Quirk et al also examines the transfer of the negative form a subordinate that-clause, which it belongs to the main clauses semantically

E.g.: “I don’t believe he is right”

can be transferred to: “I believe he isn’t right”

This kind of transfer is limited to verbs of belief of assumption, eg “Think, believe,

suppose, fancy, expect, imagine and reckon”

He proposes assertive and non-assertive negatives as the table below:

other

Either Neither

He also provides the overview of negative structures (including predicate, subject, complement and adverbial negation

Among those linguists is Quirk et al In the next part, his concept and characteristics

of negation will be described

1.2.4 Negation in Vietnamese in brief

In Vietnamese, a sentence may be negated by various ways through different negators According to Diep Quang Ban, (2011, 241-242), there are four main negative groups:

a.Không, chẳng, chưa, chả:

“Không” is the most common adverb of negation It is usually placed before the verb to make negative sentences

“Hắn chửi những quân hàng bưởi không chịu đến mua cây bưởi đào nhà hắn để

hắn có dăm đồng bạc tiêu.” (Nam Cao, p.138)(“Không” is used as an adverb

In interrogative sentence “chăng” can be found instead of “không”

“Tình thâm mong trả nghĩa dày

Non kia có chắc cội này cho chăng? (Tục ngữ, p.632)

“Chẳng” normally can be used interchangeably with “không” to demonstrate the

“Chớ thấy hùm ngủ vuốt râu

Đến khi hùm dạy đầu lâu chẳng còn. (Tục ngữ p.111)

something”

“Chẳng đợi mà xuân vẫn cứ sang

Phồn hoa thôi hết mộng huy hoàng”

(Nguyễn Bính- 121)

“Chưa”:

Depending to the context, “chưa” can be used in negative sentences to show that

the action hasn’t happened until the moment of speaking

‘Mùa vải năm nay chừng đến muộn

Chưa nghe tu hú giục xuân đi

Nóng lòng cây gạo lìa hoa đỏ

Trổ búp tơ xanh đón gió hè”

(Nguyễn Bính, p133)

Chả:

“Bốn bên hàng xóm đã lên đèn

Em ngửa bàn tay trước mái hiên

Mưa chấm bàn tay từng chấm lạnh

Thế nào anh ấy chả sang xem” (Nguyễn Bính, p7)

“Người khôn ai chả nâng niu

Hoa thơm ai chả chắt chiu trên cành” (Tục ngữ, p.635)

b.Không phải, chẳng phải, chưa phải, chả phải

eg “Người ta thuê mình cho mình làm chứ không phải để

cho mình đắp chiếu nằm như bố già người ta (Nam cao, p.273)

c Không, chẳng, chưa, chả + predicate+ đâu

eg “Từ nay tôi cạch đến già

Tôi chẳng dám cấy ruộng bà nữa đâu”… ( Tục ngữ )

“Bốn bề ổ cọp hang beo

Làng tôi chắc chả chơi diều nữa đâu”

(Nguyễn Bính, 128)

“Tìm mũ Thần nông chẳng thấy đâu

Thấy con vịt lội giữa dòng sâu,

Sao Hôm như mắt em ngày ấy

Rớm lệ nhìn tôi bước xuống tàu.( Nguyễn Bính, 125)

d Negative coordinators: (không) có đâu, nào có đâu, làm gì có, có

phải đâu, đâu (có) phải etc

Eg “Hắn biết đâu vì hắn lầm tất cả những việc ấy trong khi người hắn say; hắn say

thì hắn làm bất cứ cái gì người ta sai hắn làm (Nam Cao,p.36)

“– Vâng, tôi biết rồi…Anh tình cờ đi qua thì tạt vào một tí, chứ vốn có định đến

làm gì đâu.! (Truyện người hàng xóm Nam Cao, p 464)

However, there have been several variations such as “chửa” instead of “chưa”:

or “khỏi” instead of ‘không” that make Vietnamese interesting

“Thư rằng em chửa có ai

Trên nghiên dưới mực giữa cài chữ sen”

In general, Vietnamese verbs do not have tense form; the negative sentences are carried out depending on the position of the words or phrases, which convey the negative meanings

CHAPTER TWO: THE COMPARISION OF SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES

OF NEGATION BETWEEN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

In this chapter, we confine our attention to English and Vietnamese negative

structures to see how they are similar and how they are different

In general, English and Vietnamese have numbers of similar features in terms of

syntactic negative structures For example, “no”,”not” in English correspond to

“không”, “chẳng”, “chả”, “chưa”, “đừng”, “chớ” in Vietnamese Besides, there are some other words conveying negative meanings occuring with a lower frequency Structures of negative sentences with negative object, negative predicate, negative complement, negative adverb with negators NOT, NO, NEVER are demonstrated as the following:

2.1 Stuctures of negative statements

2.1.1 Subject negation:

According to Quirk (p.170) a subject is normally a noun phrase or a clause with norminal function, it occurs before the verb phrase in declarative, and immediately after the operator in question.A subject has number and personal concord, where applicable with verb phrase In negative form, subject contains “NOT” or “NO” In

other words, English negative subject can be realized by “not” + noun group or pronouns” (not the director, not a teacher…., not everyone) or “no+ noun group” (no bread, no student, no letters), pronouns (nobody, no one, nothing, neither,

none) While according to Diep Quang Ban, there are normally two kinds of

forming the subject negation in Vietnamese : “không phải+ noun” or noun group,

Or “không”+ noun or noun phrase.The ways to express structures with negative

subject with “NOT” and “NO” in English and Vietnamese are listed as the following patterns:

Structure of subject negation with “NOT”:

In English In Vietnamese

(PHẢI/CÓ) + DT/AI/GÌ + VN + (ĐÂU)

các lãnh tụ miền Nam (Duong Tuong, p.108)

2 Not everybody is willing to pay even so much (Thatkeray, p.888)

(“Not every body” is the subject of this sentence)

Nói đến trả nợ, ai mà không cảm thấy khó khăn? (Trần Kiêm, p158)

And the following is the structure of subiect negation with “NO”

tất cả vật gì vào tay cô đều dùng được việc cả, ( Trần Kiêm,p.266)

4 Though nobody said a word on the subject of the marriage, everybody

S V

seemed to understand it (Thackeray, p.101)

In the above structures, S is the subject, Aux is the Auxiliary (auxiliary is a grammatical definition, it is a verb such as be, do, have used with main verbs to

show tense.)

V is the verb (verb is a word or group of words that expresses an action (such as go),an event (such as happen) or a state ( such as exist);

O is object (a noun, noun phrase or pronoun that refers to a person or thing that is

affected by the action of the verb (called the direct object) or that the action is done

to or for (called the indirect object)

A(Adverb) means a word that adds more information about place, time, manner,

cause or degree to a verb, an adjective, a phrase or another adverb

N is a Noun means a word that refers to a person such as “Nam” or“ doctor”, a

place such as “Paris” or “city” or a thing, a quality or an activity such as “plant”,

“sorrow” or “tennis”

C is the complement- a word or phrase, especially an adjective or a noun, which is

used after linking verbs such as be and become, and describes the subject of the verb In some descriptions of grammar, it is used to refer to any word or phrase, which is governed by a verb and usually comes after the verb in a sentence

2.1.2 Predicate negation

Predicate is a part of a sentence containing a verb that makes a statement about the subject of the verb, for example;there is a primary distinction between subject and predicate:

“John carefully searched the room” (Quirk, p.10)

S Pr

“The girl is now a student at a large university” (Quirk, p.10)

S Pr

It is obvious that English and Vietnamse predicate negation accounts for a majority

of negative sentences in both languages In English, predicate negation can be

expressed by negators “not” “no” In spoken English and informal written English,

“not” is often shortened to “n’t” after “be’ or “have” or after an auxiliary “n’t” is

attached to the end of the verb ‘NOT” is considered the most commonly used

negative word When “not” is used with a verb group which contains an auxiliary

verb, it comes after the verb in group

English predicate negation is composed of the auxialiaries, which are primary (do,

have, be ) or modals (can, could, may, must) Primary auxiliaries show the tense,

aspect and voice of the main verb, while there are two kinds of meaning of the modal ones: epistemics (permission, impossibility, allowance, ability…) and deontic (expression duty) (possibility, non-obligation or non-necessity)

In Vietnamese, negative adverbs (“không/ chẳng/ chả /chưa thể) cần /dám; có còn;

bao giờ; là; phải là” are placed before a verb in the predicate negation This case has the following structures:

Structure of predicate negation with NOT:

