The syntactic and lexical features of english and vietnamese newspaper headlines a contrastive analysis

LIST OF TABLESTable 3.1: Frequency of structural headline types in the English and Vietnamese corporaTable 3.2: Frequency of sentential headline types in the English and Vietnamese corpo

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

PHẠM HỒNG PHƯỢNG

THE SYNTACTIC AND LEXICAL FEATURES OF ENGLISH

AND VIETNAMESE NEWSPAPER HEADLINES: A

CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS

(Phân tích đối chiếu các đặc điểm cú pháp và từ vựng của các

tiêu đề bài báo Tiếng Anh và Tiếng Việt)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Linguistics

Hanoi, 2011

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

PHẠM HỒNG PHƯỢNG

THE SYNTACTIC AND LEXICAL FEATURES OF ENGLISH

AND VIETNAMESE NEWSPAPER HEADLINES: A

CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS

(Phân tích đối chiếu các đặc điểm cú pháp và từ vựng của các

tiêu đề bài báo Tiếng Anh và Tiếng Việt)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Linguistics

Supervisor: Dr Nguyễn Huy Kỷ

Hanoi, 2011

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1: Frequency of structural headline types in the English and Vietnamese corporaTable 3.2: Frequency of sentential headline types in the English and Vietnamese corporaTable 3.3: Frequency of simple headline types in the English and Vietnamese corporaTable 3.4: Frequency of compound headline types in the English and Vietnamese corporaTable 3.5: Frequency of non-sentential headlines in the English and Vietnamese corporaTable 3.6: The Frequency of non-finite clauses in the English sample headlines

Table 3.7: Frequency of omission of subjects in English and Vietnamese non-finite clausalheadlines

Table 3.8: Frequency of non-sentential headline types in English and Vietnamese corporaTable 3.9: Frequency of nominal headline types in the English and Vietnamese corporaTable 3.10: Frequency of types of postmodifiers in Vietnamese nominal headlines

Table 3.11: Frequency of functional headlines types in English and Vietnamese corporaTable 3.12: Frequency of different parts of speech in English and Vietnamese headlinesTable 3.13: Frequency of nouns in English and Vietnamese corpora

Table 3.14: Frequency of dynamic and static verbs in English and Vietnamese corporaTable 3.15: Frequency of active and passive voice in English and Vietnamese corporaTable 3.16: Frequency of verbs with different syllables in English and Vietnamese corporaTable 3.17: Frequency of the omission of verb 'be' in English corpus

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CANDIDATE‟S STATEMENT

-ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

-LIST OF TABLES

-

ABSTRACT -PART A: INTRODUCTION

-1 Rationale of the study

2 Objectives of the study

-3 Research questions

-4 Scope of the study

-5 Methods of the study

-6 Design of the study

-PART B: DEVELOPMENT

-CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 Literature review

-1.1.1 Language of headlines

1.1.2 Complexity in headlines

-1.1.3 Typical features of headlines

-1.1.4 Contrastive analyses on headlines

-1.1.5 Studies on headlines in Vietnam

-1.2 Theoretical background

-1.2.1 Newspaper headlines

-1.2.1.1 Concepts of headlines

-1.2.1.2 Functions of headlines

-1.2.2 Syntactic and lexical features

-1.2.2.1 Syntactic features

-1.2.2.2 Lexical features

-CHAPTER 2: ANALYSIS ON COLLECTED NEWSPAPER HEADLINES

-2.1 Materials

-2.2 Procedure

-2.3 Data

analysis -2.3.1 First level of analysis

-2.3.1.1 Structural headline types

-2.3.1.2 Functional headline types

-2.3.2 Second level of analysis

-2.3.2.1 Parts of speech in sample headlines

-2.3.2.2 Omissions in headlines

-2.4

Summary -CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND IMPLICATIONS

-3.1 Similar features of English and Vietnamese newspaper

headlines -3.1.1 Syntactic similarities

-3.1.2 Lexical similarities

-3.2 Different features of English and Vietnamese newspaper headlines

-3.2.1 Syntactic differences

-3.2.2 Lexical differences

3.3 Pedagogical implications

-3.3.1 Implications for teaching journalistic English

-3.3.2 Implications for teaching translation

-3.4 Summary

-PART C: CONCLUSION

-1 Recapitulation

-2 Limitations of the study

-3 Suggestions for further studies

-REFERENCES

-APPENDIX

-PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

It is undeniable that our country has been moving towards globalization and tradeliberalization To be successful, we have opened to welcome foreign investment for manyyears and now we still need to continuously understand the political and economicsituations of other countries In such a situation, information has played a vital role up tonow Newspapers are one of the most popular means of transmitting information which hasattracted a great number of readers

Conventionally, it is believed that newspapers have more readers than any other

kind of written text According to Van Dijk (1986:156), "for most citizens, news is perhaps the type of written discourse with which they are confronted most frequently" Reading

newspapers in English, in fact, has always been an interest of English learners Newspapersare everywhere but how to read in an easy way to understand is still a problem Moreover,

as teachers of English, how to teach students to translate, to write and to understandEnglish press in an effective way is really a big question

In a newspaper, it is the headline that has the highest readership It is always thefirst thing that everyone notices when picking up a newspaper It serves as a guide forreaders that helps decide whether to continue on reading the whole report or to skip ontoanother one Each headline summarizes the content of a story, and entices an audience intoreading the article Newspaper headlines are particularly important for the way readerscomprehend a news text, they are markers that monitor attention, perception and thereading process (Van Dijk, 1988)

Many students of English find that newspaper headlines are especially difficult tounderstand Obviously, it is not just a matter of vocabulary; even the style of writing isdifferent from any other text they have met in their studies The language of headlines isspecial and has its own characteristics on the lexical, syntactic, and rhetorical levels for itsbrevity, attractiveness, and clarity (Danuta R., 1998) These language features pose a greatchallenge to foreign learners of English when they begin to read English newspapers

The key to ease the difficulty of this special genre lies on the comparison betweenforeign and native languages (Connor, 1996) Thereby, this study is conducted toinvestigate the similar and different features in the newspaper headlines of English and

Vietnamese languages From the findings, I hope partly to guide Vietnamese learners and teachers of English towards the effective way of mastering English.

2 Objectives of the study

In the light of Contrastive Analysis, this study attempts to contrast English andVietnamese newspaper headlines, which concentrates on the following objectives:

 Studying the syntactic and lexical features of English and Vietnamese newspaper headlines;

 Contrastively comparing the newspaper headlines of the two languages syntactically and lexically to find the similarities and mainly differences between them;

Drawing out the practical applications in English language teaching and

4 Scope of the study

Due to the limit in time and within the framework of an M.A thesis, it isimpossible for a study to deal with all the features of language theory and practice in depth.This study, therefore, only focuses on some syntactic and lexical features found in thenewspapers headlines of English and Vietnamese to see how they are different

5 Methods of the study

In the thesis, the main methods used are description and contrastive comparison ofthe two languages in newspaper headlines including:

 Describing the syntactic and lexical features in the English and Vietnamese headlines

collected from The New York Times and Hà Nội Mới newspapers.

 Contrastively comparing those features in English and Vietnamese newspaper

headlines with concrete contrasting techniques, namely, analysis and statistics

6 Design of the study

This thesis consists of three parts:

Part A is the introduction which shows the reasons why the topic is chosen, what

the study aims at as well as the scope of the study and some outlook on methodology

Part B consists of 3 chapters Chapter 1 discusses the review of related literature

and theoretical background of every matter mentioned in the title of the study Chapter 2and 3 are the analysis of the headlines selected, the major findings and discussions withsome implications for learning and teaching English

Part C is the conclusion which presents the recapitulation of the study, the

limitations of the study and some suggestions for further researches

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

In this Chapter, review of related literature and theoretical background includingthe syntactic and lexical features of English and Vietnamese headlines will be provided

1.1 Literature review

Headlines are obviously one of the striking features of modern newspapers.Therefore it is not surprising that they have been studied quite extensively not only byjournalists but also by linguists Some of the few existing linguistic studies of headlineswill be reviewed below

1.1.3 Typical features of headlines

Mardh (1980) offers an exhaustive study of the characteristic features of theheadlines of a range of English newspapers She identifies the following linguistic features

as typical of headlines in English newspapers: the omission of articles; the omission ofverbs and of auxiliaries (the verb "to be" for example); nominalizations; the frequent use ofcomplex noun phrases in subject position (in theme position); adverbial headlines, with theomission of both verb and subject; the use of short words ("bid" instead of "attempt"); the

widespread use of puns, word play and alliteration; the importance of word order, with themost important items placed first, even, in some cases, a verb; and independent "wh"

constructions not linked to a main clause, for example: Why the French don't give a damn.

Van Dijk (1988) analyzes a five-decker from the New York Times He sees thejournalistic process as beginning with a headline and working through lead to body copy

He analyzes over 400 headlines in the Dutch press reporting the 1985 Tamil panic, anoccasion of racial tensions between the Dutch and immigrant groups He finds that theauthorities dominate first position in the headline, with active verbs When thedisadvantaged Tamils are mentioned first, the verb tends to be passive

Mouillaud and Tetu (as cited in Develotte & Rechniewski 2000), analyzing LeMonde, suggest the following features as typical of headlines: the suppression of spatialand particularly temporal markers; the use of the present tense of verbs (where they areused) as opposed to or in place of any other tenses; the replacement of verbs bynominalizations; the suppression of declarative verbs and the disappearance of signs ofspeech (quotation marks; personal pronouns)

1.1.4 Contrastive analyses on headlines

Kniffka's (in Bell, 1991) detailed comparison of leads and headlines finds a highlevel of structural correspondence between the two The subeditor tends to reproduce thesyntactic patterns of the lead in the headline Kniffka finds that the presence of active orpassive voice in the lead is carried over to the headline According to Kniffka, headlinestructures appear to be very regular across languages He confirms his analysis of bothGerman and American English news texts, finding their leads and headlines structurallyidentical The regularity is so consistent that he concludes there is a shared internationalgrammar of lead and headline writing

Scollon (2000), in his study of five days of three editions of the same newspaper inits Chinese and English editions, argues that the English headlines, following on generalwestern journalistic practice put the main point right in the headline in what has also beencalled a deductive rhetorical mode The Chinese editions, on the other hand, use theheadlines to establish the setting but do not provide any further information about thecontent of the talks, which is the inductive ordering of the topics elsewhere found incontrast between Chinese and English language news stories In other words, the major

difference lies in whether the headline focuses directly on the central topic found withinthe body of the story or the setting.

1.1.5 Studies on headlines in Vietnam

In Vietnam, newspaper headlines are investigated by some authors who havedifferent concerns Ánh (2003) finds out some discourse features of headlines and articles

in English containing syntactic features, cohesive devices, collocations, phrasal verbs andidioms The syntactic features in her research include the selection of verbs, passivestructures, and the use of non-finites, implicit expression of opinions, modality and wordorder She concludes that headline writers often omit definite and indefinite articles, theverb „to be‟, auxiliary verbs and titles before proper names; they widely use punctuation,visual images and simple tenses instead of progressive and perfect forms to state the topic

of the article and to attract a large number of readers Bích (2009) study on English –Vietnamese translation of electronic news headlines also gives some distinctivegrammatical characteristics of English news headlines with dominance of phrases,statements, expansion of present simple tense, and frequent omission of words such as theverb „be‟ and articles

Concerning English and Vietnamese translation, Trang (2008) carries out a study ontranslating English newspaper headlines into Vietnamese newspaper headlines on Dantrionline newspaper She analyzes the language structures of English and Vietnameseheadlines in order to find whether they are equivalent between the two languages InEnglish, syntactically she concentrates on verbal, nominal, adverbial, simple, compoundand complex headlines In Vietnamese, her focus is on one-word, phrasal and sentenceheadlines However, her aim is at translation Therefore, more studies on comparing thecharacteristics of English and Vietnamese news headlines are necessary This study intends

to investigate the application of syntactic and lexical features in English and Vietnamesenewspaper headlines in order to uncover to what extent the two languages are compatible

in these domains

From the original literal meaning, headline is defined as a heading, usually in large,heavy type, at the top of an article in a newspaper, magazine or other publicationsindicating the subject of the article The following definition is quoted in English language

dictionary as “headline is the title of a newspaper story, printed in large letters at the top

of the story, especially in the front pages” (Sinclair, 1998:389).

As for Gimmer (1997:497), headline is a “head of newspaper story or article printed in large type and devised to summarize the story or article that follows”.

Danuta‟s (1998: 121) opinion about a headline is that it is a unique type of text Ithas a range of functions that specifically dictate its shape, content, and structure and itoperates within a range of restrictions that limited the freedom of the writer In otherwords, headline should encapsulate the story in minimum words, attract readers to thestory

According to Ungerer (2000:48), "a headline describes the essence of a complicated news story in a few words It informs quickly and accurately and arouses the reader's curiosity".

In brief, headline is the title given to a news item or an article It is a condensedform of writing It is in fact a part of a whole The specific functional and linguistic traits ofthe headline provide sufficient ground for isolating and analyzing it in a specific “genre” ofjournalism

1.2.1.2 Functions of headlines

According to Danuta R (1998), a headline serves the following functions: It getsthe reader's attention; summarizes or tells about the article; helps organize the news on thepage and indicates the relative importance of a story Therefore, “the reader can skim theheadlines and have an outline of the news of the day, and some ideas of its relative impactand importance.” (Danuta R.,1998:14)

Danuta R says that headline plays conflicting roles which is carrying informationand attracting readers‟ attention For carrying information, the headline should deliversome details on what happened, who was involved, where it happened, what thecircumstances were which is simplified into what, who, where, how However, to whatextent headlines perform what-where-who-how function depends on the certaincircumstances.

Besides, according to Danuta R (1998), headlines have a persuasive function whenthey are to attract readers‟ attention However, they are also written to influence readers

1.2.2 Syntactic and lexical features

As mentioned before, this study considers lexical and syntactic features in Englishand Vietnamese newspaper headlines in order to see how they are different Below is abrief description of syntactic and lexical features All the examples are the headlines takenfrom the corpus with denoted dates

1.2.2.1 Syntactic features

According to Maggie (1998), „syntax‟ means „sentence construction‟: How words

group together to make phrases and sentences More generally, it refers to the study of theinterrelationships between all elements of sentence structure, and of the rules governing thearrangements of sentences in sequences It allows various possibilities to be exploited foreffective linguistic communication

In Ban‟s (2009:32) opinion, syntax is a division of grammar which studies theways to combine the elements of language conventionally from „words‟ upwards, and twointernal levels of syntax are at phrases and sentences

In order to get an overall picture of the structure of English and Vietnameseheadlines, a description of syntactic features of headlines including structural andfunctional headline types of the two languages will be introduced in the following sections

a Structural headline types

Below are the basic types of headlines in terms of their structures: sentential andnon-sentential headlines

 Sentential headlines

Sentential headlines are all headlines that have a regular sentence structure, i.e all

headlines with a subject and a finite verb phrase which is characterized as a phrase "in which the first or only word is a finite verb, the rest of the verb phrase (if any) consisting of

non-finite verbs" (Quirk, 1985:149) As far as sentence structure is concerned, there are

two main types of sentence: simple and multiple sentences (Crystal, 2006:216) The mostnatural sentence structure is the simple sentence: it is the first kind which children learn tospeak, and it remains by far the most common sentence in the spoken language of people

of all ages In written work, simple sentences can be very effective for grabbing a reader'sattention or for summing up an argument as they are simply understandable

 Simple sentences

As Leech (2006:104) explains, a simple sentence consists of just one independentclause Consistent with this rule, when a simple sentence is further analyzed, there is justone subject and one finite verb phrase These are the main elements but several others (e.g.adverbials), which are obligatory, can be present in addition to the subject and verb Quirk1985: 204) distinguishes seven clause types The following table illustrates these typeswith the examples from the corpora:

 Multiple sentencesMultiple sentences are described by Crystal (2006:226) as sentences with two ormore clauses that are linked either by coordination or by subordination According to thetype of the linking words, these constructions are classified as compound sentences andcomplex sentences.

- Compound sentences:

As Biber (1999:227) points out, "there are three major coordinators in and, or and but" These coordinators do not only link clauses, but also words or phrases.

English-Sometimes, no coordinator is present and clauses are linked by a comma For example:

Eng: Europe Stews on Greece, and Markets Sweat Out the Wait (Aug 28th 2011)

Viet: Giá hàng hóa tăng hàng loạt nhưng sẽ không có biến động lớn (Aug 29th 2011)

(Goods price increases at mass but there will not be a great fluctuation)

As it was already said, compound sentences contain two or more clauses, and theimportant thing is that all clauses in such a sentence are at the same level In other words,they can stand on their own independently, which is not true for complex sentences

- Complex sentences

Individual clauses of a complex sentence are linked by subordinators, such as since, although or when, etc and can be further classified as the main clause and one or more

subordinate clauses For example:

Eng: DNA tests say Lindbergh fathered three children in Germany (Aug 26th 2011)

Viet: Cha mẹ làm gì khi trẻ biếng ăn? (Aug 26th 2011)

(What will parents do when children do not have good appetite?)

The first clause is a subordinate one and the second is the main in the Englishexample and vice versa in the Vietnamese one

The subordinate clauses are always dependent upon the main clause and cannot stand

as a sentence on their own (Crystal, 2006:226) As Quirk (1985:283) says, the dependent orsubordinate clauses function as an element of a sentence Leech (2006:17-18) furtherexplains that we can classify them on the basis of their functions within the main clause asnominal, adverbial, comparative or relative Sometimes the subordinate clauses do not

contain a finite verb phrase (non-finite clauses- e.g Teen helps fight human trafficking –

Aug.27th 2011) or they lack a verb completely (verbless clauses- e.g If possible, nominate

them!- Aug.27th 2011).

It is necessary to consider the non-sentential units as they are characteristic for thelanguage of newspaper headlines and they form a great deal of the materials analyzed forthe purpose of this paper.

 Non-sentential headlines

The structure of such headlines is lower than a regular sentence; they areconstructed in an irregular way Crystal (2006) calls such structures minor sentences.Although independent sentences are the main building blocks of texts or conversation, non-sentential structures are also frequent Non-sentential headlines can be divided accordinglywhether they do or do not contain a verb phrase Structures with a verb phrase are non-finite clauses (with the exception of verbless clauses), whereas structures without a verbphrase are just phrases, which will be further described respectively

 Non-finite clauses:

According to Biber (1999:259, 262), non-finite clauses are usually dependentclauses, i.e they appear in a sentence together with a main clause In some circumstances,however, dependent clauses can be used separately

Leech (2006:71) describes these clauses as clauses which have a non-finite verb

phrase and subdivides them into three categories: infinitive clauses (e.g Bank of America

to Cut 3,500 Jobs - Aug.28th 2011), -ing clauses (e.g Finding Planets Around Other Stars - Aug.28th 2011), and ed clauses (e.g One Killed in Israeli Port City - Aug.28th

2011) All three types have a varied range of syntactic roles, which means that they canstand on positions of different clause elements, such as subject, direct object, orcomplement Moreover, apart from the three above mentioned types, Biber (1999:261)describes the fourth type of non-finite clauses- so called verbless clauses For these clauses,

he says, ellipsis of the verb „be‟ and the subject is typical (Factory Growth Fastest in 20

Years - Aug.26th 2011).

″A phrase may consist of a single word or a group of words″ (Biber, 1999:38) In

other words, phrases are built up from words and they usually consist of a head andmodifiers which are not necessarily present Under the head we understand a word in the

phrase ″around which the other components cluster and which dictates concord and other kinds of congruence with the rest of the sentence outside the phrase″ (Quirk, 1985:1238).

The head is essential for categorizing phrases The phrase types are following: noun

phrases, verb phrases, adjective phrases, adverb phrases, and prepositional phrases (Biber,1999:41).

Individual phrases function as clause elements, i.e they built up a clause Usually,the most important element of a clause is verb phrase which was focused previously asfinite and non-finite So now a greater interest will be put on noun phrases, as they oftenstand on their own in headlines

- Noun phrases

Noun phrases have a noun as the head which can be preceded by determiners andaccompanied by modifiers- either premodifiers or postmodiefiers (Biber, 1999:41-42).Sometimes an adjective can be the head of a noun phrase Mardh, who devoted her time tothe analysis of headlines, denotes the headlines consisting of a noun phrase and notcontaining a verb as nominal In order to examine syntactic variation within the nounphrases across the two languages, the structural types of nominal headlines were analyzedaccording to unmodification, premodification, postmodification and pre -post modification

+ Unmodification: Structures in which the head of noun phrase is not modified by

any other item are referred to as unmodified structures (Quirk, 1985)

+ Premodification: A premodifier is a modifier that precedes the word it modifies

(Quirk, 1985)

+ Postmodification: A postmodifier is a modifier or quantifier that follows the

constituent it modifies (Quirk, 1985)

+ Pre-post Modifications: Structures which have both pre- and post-modifiers are

referred to as pre-post modified headlines, e.g

Ex: Weekly prompts from a mentor (Aug 29th 2011)

b Functional headline types

Analyzing headline types by function, they can be divided into four functionaltypes: statements, questions, directives, and exclamations (Mardh, 1980; Quirk, 1985;McLoughlin, 2000)

 Statements

In Quirk(1985:803)'s words, "statements are primarily used to convey information".

It means that their primary purpose is to inform about something They

should always include a subject which usually precedes a verb In other words, they have a

declarative structure - "a structure which declares or makes something known" (Crystal,

2006:218) A statement headline describes a state of affairs, actions, feelings or belief Forexample:

Eng: Iran jails US hikers for 8 years (Aug 26th 2011)

Viet: 10 cá nhân được nhận giải thưởng Tôn Đức Thắng (Aug 27th 2011)

(10 people receive Tôn Đức Thắng prize)

 Questions

In the common core, questions are usually used when speakers need someinformation they lack, and they expect an answer provided by their listeners Questions inspeech may be indicated by placing the operator in front of the subject and by initial wh-

word (Ex: Where is Gadhafi’s money now?- (Aug 29th 2011)) A common structure of a

question, it means a verb-subject structure (Ex: Is Samsung aiming to snap up HP’s PC

business? (Aug 27th 2011)), is called interrogative Also, a rising intonation may be a

characteristic feature of questions In writing, a question mark has such a function It may

convert any structure into a question (Ex: Anne Hathaway, future rap star? (Aug 29th

2011)) And on the other hand, as Leech (2006:106) points out, not all clauses with the

interrogative structure must necessarily be questions, ex “Will you turn down the radio?”

is interrogative in structure but a command in function A question headline is addressed to

a reader or listener and asks for an expression of fact, opinion, belief, etc For example:

Eng: Music‟s best kept secret? (Aug 28th 2011)

Viet: Công cụ thị trường nào cho lãi suất? (Aug 27th 2011)

(Which market tool is for interest?)

 Directives

Directives are all sentences that have the imperative structure, i.e sentences with no

subject usually and with a verb in its base form (ex Send your image to iReport! (Aug.

29th 2011)) Their function is to "instruct someone to do something" (Crystal, 2006:219).

Usually directives are very simple sentences with the function to urge somebody to do ornot to do something, and therefore it is not necessary to consider tense, modality or aspect

of the verb (Biber, 1999:254) Directive sentence, according to Hạo (1991), is the sentencethat has illocutionary value, affects second person, and requires this person to make aunilateral or a co-operating action Directive sentence is also a mean to order, request, or

require someone to do something When using directive sentence, the speaker expects that the hearer will obey.

A directive headline expresses a request or advice:

Eng: Put these question marks by the hardware (Aug 29th 2011)

Viet: Hãy bỏ cơ chế Xin - Cho(Aug 29th 2011)

(Leave off ask-give mechanism!)

 Exclamations

As Crystal (2006:219) says, exclamations usually show impression and are often

just minor sentences, such as Gosh!, or Oh dear! However, their structure can be that of a

major sentence as well with the first element being how or what followed by a subject and

a verb Sometimes their form is reduced and no verb is present

An exclamation headline shows the writer‟s or speaker‟s feelings:

Ex: Đừng làm mình bị tụt hậu! (Aug 29th 2011)

(Don‟t make us lag behind!)

1.2.2.2 Lexical features

Lexicology, in its most general sense, is synonymous with vocabulary; and, in itstechnical sense, it deals with the analysis of words (Quirk, 1985) Under lexicology, theindividual words such as nouns, verbs, articles, adjectives, adverbs, numerals,conjunctions, pronouns and prepositions will be analyzed in both English and Vietnameseheadlines in order to determine the frequency of their occurrence Below is a shortdescription of nouns and verbs which are considered the most important parts of speech

a Nouns

A noun is a word which (a) can occur as the subject or object of a verb or the object

of a preposition, (b) can be modified by an adjective, and (c) can be used with determiners.Nouns typically refer to people, animals, places, things, or abstractions (Murphy, 1997).For example:

Eng: Don Lemon‟s new marriage dilemma.(Aug.29th 2011)

Viet: Một trường phổ thông trong căn hộ nhỏ (Aug.27th 2011)

(A secondary school in a small flat)

The distinct features of nouns used in headlines are the frequent appearance of the proper nouns, the acronyms, and the abbreviations (Baddock, 1988) These features were

investigated in headlines of the two languages to determine the frequency of their

Acronyms and abbreviations

Acronyms are words derived from the initials of several words This process iswidely used in shortening extremely long words or word groups in science, technology andother special fields (Fromkin & Rodman, 1999) For example:

Eng: C.I.A Demands Cuts in Book About 9/11 and Terror Fight (Aug 26th 2011)

Viet: TP HCM sẽ kiểm soát chặt tình trạng nghệ sĩ trang phục phản cảm (August

26th 2011) (HCM city will tightly control the state of artists with anti-emotion clothes)

Abbreviation is a reduced version of a word, phrase, or sentence It is also calledclipping (Crystal, 1992):

Ex: Japan Govt to Nationalize Regional Bank (Aug 28th 2011)

b Verbs

Verb is an important lexical category, and the one which is seemingly universal.Verb categories will be analyzed in both English and Vietnamese headlines to seedifferences and similarities across the two languages

 Voice

Voice is the form of the verb, which shows the relation between the action and itssubject In English and Vietnamese, there are two voices: the active and the passive If thesubject performs the action, then the verb form is in the active voice If the subject receivesthe action, then the verb form is in passive voice (Fallahi, 1991; Ban, 2009) For example:

Eng: Three arrested in American‟s kidnapping in Pakistan (Aug.29th 2011)

Viet: Gần 200 ảnh được trưng bày (Aug.29th 2011)

(Nearly 200 photos are displayed)

Voice will be considered in this study to examine the frequency of its occurrence inthe headlines of the two languages



Dynamic and static verbs

According to their lexical meanings, verbs can be divided into dynamic and staticverbs A type of verbs which typically occurs in the progressive form and in the

imperative, and which expresses such meaning as activity, process, and bodily sensation isreferred to as a dynamic verb (Quirk, 1985) Static verbs (also called stative or state verbs)

do not usually occur in the progressive nor in the imperative, and which express a state ofaffairs rather than an action (Quirk, 1985) Hòa (2009) gives the concept of dependent andindependent verbs in Vietnamese in which dynamic and static verbs belong to the latter Heshares the same opinion with Quirk (1985) about these two types of verbs For example:

Dynamic verb: Eng: South Koreans leave N.Korean resort (Aug.29th 2011)

Viet: Thượng nghị sĩ Mỹ Jim Webb thăm TP Hồ Chí Minh.

(American Senator Jim Webb visits Hồ Chí Minh city) (Aug.29th 2011)

Static verb: Eng: Libya does not need UN peace keepers (Aug.29th 2011)

Viet: Cần chủ động bình ổn giá thực phẩm (Aug.29th 2011)

(Need to actively stabilize food price)

 Syllables of verbs in headlines

In headlines, monosyllabic verbs are used frequently as substitutes for longer, morecolloquial expressions The analysis of verbs according to their syllables in the English andVietnamese corpora was done in order to investigate their similarities and differences in thetwo languages in this respect

c Omissions in headlines

Omission is one of the major features of newspaper headlines (Bell, 1991) Turner

(1972: 72) says: "Determiners and the verb 'to be' are almost universally omitted in headlines" For the sake of brevity and saving space, most closed words and some open

words in headlines are often omitted or reduced to a minimum in headlines For example:

Eng: Under 40, blindsided by breast cancer (Aug.28th 2011)

Viet: Luật doanh nghiệp đang “hành” doanh nghiệp? (Aug.29th 2011)

(Enterprise law is “disturbing” enterprises?)

As can be seen from the above examples, the verb "are" in the English headline and

"có phải" in the Vietnamese one are omitted

In the sample headlines, an investigation is made in order to find out the frequency

of omission of words across and within the two languages

To sum up, this Chapter dealt with some previous studies on newspaper headlines

as well as a syntactically and lexically theoretical description of English and Vietnameseheadline features The syntactic characteristics include headline types by structure and byfunction, and the lexical ones concern parts of speech mainly with nouns and verbs andomissions as typical of headline language The next Chapter is a detailed analysis on thenewspaper headlines collected in a four-day corpus

CHAPER 2 ANALYSIS ON COLLECTED NEWSPAPER HEADLINES

The previous chapter has reviewed some related literature and established theframework of the theoretical background from which the syntactic and lexicalcharacteristics of headlines have been covered The information regarding the materials,procedure and data analysis of the study will be presented in this chapter

headlines are from the website http://nytimes.com and the Vietnamese ones are from http://hanoimoi.com.vn.

The headlines issued during a four-day period from August 26th to August 29th, 2011.The number of English and Vietnamese headlines arrived at a total of 227 and 232 from thetwo sources respectively The headlines taken for analysis belong to various fields such aseconomics, culture, politics, science, technology, health, travel, sports, etc which areupdated every day in the two newspapers

2.2 Procedure

This research is directed towards studying the syntactic and lexical features ofEnglish and Vietnamese corpora in such a way that by a systematic comparison, thedifferences and similarities between the sample headlines of the two languages will beidentified

At the start, the investigation began with the description of the basic units of analysis

in the English headline structures and continued with the analysis of the Vietnameseheadlines In doing so, for the analysis of the structure of English headlines, thegrammatical framework provided mainly by Quirk (1985), Biber (1999), and Crystal(2006) was chosen, and for the analysis of Vietnamese headlines, the grammar provided byHạo (1991), Ban (2009), and Hòa (2009) was used to inform the study

In the following step, the researcher synthesized all the syntactic and lexical featuresanalyzed previously and did statistical computations on the percentage for each typicalfeature of English and Vietnamese news headlines in order to give out the differences andsimilarities.

2.3 Data analysis

The analysis of data was conducted in two stages In both stages, a detailed analysis

of the corpus of 227 English and 232 Vietnamese headlines at lexical and syntactic levelswas done to see the similar and different characteristics between the two languages

2.3.1 First level of analysis

The first level included the analysis of the syntactic features of the headlines acrossand within the two languages As for the syntactic features, the following two major areaswere studied in the headlines: Structural headline types and functional headline types

2.3.1.1 Structural headline types

All headlines in the corpora were divided into two major groups according to theirstructure: Sentential (those with a regular sentence structure - major sentences) and non-sentential headlines (those with an irregular sentence structure) The first group consisted

of all headlines that contain a subject and a predicate The second one included theheadlines without a predicate, often just with a non-finite verb phrase or in the form of aphrase The frequency of the different types of headlines in terms of their structure isshown in Table 3.1

Table 3.1 Frequency of structural headline types in the English and Vietnamese corpora

Type of headlinesSententialNon-sententialTotalThe table shows that the proportion of sentential headlines is comparatively higher

in the English headlines (70.5%) than in the Vietnamese ones (58.2%) and the number ofEnglish non-sentential headlines (29.5%) is lower than that of Vietnamese ones (41.8%)

As can be noticed in the table, sentential headlines tend to be used much more than sentential ones in English

non-a Sentential headlines

All headlines with a finite verb phrase and which are not dominated by a noun phrase

post-modified by a finite clause are classified as sentential The frequency of the sentential

headline types in the English and Vietnamese corpora is presented in Table 3.2 Table 3.2.

Frequency of sentential headline types in the English and Vietnamese corpora

Type of sententialheadlinesSimpleMultipleTotal

As can be seen, the simple headlines outnumbered any of the multiple ones, which

accounted for 74.4% and 80% in a total of 160 and 135 English and Vietnamese headlines

respectively

 Headlines are simple sentences:

119 English headlines were classified as those with the simple sentence structure in

which there were three headlines consisting of a dependent clause with a finite verb phrase

The headlines “When Children Fly Alone” (Aug.26th 2011) is just a conditional clause

without a main clause, yet functioning independently in the form of a headline In the

Vietnamese corpus, headlines by simple sentences dominated with 80% Dependent clauses

with a finite verb phrase were also found such as the headline “Việc cần làm ngay!” (What

need to be done right now!) (Aug.26th 2011) Table 3.3 presents the frequency of simple

headline types in the English and Vietnamese corpora

Table 3.3 Frequency of simple headline types in the English and Vietnamese corpora

Type of simpleheadlinesSVSVOSVCSVASVOC

Concerning the clause types as noticed in the table, the most frequent type in both

English and Vietnamese corpora was SVO The probable reason for favoring this type

could be the fact that it describes in the best suitable way "who did what" The subject is

almost always present The only exceptions are headlines with imperative structure, as

imperatives "are characterized by the lack of subject" (Biber,1999:219) The other

structures, namely SV, SVC, SVOA appeared with relatively equal occurrences in the

samples SVOA structure was more frequently used in the English headlines (7.5%) than

that in the Vietnamese ones (only 2.8%) Specially, the structure SVOO was rarely found in

both languages In many cases, optional adverbials appear together with the obligatory

elements to add more information to the headlines

 Headlines are multiple sentences:

There were 41 English headlines and only 27 Vietnamese ones identified as the

headlines with a regular multiple sentence structure Among the analyzed headlines, there

were not many compound ones The frequency of using those headlines is shown in Table

3.4

Table 3.4 Frequency of compound headline types in the English and Vietnamese corpora

Type of multipleheadlinesCompoundComplexTotal

As can be seen from the table, the complex headlines were used more frequently in

both languages

b Non-sentential headlines

Undoubtedly each language has its own syntactic principles which are considered to

be standard, but there are seemingly a lot of syntactic sub-standards in headlines, both in

English and Vietnamese That is the case of non-sentential headlines Those with the

irregular structure are quite an often phenomenon in newspapers All the non-sentential

headlines in the study were divided into two basic groups: The headlines which contain a

non-finite verb form at the position of the predicate (e.g Dead bodies found in house

(Aug.29th 2011)); and the headlines which consist of just a phrase (without any verb form

at the position of the predicate, e.g Weekly Prompts From a Mentor (Aug.26th 2011)) The

frequency of non-sentential headline types in English and Vietnamese corpora is presented

in Table 3.5

Table 3.5 Frequency of non-sentential headlines in the English and Vietnamese corpora

Type of non-sententialheadline

Non-finite clausesVerbless clausesPhrasesTotal

 Non-finite clausal headlines:

In the analysis, out of 67 English non-sentential headlines as shown in Table 3.1 from

which 28 headlines were identified as headlines with non-finite predicate

Table 3.6 of the frequency of non-finite clauses in the English sample headlines shows

that the headlines with a past participle form of verb, a present subject, and an omitted

auxiliary verb were used most frequently (Ex: Syrian Demonstrators attacked (Aug.27th

2011)) which accounted for 60.7 % of the total English headlines These headlines usually

refer to the events happened in the past Besides, using V-infinitive with „to‟ after subject

to denote future actions or events and using V-ing form with or without subject are less

frequent with 17.9% and 21.4% in turn

Table 3.6: The Frequency of non-finite clauses in the English sample headlines

Type of non-finite clauseV-ed

to V-infV-ingTotal

In contrast, there were 64 with a non-finite verb form in a total of 97 Vietnamese

non-sentential headlines All these headlines compose of a non-finite verb form with

omitted subject and can be modified by an adverb (Ex: Lặng lẽ tiếp sức cho trẻ thiệt thòi –

Silently give strength to the unfavorable children (Aug.27th 2011)) However, there are few

verbs modified by an adverb in the Vietnamese sample with only 2 occurrences A

relatively high number of non-finite clauses are preceded by modal verbs such as “cần xử

lý nghiêm những người cố tình tụ tập, gây rối trật tự công cộng” (It‟s necessary to seriously deal with the people intending to gather and disturb the peace of public

(Aug.27th 2011)) in which „cần‟ is a modal verb.

