A contrastive analysis on selected english and vietnamese dog related idioms

HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY 2 FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE ---NGUYEN THI TRUNG ANH A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS ON SELECTED ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE DOG-RELATED IDIOMS Major: English Language Te

HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY 2 FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE

-NGUYEN THI TRUNG ANH

A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS ON SELECTED ENGLISH

AND VIETNAMESE DOG-RELATED IDIOMS

Major: English Language Teaching

Ha Noi, 2019

HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY 2 FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE

-NGUYEN THI TRUNG ANH

A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS ON SELECTED ENGLISH

AND VIETNAMESE DOG-RELATED IDIOMS

Major: English Language Teaching

Supervisor: Pham Thi Tuan

Ha Noi, 2019

I would love to show profound gratitude to my supervisor, Ms Pham ThiTuan, for her dedicated and scholarly instructions, wholehearted guidance, criticalcomment, great encouragement and valuable materials that she gave me while I wasdoing in research Without these, the thesis could not have been completed

I wish to express my sincere thanks Mr William Salazar for his dedicatedinstructions and reminding in time during months of my graduation paper

Last but not least, I owe a debt of gratitude to my beloved family and friendsfor their support and love, which were extremely important for the completion ofthis paper

Student

Idioms can be found in every language and in all types of discourse, rangingfrom daily conversations to scientific texts Hence, it is indispensable for languagelearners to know what idioms are and how they are related within and amonglanguages This study was aimed to investigate the similarities and differencesbetween English and Vietnamese idioms containing the word „dog‟ Contrastiveanalysis and content analysis were used to analyze and discuss 110 selected dog-related Vietnamese and English idioms in both syntactic and semantic features Theresults revealed that dog-related English and Vietnamese idioms greatly differ interms of syntactic structures, namely noun phrases, verb phrases, adjective phrases,preposition phrases, and sentences While the two most common syntacticstructures for dog-related English idioms are noun phrases and verb phrases,sentence is the syntactic structure for the majority of Vietnamese ones As forsemantic features, dog-related idioms in these two languages; however, sharesimilarities in positive, negative and neutral connotation, which are particularlyinfluenced by culture and stylistic devices

Key words: idiom, dog, syntactic features, semantic features, contrastiveanalysis

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS ON SELECTED ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE DOG-RELATED IDIOMS

(Graduation paper submitted in partial fulfillment of the Degree of Bachelor of arts in English)

I certify that no part in this study has not been copied by me from any otherperson„s report without acknowledgment and this work is written by my best under the instruction from my supervisor

LIST OF THE TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1 Classification of idioms in syntactic features

Table 2 Classification of idioms in semantic features

Table 3 Structures of selected English dog-related idioms

Table 4 Structures of selected Vietnamese dog-related idioms

Table 5 Syntactic features of selected English and Vietnamese dog-related

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP iv

LIST OF THE TABLES AND FIGURES v

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Significance of the study 2

3 Scope of the study 2

4 Aims of the study and Research questions 3

5 Research methods 3

6 Design of the study 3

PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT 5

Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

Chapter 2: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 6

1 An overview of idioms and dog-related idioms 6

1.1 Definition of idioms 6

1.2 Idioms which are related to dogs 7

1.3 Linguistic features of idioms 7

1.3.1 Syntactic features 7

1.3.2 Semantic features 8

1.3.3 Culture features 9

2 Classification of idioms 10

2.1 Based on syntactic features 10

2.2 Based on semantic features 12

2.3 Idioms in association with culture 13

3 Overview of Phrase, Clause and Sentence Structures 14

3.1 Phrase 14

3.2 Clause 14

3.3 Sentence 15

Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY AND PROCEDURES 17

1 Research Methods 17

2 Research Procedures 17

3 Description of the Sample 18

Chapter 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 19

1 Syntactic analysis of selected dog-related idioms in English and Vietnamese 19

1.1 Idiom structures based on syntactic features 19

1.2 Discussion of similarities and differences in Syntactic features of selected English and Vietnamese dog-related idioms 24

1.2.1 Similarities in Syntactic features of selected English and Vietnamese dog-related idioms 28

1.2.2 Differences in Syntactic features of selected English and Vietnamese dog-related idioms 29

2 Semantic analysis of selected dog-related idioms in English and Vietnamese 32

2.1 Meaning colors of selected English and Vietnamese dog-related idioms32 2.1.1 Meaning colors of English dog-related idioms 32

2.1.2 Meaning colors of selected Vietnamese dog-related idioms 34

2.2 Discussion of similarities and differences in Semantic features of selected English and Vietnamese dog-related idioms 35

2.2.1 Similarities in Semantic features of selected English and Vietnamese dog-related idioms 37

2.2.2 Differences in Semantic features of selected English and Vietnamese dog-related idioms 39

3 Cultural factors behind English and Vietnamese idioms concerning dogs 41 5 Difficulties in learning idioms concerning dogs and suggested solutions 42

5.1 Difficulties of learning idioms related to dogs 43

5.1.1 Idioms are not literal 43

5.1.2 Dog-related idioms has complex structures 43

5.1.3 It’s difficult to use idioms correctively 43

5.1.4 Teaching materials are not much available 43

5.2 Suggested solutions 44

5.2.1 Learn idioms in context, never in isolation 44

5.2.2 Create conversation using idioms 44

5.2.3 Themes: Related to your topic 45

5.2.4 Always study about culture 45

PART THREE: CONCLUSION 46

1 Major findings 46

2 Limitation of the study and suggestions for further research 47

REFERENCES 48

APPENDIX 1 50

APPENDIX 2 55

1 Rationale

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION

A quite long time ago, human being used numerous forms of language toconvey their messages with one another and show the cultural identity of thecountry Meanwhile, with the development of the 21st century society, people are inhigh demand for learning languages to interchange such a lot of fields as economy,education, service, etc Therefore, English has increasingly become much morenecessary but quite struggling for learners to understand the words.

In daily conversations, communicators may encounter odd andpuzzling phrases or expressions whose meanings are different from what theircomponents convey This challenge lies in the complicated, strange yet captivatingnature of idioms owing to such cultural identity of different countries as history,religions, tradition, etc (Grunwell, 1998 & Yagiz, 2013) To English learners, ifthey desire to reach the ultimate goal in communicating as native speakers, theyneed to pay attention to the idioms as well

Idioms are appeared in every single material surrounded us It can be in

“newspapers, books, magazines, on the radio, on the television, in everydayconversation, and at work.” Besides, what the world‟s perceptions and viewpointsabout things in human and animal existence between English and Vietnamese isquite different and leads most of the idioms not the same Expressions in this waybear the cultural characteristics of a country in which they are used Therefore, tounderstand as well as translate idioms from a language into another one, knowledge

of not only linguistic aspects but also of cultural reality has to be involved

Finding idioms exciting and compelling for quite a long time, I would like totake this chance to achieve deep insight into both English and Vietnamese idioms

As a matter of fact, a wide variety of studies and investigations into idioms havebeen done so far which mainly concern love, family, colors, body parts, animals,plants, etc With limited time, this study focuses on a tiny part of the wholeimmense idiom treasure – English and Vietnamese idioms related to dogs.Furthermore, I personally find dog-related idioms fascinating to learn and use andthere has been no study of idioms related to dogs in a range of Hanoi PedagogicalUniversity Number 2

Hopefully, this analysis can be helpful, to a certain extent, for learners tounderstand the fundamental nature of dog-related idioms in both languages and how

to use them practically It can also contribute a bit to the teaching and learning as asecond language in Vietnam, particularly in Hanoi Pedagogical University 2

2 Significance of the study

Idioms are plentiful in both English and Vietnamese, and there are numerousaspects to investigate regarding idioms It is undeniable that idioms concerninganimals account for a significant proportion of both English and Vietnamese idiomsystem, especially dogs, are the most frequently mentioned animal in Englishidioms (Ruhanen, 2015)

However, to what extent, it is easier to find out how to learn idioms inforeign languages if having clear understanding in similarities and differencesbetween them I used to encounter it when I study English and then took notes all ofthem so that they now are sources in this paper to help language learner deal with

To be equal and have the best general look at both languages, and I choose the samenumber of dog-related idioms Therefore, the study is considered a dog-mentionedidiom dictionary for learners to study effectively and use them correctly

3 Scope of the study

During doing this research, all the idioms are carefully selected from officialresources and specialized idiom dictionaries such as American Idioms Dictionary,English Idioms Dictionary, and Từ điển Thành ngữ Tiếng Việt based on theirconvention and system Throughout the process of finding and filtering idioms,there is a significant number of selected idioms about dogs including 55 idioms inVietnamese and 55 idioms in English

In this study, only dog-related idioms are selected to make a contrastiveanalysis of English and Vietnamese idioms about dogs “It is a contrastive analysisfocusing on terms of syntactic and semantic aspects Syntactically, my study willinvestigate into account of dogs with noun phrase structure, verb phrase structure,adjective phrase structure, prepositional phrase structure, and sentence structure Inthe aspect of semantic opacity, an investigation into Positive connotation, Negativeconnotation, and Neutral connotation will be carried out.”

4 Aims of the study and Research questions

4.1 Aims of the study

This study is carried out with the hope to identify the similarities anddifferences between English and Vietnamese dog-related idioms regarding semanticfeatures and syntactic features to help people to be master in learning English andVietnamese In addition, learners are able to imply the beauty of a foreign languageand its social features

4.2 Research questions:

The study is to answer the following questions:

1 What are the similarities in syntactic and semantic features of selectedEnglish and Vietnamese idioms concerning dogs?

2 What are the differences in syntactic and semantic features of selectedEnglish and Vietnamese idioms regarding dogs?

5 Research methods

This research was conducted with the use of contrastive analysis and contentanalysis method They are research methods that analyze “the differences andsimilarities of two or more languages (or subsystem languages) are made explicit”,more specific it is English and Vietnamese I based on database analysis formresources of material both on the Internet and my supervisor

“An explicit analysis is a way of comparing the forms (phonemes,morphemes, syntax, etc.) of first language and a second language to find out howfar or close the structures of the two languages are In this case, the primarylanguage is English and the second one is Vietnamese and the features of syntacticand semantic.”

6 Design of the study

For a transparent organization, my graduation paper is divided into threemain parts in which the second is the most important part:

- Part 1 is entitled the “Introduction” where rationale, significance, scope,

aims and research questions, research methods and design of the thesis arepresented

- Part 2 is the “Development” which consists of three chapters:

+ Chapter 1: Theoretical Background, including small parts presenting the

definitions of idioms; principal features of idioms: syntactic and semantic andculture features; and overview of phrase, clause and sentence structures

+ Chapter 2: Methodology and Procedure, dealing with research design,

research methods, research procedures, description of the sample, datacollection, reliability and validity

+ Chapter 3: Findings and discussion, presenting the data analysis and

discussion on the similarities and differences of dog-related English andVietnamese idioms in terms of syntactic and semantic features

- Part 3 is the “Conclusion” to perform summary of the study, limitation of

the study and suggestions for further studies

PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT

Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

In fact, idiomaticity is not a new subject in linguistic study There has beenplenty of work on it such as “Essential Idioms in English” by Dixon, R J [17], or

“Idioms for Everyday Use” by Broukai, M [6]…

Vietnamese idioms also prove significant in Vietnamese language, andseveral native linguists have been trying to collect them and to detect their specialpeculiarities The pioneers are Nguyễn Lực and Lương Văn Đang [63] Lately,Nguyễn Lực has just produced an important and useful book “Thành ngữ tiếngViệt” [64] More interestingly, there have been a lot of contrastive studies on idioms

in Vietnamese and other languages such as English, French, Russian… by NguyễnĐình Hùng [60], Bùi Phụng [67] Furthermore, a number of contrastive studies onthe various aspects of idioms have been carried out in many universities andcolleges across Vietnam For example, in Danang University, there are “Aninvestigation into syntactic, semantic and cultural features of idioms denoting lifeand death in English and Vietnamese” by Nguyễn Hoàng Trà My [25]; “AContrastive Analysis of English and Vietnamese Idioms Using the Terms of HumanBody Parts” by Nguyễn Thị Hiệp [31]… It can be seen researches on such terms asplants, time, happiness but none of term of dog

To be clearer, there has been thesis in Hanoi Pedagogical University 2involved in dogs Based on many interviews second language learners, the obstaclethey feel hard to overcome most is studying idioms Therefore, this paper isnecessarily fulfilled in the university library and may be small dictionary for whomwants to look up the idioms‟ meanings and find the approach to be better

Chapter 2: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1 An overview of idioms and dog-related idioms

1.1 Definition of idioms

As a peculiar part of the language, idioms have drawn so much attentionfrom linguists globally that numerous research has been conducted to investigatetheir basic nature, characteristics and varieties from various approaches However,the concept of idioms has remained controversial in the field of language, leading to

no agreed definition of idioms among linguistic scholars

First and foremost, defined by the Oxford Advanced Learners‟ Dictionary(2006), idioms are “a phrase or sentence whose meaning is not clear from themeaning of its every single words and which must be learnt as a whole unit” Forexample, the idiom “under the weather” refers to the state of being slightly unwell

or in low spirits, which means that it is impossible to understand this idiom bymerely knowing the meaning of its components – “under” and “weather” Likewise,

on the ground of semantics, O‟Grady (1998) stated that what idioms truly convey is

a more complicated interpretation of its components In a similar vein, Adkins(1968) provided a more specific explanation that idioms, known as phraseologicalunit, are a stable multi-word group whose meaning is entirely or partiallytransferred In other words, as assumed by Fotovatnia and Goudarzi (2014), idioms

in the form of fixed expression convey meaning in a non-literal or metaphoricalway

Another concept of idioms provided by Johnson (1993) is that “If naturallanguage had been designed by a logician, idioms would not exist” (Khosravi &Khatib, 2012, p.274) That is to say, the real meaning of an idiom cannot belogically deduced from its elements

In Vietnamese, idioms are generally considered “thành ngữ”, “nhóm ngữcú”, or “cụm từ cố định” According to another concept of idioms given out byNguyen (2010), idioms are viewed as groups of words which are restricted in syntaxand often convey imaginative and figurative meanings Hanh (2002) mentionedidioms in “Kể chuyện Thành ngữ, Tục ngữ” as a set expressions stable in structure,figurative in connotation and used mainly in daily discourse

In a nutshell, despite minor differences in aspects among concepts of idiomspreviously mentioned, idioms can be generally considered as fixed word groupswhose meaning is not deducible from the meaning of individual constituents.

1.2 Idioms which are related to dogs

Although the origin of the domestic dog is not clear, it is known that the dogwas the first domesticated species and has a very close-knit relationship with humanbeings Thanks to the dogs‟ senses include vision, hearing, sense of smell, sense oftaste, touch and sensitivity to the earth's magnetic field, and they make lots ofefforts in helping people such activities as hunting, protection, assisting police andmaking as friends

English idioms were classified into several special groups includingnumbers, time, body parts, animals and briefly listed by Seidl & Mordie (1993) in

“Pocket English Idioms” According to them, dog-related idiom is a special kind inwhich dog elements with special meanings are considered vital words In otherwords, dog-related idioms are one specific group of idioms that demonstrate theway each person using in set expressions and how they associate these terms withother things in the world

1.3 Linguistic features of idioms

Existing in most languages, idioms have long posed long-lasting challengesfor linguistic scholars to figure out typical characteristics of idioms As a matter offact, tremendous efforts in this field have been made among researchers According

to Carter (1997), features can be summarized based on two major grounds: syntacticand semantic peculiarities

1.3.1 Syntactic features

“Syntactic” refers to “the way that words and phrases are put together toform sentences in a language” (Cambridge Advanced Learners‟ Dictionary).Regarding syntax of idioms; inflexibility, fixedness and invariability are frequentlyused words by linguists to describe the nature of idioms

First of all, it is impossible to replace any individual element of idioms;otherwise, there will be loss of idiomatic meaning For instance, the idiom “cup oftea” refers to something you are interested, you are good at, or you enjoy doing;however “glass of tea” would not create any idiomatic expression though glass andcup are near synonyms It is this feature that makes idioms truly distinct from other

lexical units because, in daily discourse, replacement of words within structures is

so common to convey similar ideas

Secondly, introducing any additional constituent into idioms‟ structures isnot allowed That is to say, idioms are regarded as whole chunks, nearly equivalent

to a single word (Cacciari and Tabossi, 1988) An example can be “like two peas in

a pod” which means two things bear a very close resemblance The idiom‟s realmeaning will be broken or distorted if a component is added into the structure like

“like two small peas in a pod” or “like two green peas in a pod”

The third restriction that should be considered when using idioms isgrammatical invariability For example, for the idiom “pull someone‟s leg” (makefun of someone), it is possible to say “He always pulls my leg” or “He pulled myleg whenever he met me” However, the idiomatic meaning will not be delivered if

we add plural forms: “pull my legs” or an article: “pull the leg” Moreover, whilepassivization is a common phenomenon in English to retain the same sense, it is notapplied for the case of idioms Take idiom “spill the beans” as an example It can beseen that in the passive voice, “beans are spilled” may make literal sense in somecertain context but it fails to retain idiomatic connotation of the original idiom

Another noteworthy feature of idioms is that they can bear regular structures

or grammatically incorrect ones (Holsinger, 2013) Considering the first group,some idioms have correct grammatical structures like “You can‟t teach an old dognew tricks” or “It‟s not just a day” Meanwhile, others have unconventional forms

“Through thick and thin” is a typical illustration for illogical and irregulargrammatical forms According to the rule of language, the preposition “through”must be followed by a noun, a noun phrase or a gerund, but “thick and thin” in thisidiom is an adjective phrase

1.3.2 Semantic features

Semantics, rooted from Greek verb “Semainein” meaning “to signify”, is anaspect of linguistics dealing with the meaning of words and sentences (OxfordAdvanced Learner‟s Dictionary)

The degree of meaning transference of idioms may be varied at differentlevels because some idioms are “semantically opaque” (Langlotz, 2006, p.2) whileothers are relatively transparent With the same viewpoint, Coulson (2001) referred

to two terms which are non-compositional and partly-compositional idioms

In non-compositional idioms, the whole group undergoes meaningtransference and there is no relation between the surface sense of words and the truemeaning of idioms A wide variety of idioms can be taken as examples for this like