KHÔNG/CHẲNG/CHẢ/CHƯA CÓ/CÒN KHÔNG/CHẲNG/CHẢ/CHƯA BAO GIỜ KHÔNG/CHẲNG/CHẢ/CHƯA LÀ

negation: modal negation, negation with BE, negation with lexical HAVE, negation with auxiliary HAVE, negation with DO, negation with NOT…ANY, negation with NOT….EITHER, and negation with NOT ….EVER

Structure of auxiliary negation

In English, modal verbs have only one form; they have no -ing or -ed forms and do

not add -s to the 3rd person singular form Negative sentences are formed with not

or the short form “-n’t” and do not use “do/does” or “did” They are equivalent to

“không thể”, “không cần”, “không dám”; “chẳng thể”, “chẳng cần”, “chẳng

dám” or “chả thể”, “chả cần”, “chả dám” in Vietnamese It can be shown in the

This structure consists of S (Subject) and modal verbs such as can, could, may,

might, will , would, must, should and ought to which express different types of

modal meanings: Auxiliary negation and main verb negation

This structure can be illustrated by the following examples:

5 “He could not see the green of the shore now but only the tops of the blue hills

that showed white as though they were snow-capped and the clouds that looked like high snow mountains above them” (Hemingway, p.52)

“Lão không còn trông thấy dải bờ biển màu xanh quan lục nữa mà chỉ có những

mỏm đồi in màu trắng toát như phủ tuyết và những đám mây như những quả núi tuyết lừng lững phía trên (Huy Phương, p.53)

“I may not be as strong as I think”, the old man said “ But I know many

S AUX V C

tricks and I have resolution” (Hemingway, p.28)

Có thể là bác chẳng khỏe được đến thê Nhưng bác lại được cái lắm mẹo và

gan lì ( Huy Phương, p 29)

Structure of negation with BE

In English, be + not can be used as a linking verb to describe a situation or say

something that you think about Its Vietnamese equivalents are “không phải là”,

“Con cá mập này không ngẫu nhiên mà xuất hiện) (Huy Phương, p.135)

When be is an auxiliary, it is added to other verbs to make progressive:

6 “ she is not leaving the Union by the Union’s kindness but by her own

strength!”(Mitchell, p.58)

“…việc nó tách rời khỏi liên bang không phải do lòng tốt của Liên bang mà do

chính sức mạnh của nó.” (Duong Tuong, p.68) (“không phải” here can be

understood as a short form of “không phải là”

In addition, “be” used as an auxiliary is also added to past participles to make

passive:

7 … “if you are not allowed to touch the heart sometimes in spite of syntax, and are

not to be loved until you all know the difference between trimeter and tetrameter, may all Poetry go to the deuce”……( Thackeray , p.222)

“…nếu thỉnh thoảng các bà không được phép bấm dây tơ lòng mà không cần tuân

theo nhạc luật, nếu vì các bà không thuộc lầu cách phân biệt thế nào là “ngắt đoạn ba”, thế nào là “ngắt đoạn bốn” mà không được đàn ông yêu, thì Thi ca có

lẽ cũng đến tiêu ma, … (Trần Kiêm, p.234)

A negative sentence whose subject is “there” and the verb is “be” describes the

non- existence of something

8 “There is not much of what you call incident in it” (Thackeray,p.213)

“Trong đời cô không có mấy cái mà bạn gọi là những chuyện đặc biệt”,(Trần

Kiêm,p227)

Negation with HAVE

Sentences with lexical have can be negated by two ways In American English,

auxiliaries “do”, “does”or “did” are used as operator and “not” is inserted after them “Does” is used for the third singular person at the present, “do” is used for the first and the second ones and “did” is used for all persons in the past In British English “not” is inserted directly after “have” or “has” and informally “got” is often added “Has” is used for the third singular and “have” for the rest

In English, negation of lexical have indicates the absence of possession To describe

the non- existence of something, the structure “there is +not” is used and it is equivalent to “không có”, “chẳng có”, “chả có”, “chưa có” in Vietnamese This

structure conveys two different meanings, the absence of possession and non- existence of something

The following is the structure of negation with lexical HAVE in English:

Structure of negation with lexical HAVE

Eg

I don’t have that much money on me (Oxford Advanced learner, 8th version)

Tôi không có / không mang theo nhiều tiền trong người

He hasn’t much faith (Hemingway, p.10)

“Bố cháu không tin” (Huy Phuong, p.11)

