LV INFORMATION FOCUS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE SENTENCES

Due to the limitation of time as well as the lack of material, our thesis focuses on Syntactic Devices used to mark Information Focus in English and Vietnamese sentences.. What syntacti

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 RATIONALE

English, like any other language, is full of problems for the foreign learner

As L.G Alexander [40, p.9] states, what makes language difficult is not just words, but the way words are combined to make sentences, for a sentence is a sum-total of words and this sum-total is greater than its parts Methodologists [57, p.116] have pointed out that the goal of foreign language learning is to communicate appropriately by means of the foreign language and that understanding the grammar of English can help learners to communicate appropriately since grammar is the support system of communication

As for language teaching and learning in general, both teachers and students usually pay much attention to vocabulary and grammar However, how to make use of grammatical knowledge in order to carry out communication is still a more important matter

Linguistic communication is not merely a matter of transmitting meanings from one mind to another but also of achieving communicative effects One of the ways in which speech achieves its communicative effects is through information organization embedded in syntactic structure Whether language is spoken or written, it has structure and a structure is not included in itself a hotchpotch of randomly distributed elements I cannot string words in a sentence randomly but arrange them in accordance with a set of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic rules There is a whole range of both canonical and non-canonical syntactic structures used in writing and speaking, which aid language users in conveying messages successfully The question is that the speaker has to make a right choice among these structures which will explicitly signal the writer’s

intention to the reader The reader as a result will be warned about the sort of interactional effects the writer intends Their communication is successful only when the reader gets the writer’s intention

English, like any other foreign language, is very complicated to Vietnamese learners English and Vietnamese are of different language types belonging to distant language families Also, there are quite a lot of differences in way of thinking, lifestyle and literature between the Vietnamese people and the English native speakers These differences themselves cause many difficulties for Vietnamese learners of English

As an important modern concept, Information Focus is a very important issue

in the Information theory of language communication, especially when we want

to express our intended meaning to the hearer It is the speaker who decides how

to cut up his message into pieces of information, each of which is called an information unit In each information unit, there is one part that is made outstanding from the other by processing in different ways Consider, for example:

(1.1a) John kissed Mary

(1.1b) Mary was kissed by John

(1.1c) It was John who kissed Mary

(1.1d) What John did was kiss Mary

What we want to identify in each of these sentences is focus of information – the propositional content In each case, it is asserted that kissing went on, John did the kissing and Mary was the one who was kissed However, these sentences differ from one another in terms of the order of the elements and emphasized elements (1a) is considered to be the most neutral or unmarked word order The other sentences are marked in one way or another with the focus laid on different elements

The study of how information focus is organized and realized is the study of syntactic devices to assign information focus These devices are marked by variations of basic simple structures such as: extraposition, cleft structures, passive voice, etc that are largely guided by some discourse and pragmatic factors

The learner is usually provided with syntactic structures or patterns but he is not fully aware of which one will be used in which situation and how to organize the message in accordance with information focus This paper is intended to raise the importance of teaching and learning syntactic structures to assign focus information

English and Vietnamese are two different languages Devices of focusing information in these languages are certainly very different though there do exist some similarities Learning these differences and similarities genuinely aids us in both using our native language accurately and improving our English teaching

1.2 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

There are several different ways of showing Information Focus in English and Vietnamese

To begin with, phonologically Focus can be shown by changes in stress and intonation Words as Focus are usually spoken with higher intonation and a lower voice than normal and vowel may be longer

Secondly, lexically Information Focus can be shown by using special words

or phrases, such as “really” (thật sự là), “certainly”(chắc chắn là),

“definitely”(dứt khoát) ect For example, the following sentence:

‘I enjoyed it’

will be more emphatic if we add the adverb “ really” to intensify the meaning of

“enjoyed” So we have:

(1.3) I really enjoyed it [82, p.183] Similarly, owing to the presence of the word “definitely”, the meaning of the sentence:

(1.4) Certainly, several women loved him, and he was married twice

is stronger than that of the sentence:

‘Several women loved him, and he was married twice’

Finally, syntactically (through marked word order or special focus constructions), different parts of a sentence can be given more importance by using special grammatical constructions For instance, part of a sentence can be moved to front Instead of “Tôi đã biết điều này” ( I knew this.)

we can say: Điều này, tôi đã biết.(This I knew) as in this sentence:

(1.5) When they scented my fear, they would attack This I knew [79, p.429]

“điều này” or “This”is placed at the beginning of the sentence for focus

One more way to focus information is using the structure of cleft sentence The following two sentences:

and

The Focus “his callousness” is stronger than the sentence:

‘I shall ignore his callousness’

Due to the limitation of time as well as the lack of material, our thesis

focuses on Syntactic Devices used to mark Information Focus in English and

Vietnamese sentences

Besides, in this study, I also figure out how Information Focus is arranged in these syntactic devices I also try to find out some major problem that Vietnamese learners of English face in the identification and performance of

Information Focus in English to help them make a systematic and detailed investigation so as to produce an adequate and plausible explanation of the topic

1.3 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

Our thesis aims at finding out all possible means of focusing information in English and Vietnamese equivalents In particular, I make a special effort to describe and classify grammatical constructions employed for assigning focus The intended readers of the thesis are therefore English learners and teachers, who need to understand the major syntactic devices that are used to make more prominent the information they want to communicate Such an understanding will help the teacher to present language material in details, and the learner to make individual choices without any serious risk of error It will help to guide him towards confidence in personal expression as well

What is more, the thesis will offer some suggestions for preparing and teaching language material involving means of assigning information focus

As determined by its purpose, the study attempts to find out the answers to the following main questions:

1 What syntactic devices are commonly used to assign Information Focus in English sentences?

2 What are Vietnamese equivalent devices used to assign Information Focus in sentence?

3 Which sentence elements are Focuses in English and Vietnamese?

4 What are the pragmatic factors (information status) that trigger in these devices?

5 What are the implications of learning and teaching English constructions? However, at the comparatively advanced level at which this thesis is aimed,

it is necessary to present the information systematically, and how it is used in language communication At lower levels of study, one is concerned simply with

how to form grammatical sentence to convey their idea, therefore they need to grasp all possible grammatical construction for marking information focus

The theorical material presented in this thesis is necessary for anyone who needs to understand the principles regulating the use of devices, mainly syntactic devices to mark Information Focus in English and Vietnamese

1.4 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY

The study is divided into five chapters as follow:

- Chapter 1 is Introduction In this section, the rationale of the study is presented It also contains the purpose, the scope of the study, and the organization of the study

- Chapter 2 consists of 2 parts The first part is a review of previous studies related to the problems under investigation The second is concerned with the theoretical background which includes the concepts of information, information structure, focus, classification of focus All of the syntactic devices to mark information Focus are introduced and classified depend on the principle of end-focus or thematisation In this chapter I also introduce basic sentence patterns in both languages because it is necessary to analyse the sentence construction during the study

- Chapter 3 is methodology and procedures of the study Here I focus on the aims and objectives of the study The questions raise in this chapter are answered and analyzed in the next one The reseach methods and research procedures are also included in this chapter

- Chapter 4 is findings and discussion In this chapter, I analyze, describe and illustrate the syntactic devices to assign information focus in English and the Vietnamese equivalents From these analyses, I find out the pragmatic factors trigger in these devices

- Chapter 5 is conclusion and implications I summarize the results of the tasks done in chapter 4 and suggest some implication for teaching and learning grammatical constructions to mark information focus as well as present the suggestion for further research in this chapter

CHAPTER 2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE

2.1 REVIEW OF PREVIOUS STUDIES

Information structure was first studied by the linguists of the Prague School Their studies is concerned with “Communicative Dynamism” “Communicative Dynamism” is the extent of the contribution which the sentence elements make the push forward the development of communication The theory of Communicative Dynamism that was devised by Czech linguists lays a foundation for the analysis of sentences in term of the information they contain

Adopting the Prague School view, M.A.K Halliday (1991) with: “An

Introduction to Functional Grammar” affirmed the notion of Theme and Rheme

in which Theme responded to Known and Rheme responded to Unknown

Halliday delimited the categories of these elements: the given, the new and

described their organization in an information unit Halliday also gave the role of information and stress in expressing information unit, especially new information Halliday assumed that each information segment contains one

information focus and this focus was realized by stress

After that, a lot of linguistics assumed that there may be more than one information focus in a discourse The information status was identified by speakers who used intonation to mark off the focus on any segment of information The focus can be on not only New information but also Given information where the speakers make the listeners pay much attention on the focus element as the emphasis or the contrast of what was said in the presupposition

interested much on focus structure and types of focus structure in sentences He

distinguished Old information from New information base on Pragmatic Presupposition and Focus

All of these previous works help me a lot in gaining background knowledge

to penetrate to the domain of information structure concerning the issue

In examing devices marking information which is the main part in my thesis there were many other linguists:

VanVallin & Lapolla (1997), “Syntax: Structure, Meaning and Function”,

suggested that all languages have some grammatical systems for marking which type of information is which within the utterance; it may involve intonation, morphological marking, word order or some combination theory of information

Huddleston (1979), only one kind of extraposition is mentioned in the

viewpoint of a transformationalist He transformed a sentence with clausal subject, called deep structure, into the sentence introduced with an introductory subject “it”, call surface structure This transformation shows the relation between syntax and semantics

E.K Brown and J.E Miller in “A Linguistic Introduction to Sentence

Structure” (1986) generally mention end-focus and end-weight principles The

language phenomenon occurs when language users want to place focus on

“heavy” constituents at the end of the sentence In this book, they mainly discuss extraposition of subject and object

“A University Course in English grammar” by Agenla Downing and Phillip

Locke (1992) discusses syntactic strategies in assigning focus, three of which

are postponement devices: extraposition, discontinuity of sentence elements, and dative movement

In general, all English linguists succeed in giving out some types of devices

in marking information

Dang Phuong Ha (2000) examined the phonological and syntactic features

of Information Structure in the light of discourse analysis It is concerned with both spoken and written English used in the functional style of everyday – life discourse However, the syntactic features that are presented in this thesis are studied in English sources only

Tran Huu Manh (10/2004) applied the modern concepts that are raised by

Lambrecht(1994) and Van Vallin & Lapolla(1997) to the study of sentences and Information Structure in Journal of Linguistics

Phan Thi Linh Giang (2002) investigated the postponement devices in

English and Vietnamese The devices she mentioned in her thesis are extraposition, discontinuity of sentence elements and existence construction These devices are based on principle of end-focus and end-weight Therefore, the devices based on thematization have not been presented

Huynh Thi Bich Ngoc (2005) presented, described and analyzed

Information Structure at the level of sentences and paragraphs as well In this thesis, she tried to present different kinds of Focus, Focus Domain, Topic sentences in paragraphs No devices are investigated Moreover, the resources used in her thesis is in English language only

In Vietnamese, Diệp Quang Ban (1998) in “Một Số Vấn Đề về Câu Tồn Tại

Trong Tiếng Việt” has paid special attention to existence constructions in Vietnamese He groups types of existential constructions and generalizes syntactic forms, lexical constraints and semantic feature of existential constructions Yet, few pragmatic characteristics have been discussed

Minh Thuyết and Nguyễn Văn Hiệp describe rules of movement of Subject

and object on syntactic and pragmatic ground Syntactically, they mention syntactic constraints on sentence element movement Pragmatically, they state

that the purpose of the movement is to meet the principle of information structure, and to place a topic for the next sentence

“Phong Cách Học và Đặc Điểm Tu Từ” (1983) by Cù Đình Tú and “Phong

Cách Học Tiếng Việt (1997) and “99 Phương Tiện và Biện Pháp Tu từ Tiếng

Việt (2001) by Đinh Trọng Lạc have studied pragmatic features of variations

of Vietnamese basic structures The linguistic phenomenon of movement of sentence elements is considered one of the syntactic devices They say that the constituent that is moved out of its normal position to the end of sentence is the one the writer intends to emphasize most and give some specific information Briefly, all of linguists in both languages discussed information structure through syntactic devices to mark information focus However, no one have a full picture of these devices in English and Vietnamese equivalence The study

of syntactic devices to mark information focus in both English and Vietnamese

is still open

As the background mentioned above, it is worthwhile analyzing information structure, information focus to contrast and distinguish information focus by investigating the syntactic devices to assign the information focus in English and Vietnamese sentences

2.2 THEORICAL BACKGROUND

2.2.1 INFORMATION

When we talk about a situation, we can usually organize the information in various ways; for example, by choosing different elements of the situation as the subject of a clause or sentence

(2.1a) Last night, the C.I.A arrested the attorney general of the United States

(2.2b) The attorney general of the United States was arrested last night by the C.I.A

(2.3c) The attorney general of the United States was arrested by the C.I.A last

The way we choose to organize information in a clause or sentence can depend on what has been said before, on what the listener already knows, or on what we want to take the focus off

2.2.1.1 Given and New information

Information, as M.A.K Halliday defines, is “a process of interaction between

what is already know or predictable and what is new or unpredictable” It is the interplay of what is new and what is old or given that generates information in the linguistic sense As a result, it can be said that an information unit is a

structure which is made up of the new and the given

Given information is something which the speaker assumes the hearer knows about already; and new information is something unknown or unpredictable In the following dialogue:

(2.4) “What did John say to Mary?

“He was speaking” is given information: it is already given by the preceding clause

He was speaking to me

GIVEN NEW

As new information is obviously what is most important in a message, it receives the information focus, whereas given information does not That is to say, the focus, signaled by the nucleus, indicates where the new information lies, and the unit carrying such information has the nucleus in final position In the dialogue:

“We’re going to the races”

NEW

The whole clause is new information But in

“We’re going to the races

NEW

The new information is “going to the race” And the final adverbial is new information as in:

“We’re going to the races

NEW

2.2.1.2 Topic and Comment

Sentences can be organized in such a way that one part represents what the speaker wants the sentence to be about, and the other part contains the major information asserted about what is presented in the first part The first part of sentence is called the topic, the second part the comment

Consider the following statements:

(2.8) The next train is at haft past nine (at a railway station)[70, p.93] Each of these sentences starts with a topic phrase The topic is known or

expected in the situation: “steak” is what we are eating; “I” am in the shop; “the

next train” is what we are going to catch

The new information about the topic is presented in the comment which usually comes at or near the end of the sentences

This steak is terrible

The next train is at haft past nine

The point of interest, the important part of the message, is “terrible”, “a

couple of books” and “half past nine” It is also the part of the sentence where

the voice rises or falls

Each of the statement starts with something known, the topic, and ends with something new, the comment

To sum up, I want to resort to R A Jacobs’ viewpoint on the connection between what was said before and what is said after within a sentence: “The old information is referred to and is clearly the topic about which the speaker intends

to communicate something The new information is being asserted as the main thrust of the sentence, the comment about the topic.”

2.2.1.3 Theme and Rheme

We base our explanation of “theme” and “rheme” on M.A.K Halliday’s point of view

He assumes that “in all languages the clause has the character of a message”

It has some form of organization which gives it the status of a communicative event In English, and in other language as well, the clause is organized as a message by having a special function assigned to one part of it One part of a

clause is called the theme; it then combines with another part, the rheme, so that

the two parts together make a message

The theme is indicated by position in the clause: it is put in initial position The theme is considered to be the element which serves as the point of departure

of the message The remainder of the message is named the rheme Therefore, a clause, as information structure, consists of a theme followed by a rheme In the following sentences:

(2.9a) The duke has given my aunt that teapot

(2.9b) My aunt has been given that teapot by the duke

“the duke”, “my aunt”, and “that teapot” are the themes and the rest of each

sentence is rheme

As a general guide, the theme can be identified as an element which comes first in the clause The theme is element in a particular structure which organizes

the clause as a message A clause, therefore, is organized as a rheme-theme structure If in any language, the information is organized as a rheme-theme structure, it is natural that the position for theme should be at the beginning of the clause or sentence, rather than at the end or in the middle

The theme is not necessarily a noun phrase like those in the above sentences

It can also be an adverb phrase, or a prepositional phrase as in the following examples

(2.11) Very carefully she put him back on his feet again [57, p.39]

“Once”, “very carefully”, and “on Friday night” as adverb phrases and a

prepositional phrase respectively are the themes

2.2.2 INFORMATION STRUCTURE

2.2.2.1 Information Structure in English

The questions that the theory of information structure is supposed to answer are what people do when they focalize and what and in which way focalization contributes to the construction of meaning When sentences are considered in terms of communicative functions, they include in themselves information units These units can be organized in different ways so as to be as much informative

as desired Pragmatically, there exist some factors having influence on the ordering of information units in sentences

Firbas (1964), a functionalist linguist of the Prague School, argues that information structure is a communicative dynamism (CD), which Firbas defines

as ‘the extent to which the sentence element contributes to the development of the communication’ Information in a sentence is distributed in accordance with

the scale of CD, that is, progress from left low to right high information value

Information with the lowest degree of CD is called old (given) information, which is considered the least relevant type of information Information with the

highest CD is named new information, which conveys the most important information Therefore, according to the principle of CD, sentences are organized so that old information precedes what is new in the discourse context and this presentation is preferable

The study of sentence grammar from an information structure perspective is

understanding of such phenomena: cleft construction, postponement, dislocation,

etc According to the principle of CD, the constituents that carries old information is put at the initial position and the one that carries new information stands at the final position of the clause Hence, the beginning and the end of the sentence are two focal points in English and as a matter of fact, there is indeed a correlation between word order and information structure of sentences and that pragmatic consideration is reflected in the syntactic composition of English utterances In any language, there exist a variety of constructions that allow the speakers to structure the discourse so that new information is focalized

Following Prince (1992), we shall refer to entities that are new to the

discourse as discourse-new and those that are new to the hearer as hearer-new; likewise, entities that have been evoked in the prior discourse will be called

discourse-old, and those that are assumed to be known to the hearer as old The distinction between discourse-familiarity will result in four possible

hearer-information statuses, of which only three normally occur in natural discourse:

1 Hearer-old, discourse-old: this refers to information which has previously been evoked in the current discourse, and which the speaker therefore believes is known to the hearer

(2.13) When somebody says to me, ‘you’re great, how come you just a

waitress? Just a waitress’ I’d say, ‘Why don’t you think you deserve to be served

2 Hearer-old, discourse-new: this is a kind of information which has not been evoked in the current discourse, but which the speaker believes is known to

the hearer Both the hearer and speaker are supposed to share the same knowledge of information In the following instance, they are assumed to know who Chelsea Clinton is

Eg: There is a new hotel in Verona In this hotel, Chelsea Clinton works

3 Hearer-new, discourse-new: information which has not been evoked in the current discourse, and which the speaker does not believe is known to the hearer

4 Hearer-new, discourse-old: theoretically, information which has been evoked in the current discourse, but which the speaker believes is not known to

the hearer

2.2.2.2 Information Structure in Vietnamese

Like English, the theory of information structure in Vietnamese language is also based on the theory of actual division of the sentence by the Praha The

authors of the grammar book ‘Ngữ Pháp Tiếng Viet’ are the first linguists to

discuss possibility of existence of the structure giveness-newness in Vietnamese

language and devices presenting this structure Then, Panfilov described various

ways of presenting old and new information in Vietnamese sentences in an

article entitled Sự Phân Đoạn Thực Tại Của Câu Tiếng Việt (1980) Lý Toàn

Thắng (1981) and Diệp Quang Ban(1989) applied dichotomous opposition

(Theme-Rheme) of the theory of actual division of sentences in respect to a new way that theme is what will be talked about or explain and rheme is what the speaker talks about or explains theme Theoretically, all above linguists generally intend to distinguish functional sentence perspective (ESP, also known

as actual division of sentence), (theme-rheme or topic-comment) from syntactic division of sentence (subject-predicate) However, practically it is complicated and hard work to make a distinction and establish corelations between functions

on these two grounds The reason is that there are no appropriate surface signs marking dichotomous structures (theme-rheme, subject-predicate) Cao Xuân Hạo [12, p.425-426] states that correlation between information structure and

thematic structure can only be found in languages accepting difference between theme and subject but no difference between theme and giveness Yet, in some languages like Vietnamese, Chinese… basic syntactic structures directly reflect logical structure of discourse; there is an absolute difference between information structure and thematic structure Thematic structure considered as syntactic structure always divides a sentence into two parts: theme-rheme Information structure – that is – a sentence is studied on pragmatic ground – may consider the whole sentence or any sentence constituent (object, postmodifier…) as new information or information focus Cao Xuân Hao’s view has been shared by many Vietnamese linguists like Lưu Văn Lăng, Nguyễn Thị Ảnh,… Recently, Nguyễn Thị Thúy states in her article [33] there exists two different opinions of Vietnamese linguists to information structure:

(1) Information structure and thematic structure (theme-rheme) are completely different from each other The thematic structure is studied on syntactic ground and information structure on pragmatic ground The case in which thematic structure correlates with information structure is not popular in Vietnamese Sometimes new information is the whole structure Theme-rheme of it can correlate with Theme but not Rheme and vice versa The second explanation is that new and old information can only be found in context and hearers’ knowledge and is marked by stress in speech, while thematic structure is

marked by word order and the position of ‘thì’ and 'là’[10]

(2) The thematic structure and the structure of old and new information are integrated in information structure They are the two basic elements of information structure of utterances

So far few Vietnamese linguists have spent time studying profound relationship between information structure and sentence word order and effects

of information structure on sentence word order

2.2.3 INFORMATION FOCUS

2.2.3.1 Definition of Focus

Knud Lambecht in “Information Structure and Sentence Form” assumes that the Focus of a sentence, or, more precisely, the Focus of proposition expressed

by a sentence in a given utterance context, is seen as the element of information

whereby the presupposition and the assertion differ from each other The Focus

is that portion of a proposition which can not be taken for granted at time of

speech It is the unpredictable or pragmatically non-recoverable element in an utterance The Focus is what makes an utterance into an assertion [66, p.207] More explicitly the notion is expressed in Halliday’s (1967) definition of

Focus:

“Information focus is one kind of emphasis, that whereby the speaker marks

out a part (which may be the whole) of a message block as that which he wishes

to be interpreted as informative What is focus is “new” information; not in the sense that it cannot have been previously mentioned, although it is often the case that it has not been, but in the sense that the speaker presents as not being recoverable from the preceding discourse… The focus of the message, it is suggested, is that which is represented by the speaker as being new, textually (and situationally) non-derivable information”

The concept of Focus is the element of information in a sentence whereby

shared and not-yet-shared knowledge differing from each other

Let’s look at the example:

(2.14) Q: Where did you go last night?

In some intuitive sense, we are no doubt justified in saying, that the word

movies, or perhaps the phrase the movies, in the answer indicates the point

“where there is the greatest concentration of information”, or that this word is

the element “whereby the speaker marks out [the] part… of [the] message block which he wishes to be interpreted as informative”

2.2.3.2 Types of focus

a New Information Focus

Constituents of information unit in an utterance are organized into principled order: old –new Old information precedes New information, thus new information focus often stands in the last-portion of a sentence In English this

order is end-focus This is similar to Vietnamese:

Look at the example:

In this sentence, information is divided into two portions, the known

information “Lão ấy”, is one which the speaker and the hearer have already

known, takes the initial position; the new information, is one which the speaker believes the hearer doesn’t know, and which the speaker presents it as the most

important of information, takes the last position: “Lại đến” Therefore

information focus in this sentence is new information focus

b End-Focus and Contrastive Information Focus

The neutral and usual position of focus is end-focus, the chief prominence on the last open-class item or proper noun in the clause

Contrastive focus, however, may be placed at earlier points, and so may fall

on any of the non-final elements of the clause For example:

c Contrastive Focus on Words and Syllables

The example presented above shows that any element, for contrastive purpose, can receive nuclear prominence on its last fully stressed syllable

Intonation can also focus more specifically on a particular word of a phrase, rather than a phrase of a clause:

(2.23) DỲlan Thomas was born in 1914 (not EDWARD Thomas)

Or the normal stress pattern of a word maybe distorted by means of focus to show a contrastive point:

(2.26) I’m afraid that BÙreaucracy can be worse than Átocracy

(The normal stress patterns of the words are /bu’reaucracy/ and /au’tocracy/.)

2.2.4 PRINCIPLE OF END-FOCUS, END-WEIGHT, THEMATIZATION

2.2.4.1 Principle of End-focus

There are two ways of assigning focus in a sentence: preverbal focus position, i.e focused information precedes verbs, normally in initial-clause position and post-verbal focus position (known as end-focus), i.e focused information follows verbs, usually in final-clause position Quirk et al [74] calls

the end-focus the old –before- new principle since the principle is related to the

tendency of recoverable (old) information to precede irrecoverable (new) information So, there exists one-to-one correlation between new information and end-focus This focus tends to come towards the end of the sentence, which

is unmarked, whereas the focus falls on the initial position of the sentence, it is marked With English and Vietnamese postponement devices, focused information stands at the final sentence position where it is believed to easily attract the listener’s attention

2.2.4.2 Principle of End-weight

What follows closely related to the end –focus principle is the principle of end-weight [74, p.189] which stipulates that longer, heavier structures tend to come in the final position of sentence This is hardly surprising since new information which usually comes at the end often needs to be stated fully, and since it takes more assembly time for heavy information than light one The weight of a constituent is a matter of its length and syntactic and morphological complexity Probably the most widely accepted of proposed In English and many languages, it has been recognized that there is a preference for placing heavy constituents towards the right of the sentence to alleviate the complexity

or heaviness Therefore, the weight of a constituent may affect its position in the clause Both speaker’s and hearer’s interests have put forward as reasons why weight may have an effect on word order The fact that heavier constituents simply take longer to formulate may help to explain the preference for heavy

constituents to appear ate in many languages The following example will show

the influence of end-weight on the ordering of sentence constituents:

Instead of this unaccepted sentence:

* I have hated the man who wallowed on them while I was wallowing in mud and

blood too much

The English say:

(2.27) I have hated too much the man who wallowed on them while I was

wallowing in mud and blood [53, p.56]

In this example, the object, long and complex new information, is shifted to the end of the sentence to satisfy the principle of end-focus and end-weight, which helps avoid front-heavy sentences as Quirk et al [74, p.426] stated ‘there

is a feeling that the predicate of a clause should where possible be longer than the subject’

2.2.4.3 Thematization

In English, the Theme can generally be identified as an element which comes

in first position in the clause As Cao Xuan Hao mentions, the Vietnamese language is a Theme prominent language

When any constituent other than the Subject functions as Theme, it is regarded as a marked Theme Such a constituent may be thought of as in some way having been moved from its unmarked position to the front of the clause

Technically, we can say that it has been thematized Thus, in sentence:

(2.28) At around 5000 B.C., man learns to smelt and shape copper

We can say that the circumstantial Adjunct at around 5000 B.C has been

thematized Similarly in the clause:

We can say that the Object this example has been thematized

To understand the possible motivation for selecting the constituent other than Subject to begin the clause, that is, to understand why thematization occurs, it is necessary to look at the relationship between a clause and its context

Objects in the initial position of a clause are highly marked They are common in English, particularly in written English However, they do occur in certain contexts

If we try to reconstruct a context in which the thematized object in clause

such as this example I invented would seem natural and appropriate, we might

come up with something like:

(2.29) Most of the examples come from the texts, but this example I invented, as

In this example, the marked theme highlights a contrast between most of examples and this example As thematized object are highly marked, it often have this kind of contrastive effect

Basing on the principle of end-focus, there are devices marking information

focus include passive, existential sentences and extraposition whereas the postponing is based on the principle of end weight The others are preposing and

clefting are based on the principle of thematization

2.2.5 DEVICES IN ASSIGNING INFORMATION FOCUS

2.2.5.1 Phonological devices

Speakers divide their messages into one or more chunks which are

information units Each information unit is realized, not directly by a

grammatical unit, but by a phonological unit called a tone unit

A tone unit consists of a series of stressed and unstressed syllables and always contains one syllable which is marked by a jump in pitch (“pitch prominence’) which is accompanied by increased duration and tonic stress This

is the intonation nucleus The syllable on which the nucleus falls is the focus of

information

Speaker use their voice to stress the the focus information The following sentence could be said in many different ways:

(2.30a) My brother has sold his motorbike to the VET

(2.30b) My brother has sold his MOTORbike to the vet (not his car)

(2.30c) My brother has SOLD his motorbike to the vet (not given it)

(2.30d) My BROther has sold his motorbike to the vet (not my cousin)

Generally, the main stress in a sentence is on the last word In declarative sentences and wh-question the stress is accompanied by a falling tone Therefore the first example (15a) has unmarked focus, the stress falls on VET But stress can also be used contrastively to focus on new information that the speaker want

to assert, such as in (15b, 15c, 15d) Contrastive stress is usually marked by a rising tone The speaker’s focus, then, is on asserting what the addressee is assumed not to know, or at least not to have in mind at that moment

Pronounce the following sentence aloud:

(2.31b) The BULLDOZER destroyed the cottage

In (2.31a) the main stress is where we would expect it to be - on the last constituent of the verb phrase The verb phrase contains the major new information In (2.31b), contrastive stress has been placed on the last constituent

of the subject noun phrase The subject is most typically old information; contrastive stress identifies this constituent as containing the major new information

(1) Focusing adjuncts

Focusing adjuncts indicate that what is being communicated is limited to a part that is focused Focusing adjuncts can be divided into:

(a)Limiters:

- Exclusives restrict what is said to the part focused, e.g alone, just, merely,

only, purely, simply,

- Particularizers restrict what is said particularly or mainly to the part

focused, e.g chiefly, especially, mainly, mostly, in particularly,…

(b) Additives: also, either, even, neither, nor, too, as well as, in addition

(2.35) Everybody helped with the packing, even the dog [82, p.188] (2.36) Other people have meetings on Sunday, and we have meeting on

(2) Intensifiers:

Intensifiers are not limited to indicating an increase in intensity; they indicate

a point on the intensity scale which may be high or low Most of the common intensifiers are adverbs, but they also include some adjectives, noun phrases, and

a few prepositional phrases

Intensifiers can be divided into three semantic classes: emphasizers; amplifiers; and downtoners

(a) Emphasizers have a general heightening effect Common emphasizers are:

- actually, certainly, clearly, definitely, indeed, obviously, plainly, really, surely, for certain, for sure, of course

(2.38) Tommy’s really stupid You know, he actually still believes in

- frankly, honestly, literally, fairly

(2.40) Honestly, I never said a word to him about the money [82, p.157] (b)Amplifiers are divided into maximizers, which can denote the upper extreme of the scale, and boosters, which denote a high point on the scale

- Maximizers: absolutely, altogether, completely, entirely, fully, quite,

thoroughly, utterly, most, perfectly

- Boosters: badly, deeply, greatly, much, so, violently, well, by far

(c) Downtoners such as “partly, slightly, kind of, sort of,…” have a lowering

effect on the force of the verb, so they cannot fulfil the function of assigning focus

Swearwords are often used to assign focus in an informal style They are considered intensifying adjectives or adverbs and used to focus on emotion, e.g

damn(ed), goddam, blasted, bloody, sodding, bleeding

(4) Interjections

Interjections are words whose only function is to express emotion, such as:

Oh (surprise), Ah (satisfaction, recognition…); Aha (jubilant satisfaction,

recognition); Ow (great surprise); Yipee (excitement, delight); Ouch or Ow (pain); Ugh (disgust); Ooh (pleasure, pain)

(2.47) Ow! That hurt [79, p.432]

2.2.5.3 Syntactic devices

In writing, the resources of stress and intonation are not available, and so written one is essentially limited to syntactic devices for communicating different focuses In other words, there are various grammatical constructions Many language scholars have recognized that there are correlations between the order of syntactic constituents in a sentence and the discourse role of the information which a particular constituent represents Therefore, when syntactic

constructions are considered in terms of information structure, that is

organization of information in a sentence, speakers must make a choice between alternative syntactic constructions, each of which allows presenting certain kind

of information Any non-canonical constructions are called information-packing constructions which characteristically differ from their basic (canonical) counterparts not in truth conditions or illocutionary meanings but in the way the information content is packaged It is, therefore, clear that information-packing constructions allow language users to say the same thing in different ways, with various versions differing in how the information is positioned in the discourse Huddleston et al [60, p.1366] classifies the information-packing constructions into the following types in terms of the positioning of the non-canonically ordered constituents in a sentence:

Table 2.1 Information Packing Constructions

Information

packing

constructions

1 Preposing We rejected most of them Most of them we rejected

2 Postposing

There was a certain aloofness

that I found quite disconcerting in her manner

There was in her manner a

certain aloofness that I found quite disconcerting

3 Existential Several doctors were on

7 Extraposition That they meet is fortunate It is fortunate that they meet

All of these marking focus devices can be defined as the movement of a constituent into a position where we would not ordinarily expect to find it The syntactic elements present in the sentence must be moved around to produce a grammatical sentence The reasons for employing word-order focus that have most frequently been identified and described are: discourse constraints (e.g the management of given and new information) and the expression of counterexpectancy, contrast, or emphasis

From the point of view of communicative effect, the important positions in the clause are initial position and final position We have seen that English has

devices for reordering the clause so as to bring an element to initial position

(thematic fronting) We shall examine the left –movement device and clefting

which places the element to be focused near the front Both of these devices

provide thematic prominence

Equally, the language provides resources for shifting information towards the

end of the clause, which is based on principle of end –focus and end-weight The

function of the WH-cleft is, in part, just this Other postponing devices include the active-passive alternative, existential sentences and extraposition

2.2.6 BASIC CLAUSE PATTERNS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

2.2.6.1 English Clause Patterns

Delahunty et al [48] states that the basic structure of a clause is very simple

“A clause is a grammatical unit which contain a subject and a predicate” The subject is what the sentence is about and the predicate says something about its subject

There are seven basic clause patterns in English:

7 SV A swarm of locusts appeared

2.2.6.2 Vietnamese Sentence Patterns

I absolutely agree with Hồ Lê [22] when he says that Vietnamese is an inflectional language, which does not mean it has no grammar but it has other means to present grammar: word order, stress, intonation… instead of morphological flections Therefore like other languages, there does exist the structure Subject- Predicate in Vietnam It is obligatory that each Vietnamese sentence should have a predicate but not a subject The order in which subject precedes predicate is known as canonical, marked order The frequency of non-canonical order occurrence in Vietnamese is quite low As an inflectional language, there are no changes of word form (number, tense…) when the words are combined in a sentence These words can stand in different sentence positions, and can combine with certain other words, and in each position each word has a different function: all the words that occur in certain position belong

to the word class defined by that position As a result, constituent order in a sentence is quite fixed:

e.g.: (1) Cái cân này chính xác (a noun)

(This pair of scales is accurate)

(2)Bán cho tôi một cân cam (a quantifier)

(Give me a kilo of oranges)

(3) Bạn cân nặng bao nhiêu? (a verb)

(How much do you weight?)

According to Hồ Lê [19] there are also seven main clause patterns in Vietnamese

Unlike English, the predicator in these Vietnamese clause patterns is not only

a verb, but an adjective and a noun as well

CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY

3.1 OVERVIEW

In this chapter, I first focus on the aims and objectives of the study Then, the

research method is mentioned Next came to research procedures They include

the decision on the research questions, the selection of samples, data collection and analyses, proposal writing and presentation Finally, this chapter is ended with a research schedule of the study as well as the summary

3.2 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

As presented above, there are three ways to assign Information Focus They are phonological devices (through tone and intonation); lexical devices (through words and phrases) and syntactic devices (through marked word order or special focus constructions) Therefore, in this study I only desire to gain the following

aims and objectives

3.2.1 AIMS

The research aims

- To make learners be aware of the syntactic devices to mark Information Focus

in English and Vietnamese sentences

- To help Vietnamese learners of English have a better insight of syntactic devices to mark Information Focus in order to apply appropriate devices to express correctly, effetely and clarify what they mean

- To provide teachers with some valuable information in teaching constructions

of emphasis

3.2.2 OBJECTIVES

The study is done:

- To identify and describe syntactic devices used to mark information focus in English and Vietnamese equivalents in written discourse

- To analyze syntactic devices to mark information focus

- To investigate the pragmatic interpretation

- To find out how English speakers, writers make use of the devices to mark information focus in sentences

-To show the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese devices in syntactic and pragmatic aspects

-To offer some suggestions for the application of the study to the learning and teaching how to mark information focus in English and Vietnamese sentences

3.3 RESEARCH METHOD AND PROCEDURE

With the aims and objectives described above, the study is carried out on qualitative and descriptive methods

Descriptive research is supposed to be the main method for the contrastive analysis because it is synthetic and analytic in its approach and deductive in its objects The study also uses qualitative approaches as supporting methods This method allows analyzing data to make the generalization about characteristics of the data which is based on the information obtained from the examples Besides, the quantitative approach is also used for frequency calculation of the devices The theoretical background in the thesis is taken from various English and Vietnamese authors

3.3.1 DECISION ON THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The thesis aims at finding out all syntactic devices of focusing information in English and Vietnamese equivalents

Therefore English learners and teachers, who need to understand the major syntactic devices that are used to make more prominent the information they want to communicate are the intended readers of the thesis Such an understanding will help the teacher to present language material in details, and

the learner to make individual choices without any serious risk of error It will help to guide him towards confidence in personal expression as well

The thesis also offers some suggestions for preparing and teaching language material involving means of focusing information

As determined by its purpose, the study attempts to solve the problem concerning the following issues:

- What syntactic devices are commonly used to assign Information Focus in English sentences? What are Vietnamese equivalent devices used to assign Information Focus in sentences?

- Which sentence elements are Focuses in English and Vietnamese sentences?

- What are the pragmatic factors (information status) that trigger in these devices? and the implications for learning and teaching English as well as developing material

3.3.2 SELECTION OF THE SAMPLE

I have collected about 800 samples for each language All are used to investigate the similarities and differences between two languages They are mainly taken from English books and short stories as well as Vietnamese ones 3.3.3 DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSES

This study aims to consider the constructions as devices used to assign Information Focus in English and Vietnamese so as to find out the similarities and differences of these devices in two languages

The basic unit for investigation is the sentence and its equivalent The thesis focuses mainly on material collected from both English and Vietnamese novels

as well as short stories

The data in English are taken mainly from three sources The first source is

English stories such as “The White Monkey” [54] by John Galsworthy, “Love of

Life” ( Selected American Short Stories) [68] by London, Jack et al The second

source is the teaching materials such as “Headway Intermediate” [80] by Soar,

John and Liz, “The Cambridge English Course” [81] by Swan, Michael and Walter, “Streamline English Destination” [58], “Streamline English Directions” [59] by Hartly, Bernard and Viney, Peter; “Fluency in English” [39],

“Developing skills” [40] by Alexander, L.G… The third source of illustrated

examples is references such as “English Syntax – A Grammar for English

Language professionals” [64] by Jacobs, R.A.; “Collins Cobuild English Grammar” [79] by Sinclair, J et al.; “A University Course in English Grammar”

[49] by Dowing, Angela, and Locke, Phillip……The examples, or to be more exact, the information units are collected at random from the second source About 85 out of 768 examples are quoted They are then described and analyzed

so that some generalizations can be made about their syntactic and pragmatic features

The data in Vietnamese are taken mainly from two sources The first is from

short stories: “40 truyện ngắn rất hay” [21] by Hội Nhà Văn Việt Nam, novels:

“Lều Chõng” [27] and “Tắt Đèn” [28] by Ngô Tất Tố… The second source is from Vietnamese references such as “Ngữ pháp Tiếng Việt” [10] by Diệp Quang Ban; “Ngữ Pháp Tiếng Việt” [36] by Nguyễn Tài Cẩn; “Phong cách học Tiếng

Việt” [12] and “99 Phương Tiện và Biện Pháp Tu Từ Trong Tiếng Việt” [13] by

Đinh Trọng Lạc…Of those books, “40 truyện ngắn rất hay” and “Lều chõng”

are paid much attention to because in these books the author use a lot of sentence constructions assigning Information Focus They are really necessary for us to use and analyze the syntactic features of Devices focusing Information About

85 out of 765 Vietnamese examples are analyzed and illustrated in the thesis

I tried to choose the most interesting and understandable samples, not something too complicated Samples and examples were written on pieces of paper of the same size so that it was easy to be counted and taken out when in need

The data in English and Vietnamese are grouped into categories depending

on their structural patterns The typical sentences are listed as illustrations The researcher observes and investigates the data taken from literary works, examines how they are used to describe them A more detailed linguistic analysis

is finally performed in order to find out the differences among them and compare them with Vietnamese equivalents

3.3.4 RESEARCH PROPOSAL WRITING AND PRESENTATION

A research proposal is a written plan for a study It spells out in details what the researcher intends to do Thus, a proposal of the study had been written

before the study was actually carried out This proposal allows others to know more about the intended research and offer suggestions for improving the study

At the same time, it helps the researcher decide what to do at the particular periods of time and avoid the unknown or unexpected problems The research proposal, then, was presented to the Science committee in the Danang Foreign Languages College There, the Science Committee members will consider the feasibility of the study carefully and offer necessary and helpful suggestions to help the researcher improve or reorient the study

3.4 STUDY SCHEDULE

The time frame for carrying out activities of the research is presented in the table 3.1

Table 3.1: Activities of the Research

9 Presentation of the thesis at

the Master Thesis Evaluation

Council of Danang Foreign

Languages Colleges

x

3.5 SUMMARY

In Chapter three, I presented some problems relating to the methodology of doing this survey research The aims and objectives of the study were introduced first The next is the research methods Then I concerned to research procedures which involve the decision on the research questions, the selection of the sample, data collection and analysis, the writing and presentation of the research proposal The chapter ends with the research schedule As for results, the following chapter will deal with them in detail

4.1.1.1 English Extraposition of Subject

a Extraposition of Finite Subject Clauses

The most important type of extraposition is the extraposition of finite subject clauses When the subject clause is moved to the end of the sentence, the initial subject position is filled by the anticipatory "it" acting as a kind of substitute for the "postponed" subject The resulting sentence thus contains two subjects which

we may identify as the subject (the clause which is notionally the subject of the sentence) and the dummy subject "it" [57, p.963] Extraposition of finite subject clauses is illustrated in the following examples:

(4.1) The first of the two ships to reach Java after the race had begun was the Thermopylae, but on the Indian Ocean, the Cully Sark took the lead It seems

(4.2) It really is incredible that in this day and age we should still allow hunting

or bull-fighting, that we should be prepared to sit back and watch two men batter each other to pulp in a boxing ring, that we should be relatively unmoved

by the sigh of one or a number of racing cars crashing and bursting into flames

It can be seen that the subject clauses in these examples carry new information They are longer, and much more informative than their complement As a result, they are moved to end position A simple rule for deriving a sentence with subject clause extraposition from one or more orthodox ordering is

Cl S + V + C It + V + C + that + Cl S

Figure4.1: Construction with Extraposition of Finite Subject Clause

It should be noticed that both constructions are acceptable but the "it" construction seems stylistically more acceptable and usual than the construction without extraposition The reason why this should be has something to do with informativeness of the sentence and/or with processing difficulties in understanding the sentence Extraposition of subject clauses is commonly used

in speech and writing when the subject is longer than the complement The placement of the weighty and most informative part at the end of the sentence is

in accordance with the principle of end-focus and end-weight and is affected by the motivation to place focus on new information

If the clause is kept in front position as in:

(4.3) That all great art has this power of suggesting a world beyond is

In (4.3) the long subject clause comes in front position It seems to break the end-weight principle and is less natural Yet, it is not new information

b Extraposition of Non-Finite Subject Clauses

● Extraposition of to-infinitive Clauses

Not only finite subject clauses but also non-finite subject clauses can be extraposed It is observed that to-infinitive clauses are more regularly extraposed