In the non-finite headlines found in the corpora, there were many cases with omittedsubjects, which can be a specific feature in headlines to make them shorter and moreinteresting Table 3.7 illustrates the frequency of omission of subjects in the corpora

Table 3.7 Frequency of omission of subjects in English and Vietnamese non-finite clausal

headlines

Non-finite clausesOmitted subjectPresent subjectTotal

As can be noticed in the table, omitted subjects were much more frequent in theVietnamese headlines with 100% than in the English ones which accounted for only32.1%



Verbless clausal headlines:

There were 9 verbless clauses in the English sample which accounted for 13.4% in atotal of 67 non-sentential ones All these headlines appeared with the ellipsis of the linking

verb „be‟ like the clause “Open courses nearly free” (Aug.27th 2011) which would be a

complete one when inserting „are‟ between the subject „Open courses‟ and its complement „nearly free‟ In the Vietnamese corpus, there were some cases with the equivalent structure such as “Lãi suất cho vay VND vẫn cao” (“VND loan interest still high”) (Aug.28th 2011) However, for some Vietnamese authors like Diệp Quang Ban,

Nguyễn Chí Hòa who have studied Vietnamese grammar for many years, this structure isconsidered to be sentential Therefore, this type was classified as simple sentence in theVietnamese corpus



Phrasal headlines:

Considering the information presented in Table 3.8 below, most English andVietnamese headlines analyzed as phrases were noun phrases which accounted for 96.7 %and 84.8% respectively in the two languages The adjective phrasal headlines can be found

in the Vietnamese corpora which did not occur in the English ones However, this does not

mean that there is no English adjective phrasal headline in general Some can be found but

with few occurrences The same case is headlines by adverbs which were not present in the

studied corpora

Table 3.8 Frequency of non-sentential headline types in English and Vietnamese corpora

Type of phrasalheadlinesNoun phrasePrepositional phraseAdjective phraseAdverb phraseTotal

As it was already stated in Chapter 1, the analysis of noun phrases followed Mardh‟s

model Therefore, the nominal headlines in the English and Vietnamese sample headlines

were analyzed in terms of unmodification, premodification, postmodification and pre-post

modification The frequency of different types of nominal headlines in the sample

headlines are shown in Table 3.9

Table 3.9 Frequency of nominal headline types in the English and Vietnamese corpora

Type of nominalheadlinesUnmodifiedPre-modifiedPost-modifiedPre-postmodifiedTotalThe table shows that most nominal headlines in the Vietnamese samples were

postmodified (92.9%), while postmodification and pre-post modification were high in the

English corpus (both with 37.9%) There were no unmodified nominal headlines in the two

samples Premodified nominal headlines were found in the English samples (24.2%) while

in the Vietnamese ones there was not any as such

 Premodified nominal headlines:

33

Two types of items may precede the head in the English premodified nominalheadlines are closed system and open class premodifiers The closed system premodifierscan not be extended by the creation of additional members The set of open classpremodifiers is extendable, i.e new items may be added to the class (Jucker, 1992; Quirk,1985).

Open class premodifiers which preceded the head of the noun phrase in the Englishnominal headlines were adjectives - the most common type (56%) - and nouns withgenitives (4%)

In the Vietnamese corpus, no premodified nominal headline was found

 Postmodified nominal headlines:

As indicated by Table 3.9, the Vietnamese corpus had a high number ofpostmodification in nominal headlines (92.9%) compared with the English ones (37.9%).Prepositional modification was by far the most frequent type of postmodification in theEnglish nominal headlines

In Table 3.10 below, the frequency of different kinds of postmodifiers in theVietnamese headlines following the classification of Hòa (2009) is given

Table 3.10 Frequency of types of postmodifiers in Vietnamese nominal headlines

The table shows postmodification by noun phrases ranked first with 46.2%, then byprepositional phrases with 30.8% The occurrence of adjectives after head nouns was15.4% while the others were present but very few

 Pre-postmodified nominal headlines:

34

Vietnamese pre-postmodified nominal headlines found in the corpus all composed ofnumerals as premodifiers and prepositional phrases as post-modifiers.

Among the pre-postmodified nominal headlines found in the English corpus,premodification by adjectives were most frequently used Besides, there were nouns,numerals and pronouns with only some occurrences It is interesting that all thepostmodifiers were prepositional phrases

2.3.1.2 Functional headline types

Headlines can be divided into four functional types: statements, questions, directivesand exclamations The distribution of the functional headline types is shown in Table 3.11

Table 3.11 Frequency of functional headlines types in English and Vietnamese corpora

Type of functionalheadlinesStatementQuestionDirectiveExclamationTotal

As shown in the table, exclamations, commands and questions were not many inboth samples in which they constituted a part of only 5.3% in the English sample headlinesand 17.3% in the Vietnamese ones However, these types in the Vietnamese corpus wereused much more frequently than those in the English corpus Unfortunately, noexclamation headline was represented in the English analyzed headlines, which does notnecessarily mean that such headlines do not exist As Mardh (2003) found out in herresearch on headlines, exclamations sometimes may occur but not frequently As it can beseen from the table, statements were the largest in number of the functional headline types:

no less than 94.7% of the headlines in English sample headlines and 82.7% of those in theVietnamese ones

35

2.3.2 Second level of analysis

The second level of the analysis consisted of the lexical features of the headlinesacross and within the two languages The analysis of lexical features of headlines wascarried out in two levels whose results are presented and tabulated in the followingsections

2.3.2.1 Parts of speech in sample headlines

Words in English are classified into ten parts of speech as follows: noun, verb,article, adjective, adverb, numeral, modal, conjunction, pronoun, and preposition Thisclassification is equivalent in Vietnamese with the exception of article

In order to have a clear picture of words used in headlines, the researcher made aninvestigation of the frequency of different parts of speech in the sample headlines, theresults of which are shown in Table 3.12

Table 3.12 Frequency of different parts of speech in English and Vietnamese headlines

Parts of speechNounVerbArticleAdjectiveAdverbPrepositionConjunctionModalNumeralPronounTotalSome parts of speech as presented in the table need to take into consideration Nounsand verbs will be discussed in the next section One special thing to pay attention to is thefrequency of prepositions It is clear that they were used much more in English than in