In English, “haven’t got” is the usual verb to show possession This structure is

common in British English, especially in spoken and informal language, in present

tense In Vietnamese, it is expressed by “không có”, “chẳng có”, “chả có”, “chưa

có” In some situations, subject can be absent, “chả có” is put at the beginning of

the sentence and it is followed by a noun to denote the non-existence of something

However, the English prefer to use a noun phrase consisting of “no” and a noun as

in the following example:

“He had no mysticism about turtles although he had gone in turtle boats for many

years”.( Hemingway, p.46)

“Tuy đã trải qua nhiều năm làm nghề câu rùa mà long lão vẫn không ngớt quan

tâm đến giống vật này” (Huy Phương, p.47)

Structure of negation with auxiliary HAVE:

Negation with auxiliary HAVE:

In English, “Have” is used as an auxiliary verb and it is changed to express the time

when the action happens The present perfect tense is formed with the present tense

of “have + the past participle”, the negative is formed by adding not to the

auxiliary. E.g., “I have not worked” (Thomson, p.78) The negative past perfect

tense is formed with “had not” and the past participle: “had not/had not worked”

(Thomson, p.83)

While in Vietnamese, there is no kind of auxialary verb, however, basing on the situation and meaning, we have the following structure:

Alternative negative contractions (chiefly used in perfect tenses): I've not, you've

not, he's not etc

In English In Vietnamese

S + HAVE/HAS + NOT + V (PP)+

O/A (the present perfect)

S + HAD + NOT + V (PP)+ O/A (the

past perfect)

S + HAVE/HAS+ NOT +BEEN+

V-ING + O/A (the present perfect

continuous)

S + HAD+ NOT +BEEN+ V-ING +

O/A (the past perfect continuous)

S + WILL HAVE + NOT + V (PP)+

O/A (the future perfect)

S + WILL HAVE + NOT + BEEN +

V-ING + O/A (the future perfect

continuous)

CN + KHÔNG/CHẲNG/CHẢ/CHƯA (PHẢI/HỀ) + ĐT + TN/TrN

This structure is illustrated by the following examples:

E.g.

“I have not written to my beloved Amelia for these many weeks past ”

S V O A

(Thackeray,p.188)

He had not at first distinguished who it was that called him, (Thackeray, p.133)

Mới đầu cũng chưa nhận ra được ai gọi mình (Trần Kiêm, p604)

“The Irish maidservant has not altered in the least in her kind and respectful behaviour” (Thackeray, p.987)

Structure of negation with auxiliary DO in English

In English “do” as an auxiliary verb followed by subjects “I”, “We”, “You”,

“They” is used before a full verb to form negative sentences, in the past tense it is

changed into “did”

In English In Vietnamese S+DO+/DOES/DID+NOT+V (bare

“Lão cũng không nhớ là lão quen cái thói cứ nói to lên như thế một mình tự bao

giờ ” (Huy Phuong, p.51)

* Structures of non-assertive forms

With non-assertive forms, in English we have negation with “not…any”, “not

….either ”, and “not… ever” In Vietnamese “không/chẳng… tý gì , chút nào…” as

the following:

Structure of negation with NOT ANY

In English, together with negative particle “not”, “any” is used with uncountable

nouns or plural nouns to form negative sentences as the formula below:

S+AUX+NOT+V+ANY+NP/BODY/ONE/THING/WHERE

In Vietnamese, “any” in this situation can be understood as: “nào”, “tí gì” The

following examples serve to illustrate this point:

Mr Higgs looked exceedingly grave as he came into the outer rooms, and very hard

in Mr Chopper’s faced; but there were not any explanations

( Thackery,p.457) (negative marker:” not any+noun)

Lúc ông Higgs bước ra phòng ngoài, mặt ông ta có vẻ đặc biệt đăm chiêu, trịnh trọng; ông ta nhìn thẳng vào mặt ông Chopper, nhưng không giải thích tý gì (p447)

You don’t know anything about business, my dear,’ answered the sire, shaking his

head with an important air ( Thackery,p.1185)

Con ơi, mày chẳng hiểu tý gì về việc kinh doanh cả (Trần Kiêm, p412)

Structure of negation with NOT EITHER:

In English, “either” as an adverb is used after negative phrases to state that a feeling

or situation is similar to one already mentioned It is similar to “cũng không” in

Vietnamese The difference is that in English the adverb” either” with this meaning

usually found at the end of the statement, while in Vietnamese “cũng không” is

usually put before the verb

S + AUX + NOT + V + O/A, EITHER

“either”is used as an adverb after negative phrases to state that a feeling or

situation is similar to one already mentioned

She did not remark that either:….( Thackery, p.712)

Amelia cũng không biết đến việc Dobbin ra về (p14)

Structure of negation with NOT EVER:

EVER is used in negative sentences It follows “NOT” and precedes the verb as

passive transformation, assumes the status of subject” (Quirk, p.170)

In English, the phrase including negative adverb “no” and a noun or a pronoun

(“nobody”, “nothing”) composes the object of a negative sentence Vietnamese has

no exact equivalents to English negative sentences with nuclear negators in regard

to the form For example: “Tôi làm không gì cả” as a translation of the English sentence: “I do nothing.”is unacceptable in Vietnamese and it should be replaced

“Tôi không/ chẳng làm gì cả” The way to express negative structures with negative

object can be generalized as below:

(SẼ/SẮP)KHÔNG/CHẲNG/CHẢ/CHƯA THỂ/CẦN/DÁM

KHÔNG/CHẲNG/CHẢ/CHƯA CÓ/CÒN

KHÔNG/CHẲNG/CHẢ/CHƯA BAO GIỜ

KHÔNG/CHẲNG/CHẢ/CHƯA LÀ KHÔNG/CHẲNG/CHẢ/CHƯA PHẢI (LÀ)

Like object negation, Vietnamese has no exact equivalents to English negative sentences with nuclear negators in regard to the form of complement negation The

complement negation in English is made up of the components: subject (S), the verb

“be”, negative adverb “no” and a noun, a gerund, or an adjective “Nobody”,

“nothing”, “none of”, “neither of” can be found in this structure In Vietnamese

complement negation is rendered by subjects accompanied by negators” “

không”, “ chẳng”, “ chả” ,”chưa” or “ không phải là”, chẳng phải là”, “chưa phải là ” and complement

It is no laughing matter that, Mrs C., anyways.(Thakeray, p.579)

Này, bà Crawley ơi, không phải là chuyện đáng cười đâu (Trần Kiêm, p555)

There was no cast net and the boy remembered when they had sold it.(Hemingway,

p 18)

“Không làm gì có lưới cá trích, chú bé còn nhớ rõ cái ngày phải mang cái lưới ấy

đi bán” (Huy Phương, p.19)

2.1.5 Adverbial negation

According to Quirk (p.171), “An adverbial is an adverb phrase, adverbial clause,

noun phrase, or preposition phrase” He also proclaims that “An adverbial is

generally mobile ie it is capable of occurring in more than one position in the clause and it is generally optional, ie may be added to or removed from a sentence without affecting its acceptability” ( Quirk, p.171)

In English, negative sentences with adverbs: “nowhere” (means: not in to any place”), “no longer” is used to say that something which was possible or true

before, is not now This can be shown as the following sentence pattern:

CN + KHÔNG/CHẲNG CÒN (LÀ) + BN +NỮA (b)

This form is illustrated with the following examples:

He no longer dreamed of storms, nor women, or of great occurrences, or of great

fish, nor fights, nor contests or strength, nor his wife ( Hemingway, p.32)

Lão chẳng còn bao giờ mơ thấy bão táp, thấy đàn bà, thấy những sự việc phi

thường, những con cá lớn, những trận ẩu đả, những cuộc đọ sức và ngay đến vợ lão, lão cũng chẳng bao giờ mơ thấy.( Huy Phương, p 33)

In this example, “no longer” is found before the verb “dream” it can be

understood that the old man wil not dream of storms any more And in

Vietnamese negative marker is expressed by “chẳng còn bao giờ”

Her eyes were fixed, and looking nowhere (Thakeray, p.711)

Mắt cô mở trừng trừng, nhưng nào cô có nom thấy gì đâu! (Trần Kiêm, p14)

2.1.6 Clause negation

“Clause is a group of words that includes a subject and a verb, and forms a sentence

or part of a sentence” (Oxford dictionary)

Clausal negation is expressed by adverbs “not” or “no” which are used to give the

phrase a negative meaning or to reply in negative It can also be realized by using

“not” after the verbs: “hope”, “expect”, “believe” They are the same as: ‘chắc

chắn là không”, “tất nhiên là không”, “ có lẽ là không ” or “tôi tin là không”, “tôi

hy vọng là không” as the following structures: