A contrastive analysis of premodification in english noun phrase and vietnamese equivalent

According to Randolph Quirk in University Grammar of English, 1973 and Geoffrey Leech Jansvartvich A Communicative Grammar of English, 2.2 Classification of noun phrase English noun phr

First of all, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Mrs Ha Thi Van Tien,

my supervisor for her great help as well as her precious suggestions on my study

I would also like to express our gratitude to my teachers and friends, who havedirectly or indirectly helped me with their encouragement and comments

Finally, my thanks go to my families for their support during the time I carriedout this study

Pre- modifier in English noun phrase has an important function in sentences;however, they cause a great problem for Vietnamese learners Both beginners andadvanced learners may make mistakes when using them in English noun phrase such asarranging adjectives in order or using articles, etc In order to help learners to avoidthese mistakes and acquire better knowledge of English, particularly the matters ofEnglish noun phrase, it is necessary to give an overview of English noun phrase, itspre- modifiers and to find out similarities and differences between pre- modifiers inEnglish noun phrase and those in Vietnamese That is the reason why I chose the topic

“A contrastive analysis of premodification in English noun phrase and Vietnameseequivalent” for my study

- Od: Direct object

- Oi: Indirect object

- Cs: Subject Complement

- Co: Object complement

- Pre: Pre- position

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i

ABSTRACT ii

A LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iii

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Purposes of the study 1

3 Research questions 1

4 Scope of the study 2

5 Methods of the study 2

6 The structures of the study 2

CHAPTER II: GENERAL INTRODUCTION OF ENGLISH NOUN PHRASE.3 2.1 Definition of the noun phrase 3

2.2 Classification of noun phrase 3

2.3Functions of the noun phrase 5

2.3.1 Noun phrase as subject 5

2.3.2 Noun phrase as Object 5

2.3.3 Noun phrase as complement 6

2.3.4 Noun phrase as adverbials 6

2.3.5 Noun phrase as appositive 6

2.4 Components of premodification in English noun phrase 6

2.4.1 Closed- system items 6

2.4.1.1 Determiner 7

2.4.1.2 Pre-determiners 10

2.4.1.3 Post- determiners 13

2.4.2 Open- class items 15

2.4.2.1 Single premodification 16

2.4.2.1.1 Premodification by adjectives 16

2.4.2.1.2 Premodification by adverbs 17

2.4.2.1.3 Premodification by participles 18

2.4.2.1.4 Premodification by genitives 19

2.4.2.1.5 Premodification by nouns 20

2.4.2.1.6 Premodification by sentence 21

2.4.2.2 Multiple premodification 21

2.4.2.2.1 With single head 21

2.4.2.2.2With multiple head 23

2.4.2.2.3With modified modifier 23

2.4.2.2.4 Other complexities in premodification 24

2.5 The structure of the noun phrase with its premodification 25

2.5.1 Some analyzing of pre-modification in English noun phrase 25

2.5.2 The relative order of pre-modifiers in the complex noun phrase 25

CHAPTER III: GENERAL FEATURES OF VIETNAMESE NOUN PHRASE 27

3.1 Definition of Vietnamese noun phrase 27

3.2 Functions of Vietnamese noun phrase 27

3.3 Components of Vietnamese noun phrase 28

3.3.1 Premodification 28

3.3.1.1 Premodification by classifiers or units of measurement 28

3.3.1.2 Premodification by quantifiers 30

3.3.1.3 Premodification by totalities (pre3) 32

CHAPTER IV: COMPARISON BETWEEN PREMODIFICATION IN ENGLISH NOUN PHRASE AND VIETNAMESE EQUAVILENT 33

4.1 The similarities 34

4.1.1 The similarities of structure 34

4.1.2 The similarities of position 34

4.1.3 The possibility of changing modifiers to new positions 35

4.1.4 The changes of meaning 35

4.2.1 The difference in position of pre-modifiers in English and Vietnamese noun phrases 36

4.2.1.1 Adjectives 36

4.2.1.2 Participles 38

4.2.1.3 Genitives 40

4.2.1.4 Some other modifiers 41

4.2.2 Other differences between premodification in English and Vietnamese noun phrases 41

4.2.2.1 Articles 41

4.2.2.2 The concord of number between the head and demonstrative adjectives in English noun phrase 42

4.2.2.3 The occurrence of classifier- modifiers in Vietnamese noun phrase 43

4.2.2.4 The occurrence of “helping” word “cái” and “những” in pre-modification of Vietnamese noun- phrase 44

CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION 45

REFERENCES 46

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Nowadays, English has become an international language which is widely used

in almost every field of our life: trade, economy, science, technology, etc English is abridge to connect cultures in the world In order to master this language, it is essentialfor the learners to master English grammar Grammar plays an important role in bothwriting and speaking as well If we know the meaning of words, without knowingabout the rules of combining words into sentences how can we understand the meaning

of the whole sentence (especially a sentence with a complex structure) and how can wemake sentences correctly? But with the good grammar knowledge about noun phrase, it

is very easy for you to use and understand them perfectly

Noun phrase has a very important function in forming sentences; it is a great

problem for most of learners In order to understand about structure and word order inEnglish noun phrase, I wish to mention the noun phrase in this study However,because of limited knowledge, whereas noun phrase is a great problem, I cannot coverall aspects of noun phrase but the focus is only on “A contrastive analysis of premodification in English noun phrase and Vietnamese equivalent”

2 Purposes of the study

- To find out the similarities and differences in English noun phrase andVietnamese equivalent

- To enable the learners understand the structures of premodification and make the correct sentences with noun phrase

- What are the similarities and differences between pre- modifiers in Englishnoun- phrase and Vietnamese equivalent?

4 Scope of the study

The study focuses on pre- modifiers of noun phrase in English and Vietnamese and the similarities and differences between English noun phrase and Vietnamese counterpart

5 Methods of the study

In the course of writing paper, I have followed the procedure below

- Describing theoretical premises of pre-modification of noun phrases

- Collecting and classifying materials, analyzing and synthesizing all informationabout pre-modification of noun phrases in English and Vietnamese

- Contrasting English premodification of noun phrases with those in Vietnamese

to find out the differences and similarities between them

6 The structures of the study

The study is organized into five chapters: introduction, general introduction about

English noun phrase, general features of Vietnamese noun phrase, comparison betweenpre- modification in English noun phrase and Vietnamese equivalent, and conclusion The introduction includes the rationale, purposes of the study, research questions, scope of the study, methods of the study as well as structures of the study

Chapter 2 gives general features of English noun phrase

Chapter 3 is general features of Vietnamese noun phrase

Chapter 4 presents the similarities and differences of pre- modification in Englishnoun phrase and Vietnamese equivalent

And the conclusion gives a summary of what has been done and providesrecommendations for further study

CHAPTER II: GENERAL INTRODUCTION OF ENGLISH NOUN PHRASE

2.1 Definition of the noun phrase

As far as we know the study of the noun phrase in English has been carried out

by many grammarians for many years English noun phrase has been defined in

different ways According to Randolph Quirk (in University Grammar of English, 1973) and Geoffrey Leech Jansvartvich (A Communicative Grammar of English,

2.2 Classification of noun phrase

English noun phrases are classified into two types:

- The basic noun phrase

- The complex noun phrase

Besides the common features, there are differences between the modification ofthese two kinds This can be seen clearly in their following diagrams

The basic noun phrase

premodification head noun

closed- system item

pre- determiner determiner post- determiner

head nou

n

post

- mod

ification

close-

syst

em item

Open-

cla

ss item

determiner:

pre Quantifie

rs

- Multipliers

- Fractions

determiner:

Article

Demonstrative

Possessive

Interrogative

Indefinite

“Much” de post-terminer:

Numerals

+ Cardinal

+ Ordinal

Quantifiers

+ Class system quant

ifiers

+ Close system quantifiers

phrase

clause

Ge- nat-tiv- eAdj.P

Verb

Ad-jec-tive

l

str-ect-ive Cl

Re-Non Re-ste-cti-ve Cl

par-tici-ple Cl

From the diagrams of the basic noun phrase and the complex noun phrase, wecan draw out some similarities and differences as follows:

Both the basic noun phrase and the complex noun phrase have noun as the head,pre-modification, and have the same syntactic functions

However, the head noun in a basis noun phrase is not modified by modification whereas in a complex noun phrase, there are both premodification andpost-modification Besides, premodification of the basic noun phrase consists of onlyclosed- system items, whereas it comprises both open- class items and closed- systemitems in complex noun phrase

Therefore, in order to have a complete contrastive analysis of premodification inEnglish noun phrase and Vietnamese equivalent, I will focus on the premodification ofcomplex noun phrase in English

2.3 Functions of the noun phrase

From the above definition, we can easily find out that the noun phrase in Englishhas several functions such as Subject, Object, Complement, besides according to John

Eastwood (in “ Oxford Guide to English Grammar”, 1994) noun phrase can function as

Adverbials and Appositive

2.3.1 Noun phrase as subject

Eg: Security guards set a trap

Eg: She lent her friend some money

Oi

2.3.3 Noun phrase as complement

2.3.4 Noun phrase as adverbials

Eg: I met him this morning

adverbial

2.3.5 Noun phrase as appositive

Eg: My friend Jame is the monitor

appositive

2.4 Components of premodification in English noun phrase

Looking at the diagrams of premodification structure in English noun phrase,

we can see that components of premodification are different parts of speech and theyare of two kinds:

- Closed- system items

- Open- class items

2.4.1 Closed- system items

First of all we should understand what items are called closed- system items andwhat is closed- system items?

As far as closed- system items are concerned, they are defined in A University Grammar of English by Randolph Quirk as follows:

“Closed- system items are items that can not normally be extended by thecreation of additional members”

They consist of article (a, an, the), demonstrative (this, that, these, those),pronoun (he, she, it…), preposition (of, at, without, in), conjunction (and, that,when…), interjection: (oh, ah, uh…)

The items are said to constitute a system in being

Reciprocally exclusive: The decision to use one item in a given structure

excludes the possibility of using another

Eg: One can have the pen or a pen but not a the pen

Reciprocally defining: It is easier to define the meaning of an item in relation tothe rest of the system than define it individually

Closed- system items as pre-modifiers consist of: determiner, pre-determiners, post- determiners

The moon This book

A nice day Some books

To understand the grammatical role of determiners, we have to consider whatdeterminers and nouns can occur together It means that determiners are classifiedbasing on their possibility of combination with the noun classes By this way,Randolph Quirk as well as Michael Swan classified determiners into six classes:

1) The first class: including determiners that can go with all three classes ofnoun

They are: The definite article

The possessive adjectives

The interrogative adjectives

The quantitative adjectives

a) The definite article (the )

“The” is used with a noun that their meaning is particular, not in general

Eg: The stamp (I showed you) is available

I have lost the pens/ the money

b) The possessive adjectives (my, our, his…)

Eg: My car

Her children

c) The interrogative adjectives: whose, what, whatever…

Eg: Whose garden do you think look the nicest?

Whose gloves are they?

d) The quantitative adjectives : any, some ( stressed)

Eg: A’ny pen/ a’ny information will do?

Note: Possessive determiners can come after all, both, half or after a quantifier + “of”Eg: All my money

A lot of his time

2) The second class: consists of determiners that can go with plurals nouns ormass nouns only

They are: Zero articles, some, any (unstressed), enough

However, zero articles are used with plurals or uncountable nouns to talk aboutthings in general

Eg: I love sports but she loves music

When we talk about things that are not definite or uncertain, we can use nounswith “some” or “any”(unstressed)

Eg: I want some a’pple

Have you got any clothes or any furniture to sell?

With enough

Eg: we have not got enough oranges

3) The third class: including determiners that can go with singular nouns ornon-count nouns only They are “this” and “that” The basic meaning of this is” thethings near the speaker” and of that “ the things further away” both in space and time

Eg: This book (here) This time (now)

That book (there) That time (then)This child (in here) That water (over there)

“This” and “that” combines with quantifiers occurring before non- count nounsEg: We drink that little water

4) The fourth class: consists of “these” and “those” They are plural form of

“this” and “ that’ and go with plural nouns only

Eg: These people

Those boys5) The fifth class: comprises of “a, an, each, either, neither” They go withsingular nouns only

Eg: Wait a minute!

He comes here everyday

She had a child on each side of her

Either solution is bad one

Neither method is right

“a”, “an” are used to talk about things in general or things which are not definite

“every” can combine with plural- count noun and occur before numeral

Eg: The meeting is held every two years

6) The sixth class:

“much” can go with mass noun only

Eg: I do not have much news of him

H

Much can be modified by “so, too, as, very”

Eg: He has so much money

H

2.4.1.2 Pre-determiners

Pre-determiners occur before the head of noun phrase and determiners They areclassified into 3 groups:

Quantifiers: all, both, half

Multipliers: twice, double, three, four….times

Fractions: one-third, two- third, three- fourth

1) Quantifiers: all, both, half

These pre-determiners can occur before articles or demonstrative but, since theyare themselves quantifiers, they do not occur with the following quantitativedeterminers: every, (n)either, each, some, any, no, enough

Eg: All the girls in our class are beautiful

Eg: All (of) the beer All of them

Both (of) the children but Both of us

SINGULAR COUNT NOUN

Eg: All children can be difficult

All the children (in our class) can be difficult

“All” and “both” often occur before plural nouns with the definite or zero article

or the plural demonstrative adjectives

Eg: All books Both children

All these students Both these doctors

All the teachers Both the pens

However, “all” can be used before uncountable nouns but “both” can not

Eg: All the water

She spends all money on books

“all” can occur before some singular countable nouns referring to things that cannaturally be divided into parts

Zero articles

Zero articles

the, my,this, thathalf

all

Eg: All the week

Eg: Half an hour

Half that cake is hers “all, both, half” can be modified by adverbs:

Eg: He has eaten nearly half (of) this cake

non-Eg: Double their work

Twice his strength “Three, four, etc times” as well as “once” can occur with determiners “a, every,each” and (less commonly) “per” to form “distributive” expressions with a temporalnoun as head of

non-Eg: It takes me two- third (of) an hour to go to my college by bicycle

+Close system quantifiers

+Open class quantifiers

a) Cardinal numerals: consist of one, two, threes…

All cardinal numerals, except one, co- occur only with plural count nouns

Eg: One pen and two books

“one” may be regarded as a stressed form of the indefinite article

The definite article can precede any cardinal but the indefinite can not

Eg: The two boys are naughty

“one” can occur before “hundred, million…” but when the other cardinalnumeral co-occurs with them, “ a” is replaced by “one”

Eg: A hundred of workers

Det post de

One hundred and twenty workers

Det post det

b) Ordinal numerals

The ordinal numerals have one for one relation with the cardinals (i.e fourth, six- sixth…) Ordinal numerals, except first, co- occur only with count nouns.All ordinals often precede any cardinal number in the noun phrase

four-Eg: The first two novels were written in English

2) Quantifiers

Quantifiers can function as pre- determiners, determiners and post- determiners.They can be divided into 2 types: Closed- system quantifiers and open- class of phrasalquantifiers

a) Close- system quantifiers as post- determiners: consist of 2 groups

Quantifiers co- occur only with plural nouns: many, (a) few, several

Eg: His many friends never deserted him

Several cars were involved in the accident

A few words he spoke were well chosen “Several” is rarely preceded by a determiner

Eg: He has not been to school for several days

In case of “few”, there is a positive and negative contrast as the indefinite article

is used or is not used

Eg: He was a man of few words (not many words)

May I have a few words with you (several words)

Quantifiers occur before non- count nouns: “much, (a) little”

Eg: There has not been much good weather recently

There is a little evidence that he has committed the crime

Like in the case of “few”, in the case of “little”, there is also a positive andnegative contrast as the indefinite article is or is not used

Eg: We have a little water (some)

little (not much)

b) Open- class of phrasal quantifiers

Basing on their combinability- possibilities with noun classes, open- classquantifiers are divided into 3 subgroups

The first group can occur with plural nouns:

A good

great number of

large

Eg: A great number of pupils will take part in the entrance exams this year.The second group can co-occur only with non- count nouns:

a great / good deal of

a large / small quantity of

a large / small amount of

Eg: She took a small amount of sugar

The third group can co-occur with both plural noun and non- count nouns:

They are: plenty of, a lot of, lots of

Eg: We have got a lot of time to do that

Besides, there are phrasal quantifiers that provide a means of imposing ability on noun count nouns as following partitive expressions

count- General partitives: an item furniture

two pieces of news

2.4.2 Open- class items

According to R Quirk , by contrast with the closed- system items, the open- classitems have the same grammatical properties and structural possibilities as othermembers of the class ( that is: as other nouns or verbs or adjectives or adverbsrespectively)

The class of words is “open” in the sense that is indefinitely ex-tendable Newitems are constantly being created, no one could make an inventory of all nouns inEnglish and no one could be confident that it was complete.

This affects the way in which we attempt to define any item in open class Forexample, we can replace the meaning of “room” to others nouns with which it hassemantically affinity (i.e chambers hall, house…) but we could not define “a room” as

“not box, not table…” As in we might define a close- system item like “those” as not

“these” So we can see that the ranges of the open- class items are extendable andindefinite

Premodification in English complex noun phrase can be performed by: adjectives,adverbs, participles, ‘S- genitives, sentences/ clauses

Basing on the way that pre-modifiers combine with the head, pre-modificationcan be classified into 2 kinds: Single pre-modification and multiple pre-modification

2.4.2.1 Single premodification

2.4.2.1.1 Premodification by adjectives

An adjective is used to describe the qualities and characteristics of things,people, events, etc In an English noun phrase, adjectives are mostly used in pre-modification They appear between the determiner and the head

Eg: His beautiful wife

Det adj H

A pre-modifying adjective; especially, when it is the first item after the determiner,can itself be pre-modified by adverbs in the same way as it can be in predicativeposition

Eg: The really quite place

Det adv H

It is a very funny story

adv adj (in predicative position)

However, some intensifiers tend to be avoided with pre-modifying adjectives:

“they’re so strict teacher” with indefinite determiner “so” would be replaced by “such”

Eg: Their teacher who is so strict

=> Such a strict teacher

Note:

Most of adjectives of English used in premodification of noun phrase but thereare some that cannot be attributes of nouns

Eg: frond of, afraid of, conscious of…

Adjectives when they modify indefinite pronoun ending in “body, one, thing,where” such as somewhere, someone, something…will be post-modifiers

Eg: Let’s go to somewhere quiet

H adj

The adjectives can be post-modifiers in several compounds (mostly legal orquasi-legal), the most common being

Eg: Court martial, post master general, heir apparent

Some “a-” adjectives and adjectives as “absent”, “present”, “concerned”,

“involved” are usually used in post-modification

Eg: The house ablaze

Please, speak to the clerk concerned

Some post posed adjectives, especially those ending in “ible, able”… implyingwhat they are denoting has only a temporary application, whereas pre-modifyingadjectives denote permanence

Eg: A star visible (refer to a star that can be seen at certain time)

A visible star (refer to a star that seen at any time)

2.4.2.1.2 Premodification by adverbs

Some adverbs (mostly adverbs of place and time) can be used in pre-modification

of noun phrase, among them “above” and “then” are most commonly used

Eg: The above examples

adv H

The crying child

Everything here depends on potentiality of the participles to indicate a permanent

or characteristics feature When the participle is preceded by the indefinite article, itfavors the habitual or permanent characteristics and if it is the definite article, theparticiple shows the specific or temporary

Eg: He has a very interesting mind

For example: A wandering minstrel is one habitually given to wandering, but if we saw

a man wandering down the street, we could not say “who is the wandering man”? ( in

A University Grammar of English by R Quirk and Greenbaum, Pg 397)

b) Ed- participles

Much of what has been said of ing-participles applies to ed- participles also Inother words, it may also indicate permanent state

Eg: The damaged building

or temporary state, for instance: A confused man

But there are additional complications In the first place, the ed- participle can beactive or passive, but the active is rarely used in pre-modification

Eg: The beaten man

The stolen book

However, there are some exceptions such as a retired doctor, an escaped prisoner.

The exceptions are somewhat more general when an active participle isadverbially modified

Eg: A carefully- hidden spy

In pre-modification, participles must be either have “permanent” reference or beadverbially modified

Eg: A married women

A newly opened shop

Besides it is also used with certain kinds of inanimate nouns such as:geographical and institutional names, temporal nouns, nouns of special interest tohuman activity ‘S- genitives is used in a number of fixed expressions (arm’s length)The genitives easily cause ambiguity Therefore we should understand the rightmeaning of noun phrase basing on both its structure and the context

Eg: Thanh’s photograph can be

# The photograph of Thanh

# The photograph belongs to Thanh

#The photograph that Thanh took

Or we should distinguish between the two noun phrases

These old men’s clothes

These men’s old clothes

The first one means the clothes of these old men, the second one means the oldclothes of these old man

1) ‘S- genitive with ellipsis

The noun modified by the ‘S- genitive may be omitted if the context makes itsidentify clear

Eg: My car is faster than John’s (i.e than John’s car)

Omission of the head noun is typical of expression relating to premises or

establishments

Eg: Tonight we are going to Bill’s (normally means where John lives)

2) The double genitive

An of- phrase can be combined with an ‘S-genitive into double genitive Thenoun with the ‘S- genitive must be both definite and personal

Eg: This is a friend of my wife’s

Unlike the simple genitive, the double genitive usually implies non uniquemeaning, i.e that my wife has several friends

Let’s compare two examples:

He is my brother (I have one or more than one brother)

and He is my brother of mine ( I have more than one brother)

3) The group genitive: In addition to the ‘S- genitive, the head noun can be modified by the group genitive

pre-Eg: The people next-door’s house is for rent