a study of some english negative structures with reference to the vietnamese equivalents based on the bilingual story “an ideal husband”

THESIS A STUDY OF SOME ENGLISH NEGATIVE STRUCTURES WITH REFERENCE TO THE VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS BASED ON THE BILINGUAL STORY “AN IDEAL HUSBAND” LÊ THỊ PHƯƠNG ANH Hanoi, 2016... THE

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A THESIS

A STUDY OF SOME ENGLISH NEGATIVE STRUCTURES

WITH REFERENCE TO THE VIETNAMESE

EQUIVALENTS BASED ON THE BILINGUAL STORY

“AN IDEAL HUSBAND”

LÊ THỊ PHƯƠNG ANH

Hanoi, 2016

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A THESIS

A STUDY OF SOME ENGLISH NEGATIVE STRUCTURES

WITH REFERENCE TO THE VIETNAMESE

EQUIVALENTS BASED ON THE BILINGUAL STORY

“AN IDEAL HUSBAND”

LÊ THỊ PHƯƠNG ANH

Field: English Language Code: 60220201

Supervisor: Ly Lan, Ph.D.

Hanoi, 2016

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitled A STUDY OF SOME ENGLISH NEGATIVE STRUCTURES WITH REFERENCE TO THE VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS BASED

ON THE BILINGUAL STORY “AN IDEAL HUSBAND” submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in English Language Except where the reference is indicated, no other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis

This thesis could not have been completed without the help and

support from a number of people

First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Ph.D Ly Lan, my supervisor, who has patiently and constantly supported

me through the stages of the study, and whose stimulating ideas, expertise, and suggestions have inspired me greatly through my growth as an academic researcher

A special word of thanks goes to Dr Nguyen Dang Suu (my Teacher and also my mother’s Teacher, to all my Teachers in Hanoi Open University, without whose support and encouragement it would never have been possible for me to have this thesis accomplished

Last but not least, I am greatly indebted to my parents for the sacrifice they have devoted to the fulfillment of this academic work

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Sample:

A.: Adjective/ Adverbial

AmE: American English

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1 Assertive and non-assertive negatives 13

Table 2 The frequency of using modal verb with ‘not’ in negative

structures in the story

Figure 1 The frequency using “not” in different parts in the sentence 56

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

Figure 3 The frequency of using negators in translated version

59

v 61

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iii

LIST OF TABLE AND FIGURES iv

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 5

1.1 Rationale 5

1.2 Aims of research 5

1.3 Objectives of the research 5

1.4 Scope of the study 6

1.5 Significance of research 6

1.6 Organizational structure of thesis 6

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 7

2.1 Review of previous studies 7

2.2 Review of theoretical background 9

2.2.1 Overview of negation 9

2.2.2 Negation under some linguists’ viewpoint 10

2.2.2.1 According to the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics: 10

2.2.2.2 “Negation in English” by Klima 11

2.2.2.3 Halliday and Hassan 12

2.2.2.4 Quirk et al (1973) 12

2.2.3 Characteristics of negation 14

2.2.3.1 Scope of negation 14

2.2.3.2 Focus of negation 17

2.2.3.3 The relationship between scope and focus of negation 19

2.2.4 Negation in Vietnamese 20

Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY 23

3.1 Research-governing orientations 23

3.1.1 Researh questions 23

3.1.2 Researh setting 24

3.1.3 Principles/criteria for intended data collection and data analysis 24

3.2 Research methods 24

3.2.1 Major methods and supporting methods 24

3.2.2 Data collection techniques 25

3.2.3 Data analysis techniques 25

Chapter 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 26

4.1 The comparison of syntactic structures of negation between English and Vietnamese 26

4.1.1 Structures of negative statements 26

4.1.1.1 Subject negation 26

a Structure of subject negation with “NOT” 27

b Structure of subject negation with “NO” 27

4.1.1.2 Predicate negation 29

a Structure of predicate negation with “NOT” 30

b Structure of modal negation 31

c Structure of negation with “BE” 32

d Negation with “HAVE” 33

e Structure of negation with lexical “HAVE” 33

f Structure of negation with auxiliary “HAVE” 34

g Structure of negation with auxiliary “DO” 36

h Structure of non-assertive form 36

i Structure of negation with NOT…ANY 37

j Structure of negation with NOT…EITHER 37

k Structure of negation with NOT…EVER 38

4.1.1.3 Objective negation 38

4.1.1.4 Complement negation 39

4.4.1.5 Adverbial negation 40

4.1.1.6 Clause negation 42

4.1.1.7 Total negation .43

4.1.2 Negative questions 45

4.1.2.1 Negative Yes-No questions 45

4.1.2.2 Negative Wh- questions 46

4.1.2.3 Tag questions 47

4.1.2.4 Negative commands 48

4.1.3 The similarities and differences of negative structures between English and Vietnamese 49

4.1.3.1 Similarities 49

4.1.3.2 Differences 51

4.2 The structures of negations used in “An ideal husband” and their equivalents in Vietnamese translated version 52

4.2.1 The structures of negations used in “An ideal husband” 52

4.2.1.1 The frequency of using the negators “NOT”, “NO” in the story and in Vietnamese translated version 52

a The frequency of using “NOT” in the story 53

b The frequency of using “NO” in the story 57

4.2.1.2 Negation with not any, not … at all, not…either, neither …nor, never in the story 59

4.2.2 Syntactic features of English negative structures taken from the story “An ideal husband” by Oscar Wilderwith reference to their equivalents in Vietnamese translated version 62

4.2.2.1 Negative statements in the story 63

a Subject negation in the story 63

1 Subject negation with NOT in the story 63

2 Subject negation with NO in the story 65

b Predicate negation in the story 67

1 Predicate negation with modal verbs in the story 67

2 Predicate negation with modal verbs “cannot” and “might not” 68

3 Predicate negation with “will not, shall not” in the story 69

4 Predicate negation with “must not” in the story 69

5 Predicate negation with “BE” in the story 70

6 Predicate negation with HAVE NOTHING, HAVE NO in the story 73

7 Negation with auxiliary HAVE in the story… 74

8 Negation with auxiliary DO in the story 76

9 Negation with NOT ANY 82

10 Negation with NOT EITHER 83

11 Negation with NOT EVER 84

c Object negation in the story 85

d Complement negation in the story 87

e Adverbial negation 88

f Clausal negation 89

g Total negation 90

4.2.2.2 Negative questions in the story 92

a Negative Yes-No questions .92

b Negative Wh- questions in the story 94

c Tag questions 94

d Negative declarative questions 97

4.2.2.3 Negative commands in the story 99

Chapter 5: CONCLUSION 100

5.1 A brief summary of the thesis and main conclusions 100

5.2 Limitations of the study 100

5.3 Suggestions for further studies 101

REFERENCES 102

CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY

1.1 Rationale

Negation is present in all human languages; it is one of the prevalent and fundamental features of any human languages As Larry Horn observes in

his “A Natural History of Negation” that all human systems of

communication contain a representation of negation No animal communication system includes negative utterances, and consequently none possesses a means for assigning truth value, for lying, for irony, or for coping with false or contradictory statements (Horn2001:xiii) In English, especially in the stories, negative sentences account for not a small proportion Much attention has been paid to the patterns and semantic of negative sentences However, there has been no investigation into a particular literal work so far For this reason, in this thesis I would like to devote all my interest some English negative structures used in the bilingual story “An ideal husband” by Oscar Wilder so as to point out their syntactic and semantic features with reference to the Vietnamese equivalents in the translated version “Người chồng lí tưởng” by Hoàng Nguyên in order to get more understanding of negation in human languages and we can be able to use negative structures flexibly and fluently

1.3 Objectives of the research

To achieve the aims of the research, the objectives of the research focus on: (i) Describing the syntactic and semantic features of English and Vietnamese negative structures

(ii) Finding out the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese negative structures

(iii) Sorting out all the negative structures used in the story “An ideal husband” and its Vietnamese translated version

1.4 Scope of the study

Firstly, the theoretical background of the study focuses on the syntactic features of English and Vietnamese negative structures

Secondly, the study focuses on some English negative structures used

in the bilingual story “An ideal husband” by Oscar Wilder so as to point out their syntactic and semantic features with reference to the Vietnamese equivalents in the translated version by Hoàng Nguyên

The result of the research is hoped to be applied for teaching English negative structures to the Vietnamese learners of English as foreign language at Faculty of English at Hanoi Open University

1.5 Significance of research

Some typical syntactic and semantic features of English negative structures found in the bilingual story “An ideal husband” could be found thus helping other researchers be able to improve the theory relating to negation in terms of linguistics; and providing Vietnamese learners of English with a further understanding and using English negative structures

1.6 Organizational structure of thesis

The thesis divided into five main chapters:

Chapter I is the introduction of the study It includes the rationale for

choosing the topic, the aims, the objective, the scope, the significance of the research and the organizational structure of the thesis

Chapter II is the literature review It includes the review of previous

studies and the review of theoretical background

Chapter III is the methodology It includes the research orientations,

research questions, major methods, supporting methods and techniques of the research

Chapter IV is findings and discussions It describes the main results of the

research

Chapter V is conclusion It gives a brief summary of the whole research.

CHAPTER II - LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Review of previous studies

Jesperson (1917) in “Negation in English and Other Languages” paves the ways for studies of negation later He provides the readers with general tendencies of negation, strengthened and weakened negatives, indirect and incomplete negation and the meaning of negation He also shows that negation can be complete with nuclear negators like “not”, “no”, “never”, or incomplete with semi-negations as “hardly”, “scarcely”, “little”, “few” Among them, “not” is followed by auxiliary verbs to negate the whole sentence

Klima’s (1964) supplies a wide variety of sentences that are superficially quite distinct “negative” words such as “not”, “none”, “never”

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

Tottie (1991) puts forward a classification of the uses of negatives in both oral and written language in “Negation in English Speech and Writing” Pagan (1990) shows the pragmatic perspective of “Negatives in Written Text” Horn, Laurence, R and Yasuhiko Kato (2000) in “Negation and Polarity- Syntactic and Semantic Perspectives” give out the syntactic features and scope of negation Mazzon in “A History of English Negation” concerns about an extensive study of negation that combines both synchronic and diachronic complementary analyses.Vietnamese grammarians and linguists have investigated into negation from difference perspectives but mainly focus on traditional, structural or logical perspectives such as Hoàng Trọng Phiến (1980), Nguyễn Đức Dân (1996),

Đỗ Thị Kim Liên (1999) Diệp Quang Ban (2004, 2006), Mai Ngọc Chu, Vũ Đức Nghiệu In addition, Nguyen Quang has also investigated negative sentences in English and Vietnamese on a contrastive analysis in his master thesis Especially, Tran Van Phuoc in his doctor thesis “Phân tích đối chiếu câu phủ định tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt trên bình diện cấu trúc ngữ nghĩa” systemized the syntactic-semantic features both in English and Vietnamese declarative sentences as well as analyzed the differences and similarities of syntactic-semantic features in the two languages He suggests 17- negative

sentence structures and 61 variations in English as well as 64 variations in Vietnamese Then Ms Tran Phuong Thao from Danang University conducted “An Investigation into English Lexical Devices Denoting Negation versus Vietnamese Equivalents” (2010), in which the ways that express the conception of negation in English and Vietnamese equivalents are clarified All those books and studies have revealed typical and very interesting features of negation in general as well as negation in English and Vietnamese in particular However, there has been no investigation on a particular story so far Therefore, the investigation into some English negative structures used in the bilingual story “An ideal husband” by Oscar Wilder so as to point out their syntactic and semantic features with reference

to the Vietnamese equivalents in the translated version “Người chồng lí

tưởng” by Hoàng Nguyên

2.2 Review of theoretical background

This chapter offers some theoretical background on negation in English and

in Vietnamese in brief, to which the study related

2.2.1 Overview of negation

There have been many definitions of negation in English In the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, negation is defined as “contradicting the meaning or part of the meaning of sentences.”

Horn (2010) gives out the definition about negation: “In many ways, negation is what makes us human, imbuing us with the capacity to deny, contradict, misrepresent, lie, and convey irony.”(p.1) Lindstadd (2007) argues, “Negation is a language universal, found in all known languages, and unique to human languages” (p.3) A further uniform characteristic is that sentential negation (including what could be termed “clausal negation”)

always involves “the addition of an overt morpheme to an affirmative clause” (Lindstad 2007:24) The function of negation is fairly straightforward: it negates parts of or the entire sentence or clause

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, published in 1994 shares the same and adds some more information that “Negation is the act of stating that something does not exist or is untrue”, furthermore the Vietnamese Dictionary, published in 1998 by the Centre of dictionary and Danang Publishing House says that negation is the act of rejecting the existence, the necessity of something; the opposition of affirmation Collins Cobuilt (Collins Cobuild, 1990, p.206) concludes, “Negation is used when you want to say something is not true, is not happening, or not the case” Although there is wide variety of definition of negation, I myself totally agree to some main points as follows:

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

2.2.2 Negation under some linguists’ viewpoint

2.2.2.1 According to the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics

The dictionary shows that “The main negator (negator is a word that makes a negative sentence”) is “not”, often in its contracted form “n’t” and

combined with an auxiliary, for example: isn’t going/ hasn’t gone/ didn’t

go/ doesn’t want to go But there are other negators such as: “hardly ever”,

“never”, “seldom”, “neither”, “nothing”

E.g Although they lived quite close, they never visited us

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

nobody there”, or by negative affixes, e.g “That was unkind!”

Some varieties of English may be double negative, such as: “I haven’t done

nothing”.Double negation is merely used for emphasis Often double

negation is frowned on as being non-standard However, it is typically used

in a number of English Dialects and it follows a definite pattern, e.g the use

of no instead of any in the following example: “I didn’t hurt nobody!” In

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

different place, for instance, two sentences: I didn’t think she could do it and

I thought she couldn’t do it don’t really mean the same

2.2.2.2 “Negation in English” by Klima

Klima (1964) presents certain criteria in identifying negative structures His emphasis was on the transitional “not” He determined over some patterns

of the negative and exemplified as below:

Pattern1: Superficial negatives: not, none, never

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

Pattern3: Tag questions+ falling intonation on the tag:

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

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

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

No one ate the food, not even the dog

Pattern5: Either- conjoining sentences:

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

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

neither should she

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

2.2.2.3 Halliday and Hassan

Halliday and Hassan (1976) looked at the issue of negation and polarity They pointed out that polarity is normally expressed at the beginning of the verbal group A negative verbal group will have “n’t” or “not” attached to

the first word if it is finite e.g could not come If it is non-finite, it has not;

it usually appears as the first word e.g not having eating, not to have eaten Other negative adverbs like never, hardly, hardly ever may occur in place of

between the operator and the predication His makes intensive contributions

to the study of negation He discovers the ambiguity in negation as well as the similarity between questions and negations Quirk et al also states that

questions like statements can be positive or negative

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

identified According to Quirk et al, those prepositions may be defined by simply adding the word “not” to the corresponding positive preposition

E.g She was away from work for a week

= She was not at work for a week

Especially, Quirk et al are among the few who have looked into this area and they say most disjuncts can be modified and several can be premodified

by “not”, especially “surprising” and some with negative prefixes (unexpectedly, unreasonably, unwisely, unusually)

Quirk et al also examines the transfer of the negative form a subordinate

that-clause, which it belongs to the main clauses semantically E.g I don’t

believe he is right It can be transferred to: I believe he isn’t right This kind

of transfer is limited to verbs of belief of assumption, e.g think, believe,

suppose, fancy, expect, imagine and reckon He proposes assertive and

non-assertive negatives as the table below:

Table 1: Assertive and non-assertive negatives

S/No Syntactic Assertive Non-

4 Pronoun One or the

other

Either Neither

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

Among those linguists is Quirk et al In the next part, his concept and characteristics of negation will be described

2.2.3 Characteristics of negation

Huddleson and Pullum (2002) provide a very clear description on the characteristics of negation in English

Unlike affirmation, negation can be identified by words (e.g.: not, no,

never) or affixes (e.g.: dis, un-) Negation can interact with other words in

special ways For example, negated clauses use more different connective

adjuncts than positive clauses do: “neither, nor” instead of “either, or” The

so-called “negatively oriented polarity-sensitive items” (Huddleston and Plum 2002) contain among many others, words starting with “any-”

(anybody, anyone, anywhere, etc.), the modal auxiliaries “dare” and “need”

and the grammatical units “at all”, “much” and “until” Negation in verbs

usually requires an auxiliary; if “none” is present, the auxiliary “do” is inserted (I read the paper vs I didn’t read the paper)

2.2.3.1 Scope of negation

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

reverse the polarity of a statement (e.g She didn’t see him), emphasize how great or extreme something is (e.g It was nothing less than a disaster) or make weaker claims (e.g Her husband character is not good) Negated

statements often carry positive meaning beneath the direct meaning and

detect precious knowledge For instance, “Peter didn’t go to Moscow to

relax”, a reader will interpret that Peter went to Moscow but his purpose is

not to relax

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

“The scope of the negation normally extends from the negative word itself

to the end of the clause, or to the beginning of a final adjunct” (Quick, p.187)

In the view of Eagleson, the part of a sentence or clause that is controlled by

“not” or other negative words is called the scope of negation

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

be within or outside the scope Some following examples are given for illustration:

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

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

In (1), the scope of negation stretches from “not” to “him”, subject (I), adjunct (definetely), operator (did) are excluded, the predication takes full negative effect:

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

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

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

E.g.: Jim did not arrive at office in the morning (3)

Versus: Jim did not arrive at office in the morning (4)

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

(3)= It is not true that Jim arrived at office in the morning

(4)= In the morning, Jim did not arrive at office

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

E.g He wasn’t listening all the time (i.e I listened none of the time)

and He wasn’t listening all the time (i.e I listened some of the time)

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

E.g He didn’t listen to some of the speakers (i.e I listened to some)

He didn’t listen to some of the speakers (i.e I listened to none)

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

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

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

He did not do any exercises ≈ He did no exercises

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

“partial negative”

Apart from adverbials, the ambiguity is also made by an operator in a negative, here, operator is not a normal auxiliary expressing grammatical function, but a modal auxiliary With a negative modal auxiliary, verb phrase falls into a situation that the negation belongs to main verb or auxiliary, the interpretation of the negative depends on the negative meaning

of modal auxiliaries themselves

2.2.3.2 Focus of negation

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

End-focus

Richard Nordquist states that “End- focus is the principle that most important imformation in a clause or sentence is placed at the end It is a normal characteristic of sentence structures in English” (Richard, About.com Grammar and Composition)

Mentioning the definition of end focus, Quirk (1974; 407) states that end

- focus is the chief prominence on the last- open items (verbs, adjectives, nouns, adverbs) and proper noun "To be technically accurate, end focus is given to the last open-class item or proper noun in a clause” (Quirk and Greenbaum 1973) In other words, the end focus is used to withdraw

hearer’s attention to information that speaker wants to convey; when a negative clause has end-focus, only last item is negated the rest is positive

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

They haven’t been to Da Nang City ≈ (They have gone somewhere, but not

to Da Nang City)

Contrastive-focus

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

E.g.: Jim did not phone Hannah yesterday

≈ (Someone phoned Hannah yesterday not Jim)

Jim did not phone Hannah yesterday

≈ (Jim phoned someone yesterday, but not Hannah)

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

E.g.: “He is not looking for `me” ≈ (He is looking for someone, not me) Her sister was not `out ≈ (She was in)

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

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

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

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

2.2.3.3 The relationship between scope and focus of negation

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

In other words, they are interconnected in such a way that the scope must include the focus In an independent clause the scope of negation covers all the negative effect.The extent of the scope is identified by the position of the focus Indeed, since the scope of negation is often not clearly signaled,

“we can indicate it by where we place the information focus” (Quirk, p.188) The following is an example of the scope of negation which is extended to include a subordinate clause of reason, with a contrastive fall-rise to emphasize this:

I didn’t leave home because I was afraid of my father (Quick, p.189)

(The information focus is on “didn’t leave home” = Because I was afraid of

my father, I didn’t leave home.)

“I didn’t leave home because I was a afraid of my father”

(The information focus is on “didn’t leave home because I was a afraid of

my father” It means I left home, but it wasn’t because I was afraid of my father.)

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

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

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

ALL cats don’t like WATER (not all cats like water) (The negative meaning

operates “ALL cats don’t like WATER”) (Quirk, p.187)

2.2.4 Negation in Vietnamese:

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

a Không, chẳng, chưa, chả:

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

E.g Hắn chửi những quân hàng bưởi không chịu đến mua cây bưởi đào

nhà hắn để hắn có dăm đồng bạc tiêu (Nam Cao, p.138) (“Không” is used

as an adverb)

In interrogative sentence “chăng” can be found instead of “không”, e.g.:

Tình thâm mong trả nghĩa dày

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

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

demonstrate the negative meaning:

-Chờ mãi anh sang anh chẳng sang

Thế mà hôm nọ hát bên làng

Năm tao bảy tuyết anh hò hẹn

Để cả mùa xuân cũng nhỡ nhàng

-Chớ thấy hùm ngủ vuốt râu

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

“Chẳng” is also used to demonstrate the meaning “I don’t want” or “I

cannot do something”, e.g:

-Chẳng đợi mà xuân vẫn cứ sang

Phồn hoa thôi hết mộng huy hoàng (Nguyễn Bính, p.121)

“Chưa”: Depending to the context, “chưa” can be used in negative

sentences to show that the action hasn’t happened until the moment of speaking E.g.:

-Mùa vải năm nay chừng đến muộn

Chưa nghe tu hú giục xuân đi

Nóng lòng cây gạo lìa hoa đỏ

Trổ búp tơ xanh đón gió hè (Nguyễn Bính, p.133)

Chả:

-Bốn bên hàng xóm đã lên đèn

Em ngửa bàn tay trước mái hiên

Mưa chấm bàn tay từng chấm lạnh

Thế nào anh ấy chả sang xem” (Nguyễn Bính, p.7)

-Người khôn ai chả nâng niu

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

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

E.g Người ta thuê mình cho mình làm chứ không phải để cho mình đắp

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

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

E.g -Từ nay tôi cạch đến già

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

Bốn bề ổ cọp hang beo

Làng tôi chắc chả chơi diều nữa đâu (Nguyễn Bính, p.128)

-Tìm mũ Thần nông chẳng thấy đâu

Thấy con vịt lội giữa dòng sâu,

Sao Hôm như mắt em ngày ấy

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

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

E.g Hắn biết đâu vì hắn lầm tất cả những việc ấy trong khi người hắn say;

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

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

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

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

“chưa”, or “khỏi” instead of ‘không” that make Vietnamese interesting, e.g.:

-Thư rằng em chửa có ai

Trên nghiên dưới mực giữa cài chữ sen (Tục ngữ, p.630)

