Word order in english noun phrases in comparison with vietnamese

Word order in general structures of English noun phrases .... Now it can be seen that these errors and many more that can be found happening very often in learning English are concerned

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

NGUYEN THI HONG PHUONG

WORD ORDER IN ENGLISH NOUN PHRASES IN COMPARISON WITH VIETNAMESE

(TRẬT TỰ TỪ TRONG CỤM DANH TỪ TIẾNG ANH

SO SÁNH VỚI TIẾNG VIỆT)

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, 21st November, 2013

Supervisor Student

Le Van Thanh Nguyen Thi Hong Phuong

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to express my great gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Le Van Thanh of Hanoi Open University for his enormously invaluable advice, enlightening guidance and encouragement which are indispensable for the accomplishment of this study

I am grateful for the precious support of the teachers at Postgraduate Faculty who producing me with knowledge and basic skills to finish this study

I also would like to send my thanks to all my friends who have helped

me to develop ideas for the study

Finally, my thanks must go to my family members whose continual encouragement has been indispensable for the fulfillment of this challenging work

Hanoi, 21st November, 2013

Nguyen Thi Hong Phuong

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii

ABBREVIATIONS iii

INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale of the study 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Research questions 3

4 Scopes of the study 3

5 Methods of the study 3

6 Design of the study 4

DEVELOPMENT 5

Chapter 1 THEORETICAL PRELIMINARIES 5

1.1 Contrastive analysis 5

1.1.1.A short history of contrastive studies 5

1.1.2 What is Contrastive Analysis? 6

1.2 Word and word order 9

1.2.1 Word 9

1.2.2 Word order and Linearity 12

1.2.3 Word order, patterns and structure 13

1.3 Phrases 15

Chapter 2 WORD ORDER IN ENGLISH NOUN PHRASES 18

2.1 Word order in general structures of English noun phrases 18

2.2 Word order in noun phrase variants 23

2.3 The head 27

2.4 Word order or pre-modification 27

2.4.1 Position 1a: 27

2.4.2 Position 2a 30

2.4.3 Position 3a 32

2.4.4 Position 4a 33

2.5.1 Relative clause 35

2.5.2 Phrases with a preposition as head 36

2.5.3 Participles (the ING-participle and the ED-participle) 36

2.5.4 Adjectives 36

2.6 Grammatical categories of noun and their reflection through word order 37

2.7 Articles as determiners 39

Chapter 3 WORD ORDER IN VIETNAMESE NOUN PHRASES 45

3.1 General word order 45

3.2 Variants 47

3.2.1 Noun phrases with one modifying item and the head 48

3.2.2 Noun phrases with two modifying items and the head 48

3.2.3 Noun phrases with three modifying item and the head 48

3.2.4 Noun phrases with four modifying items and head 48

3.3 The head 49

3.3.1.Determination of the head 49

3.3.2 Noun phrases with two heads (head one and head two) 54

3.3.3 Relationship between head one and head two in the noun phrases

54

3.4 Pre-modification 58

3.4.1 Position 1 58

3.4.2 Position 2 60

3.4.3 Position 3 61

3.5 Post-modification 64

3.5.1 Position 1’ 64

3.5.2 Position 2’ 68

Chapter 4 NOUN PHRASES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS 72

4.1 The heads of noun phrases 72

4.2 Pre-modification 75

4.2.1 Position1a: 75

4.2.2 Position 2a 76

4.2.3 Position 3a 77

4.2.4 Position 4a 78

4.3 Post-modification 79

4.3.1 Relative clause as post-modification 79

4.3.2 Participles as postmodifiers 80

4.3.3 Prepositional phrases as post-modification 81

4.4 Some predictions of Vietnamese students’ errors or mistakes in learning English noun phrases 81

CONCLUSION 88

REFERENCES 89

INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

In the process of learning English, Vietnamese learners are likely to produce such incorrect phrases “hat red” or “one night summer hot” This can

be elucidated by the interference of the mother tongue The former error is probably due to the transfer of the Vietnamese pattern “chiếc mũ đỏ” and the latter “một đêm hè oi ả” Now it can be seen that these errors and many more that can be found happening very often in learning English are concerned with the word order of noun phrases This is why many linguistics as well as methodologists is unanimous in the claim that language 1 (native language) influence is manifested in the learner’s use of language 2 In other words, many errors by language 2 learners are attributable to language 1 interference

It is also the main idea which laid the foundation for contrastive analysis (CA)

in history of linguistic inquiry

This study is itself a contrastive analysis which attempts to exploit the power of contrastive in predicting the difficulties Vietnamese learners may encounter when learning English noun phrases