“dark horse” (a little known person who keeps their abilities secret and suddenlysurprises others with unexpected success), “have one‟s heart on one‟s sleeve”(openly show one‟s feelings rather than keeping them hidden) or “anh hùng rơm” inVietnamese (a person who always tries to show off his incredible characteristicslike a hero, but it is not true in reality) They are considered higher idiomaticexpressions since their meanings are not related to meaning of individual elements

Meanwhile, some idioms are regarded partly-compositional because literalmeaning of one or some components is still preserved so that the meaning of thewhole expression can somehow be guessed For instance, “fall in love” (to besuddenly and strongly attracted to someone) or “lose someone‟s temper” (becomeangry at somebody or something)

Furthermore, sematic characteristics of idioms are under tremendousinfluence of cultural factors which clearly reflect how people perceive and view theworld That‟s why it is of significant importance for learners to figure out hiddenconnotation of idioms “by summoning knowledge of cultural peculiarity as well aspersonal life experience since idioms are closely related to the culture of the countrythat they belong to.”

1.3.3 Culture features

Based on the Merriam-Webster dictionary, an idiom is defined that itexpresses the meanings cannot be grasped from “its separate words but has aseparate meaning of its own.” In other words, idioms should not be taken literally.People use them in order to communicate to others and interchange their thoughtsand feelings in a various way “To understand idioms you have to know the culturethat is behind them, or at least their origin We can say that understanding idioms islike being “in over one‟s head”, meaning it is something difficult to do.”

It is not vague that idioms brings cultural aspects to the language Theythemselves in particular and words in general closely associate with historicalbackground, economy, geographical environment, custom and innermost spirit Forexample, there an idiom in Venezuela, “al mal tiempo, buena cara” which can be

word by word translated to “during bad times, put on a good face” The English

“idiom equivalent” would be “seeing through rose-tinted glasses”

“It is the totality of human experience acquired during transmission ofheritage from one generation to another and to learn the ways of learning, eating,drinking, behaving, walking, dressing, and working is the culture of man.”

“From a dynamic view, language and culture interact with each other andshape each other Language is the carrier of culture which in turn is the content oflanguage.” “Idioms as a special form of language exist in both of them and carry alarge amount of cultural information such as history, geography, religion, custom,nationality psychology, thought pattern…, and therefore are closely related toculture Consequently, we can know much about culture through studying idiomsand in turn get better understanding of idioms by learning the cultural backgroundbehind them.”

2 Classification of idioms

It can be seen that it is absolutely crucial to systematize idioms for betterlearning and studying process In fact, different linguists and researchers alwayshave their own ways to classify idioms, leading to various criteria for groupingthem The oldest principle for sorting idioms mentioned by Nguyen (1995), alsowidely known as “thematic” categorization, is based on varied themes of idioms.Nevertheless, as he stated, this method does not cover important linguisticcharacteristics of idioms Due to the fact that form numerous approached, theunderstanding of idioms‟ nature by linguistic scholars can significantly vary; it isbeyond the realms of possibility to cover all grounds of sorting idioms Hence, thethesis only focuses on two basic criteria of idiom categorization as follow:

 Syntactic approach

 Semantic approach

2.1 Based on syntactic features

Apart from semantic approach, syntax is also a significant criterion for idiomgrouping According to Linden (1993), idioms can be sorted into phrasal andsentence idioms In other words, phrasal idioms have structures of phrases whilesentence counterparts come in the form of a complete sentence structure To bemore specific, regarding phrasal idioms, they can come in an extensive range ofconstructions

Table 1: Classification of idioms in syntactic features

a three-dollar billAdverbial phrase (adv

P)

Now and then, when pigs fly

Preposition phrase (P.P) Over the moon, up in the air

 Comparison idioms: “mỏng như lá lúa”, “nhẹ tựa lông hồng”, etc

 Alliteration idioms (idioms with the same letter or sound at the beginning

of adjacent or closely connected words): “dấm dấm dớ dớ”, “đi đi lại lại”, “đi đêm

đi hôm”, etc

 Reduplication idioms (idioms that have all or a part of a word is repeated):

“khúc kha khúc khích”, etc

In brief, there exist various ways to categorize idioms in both English andVietnamese However, for the purpose of identifying syntactic similarities anddifferences of English and Vietnamese idioms, the aspect of grammatical patternsand structural mechanism will be analyzed in the next chapter

2.2 Based on semantic features

From semantic approach, idioms can be sorted on the degree ofmetaphoricity conveyed by these multi-word units from the lowest level to thehighest one In reality, a wide variety of idiom classifications have been proposed

by numerous linguists According to Vinogradov (1986), there are three majorgroups of idioms from semantic view: phraseological combinations, phraseologicalunities and phraseological fusions

 Phraseological combinations

This is the least idiomatic because one of the member words still retains itsliteral meanings, making it possible to catch the figurative meaning of the wholeexpression partly based on individual elements For instance, in the idiom “bosomfriends” which means intimate friends, the component “friends” is literal while

“bosom” is used figuratively

 Phraseological unities

The typical feature of this type is that meaning of idioms cannot be deducedfrom the total meaning of its components because it undergoes metaphoric ormetonymic transference However, the real meaning can be inferred from the image

of the whole expression For example, “turn over a new leaf” or “fish out of water”

 Phraseological fusions

This type of idioms is considered to have the highest degree of semanticcohesion, which means its meaning is not related to the meaning of its constituentparts “Spill the beans” is one of typical illustrations for this Its connotation is

“reveal someone‟s secret” and has no direct relevance to the literal image That is tosay, idioms come as an independent part of language and must be comprehended as

a whole

Besides Vinogradov, other linguists also suggested numerous ways ofcategorizing idioms as listed in the following table:

Table 2: Classification of idioms in semantic features Fernando (1996) Moon (1998) Yorio (1980) Grant & Bauer

(2004)

Literal idioms: on “Transparent “Transparent (not ONCE (only one

“Semi-literal “Semi-transparent “Semi-transparent: “Figurative

idioms: drop idioms: the pecking shake hands, expressions: hit the

Pure idioms: smell Opaque idioms: “Opaque/True “Core idioms: by

a rat, under the over the moon, idioms: be on the and large, red

nutshell”

2.3 Idioms in association with culture

Considered as the mirror of culture, languages clearly reflect how people indifferent countries perceive and view the world in different ways The intimaterelation between language and culture can be described with a metaphor that culture

is the iceberg The visible part is the language and lying hidden beneath the surface

is the invisible aspect of culture

As an essential component of a language‟s vocabulary, idioms truly reflectrelated-culture factors like history, religion, customs and tradition Both English andVietnamese language in general and idioms in particular have developed with thelong history of the two countries That‟s why English and Vietnamese idioms notonly carry folk tradition but also represent cultural identities of the two nations Forexample, English people compare strength with a horse –“as strong as horse” whileVietnamese people believes “as strong as buffalo” It is cultural factors that can give

a reasonable explanation for this difference In English with nomadic culture, horsecan carry heavy load, pull carts, plough, transport… which is ideally helpful fornomadic people to serve for their moving lifestyles Meanwhile, in Vietnam – an

agricultural country, buffalos not horses are a precious property of every farmerbecause they are very strong and hard-working to help farmers do heavy tasks in thefield The example is to demonstrate that what idioms convey is under significantinfluence of culture aspect and shaped by cultural view Therefore, the deeperlearners understand cultures of the two countries, the better they can grasp and useidioms This is also an essential factor to take into consideration in analyzingsimilar and dissimilar semantic features of dog-related idioms in this study.

3 Overview of Phrase, Clause and Sentence Structures

3.1 Phrase

A phrase, a single unit that words group together is typically an element in aclause or a sentence It does not have a subject and verb which is opposite to clause,

as a result could not express a complete thought

Shirley Temple‟s quotes as some following examples The phrase italicized

in “I stopped believing in Santa Claus when my mother took me to see him in a department store, and he asked for my autograph.” “acts like a noun It is the direct object of the verb stopped This phrase is a gerund phrase.”

“This phrase acts like a noun It is the subject of the adverbial clause when

my mother took me to see him in a department store I stopped believing in Santa Claus when my mother took me to see him in a department store, and he asked for

my autograph.”

“I stopped believing in Santa Claus when my mother took me to see him in a

department store, and he asked for my autograph This phrase acts like a noun It is the object of the preposition for.”

“I stopped believing in Santa Claus when my mother took me to see him in a department store, and he asked for my autograph This phrase acts like an adverb It tells us where the activity took place It is an adverb of place.”

In this study, I focus on verb, noun, adjective, adverb and prepositionalphrases

3.2 Clause

A clause includes “a subject and a verb” separated into “independent clause”, convey “a complete thought and can be a standalone sentence; dependent

clause, a supporting part of a sentence and cannot stand by itself as a meaningful

proposition.”

For example:

“When the man broke into the house, the dog barked at him”.

“When the man broke into the house” called “Subordinate clause” because it contains incomplete idea and needs a main clause “the dog barked at him” to make

a meaningful sentence In the contrary, “the dog barked at him” is independent

clause since people can grasp it

Clauses are used in sentence as a variety of roles Firstly, noun clause is in “I

cannot remember what I said last night.” Secondly, adjective clause is in “My dog, who usually refuses to go near the water, dived in the canal to chase a water vole.” Thirdly, abverbial clause is in “He lost his double chin after he gave up beer.”

3.3 Sentence

“A sentence is a set of words that is complete in itself, typically containing asubject and predicate, conveying a statement, question, exclamation, or command,and consisting of a main clause and sometimes one or more subordinate clauses.”

“A sentence must have a main clause or more than one main clause There are asmany clauses as there are finite verbs in a sentence (The finite verb is the verb thatchanges with the person or number of the subject.)”

 Be complete idea that “can stand alone, its meaning is clear, and doesmake sense, it is accepted as a sentence.”

 “Can be joined to another sentence without the use of a conjunction We

do it by using the present participle which is the –ing form of a verb: look –looking.”

 “Can be made a negative sentence using –ing form of the verb, we put not

in front of it.”

Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY AND PROCEDURES

1 Research Methods

The meanings of idioms, in accordance with their syntactic and semanticfeatures, are described and interpreted with means of descriptive method and apowerful source of dictionaries and document

To what extend, the contrastive method is applied to draw out the similarities

as well as differences of selected English and Vietnamese dog-mentioned idioms

During process of collecting data, I have consulted ideas from my supervisorfor worth-reading books and websites on the Internet I employed contrastiveanalysis method and content-analysis to accomplish the research paper

1.Contrastive analysis

Contrastive analysis is to contrasts the linguistic systems of two languages inorder to pick all the relevant differences This thesis is to distinguish selectedEnglish and Vietnamese dog-mentioned idioms according to their syntactic andsemantic features to determine both the differences and similarities between them sothat this kind of research method is suitable It has pedagogical goals in the field oftranslation and second language acquisition

2.Content analysis

Content-analysis was mostly quantitative analysis of documentary materialsconcerning certain characteristics that can be identified and counted

2 Research Procedures

This part of the thesis includes all research-related activities to be undertaken

in order to achieve the aims of the study and to offer some possible solutions to theproblem

- Firstly, 55 English and 55 Vietnamese idioms which contain elements „dog‟are gathered from the sources of books, dictionaries and internet and the author‟snotes

- Secondly, English and Vietnamese dog-mentioned idioms are analyzed andcategorized according to their syntactic and semantic features “Syntactically, theanalysis and classification are mainly based on the different structural categories ofidioms such as noun phrase, verb phrases, adjective phrases, prepositional phrases,

adverb phrases Semantically, the classifying is carried out on the basic typicalsemantic features of idioms in two languages Culturally, idioms will be treated andpresented objective demonstrations to find out the cultural characteristics of dog-mentioned idioms.”

- Thirdly, the tables are used to demonstrate different types of dog-relatedidioms in English and Vietnamese in the first column basing on structures of “nounphrase, verb phrase, adjective phrase, adverb phrase and sentence” in the secondcolumn The third column contains idioms which are used to make clear the patternsand the last one is number of idioms of that pattern to estimate the proportion Thesimilarities and the differences in terms of the syntactic and semantic features ofEnglish and Vietnamese dog-related idioms are figured out from that

- Fourthly, some implications for teaching and learning idioms as well asmaking some suggestions for further research are put forward

3 Description of the Sample

- There are thoudsands of idioms in English and Vietnamese, particularlyapproximate hundreds of dog-related idioms in these two languages that cannot becovered in one paper Besides, with limited time and effort, so the author has toconsider them to make research and gain the correct results Choosing the samplesmust base on a certain criteria:

+ There is at least a word „dog‟ in an English idiom and „chó‟ in aVietnamese idiom

+ Which has the same meaning will be chosen only one

- With that criteria set, a number of English and Vietnamese idioms frommany books, dictionaries, notes and the internet is selected Therefore, the authorgot the collection of a total of 110 English and Vietnamese idioms related to dogsfor building up my corpus which consists of 55 English idioms and 55 Vietnameseones

Chapter 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

1 Syntactic analysis of selected dog-related idioms in English and Vietnamese 1.1 Idiom structures based on syntactic features

In this section, a total of 55 English and 55 Vietnamese idioms related todogs are categorized on the ground of grammatical patterns mentioned previously inChapter 2 Moreover, idioms in each group are sub-divided for a more specific andaccurate contrastive analysis

Table 3: Structures of selected dog-related English idioms

1.Noun Phrase

1 N + N “A shaggy-dog story,

top dog, a dog and

pony show, dog life, prairie dog”

cat-and-2 N‟s N “A dog‟s breakfast/

dinner, dog‟s chance,the dog‟s bollocks”

3 N + prep + N “A dog in the manger,

a whole team and the dog under the wagon”

4 N + non-finiteclause

“The tail wagging thedog”

2.Verb Phrase

1 N + N “Dog somebody‟s

footsteps, everybodyand his dog”

2 V + N/NP “Bark up the wrong(+NP) tree, rain cats and

dogs, give the dog abad name, couldn‟t getelected dogcatcher,play hide the hot dog,put on the dog”

3 V + prep + “Be done like a dog‟s

dinner, be dressed uplike a dog‟s dinner, go

to the dogs, go to see aman about a dog, blowthis hot dog stand, calloff one‟s dogs”

NP

4 V1 + N1 + V2 “Let sleeping dogs lie,

let the dog see therabbit, look for a dog

to kick”

+ (N2)

5 V + N1 + “Throw someone toprep + N2 the dogs, better be the

head of a dog than thetail of a lion, have adog in the hunt, help alame dog over a stile”

1 As + adj + as+ NP

dog, as sick as a dog,

as quick as a dog can

a hound‟s tooth, as sad

as a hound dog‟s eye”

2 N + V + N “Dog eat dog”

3 N + adj “Dog-tired, lucky dog”

4 Preposition

1 prep + NP “In the doghouse, like

a whimpped dog, until

Phrase

2 prep + NP1 +prep + NP2

“Like a dog with twotails, like a dog with a

Structure Idioms Number Percentage

1 N + N/Adj, N + “Lợn rọ, chó thui”

1 Noun N/Adj

phrase

it is easy to find a stick

to beat a dog, one‟sdog are barking,there‟s life in the olddog yet”

As can be seen from the table, selected idioms concerning dogs in Englishare constituted by both phrases and sentences with a variety of structures.Noticeably, while sentence pattern is the least frequently used structure, phrasalpatterns make up nearly all selected English dog-mentioned idioms (85%) To bemore specific, selected English idioms have abundant structures of verb phrases,noun phrases, adjective phrases and preposition phrases in which verb phrases arethe most common pattern (38%), followed by noun phrases (20%) and adjective(17%) Meanwhile, preposition is rarely used in selected English dog-relatedidioms

Table 4: Structures of selected Vietnamese dog-related idioms

2 Verb

Phrase kiếp trâu ăn cỏ, làm

kiếp chó ăn dơ; luồncửa tiền cửa hậu,chẳng thèm luồn bờgiậu chó thui; xuỵt chóbụi rậm; thui chó nửamùa/chừng hết rơm”

2 V + như + NP “Ăn ở như chó với

4 V + N, V + N “Chửi chó mắng mèo,

chửi mèo quèo chó;

đánh chó ngó chủ; lênvoi xuống chó; treođầu dê bán thịt chó; ăncùng chó, ló xó cùngma; sống được miếngdồi chó, thác được bóvàng tâm”

3. 1 Adj + N/NP + V “Mỡ gà thì gió, mỡchó thì mưa”

Sentence váy lĩnh, chó già gữ

xương, bọ chó múabấc, chó cắn trộm, chóchạy hở đuôi, chó cùngrứt giậu, chó đen giữmực, chó đói mới chịugiữ nhà, chó hùa đàn,chó ngáp phải ruồi,chó nhà quê đòi ănmắm mực, chó sói độilốt cừu, chó sủa là chókhông cắn, chó sủatrăng/ma”

2 N + V, N +V “Chó tha đi, mèo tha

lại; chó đen ăn vụng,chó trắng chịu đòn;chó treo, mèo đậy;mang chết chó cũng lè lưỡi”

4 N + V + N, N + V “Chó ăn đá, gà ăn sỏi;

cậy gần chuồng; chóchê mèo lắm long, hóa

ra chó lại lắm long hơnmèo; chó giữ nhà, gàgáy trống canh; chó ịbàn cờ, dơ mặt tướng;chó lê trôn, gà gáy gở;con chẳng chê cha mẹkhó, chó chẳng chênhà chủ nghèo; dâu dữmất họ, chó dữ mấtláng giềng”

5 N + V + adv, N + “Chó chui gầm chạn;

V + adv chó ghẻ có mỡ đằng

đuôi; chó ị bờ giếngkhông sao, chó ị bờ aongười ta cắt cổ; chókhôn chẳng sủa chỗkhông; mèo đến nhàthì khó, chó đến nhàthì sang”

As illustrated by table 4, selected idioms related to dogs in Vietnamese are inthe form of both phrases and sentences with numerous structures; especially, abouttwo-thirds of the idioms are sentences Regarding phrasal structures, selectedVietnamese idioms are constituted by three types of phrases including verb phrases,noun phrases and adjective phrases; particularly, verb phrases significantlyoutnumber the others

1.2 Discussion of similarities and differences in Syntactic features of selected English and Vietnamese dog-related idioms

Figure 1: Selected English and Vietnamese dog-related idiom structures

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