-Một hôm tình cờ vớ được miếng thịt Chó ta mang về nhà để khỏi bị nhòm

ngó.(Tuyển tập ngụ ngôn Ê dốp, nhà xuất bản Văn học, 1998, Phạm Khải

Hoản dịch; Tuyển và dịch từ các bản tiếng Anh (Fables of Aesop, Penguin Classic, 1954; Foldjore and Fable Aesop- Grimm- Andeersen), Harvard Classic,1909)

In general, Vietnamese language has no tense; the negative sentences are carried out depending on the position of the words or phrases, which convey the negative meanings

CHAPTER 3 – METHODOLOGY 3.1 Research-governing orientations

3.1.1 Research questions

The following are the three research questions:

a What are the syntactic and semantic features of English and Vietnamese negative structures?

b What are the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese negative structures?

c What are the negative structures used in the story “An ideal husband” and its Vietnamese translated version?

3.1.3 Principles/criteria for intended data collection and data analysis

(i) Data types: story, English and Vietnamese books, materials and

3.2.1 Major methods and supporting methods

The qualitative and quantitative are considered the two major methods

of the research The description and comparison are the supporting approaches used to bring out the syntactic and semantic features of negative structures in English and Vietnamese so as to do the contrastive study on the subject matter

Apart from the above mentioned, the techniques of statistics and personal consultation are also employed to help describe, analyze the semantic features and compare the similarities and differences of negative questions between English and Vietnamese

3.2.2 Data collection techniques

Materials related to the research topic are collected from research works, bilingual story, books and Internet Then the most suitable ones are selected for the theoretical background of the study Moreover, the research is realized by many examples of English and Vietnamese negative structures collected from English story and its Vietnamese- translated versions These examples are the most common- used negative structures in English and Vietnamese

3.2.3 Data analysis techniques

Once the data have been collected, they are classified and analyzed, basing

on the syntactic and semantic features and types of negation in different contexts Based on the data collected in English and Vietnamese, the writer selects the most popular to illustrate the points under the study investigation

In this process, all the negative structures are sorted out and grouped into different kinds Since the study is conducted by descriptive and contrastive analysis, English is considered the source language and Vietnamese is the target one

CHAPTER IV - FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 4.1 The comparison of syntactic structures of negation between English and Vietnamese

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

structures to see how they are similar and how they are different In general,

English and Vietnamese have numbers of similar features in terms of

syntactic negative structures For example, “no”, “not” in English correspond to “không”, “chẳng”, “chả”, “chưa”, “đừng”, “chớ” in

Vietnamese Besides, there are some other words conveying negative meanings occuring with a lower frequency Structures of negative sentences with negative object, negative predicate, negative complement, negative adverb with negators “not”, “no”, “never” are demonstrated as the

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

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

a) Structure of subject negation with “NOT”:

NOT+ S + AUX + V + O/A KHÔNG/CHẲNG/CHẢ/CHƯA

(PHẢI/CÓ) + DT/AI/GÌ + VN + (ĐÂU)

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

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

Nói đến trả nợ, ai mà không cảm thấy khó khăn? (Trần Kiêm, p.158)

b) The structure of subiect negation with “NO”

everything (Thackeray, p.257)

Không một cái gì lọt khỏi mắt cô, và giống như một người quản gia khéo

léo,

CN VN

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

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

S V

seemed to understand it (Thackeray, p.101)

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

verbs to show tense)

V is the verb (verb is a word or group of words that expresses an action

(such as go), an event (such as happen) or a state (such as exist)

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

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

A- Adverb means a word that adds more information about place, time,

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

N is a Noun - a word that refers to a person (such as Nam or doctor), a place

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

“sorrow” or “tennis”)

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

which is used after linking verbs such as be and become, and describes the subject of the verb In some descriptions of grammar, it is used to refer to

any word or phrase, which is governed by a verb and usually comes after the verb in a sentence

4.1.1.2 Predicate negation

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

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

“have” or after an auxiliary “N’t” is attached to the end of the verb “Not”

is considered the most commonly used negative word When “not” is used

with a verb group which contains an auxiliary verb, it comes after the verb

in group

English predicate negation is composed of the auxialiaries, which are primary (do, have, be) or modals (can, could, may, must) Primary auxiliaries show the tense, aspect and voice of the main verb, while there are two kinds of meaning of the modal ones: epistemics (permission, impossibility, allowance, ability…) and deontic (expression duty) (ought to, should, possibility, non-obligation or non-necessity)

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

còn, bao giờ là/phải là) are placed before a verb in the predicate negation

This case has the following structures:

a) Structure of predicate negation with NOT:

DO, negation with NOT…ANY, negation with NOT….EITHER, and negation with NOT …EVER

b) Structure of modal negation

In English, modal verbs have only one form; they have no -ing or -ed forms and do not add -s to the 3rd person singular form Negative sentences are

formed with not or the short form “-n’t” and do not use “do/does” or “did” They are equivalent to “không thể”, “không cần”, “không dám”; “chẳng thể”, “chẳng cần”, “chẳng dám” or “chả thể”, “chả cần”, “chả dám” in Vietnamese It can be shown in the following structure:

S + AUXILIARY + NOT + V

(B.INF.) + O/C/A

CN + KHÔNG/CHẲNG/CHẢ + THỂ/CẦN/DÁM + ĐT + TN/TrN

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

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

types of modal meanings: Auxiliary negation and main verb negation

This structure can be illustrated by the following examples:

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

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

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

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

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

S AUX V C

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

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

gan lì (Huy Phương, p 29)

c) Structure of negation with BE

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

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

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

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

10 “ you are not a man to do anything base or underhand or

dishonourable (Oscar Wilde, p.96)

“…anh không phải là người có thể làm bất cứ việc gì hèn hạ, uẩn khúc

hoặc không phù hợp với danh dự (Hoàng Nguyên, p.97)

(“không phải” here can be understood as a short form of “không phải là”

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

make passive:

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

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

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

cần tuân theo nhạc luật, nếu vì các bà không thuộc lầu cách phân biệt thế nào là “ngắt đoạn ba”, thế nào là “ngắt đoạn bốn” mà không được đàn ông yêu, thì Thi ca có lẽ cũng đến tiêu ma, …(Trần Kiêm, p.234)

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

the non- existence of something

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

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

(Trần Kiêm p.227)

d) Negation with HAVE

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

English, auxiliaries “do”, “does” or “did” are used as operator and “not” is

inserted after them “Does” is used for the third singular person at the present, “do” is used for the first and the second ones and “did” is used for all persons in the past In British English “not” is inserted directly after

“have” or “has” and informally “got” is often added “Has” is used for the

third singular and “have” for the rest

In English, negation of lexical have indicates the absence of possession To describe the non- existence of something, the structure there is +not is used

and it is equivalent to “không có”, “chẳng có”, “chả có”, “chưa có” in

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

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

e) Structure of negation with lexical HAVE

S + DO/ DOES/ DID + NOT +

HAVE + O (AmE)

S + HAS NOT/ HAVE

NOT(GOT) + O (BrE)

CN+ KHÔNG/ CHẲNG/ CHẢ/ CHƯA CÓ + TN

CN + KHÔNG/ CHẲNG/ CHẢ/ CHƯA CÓ + DT

Eg

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

Tôi không có / không mang theo nhiều tiền trong người

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

many years (Hemingway, p.46)

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

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

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

Bố cháu không tin (Huy Phuong, p.11)

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

structure is common in British English, especially in spoken and informal language, in present tense In Vietnamese, it is expressed by “không có”,

“chẳng có”, “chả có”, “chưa có” In some situations, subject can be absent,

“chả có” is put at the beginning of the sentence and it is followed by a noun

to denote the non-existence of something

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

noun as in the following example:

f) Structure of negation with auxiliary HAVE:

In English, “Have” is used as an auxiliary verb and it is changed to express the time when the action happens The present perfect tense is formed with