There are a number of reasons that lead for this study to be carried out Some of which can be listed as follows:

1.1 Theoretically, the word order is an important issue of grammatical structures, a general presentation of linearity of linguistic signifiers that has been paid much attention to by both English and Vietnamese linguistics However, there has been almost no detailed systematic research on this issue,

or to mention the study of the word order of noun phrases, and especially contrastive analysis of word order in English and Vietnamese noun phrases has not yet been done It is, therefore, necessary not only to study but also

make a contrastive analysis of the word order of noun phrases in the two languages

1.2 In practice, foreign language teaching especially English language teaching has become more and more popular as well as Vietnamese language teaching for foreigners which has been developing rapidly recently based on the linguistic, of which contrastive analysis of grammatical structures is one

of the best ways for teachers to improve their teaching quality and for learners

to smoothly gain and practice the transferred knowledge

This study intends to present some discussions and add comments to one of the most important issues of theoretical grammar between the two languages, English and Vietnamese, which have both different and similar grammatical structures As well this study has its significance practically as it would make its consideration to the effective foreign language teaching/learning, especially English language teaching/learning

2 Aims of the study

The study aims at analyzing word order in English and Vietnamese noun phrases

The study findings show:

- A systemic description of basic word order in English and Vietnamese noun phrases

- Basic word orders and the changes of word order in English and Vietnamese noun phrases

- Some similarities and differences between word order in English and Vietnamese noun phrases

- Common mistakes when using word order in English and Vietnamese noun phrases and solutions

- Some suggestions in translating word order in English and Vietnamese noun phrases

3 Research questions

- What are types of word order in English and Vietnamese noun phrases?

- What are similarities and differences of word order in noun phrases between the two languages?

- What are main functions of word order in English and Vietnamese noun phrases?

- What are suggestions for learners and teachers of the two languages in learning and teaching word order in English and Vietnamese noun phrases?

4 Scopes of the study

This paper attempts to focus on the contrastive analysis of the word order of noun phrases in English and Vietnamese In this study the most important principles of the word order shall be described, the potential forces

to the operation of these principles are also sought At the same time the contrastive analysis is conducted on both the formal and operating rules of the word order in noun phrases In a word, it is an attempt to draw a picture on the word order of noun phrases in the two languages – English and Vietnamese

5 Methods of the study

This paper, with the said aims, is of a descriptive and contrastive analysis study with English taken as the basic language Thus the methods for this study are:

5.1 To describe the word order of noun phrases of both languages by the method of induction, i.e a list of each type shall be made, after all the component descriptions are made, a general picture is then drawn for each language for the issue to be studied

5.2 To make a contrastive analysis of the area in question, of which:

- Starts with the comparison and analysis on the construction (grammatical relations and forms of the word order of noun phrases), and

- Pointing out influential forces that cause the differences on the structural organization and operation of the word order However this paper does not attempt to deal with semantic analysis

6 Design of the study

This study is divided into three parts, of which the first part is for the introduction which outlines the background, aim and methods of the study

The second part consists of five chapters Chapters 1 provides the theoretical preliminaries and reviews the word order in the literature Chapter 2 presents and describes the word order of English noun phrases Chapter 3 deals with that of Vietnamese noun phrases Chapter 4 presents concrete contrastive

analysis of word order of noun phrases in English and Vietnamese, looks at some of the errors Vietnamese learners often make when learning English noun phrases, then suggests some types of exercises The last part, which is the conclusion, presents a review of the study by summarizing the main points discussed in the previous parts, provides suggestions for further study and dues the limitations of this thesis

DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1 THEORETICAL PRELIMINARIES

This chapter will review the literature which relates to 1.1 Contrastive analysis, 1.2 Word and word order, 1.3 Phrases It will, therefore, serve as the theoretical backgrounds for what is being presented in the following chapters

1.1 Contrastive analysis

1.1.1 A short history of contrastive studies

It is very difficult to trace the beginning of contrastive linguists Comparison of languages is as old as languages themselves and as old as contacts between speakers of different languages Comparison between languages has had many aspects: from amateurish accidental during social contacts to more systematic investigations; from comparative linguists classifying languages according to their origin to, more recently, contrastive linguists with more practical aims in view Although the aims and methods of contrastive analysis were not defined clearly until quite recently, contrastive studies were written in a more systematic fashion as early as the beginning of twentieth century One of the first contrastivists was Vilem Mathesius His works are particularly important as the first works recognizing the necessity

of going beyond the sentence to reach a full and adequate description of language One of the fundamental concepts of his school is the concept of the functional sentence perspective according to which each sentence consists of

“theme” and “rhyme”, now also called “topic” and “comments” As has been said functional sentence perspective has only recently been recognized, and its importance is reflected in the ever increasing number of references to it such as Boliger, Halliday, Di Pietro and Chomsky The importance of

contrastive analysis was also recognized in America as early as 1940s when Whorf wrote: “Much progress has been made in classifying language of the earth into genetic families each having descent from a single precursor, and in tracing such developments through time The result is called “comparative linguists” – of even greater importance for the future technology of thought is what might be called “contrastive linguists” This plots the outstanding differences among tongues – in grammar, logic and general analysis of experience

One most important aim, if not the only aim of contrastive analysis, is its application in foreign language teaching This aim is to be achieved through the study of bilingualism Languages, when used by bilingual speakers, influence each other at all levels of linguistic structure The influence of one language on another in a bilingual situation is described as

“interference”, now one of the fundamental notions in language teaching The 1960’s saw a range of contrastive analysis published (typically between English and other languages) and a host of language teaching courses made available Through these major contrastive projects contrastive analysis has had much to offer to translation theory, the description of particular languages, language typology and the study of linguist universals Because of its closeness, however, to language learning and to the more general concept

of bilingualism, contrastive analysis has always been regarded as a major branch of applied, rather than pure linguists

1.1.2 What is Contrastive Analysis?

Classification of linguist enterprise involves three dimensions or areas:

It was pointed out that there are two broad approaches to linguists, the generalist and the particularist and that on the one hand, linguists treat

they consider the general phenomenon of human language, of which particular languages are examples

Along the second dimension linguists divisible into those who choose

to study one, or each, language in isolation and those whose ambition and methods are comparative

The third dimension is that used by De Saussure to distinguish “two sciences of language”: diachronic as opposed to synchronic: “everything that relates to the static side of our science is synchronic; everything that has to do with evolution is diachronic Similarly, synchrony designate respectively as a language state and evolutionary phase” [35, 81]

Contrastive analysis with a nature as a linguist enterprise is neither generalist nor particularist, but somewhere intermediate on a scale between the two extremes Likewise, contrastive analysis is as interested in the inherent genius of the language under its purview as it is in the comparability

of languages Yet it is not concerned with classification, and, as the term

“contrastive” implies, more interested in differences between languages than

in their likenesses

Contrastive analysis seems, therefore, to be a hybrid linguist enterprise

In term of the three criteria discussed here we might venture the following provisional definition: contrastive analysis is a linguist enterprise which aims

at producing inverted (i.e contrastive, not comparative) two-valued typologies (a contrastive analysis is always concerned with a pair of languages), and founded on the assumption that languages can be compared

C James (12) pointed out that contrastive analysis belongs to interlanguage study which is interested in the emergence of language rather than in the finished product Accordingly, contrastive analysis is to be viewed as diachronic rather than synchronic in orientation He also pointed out that

contrastive analysis is one of three branches of two valued (two languages are involved) interlingual linguists: translation theory – which is concerned with the process of text conversion, error analysis and contrastive analysis The last two have as the object of enquiry the means whereby a monolingual learns to

be bilingual

Although the point of departure for such studies is the two languages concern (NLand FL in the case of language learns, SLor “source language” and the TL “target language” in the case of translation), the focus of attention

is on the intermediate space between the two The “language” which comes in

a discussion of translation theory an “interlingua”: it is a system which encompasses, as is desirable for translation, the analysis characteristics of the

SL and the synthetically characteristics of the TL text There is one Interlingua for each pair of texts By contrast, it is suggested by error analysis that the learner, in progressing towards mastery of the FL, develops a series of

“approximate systems” or “transitional dialects”, which are successive and intersecting, such that each stage has unique features as well as features which

it shares with the immediately preceding and the intersecting circles in the figure below

Contrastive analysis has been characterized as being a form of interlingual study, or of “interlinguists” As such, and in certain other respects, it has much in common with the study of bilingualism Bilingualism,

by definition, is not the study of individual single languages, or of language in general, but of the possession of two languages Bilingualism refers to the possession of two languages by an individual or society whereas contrastive analysis is concerned with how a monolingual becomes bilingual Contrastive analysis concerns with the effects exerted by the NL on the language being learnt,

1.2 Word and word order

1.2.1 Word

Traditional grammars make use of a fairly wide technical vocabulary to describe the concepts they use – words like “noun”, “singular”, “phrase” and even “word” itself They often began with a statement of “parts of speech”, which today would be called “word classes” According to most grammarians there are eight parts of speech: Noun, Pronoun, Adjective, Verb, Preposition, Conjunct, Adverb, and Injection However C.C Fries, an American scholar suggested that English had four parts of speech he labeled classes 1, 2, 3, 4, but they are clearly what would normally be called “Nouns”, “Verbs”,

“Adjectives”, and “Adverbs” Whereas Eastwood [23, 2] has a little different idea on these word classes when he labels eight word classes in English: Noun, Pronoun, Adjective, Verb, Preposition, Conjunct, Adverb, and Determiner which belong to either “vocabulary words” (verb, noun, adjective, adverb) or “grammatical words” (preposition, determiner, pronoun, and conjunct) Though the term “parts of speech” is a good term to use in text books, methodological materials, and practical grammar books, it can serve as

a good starting point to go further into linguistic research There are a number

of questions on these ideas such as why there are only four or eight of speech but no more and so on

A famous definition of the word is that of the great American linguist Leonard Bloomfield He thought of words as “minimal free forms” – that is, the smallest units of speech that can meaningfully stand on their own [30, 47] Again many find this definition unsatisfactory as it can’t cope with several items are treated as words in writing but which never stand on their own in

natural speech (such as the and of)

However, attempts have been made in order to search for a satisfactory definition of the notion “word” Accordingly a number of criteria have been set up to clarify it and make it more convincing Meaning is one of these criteria as specific parts of speech or word classes are considered and then viewed with the light of meaning From this point of view, a noun is a word used for naming anything Verbs generally refer to action, events, and processes Adjectives typically amplify the meaning of a noun or function to designate a property or attribute that is applicable to the types of entities denoted by nouns An adverb is defined as a word that modifies a verb, an adjective or an adverb Of course this is not satisfactory enough for two reasons Firstly, meaning does not always provide a clear indication of its category membership, and secondly in some cases, words with similar meanings belong to different categories F Palmer [30, 43] suggested three main approaches to define what a word The first is to see the word as a semantic unit, a unit of meaning; the second sees it as a phonetic or phonological unit, one that is marked, if not by ‘space’ or pause, at least by some features of the sounds of the language; the attempts to establish the word by a variety of linguist procedures that are associated with the idea that the word is in some ways an isolable and individual unit

In conclusion, however argumentative the concept of word may be, it is certain that a view of the word, the smallest syntactical element, should be based on different criteria and taken from a diverse and integrated perspective

to ensure a reliable investigation and serve as the foundation to go to other syntactical elements

According to D Crystal (16) the term “word order” refers both to the order of words in a phrase and to the order of multi-word units within a

which is fixed for every type of the phrase and a sentence, and is therefore meaningful The main function of word order is to express grammatical relations and determine the grammatical status of a word by fixing its position

in the phrase or in a sentence

In linguist description, word order usually refers to the sequence in which grammatical elements such as S, V, and O occur in sentences A great deal of attention has been paid to the way in which languages vary the order

of these elements, as part of typological studies

As has been said above, word order expresses grammatical relations and determines the grammatical status of a word Then a change of the word order often leads to either a change of the sentence meaning or a break down

of sentence structure, or both In other words, any change of the position of a word in a sentence often leads to a change of its grammatical status and consequently a change of whole meaning of the sentence Thus in the two sentences below:

The position of words in these sentences is fixed with Maxim and mẹ as subjects and Victor defends Maxim and con as objects Then if the word order

of the two sentences change to:

Now Victor and Con are subjects and Maxim and mẹ are objects, and

the meaning is totally different

In order to obtain a further understanding on the word order within the internal structure of sentences and the distribution of the units forming them,

we will consider the following properties:

1.2.2 Word order and Linearity

No one can utter simultaneously all the words of a sentence Nor could such an utterance be understood Words are spoken (or written) and heard (or read) in a time sequence from early to later According to F.D Saussure, a linguist sign consists of 2 sides, labeled as signifie (i.e, “the thing signified”) and significant (i.e, “the thing which signifies”); the relationship between them is arbitrary The significant occur in the stream of time and thus are governed by the characteristics of time Time is by nature one-way direction,

so the significant come out successively in a one-way direction, forming a sequence In writing, the stream of time is replaced by the span of lines Any sentence, for Saussure, is a sequence of signs, each sign contributing something to the meaning of the whole, and each contrasting with all other signs in the language This sequence can be seen as a syntagmatic relationship – that is, a linear relationship between the signs which are present in the sentence E.g., in the sentence “I saw Tom last week”, there is a syntagmatic relationship, consisting of 4 signs in a particular order: S + Predicate + Direct Object + Time Adverbial Saussure [35, 213] points out that linearity as a property of language makes it impossible for people to produce two linguist signs simultaneously This idea is supported by Nguyễn Tài Cẩn (42) that if

two sounds a&b are to be combined together there are only two combinatorial possibilities: either ab or ba In a word, when a person hears or looks at a

display of speech or writing, the dimension he is most conscious of is a horizontal one, which shows the linear order of the bits of language Apart from the view of linear sequences of words, there are groupings within these sequences That results in hierarchical structures on which sister and daughter relations can be defined A particular sequence may be structurally

a different constituent structure tree In addition to these properties of linearity and hierarchy, there is another property of categoriality The words of sentences fall into lexical categories, with each category (and subcategory) having its special properties and distribution

1.2.3 Word order, patterns and structure

The term “chain” is used by M Berry (7) to refer to the horizontal dimension of language or the syntagmatic of language In her point of view any utterance consists of the number of bits of language, one after another, in

a sequence, the sequence being one-dimensional like a line The dimension along which the sequence occurs is called the dimension of axis of chain Each bit of language forms a link in the whole chain of a complete utterance Also according to her, the dimension of chain in spoken language can be regarded as a time dimension and that in written language as a either time dimension or a space dimension Patterns occur along the dimension of chain Each has a number of patterns which belong to it but does not have certain others For instance, English has the grammatical pattern which can be found

in the old man (not “*man old the”); a Vietnamese grammatical pattern is shown in “một ông già” (not “* một già ông”) This pattern is composed of

bits of language which occur one after another along the axis of chain

A sentence is a string of words or morphemes, but it is worth noting that not all strings of words or morphemes constitute sentences in a language because according to D Blair (27) sentences are not simply random strings of words and morphemes but conform to specific patterns determined by the syntactic rules of the language This statement is true of all human languages Only those strings that conform to the syntactic rules are called sentences or grammatical sentences of the language, and the strings of morphemes that do

not are called ungrammatical For instance, the following strings marked with

an asterisk are ungrammatical:

But when these strings are rearranged according to English patterns they become syntactically well-formed although they do not make much sense and sound “funny”

Syntactic rules permit speakers to produce and understand any of an infinite set of possible sentences which may be never produced or heard before It is syntactic rules that determine the correct order of words in a sentence; accordingly sentences are more than words placed one after another like beads on a string

In the Vietnamese language, word order is one of the two grammatical devices because Vietnamese is an uninflectional and isolating language in which grammatical functions can only be relied upon the use of word order and function words

E.g.:

In this example the order of word closely refers to the meaning of time

The word “bao giờ” as in Chị đi chợ bao giờ? refers to the past and the word

“bao giờ” as in Bao giờ chị đi chợ? refers to the future

In addition, word order in different structures in Vietnamese expresses

different grammatical meaning In the sentence “Bắc yêu Nam”, Bắc is the

is the giver and Bắc is the receiver [41, 223] The word orders in this example

show the grammatical meaning “Giver – Receiver” This is true with other meanings such as “Cardinal number – Ordinal number” as in “phòng 3 (room No.3) and 3 phòng (three rooms)” and so on

Although English is an inflecting language but it is more isolating than many other European languages Hence, besides using such grammatical means as inflectional and derivational suffixes, root inflection, etc English also employs word order to show grammatical relationships

E.g.:

The words in the above sentences are the same but it is the word order

which indicates who frightened whom, and that it is the black cat in sentence

(i) and Mary in sentence (ii)

In English the role of word order is also necessary in distinguishing

whereas the later refers to the hair of the root of some plants Or in “a horse

kept to run in races); or in “a flower garden” (a garden with flowers planted) and “a garden flower” (a flower cultivated in gardens” [48, 25]

This paper concerns with the order of words in noun phrases then such issues will be further studied with more details in the following chapters

In conclusion English and Vietnamese, although of different type of languages, employ word order as a grammatical device

1.3 Phrases

The sentence consists of words but it is generally agreed that words do not pattern directly into sentences Words are grouped into elements that

treated as intervening levels of organization between words and sentences

The intervening units between word and sentence are usually called phrases

Phrases are equivalent to “word-grouping” Halliday [31, 159] says

“describing a sentence as a construction of words is rather like describing a

house as a construction of bricks, without recognizing the walls and the

different from a group By his explanation a group is an expansion of a word,

a phrase is a contraction of a clause

Traditional grammars use “phrase” to refer to a special kind of

embedded sentence – one without a finite verb E.g.: in the sentence “He did

embedded “what to do” here has still many of characteristics of a sentence

and that is where arguments arise In this case, R Quirk (32) would attach

“non-finite clause” to the embedded

Words pattern into phrases which mean that phrases may be described

in terms of the kind of classes of words that function in them, and of the order

in which the words or classes of words arranged relate to each other

One of the good definitions may be that given by O’Grady and

Dobrovolsky [9, 159] They say “sentences have hierarchical structures

consisting of groups of words that may themselves consist of group of words, and so on This section will focus the internal structure of syntactical units built around nouns, verbs, adjectives, and prepositions with an emphasis on the organizational properties that they have in common Such units are called

They then further pointed out phrases

XP (specifier) X (complement)

NP (Det.) N (Prepositional Phrase)

V (Auxiliary) V (Noun Phrase)

AP (Degree word) A (Prepositional Phrase)

PP (Degree word) P (Noun Phrase)

(in which NP is a Noun Phrase, a VP Verb Phrase, AP an Adjective Phrase and PP, a Prepositional Phrase) Some grammar books may add Adverb Phrase (Adv P) to this list of kinds of phrase but structurally more typical of phrases are still the four NP, VP, AP and PP R Huddleston (37) lists three properties of a phrase as below:

(i) It (a phrase) is a group of 2 or more words

(ii) It does not contain a “finite” verb

(iii) It is functionally equivalent to a single word, and will thus be classified according to the part of speech of the kind of word to which it is equivalent Among these phrases listed above the most important ones of the sentences, as regarded by F Palmer (30), are Verb phrases and the noun phrases

As far as the Noun phrase in English is concerned it is defined by R Quirk [32, 127] as follows:

“The noun phrase is that element in the sentence which typically

There shares the same view when there is a saying that noun phrase may be easily identified because they can function as ‘subject’ or ‘object’ in a sentence and only noun phrase may do so

Chapter 2 WORD ORDER IN ENGLISH NOUN PHRASES

Many noun phrases in English are simple forms consisting perhaps just

of a noun like cabbages in “The truck was loaded with cabbages” or a pronoun like they in “They flew down to Aiken, South Carolina” [39, 97]

(actually pronouns are a special class of noun) In fact almost noun phrases often consist of much longer than single words Examples 1 - 3 are noun phrases:

A noun phrase is thus composed of potential parts: a head element and one or more dependents The head element is obligatory; its presence is the minimal requirement of the occurrence of a noun phrase The other parts occur optionally Some dependents precede the head, others follow, we will refer to them as pre-modification as termed by R Quirk (32) or post – head as

by R Huddleston (37) respectively

E.g.:

Pre-modifier Head Post-modifier

Pre-modifier Head Post-modifier

Now we go further into the word order in English noun phrases

2.1 Word order in general structures of English noun phrases

In English there is an argument that the structure of noun phrases consists of only Determiner(s), Pre-modifier(s), the Head, and Post-

modifier(s) According to this point of view the structure of noun phrases (NP) can be illustrated in the following formula:

Determiners, pre-modifiers and post-modifiers are often optional, i.e

their presence in noun phrases is not an obligatory requirement of the occurrence of a noun phrase Some examples of noun phrases are given below:

The old lady had been reading her morning portion of scripture

Bà lão đang đọc đoạn kinh buổi sáng [8, 296]

I told he was rather a nugly man, but quite a vgentle man

Tôi bảo ông chủ có phần xấu trai nhưng là một người thực lịch sự

[8, 256]

A noun phrase may simply consist of a noun E.g.:

Tea ready, I was going to approach the table

Trà pha xong và tôi đi tới bàn [8, 255]

It is said that the formula © does not cover a full structure of noun phrases because more modifying elements (dependent elements) that can be seen in practice are not included in it In addition in this formula the

determination of allocating such words as “all” and “those” in the same

position can cause arguments because they are of mutually exclusive class, this means that when acceptance of one of them implies that the other have to

be rejected

Consequently instead another formula should be constructed so as to cover a full structure of noun phrases Meanwhile position allocations of modifying elements in noun phrases should also be reconsidered so that confusion could be avoided The following formula is expected to meet these requirements:

NP

Pre-det Determiner Post-det Modifier Head Post-modifier

E.g.:

In this order “quantifier” is not assigned to a separate position but

assigned in the same positions of “Post-modifier” because all items occurring

in these two positions are words which denote quantity In order to facilitate the study in this paper the pre-modification is assigned to four positions labeled by left-to-right order as 4a, 3a, 2a, 1a and the post-modification to 1b, and the head

to O

Then the structure of noun phrases is constructed as below:

I felt pain, and then I felt ire

Bigamy is an ugly word

2. One modifying position and the head

Ai rồi cũng phải chết [8, 376]

Both ladies, as I advanced, rose to welcome me

4a O

Cả hai người thấy tôi vào đều đứng dậy đón [8, 257]

Cả hai cô em đều trông có vẻ sửng sốt [8, 399]

Allthevalley at my right hand was full of pasture fields…

2.2 Word order in noun phrase variants

As matter of fact various structure of noun phrases are used with the presence of individual positions of modifying items which depends on their combination with the others in noun phrases In English perhaps there are 32 variants as listed below:

Pre-modification Head

modif icatio

5 + - - - + - all books, all ink

6 - - - - + + books on sale, ink in pot

7 - - + + + - two good books, little bad

ink

8 - + + - + - the two books, the little ink

9 + + - - + - all the books, all the ink

10 - + - - + + the books on sale, the ink in

13 - - + - + + three books on sale, little

ink in the pot

everything

17 - + + - + + the three books on sale, the

little ink in the pot

18 + + - - + + all the books on sale, all the

ink in the pot

19 - - + + + + three good books on sale,

little bad ink in the pot

20 + + + - + - all the three books

26 - + - - - - the interesting books on the

table

28 + + + - + + all the 5 years’ absence

table

sale

All these 32 variants are just theoretically studied Practically, it might

be correct to say that:

(i) The first structure is the basic and simplest structure which consists of just

one word as the head with no occurrence of any modification E.g.:

Nature must be gladsome when I was so happy

Nhất định tạo vật cũng vui tươi như lòng tôi đang sung sướng như

(ii) The 32nd structure is a full exploitation of potentially existing in noun phrase structures and relatively rare to be approached

(iii) The 14th, 22nd, 23rd, 28th, 30th structures likely occur provided that the

head must be plural nouns and only occur with the presence of “all” in 4a position Meanwhile “half” can only occur with singular and non- count nouns “Both” cannot occur with “quantitative” items because

“both” means “dual”, that means it can only refer to two

(iv) Other structures can also be seen

Below are some more examples of English noun phrases

…Robert and his sister played quietly in a corner

Robert và đứa em gái lặng lẽ chơi ở góc phòng [8, 255]

He had been called away by the sudden death of his father

3a 1a O 1b

Gia đình cho gọi ông ấy về vì bố ông đột ngột mất [8, 368]

But all the surface of the waster looked level

4a 3a O 1b

Nhưng cả mặt đồi đều trơ trụi [8, 370]

…all the hideous and degrading agonies……

4a 3a 1a O

…tất cả những nỗi đau khổ gớm ghiếc và nhục nhã

[8, 345] Thus by studying these above examples we can see that some of them consist of a head and two modifying position Some of three or four different modifying positions co-occurring in the exact order as explained in the above

section

2.3 The head

All linguists naturally recognize a noun as head of noun phrases R

Jacob [39, 51] confirms that “a noun phrase has a noun as a head” or “nouns

(nouns phrase) may be an indeterminately long structure having a noun as head…” It is true even there are 2 nouns in a noun phrase, such as those

structures having the ‘s and of genitives, or having partitives, where the subordinate relationship is obviously seen E.g.:

main-Gentlemen in his station are not accustomed to marry their governess

Những người danh giá ở vào địa vị ông thường không lấy cô giáo trẻ của mình làm vợ đâu

Well did I remember Mrs Reed’s face

Tôi nhớ rất rõ khuôn mặt của bà Reed

In the above examples “gentlemen” and “face” are the head noun, respectively “station” in “in his station” is post-modification for “gentlemen” and “Mrs Reed’s” is a pre-modification for “face” As for partitives when

they occur in a noun phrase they are regarded as items of position 2a Hence

in “a mile of cable”, the noun head is “cable” and the measure partitive “a

determination of noun head in a noun phrase in English is easier than that in Vietnamese noun phrase which will be dealt with in next chapters

2.4 Word order or pre-modification

2.4.1 Position 1a

This is one of the most complicated positions in term of boththe wide range and the quality of pre-modifying items It is also complicated by the structural relationship Position 1a is traditionally termed modifier which is one of the basic functions of functions of adjective phrases As stated above a complex and diverse relationship between pre-modifying items in this position with the noun head can be found Modifiers can be:

2.4.1.1 Participles often have direct relationship to the head word in the order

(1a) participle + (O) head There are two participle forms: the present

participle (the ING participle) which is often interpreted as active and the past

participle (the ED participle) which often has the passive interpretation E.g.:

(i) ING-participle:

…and Bessie laid her sleeping child in the candle

But I looked neither to rising sun, nor smiling sky,nor waking nature

Nhưng tôi chẳng chú ý tới mặt trời đang mọc, bầu trời tươi cười cũng như cảnh thiên nhiên đang bừng tỉnh [8, 360]

In the above examples the ING participle “sleeping”, “smiling”, and

“waking” are interpreted as active “sleeping child” can be interpreted as “the

rest of ING forms in these examples

(ii) “ED”- participle

Mr Rochester had sometimes read my unspoken thoughts…

Đôi khi ông Rochester đọc được cả ý nghĩ không nói ra của tôi

[8, 276]

2.4.1.2 Adjectives establish combinations with head in the order: (1a)

1a O

Các cô gái trẻ có cái tài đặc biệt… [8, 257]

A splendid midsummer shone over England

The items co-occurring in this position can possibly cluster together in

the order (i) Participle + (ii) adjective + O E.g.:

This was a full blown, very plump damsel …, languishing blue eyes,

order (1a) Adjective + (i) noun + (ii) head + 1b E.g.:

On a frosty winter afternoon I rode in sight of Thornfied Hall

Vào một chiều đông băng giá tôi phóng ngựa về Thornfield

(i) One only occurs with singular count-noun E.g.:

He did not speak to me one word

Ông không hề nói với tôi một lời [8, 386]

(ii) “Two”, “three”…“hundred”, “thousand”, … only occur with plural count head nouns E.g.:

Two days are passed

…never seek out or dwell upon the thousand peaceful delights they

3a 2a O Chim muông đang ca khúc hát cuối cùng [8, 402]

The cardinal numbers can, optionally, co-occur with ordinal numerals

in the order (a) ordinals + (b) cardinals, and vice versa (a) cardinals +

(b) ordinals

but the meaning is changed E.g.:

Mr Rochester continued blind the first two years of our union

3a (a) (b) O 1b Ông Rochester vẫn bị mù trong hai năm đầu trong cuộc sống chung của

2.4.2.3 Quantifiers

(i) “Many”, “a few”, and “several” can occur with plural count head

nouns in the order: (2a) many/ la few/ several + (O) head (plural count

nouns) E.g.:

…and now, only a few fields,…

2a O

Và bây giờ chỉ con một vài thửa ruộng [8, 370]

(ii) “Little / a little” can only occur with non-count head nouns E.g.:

I don’t mean to be baffled by a little stiffness on your part

2a O 1b Tôi không bị lừa vì thái độ một chút lãnh đạm của ông đâu

[8, 415]

(iii) “Plenty”, “a lot of”, and “lots of” can occur with non-count head

nouns or plural count head nouns E.g.:

There is plenty ofroom on this side

2a O

(iv) “A great/ good deal of”, “a large/ small quantity/ amount of” can occur with non- count head nouns E.g.:

They will have a great deal of money

2a O

2.4.3 Position 3a

This is the position for determiners which contain articles, possessive

phrase There are 6 classes of determiners with respect to their co-occurrence with the noun classes as the head They are:

(i) definite article “the”,possessive “my”, “our”, “his”, “her”, “their”,

(singular count, plural count, and non-count head nouns) E.g.:

My heart will stop and my brain burst

3a O 3a O

Tim tôi sẽ ngừng đập và đầu tôi sẽ nổ tung [8, 482]

There are no groomsmen, no bridesmaids, no relatives to wait for or 3a O 3a O 3a O

(iii) Single demonstrative maker this and that can occur with singular count

head nouns and non-count head nouns E.g.:

…till this moment I thought my little Jane was all mine

…eachhour had its allotted task

…và mỗi giờ cô làm một công việc nhất định [8, 263]

(v) Plural demonstrative makers these and those can only occur with plural count head nouns E.g.:

…those young ladies turned their backs on me?

3a 1a O

…hai cô gái trẻ này quay lưng lại với tôi [8, 262]

These words cut me

3a O

(vi) Much can only occur with non-count noun E.g.:

Did River spend much time with the ladies of his family?

3a O River có dành nhiều thời gian sống với các cô em gái không?

[8, 491]

2.4.4 Position 4a

This is the last position of the pre-modification The occurrence in this position includes: