Linguistic features of adjective phrases in english and in vietnamese

For the same reason, this essay is about “LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF ADJECTIVE PHRASES IN ENGLISH AND IN VIETNAMESE”, and designed to answer questions about Syntactic and semantic features

i

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A THESIS

LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF ADJECTIVE

PHRASES IN ENGLISH AND IN

VIETNAMESE (Đặc điểm ngôn ngữ của cụm tính từ trong

tiếng Anh và trong tiếng Việt)

NGUYỄN THU HIỀN

Field: English Language Code: 8.22.02.01

ii

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A THESIS

LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF ADJECTIVE

PHRASES IN ENGLISH AND IN

VIETNAMESE

(Đặc điểm ngôn ngữ của cụm tính từ trong

tiếng Anh và trong tiếng Việt)

NGUYỄN THU HIỀN

Field: English Language Code: 8220201

Supervisor:

Hanoi, 2019

iii

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report

entitled “Linguistic features of adjective phrases in English and in Vietnamese” submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree

of Master in English Language Except where the reference is indicated, no other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of

thesis

Hanoi, 2019

NGUYỄN THU HIỀN

Approved by SUPERVISOR Dang Ngoc Huong, PhD

(Signature and full name)

Date:

iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my deepest appreciation to my supervisor – Ph.D Dang Ngoc Huong for her continuous support during the completion of my dissertation, for his patience, motivation, and immense knowledge Her guidance helped me in all the time of research and writing of this thesis I could not have imagined having a better advisor and mentor for my master study Besides my advisor, I would like to thank all my lecturers at Hanoi Open University for their enthusiasm and tremendous knowledge, and also for their insightful comments and encouragement

My sincere thanks are also for all of my friends and especially my beloved parents for their unconditional loves and support during my study at Hanoi Open University

Hanoi, November 2019

Nguyen Thu Hien

v

ABSTRACT

Although ranked second in terms of usage after Chinese, English is still the language we can use in the widest range, in most countries It is estimated that 1.5 billion people speak English globally, and about another billion are in the process of learning it This is why English is more beneficial than languages that are less likely to be used In general, knowing English will bring us many benefits, opportunities such as being able to travel in English-speaking countries, being able to find many documents in English, watching English movies, having Attractive CV for employers, easy to apply for international schools, etc However, learning and using English is still a big problem for learners because its syntax and semantic characteristics are different from the syntax and semantic characteristics of the mother tongue, which is Vietnamese

For the same reason, this essay is about “LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF ADJECTIVE PHRASES IN ENGLISH AND IN VIETNAMESE”, and

designed to answer questions about Syntactic and semantic features of

“adjective phrases” in English and in Vietnamese, to compare similarities and differences And to answer the mentioned questions, the researcher applied qualitative research with six main methods such as descriptive method, contrastive analysis method, synthesis method, document analysis method, tabular method The results show that English adjectives phrases in term of its syntactic have 5 main functions such as pre-modifier of noun, post-modifier of noun, subject predicative, object predicative and verb predicative While, Vietnamese adjective phrases function as the predicate, the adjunct, a complement and the subject From its features we can conclude that they have some similarities and differences In terms of semantics of adjective phrases, there are almost no differences in English and Vietnamese; they denote dimension/ size, physical property, speed, age, color, value, difficulty, qualification, human propensity, similarity, shapes, smell, relationship between noun and pronoun, the taste The findings of this study has a big significance to English teaching and learning and to translation from English to Vietnamese

and vice versa

vi

APPLICATIONS

Apps: adjective phrases

CA: contrastive analysis

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv

ABSTRACT v

APPLICATIONS vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS vii

LIST OF TABLES ix

LIST OF FIGURES ix

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Aims and Objectives of the study 2

1.3 Research questions 2

1.4 Methods of the study 2

1.5 Scope of the study 3

1.6 Significance of the study 3

1.7 Organization of the study 4

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 6

2.1 Review of Previous Studies 6

2.2 Review of Theoretical Background 6

2.2.1 Concepts of syntax 6

2.2.2 Concepts of semantics 9

2.2.3 Theory of adjectives and adjective phrases in English 12

2.2.4 Theory of adjectives (tính từ) and adjective phrases (cụm tính từ) in Vietnamese 21

2.3 An overview of Contrastive Analysis 28

2.4 Summary 29

CHAPTER 3.RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 30

3.1 Research approach 30

3.3 Research methods 32

3.4 Data collection and data analysis 34

3.5 Summary 35

CHAPTER 4 SOME SEMANTIC AND SYNTACTIC FEATURES OF ADJECTIVE PHRASES IN ENGLISH AND IN VIETNAMESE 36

4.1 Linguistic features of adjective phrases in English and in Vietnamese 36

viii

4.1.1 Syntactic features of “adjective phrases” in English and in Vietnamese 36 4.1.2 Semantic features of “adjective phrases” in English and in Vietnamese 39 4.2 A contrastive analysis between English and Vietnamese adjectives phrases41

4.2.1 In terms of their syntactic functions 41

4.2.2 In terms of their Semantic functions 46

4.3 Summary 47

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSIONS 49

5.1 Recapitulation 49

5.2 Concluding remarks 50

5.3 Implications on teaching, learning and translation 51

5.3.1 For English teaching and learning 51

5.3.2 For translation from English to Vietnamese and vice versa 51

5.4 Limitations and suggestions for further studies 51

5.4.1 Limitations 51

5.4.2 Suggestions for further studies 51

REFERENCES 53

APPENDIX 58

ix

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1: Full Adjective Phrases Structures 17

Table 2.2: Examples of the Adjective Phrases 18

Table 2.3: Position of adjectives in Vietnamese 23

Table 2.4: Translation for example 24

Table 2.5: The formation of an adjective phrase 26

Table 2.6: The adjective phrase in examples 26

Table 2.7: Full structure of the adjective phrases in Vietnamese 26

Table 4.8: Semantic types of adjectives 39

Table 4.9: Semantic types of adjective phrases 39

Table 4.10: Semantics of adjective phrases based on Dixon theory in 1991 40

Table 4.11: A contrastive analysis between English and Vietnamese adjectives phrases in term of its syntax 44

Table 4.12: Table 11: A contrastive analysis between English and Vietnamese adjectives phrases in term of its semantics 47

LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1: Functional constituents of adjective phrases 18

1

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale

Any language in the world also serves the demand of communication of human beings However, each language has its origin, characteristics and values Nowadays, English has become the most widely used language all over the world It

is considered as the means of communication in many different fields such as science, technology, aviation, international sport, diplomacy, and so on In fact, with the spread of globalization and the rapid expansion of information and technology, there has been an explosion in the demand for English worldwide

As we know, English and Vietnamese are two different languages Thus, in communication or written documents, we have difficulties in expressing our ideas, especially in transferring meanings of words, phrases from a language to another one, in our case from English to Vietnamese and vice versa, we often use different kinds of linguistic devices, one of which is adjective phrases

Adjective and adjective phrases are parts of English language and play very important role by changing or adding to their meaning They are parts of speech and written documents describing and modifying a noun and making a writing or conversation more specific, relevant, and coherent

There are many studies related to adjectives phrases, both in Vietnam and abroad In foreign studies, Anto, Sylvester Kwabena and Abraham Okrah studied “Exploring the Syntax of the Mo / Deg Adjective phrase”; Kies, D (1995) did study “adjectives and adjective phrases” in his book “Modern English Grammar”; R and Greenbaum,

S (1978) mentioned about “adjectives and adjective phrases” in the book “A University Grammar of English”, etc In Vietnam studies, Le Minh Trang studied about "Semantic, Pragmatic and Cultural Features of “Nice” and Its Equivalents in Vietnamese”, Lam Thuy Dung studied about "An Investigation into the Intensification of Adjectives in English and in Vietnamese”", etc, however, there has not been any study focusing on research and comparison of adjectives phrases

in English and Vietnamese

2

In order to have a general look about the adjective phrases of English as well as of Vietnamese and to understand the characteristics of them, I decide to research the

topic “Linguistic Features of Adjective Phrases in English and in Vietnamese”

with the hope of contributing the necessary background to the learning and teaching

of English, especially giving learners a general view in achieving effective communication and translation

1.2 Aims and Objectives of the study

Even though so far there have been a number of documents and materials in reference to English adjective phrases in English, this study aims to give a detailed account of linguistic features of adjective phrases in English and adjective phrases

in Vietnamese It also attempts to compare adjective phrases in English and those in Vietnamese and on the basis of the comparison, the thesis goes on to offer some pedagogical implications concerning the teaching and learning adjective phrases for Vietnamese learners In specific, objectives of the study are:

 To point out the syntactic features of adjective phrases in English and adjective phrases in Vietnamese;

 To find out the semantic features of adjective phrases in English and adjective phrases in Vietnamese;

 To offer some pedagogical implications

1.4 Methods of the study

This study used descriptive analytical method is used for the research The researcher will collect data on all resources and making the Corpus for analyzing

1.5 Scope of the study

This study is limited in investigating the linguistic features of adjective phrases in English and adjective phrases in Vietnamese In other words, the thesis investigates adjective phrases in English as the source language and their translated meanings as the target language in order to find out the similarities and differences in word order and their uses In order to investigate English adjective phrases effectively, the thesis attempts to study adjective phrases in sentence structures so that their syntactic and semantic features could be fully described and analyzed

Due to the limited time and ability of the researcher, the data served for this study is collected mainly from written documents such as bilingual grammar books, novels, stories and websites, etc… although adjective phrases in English and adjective phrases in Vietnamese are used in both spoken and written literature

1.6 Significance of the study

Theoretically, the study presents previous materials of English researchers, papers, articles As the same time, the study also shows the methods to improve linguistic features used with adjective phrases

The syntactic and semantic function’s categories in the two languages always have similarities and differences It will get mislead for learners if they cannot distinguish the differences in the classification, the position, the functions, many meanings of this categories It is, therefore, essential for teachers to have better solutions to limit

 Input for teachers of English with teaching implications

This study is also beneficial to anyone who is interested in adjectives in English Practically, the research findings will enhance the understanding of English learners regarding the use of adjective phrases in English and Vietnamese, facilitating their real-life communication

1.7 Organization of the study

The study consists of five chapters

 Chapter 1: Introduction This chapter outlines the background of the study In this chapter, a brief account of relevant information is provided about the rationale, aims, scopes, method, and design of the study

 Chapter 2: Theoretical Background This chapter can be considered a slight overview of some previous researches on the similar subject both in English and Vietnamese At the same time, it gives a theoretical background to this study with theoretical preliminaries directly related to the investigation of linguistic features of adjective phrases in English and Vietnamese

 Chapter 3: Research Methodology – refers to the researching approach of the study and the method to collect and analyze the collected data to help the author achieve the best results in the study

 Chapter 4: Findings and Discussion In this chapter, the author summarizes her findings after analyzed the corpus which she was collected, then the researcher will discuss on the analyzing results of linguistic features of adjective phrases used in English and and adjective phrases in Vietnamese

5

 Chapter 5: Conclusions - which provides the recapitulations, conducting remarks, limitations and implications of the study in using effectively and appropriately adjective phrases in English and and adjective phrases in Vietnamese, and suggestions for further studies

6

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Review of Previous Studies

In English, there have been diverse adjectives and adjective phrases whose frequency of use is very high Anto, Sylvester Kwabena and Abraham Okrah studied “Exploring the Syntax of the Mo / Deg Adjective phrase” Huddleston and Pullum (2002) judged that “adjectives and adjective phrases” can, in fact, be found

in almost every sentence of whatever length Besides, “adjectives and adjective phrases” are found in the textbook “Basic English Grammar” of Sargeant (2007) Haegeman and Wekker (1985) studied about “English Syntax” Kies, D (1995) did study “adjectives and adjective phrases” in his book “Modern English Grammar” Quirk, R and Greenbaum, S (1978) mentioned about “adjectives and adjective phrases” in the book “A University Grammar of English” Alexander, L.G (1992) was also interested in this subject, he stated in the book “Longman English Grammar” Similarly, Sargeant, H (2007) did also research about “adjectives and adjective phrases”, the author mentioned it in “English Grammar” Yule, G (1985) also talked about them in his book “The Study of Language” Furthermore, Radford, A (2004) wrote in his book “English Syntax: An Introduction” Biber, D

et al (1999) mentioned in “Grammar of Spoken and Written English”

In Vietnamese, there are also many studies on adjectives and adjective phrases A Study of “Semantic, Pragmatic and Cultural Features of “Nice” and Its Equivalents

in Vietnamese” by Le Minh Trang, “An Investigation into the Intensification of Adjectives in English and in Vietnamese” by Lam Thuy Dung, A Study on the

“Linguistic Features of the Adjective “Bad” in English and its Vietnamese Equivalents” by Tran Thi Thu Giang,

2.2 Review of Theoretical Background

7

things like adjectives generally come before the nouns they describe (green chair), how to start a question with a question word (What is that?), that subjects often come before verbs in non-question sentences (She jogged.), prepositional phrases start with prepositions (to the store), helping verbs come before main verbs (can go, will do), and so on He means that semantic features as the basic units of meaning in

a word The meanings of words may be described as combination of semantic features

According to Chomsky (1966), syntax theory is an investigation on the rules which govern the sentences’ formation The syntactic structure is the arrangement of words and their morphemes together in order to forming a sentence/ a phrase and clauses In other words, syntax is a set of rules on how words from our speech/ dialog/ conversation can be conveyed to transfer/deliver a complete thought

From another perspective, R.M.W Dixon (1991) said that syntax guilds on how to combine words together, syntax deals with the way in which words are combined together Syntax is understood to be the 7 theory of the structure of sentences in a language This view has its direct antecedents in the theory of immediate constituents, in which the function of syntax is to mediate between the observed forms of a sentence and its meaning

Syntax structures are analyzable into arrangements of syntactic types or syntactic classes, these being established on the basic of the syntactic relationships and linguistic items have with other items in a construction (Brown & Miller, 1996) Syntax studies the rules of combining words and phrases into expressive structures

in sentences in natural language (Santorini, Beatrice, and Anthony Kroch, 2007) There are two main syntax systems: VO (verb-object) and OV (object-object) In these systems, there are sub-systems related to the position of the subject

Every language has a limited number of syntactic relations Subject and object are probably universal of syntactic relations, which apply to every language However, just as the criteria for the major words class noun and verb differ from language to language, so do the ways in which syntactic relations are noticeable (A.E Kibrik, 2001)

8

Linda Thomas (1993) stated that languages are by nature extremely complex and describing a language, any language is not an easy task Syntax seeks to describe the way words fit together to form sentences or utterances Syntax or sentence structure concerns with the way words combine together in a language to form sentences Every language has a limited number of syntactic relations Subject and object are probably universal of syntactic relations, which apply to every language However, just as the criteria for the major words class noun and verb differ from language to language, so do the ways in which syntactic relations are marked Syntax is a set of rules in language It dictates how words from different parts of speech are put together in order to convey a complete thought

Bloomfield (1994), he states “we could not understand the form of a language if we merely reduced all the complex forms to their ultimate constituents” He argued that

in order to account for the meaning of a sentence, it is necessary to recognize how individual constituents such words and morphemes constitute more complex forms Syntax is now the study of the principles and rules that govern the ways in which words are combined to form phrases, clauses and sentences in a language Syntax, which is a subfield of grammar, focuses on the word order of a language and the relationships between words In other words, morphology deals with word formation out of morphemes whereas syntax deals with phrase and sentence formation out of words Syntax structures are analyzable into sequences of syntactic categories or syntactic classes, these being established on the basic of the syntactic relationships and linguistic items have with other items in a construction Every language has a limited number of syntactic relations Subject and object are probably universal of syntactic relations, which apply to every language However, just as the criteria for the major words class noun and verb differ from language to language, so do the ways in which syntactic relations are marked He claimed that:

if you want to understand well the meaning of a sentence, it is essential to identify how every single element such as words and morphemes establish more complex forms

9

In Vietnamese language, syntax studies the rules of combining words into phrases and sentences Syntax studies grammatical structures, grammatical relations and means of expressing grammatical relations The syntax function is involved in sentence structure Words can stand at one or some certain positions in the sentence,

or they can be exchanged for each other at that position and indicate a syntax function relationship with other components in the sentence structure to be the word

- classified However, since often a word can hold many syntactic functions in a sentence, it is important to consider which syntax function of the word is essential for classification purposes For example, words that mean things often act as subjects and complements; while the words just work, the state usually makes the predicate In terms of the syntactic function of the adjective, the adjective is usually the predicate in the sentence

Concepts about syntax show the researcher how they are related to the study of the researcher In particular, they are phrase elements and syntactic functions together

in the phrase

2.2.2 Concepts of semantics

Semantics is the study of the meaning of words, phrases and sentences In semantic analysis, there is always an attempt to focus on what the words conventionally mean, rather than on what an individual speaker

According to Evan and McDowell (1976), language is a means of communication, and people use language to communicate with others by making conversations, giving information, and other things to make social relationship Human beings have been given the capacity to talk, to communicate with each other, to make meaningful utterances, so that they are understood by other human beings They communicate about the world in which they live, about themselves, about their thought and feeling, about what has happened, about what might happen or what they would like to happen, and a lot more

Lyons (1977) at first defines semantics as the study of the relations of signs to the objects to which the signs are applicable And then he revises his definition, saying that, semantics is that portion of semiotic which deals with the signification of sign

in language - behavior, but must be taken account of in the description or context According to Hurford and Heasley (1984), “semantics is the study of meaning in language” It focuses on the relation between signifiers, like words, phrase, signs, and symbols and what they stand for, their denotation Linguistic semantics is the study of meaning that is used for understanding human expression through languages Other form of semantics includes the semantics of programing languages, formal logics and semiotics Semantic is that level of linguistic analysis where the meaning is analyzed It is the most abstract level of linguistic analysis, since we cannot see or observe the meaning as we can record and observe sounds Meaning is related very closely to the human capacity to think logically and to understand We cannot accept a sentence as meaningful if it is illogical and does not communicate anything

For example:

 Monday came before the day which followed it

 This is a circular statement which tells us nothing

Then there are contradictory statements, which are false in meaning Such as:

 My unmarried sister is married to a bachelor

 This statement is absurd- because a person cannot be both married and unmarried

Hurford and Heasley (1984) also stated: “The giving of information is itself an act

of courtesy, performed to strengthen social relationships”

According to Leech (1984) in practice, the problem of distinguishing language and language use has centered on a boundary dispute between semantics and pragmatics

11

Jack Richards, John Platt, Heidi Weber (1987) state that “the study of meaning is semantics Semantics is usually concerned with the analysis of the meaning of words, phrases, or sentences and sometimes with the meaning of utterances in discourse or the meaning of a whole text.”

David Crystal (1992) defines that “semantics is the study of meaning in language” Structural semantics applied the principles of structural linguistics to the study of meaning through the notion of semantic relations (also called sense relation), such

as synonymy and antonyms In generative grammar, the semantic component is a major area of the grammar’s organization, assigning a semantic representation to sentences, and analyzing lexical terms of semantic features

In the preface of Linguistic semantics: An introduction‖, John Lyons (1995) defines that semantics is the study of meaning in language‖ It is systematically encoded in the vocabulary and grammar of natural languages This definition of linguistic semantics, as far as it goes, is relatively uncontroversial But it is also almost wholly uninformative unless and until one goes on to say, first, what one means by meaning‖ and, second, what exactly is meant by encoded‖ in this context He also explains that those who draw a terminological distinction between semantics and pragmatics and take narrower view of meaning than he does will see his book as introduction to a broader field of linguistic semantics and pragmatics

Although every author has their own expression about linguistic semantics, all authors would agree with Kreidler’s definition (1998) that “Linguistic semantics is the study of how languages organize and express meanings”

Nowadays, there are two ways of approaching semantics The formal semantics tries to describe the meaning of language using the descriptive apparatus of formal logic The goal is to describe natural language in a formal, precise, unambiguous way The other approach to semantics we could call psychologically-oriented semantics or cognitive semantics This approach does not consider the logical structure of language as important for the description of the meaning of language, and tends to disregard notions such as truth-values or strict compositionality Cognitive semantics tries to explain semantic phenomena by appealing to

12

biological, psychological and even cultural issues They are less concerned with notions of reference and try to propose explanations that will fit with everything that we know about cognition, including perception and the role of the body in the structuring of meaning structures

Semantics defined in “The study of language” by George Yule is the study of the meaning of words, phrases and sentences In semantic analysis, there is always an attempt to focus on what the words conventionally mean, rather than on what a speaker might want the words to mean on a particular occasion Also, linguistic semantics deals with the conventional meaning conveyed by the use of words and sentences of a language

The concepts found in semantics are related to the semantic study of adjective phrases in this thesis They describe about dimension/ size, physical property, speed, age, color, value, difficulty, qualification, human propensity, similarity, shapes, smell, relationship between noun and pronoun, the taste

2.2.3 Theory of adjectives and adjective phrases in English

2.2.3.1 Adjectives in English

An adjective is a part of speech that describes and modifies a noun, to make a writing or conversation more specific, relevant, and coherent The word “adjective”

has been derived from the Latin word adjectīvum, which means “additional.”

Adjectives are words used to modify nouns or pronouns To modify is to specify the exact meaning of another word As a modifier, the adjective does not change the

basic meaning of the word it modifies: ‘a black dog’ is still a dog The modifier,

‘black’, merely tells us something more specific about the word it modifies

Adjectives modify a noun or pronoun by describing, limiting or making its meaning more nearly exact Adjectives may be more than one word

An adjective modifies, quantifies, and even transforms the things, ideas, places, and even incidents referred to in the sentence, making them unique and individual It generally appears before a noun or a pronoun, modifying it to shed more light on its

specific characteristics For instance, “This isn’t a romance You’re not a damsel in

distress and I’m not the handsome prince come to save you” (Captive in the Dark,

From the point of view of Quirk et al (1980), four features are generally considered

to be characteristic of adjectives:

1 They can freely occur in attributive position, that is, they can pre-modify a noun

as “the lazy teacher”, “the little boy”

2 They can occur in a predicative position Which means they can function as an

object or subject complement, e.g ‘reasonable’ in ‘the man seemed reasonable’

3 They can be pre-modified by the intensifier ‘very’ e.g “the men are very enthusiastic”

4 They can take comparative and superlative forms with inflection or by the addition of the pre- modifiers ‘more’ or ‘most’

For example:

“They are happier now”

“They are the happiest couple I know.”

“She is more beautiful than Jane”

“They are the most colorful flowers I have ever seen.”

According to Geoffrey Finch (2000), adjectives are words which specify the attributes of nouns Typically, they give information about the size, color, shape and appearance of entities

According to Huong and Loan (2015) in the book “Giai thich ngu phap”, in English language, if there are many adjectives appear in a sentence, they can be followed these suggesting orders:

 Adjectives indicating feelings (nice, beautiful, etc.) usually precede descriptive adjectives (new, large, round, wooden, etc.)

For example:

14

A nice long summer holiday

An interesting young man

 Adjectives that indicate the size and length (big, tall, long, etc.) usually precede the adjectives of shape and width (round, fat, wide, etc.)

For example:

A tall thin girl

A long narrow street

 When there are 2 or more adjectives of color we use "and"

For example:

A black and white dress

A red, white and green flag

 When two or more descriptive adjectives are used in a sentence, their order is arranged as follows:

A small black plastic bag

An Old Russian song

As we know, there are many classifications of English adjectives However, the writer based on Dixon’s View (1991) classifies English adjectives more categorically In terms of their usage classification, English adjectives are divided into ten types as follows: dimension, physical property, speed, age, color, value, difficulty, qualification, human propensity, and similarity

15

Regarding semantic functions of English adjectives, according to Quirk et al (1973), stative adjectives denote “a state or condition, which may generally be consider

permanent” such as big, red, tall, etc In contrast, dynamic adjectives denote

attributes which are, to some extent at least, “under the control of the one who

possesses them” For instance, brave denotes an attribute which may not always be

in evidence (as unlike red), but which may be called upon as it is required For this

reason, it is appropriate to use it in an imperative According to L G Alexander (1988) adjectives can be also divided into gradable and non- gradable Gradable adjectives mean “a large class of words which can be graded, or in other words,

they can be modified by intensifiers and include comparison such as very young,

young, younger, the youngest An adjective is gradable when we can imagine

degrees in the quality referred to and so can use it with words like very, too and

enough or when we can form a comparative and superlative from it as big, bigger, biggest, etc Non- gradable adjectives are a small class that cannot be graded or in

other words, principally technical adjectives and adjectives denoting provenance

such as atomic, hydrochloric, British and an adjective is non- gradable when we cannot modify it, it means that we cannot use it with very, too and We cannot make

a comparative or superlative from it such as daily, dead, medical, unique, etc

2.2.3.2 Adjective phrases in English

2.2.3.2.1 Definition of the phrase in English

A phrase is a group (or pairing) of words in English A phrase can be short or long,

but it does not include the subject-verb pairing necessary to make a clause

According to John Eastwood in his book “Oxford guide to English grammar”, there

are some kinds of phrases in English, which include:

 Prepositional phrases: after the meal, on time, underneath the sagging yellow couch, from eating too much, after lunch, on the aircraft, etc

 Noun phrases: the nice neighbor, a great English teacher, a cat that refused to meow, the shoplifted pair of jeans, a good flight, his crew, etc

 Verb phrases: were waiting for the movie, had cleaned, should have been writing, must wash, etc

16

 Adjective phrases: very delicious, very good, smarter than me, unbelievably

difficult, very late, etc

 Adverb phrase: quickly, almost certainly, etc

None of these examples contains a subject doing an action (subject-verb) Therefore, each example is merely a group of words called a phrase A phrase will always be more than one word

2.2.3.2.2 Definition of Adjective phrases in English

Base on the website “yourdictionary.com”, “adjective phrases” act just like adjectives They modify, describe, or give more information about a noun or

pronoun For example: “The very small kitten jumped at the big dog.” Other

adjectival phrases modify the predicate of the sentence, for instance: “Extra buttons

came with the coat.” Adjective phrases can also modify objects and will follow the

word they are modifying, for example: “My new kitten makes me very happy.”

And Biber, D et al (1999) mentioned that adjective phrases contain an adjective as head, optionally accompanied by modifiers in the form of single words, phrases,

and clauses The adjective head is in bold in the following example: “so luck, good

enough”

And the following definition of adjective phrases by Sargeant, H (2007) Phrases can

be used like single adjectives to describe nouns and pronouns Phrases that are used

in this way are called adjective phrases Most adjective phrases come after the word they describe Look at these examples The adjective phrases are in italic and the

nouns they describe are in bold “Who is the girl with long hair?” Some adjective

phrases come before the word they describe The words in these phrases are often

joined with hyphens: a long-legged bird, an eight-year-old child, etc

In his book “Phrases, Clauses and Sentences”, George Davison (2002) mentioned that an adjective phrase is any phrase that has an adjective as its head and that can occupy the same position as a single adjective in a noun phrase or fill the same slot

as a single adjective in a sentence For example "Her behavior was absolutely unbelievable"; “We considered her behavior completely unacceptable."

17

Geoffrey Leech (2006) stated in his book “A Glossary of English Grammar” An adjective phrase is a phrase in which an adjective is the head or main word The simplest kind of adjective phrase is one which consists simply of an adjective, as in

"The meeting was noisy" An adjective phrase can be made more complex by

adding modifiers (especially degree adverbs) before the adjective: The meeting was

very/too noisy Also, the adjective can be followed by other words which modify or complement the meaning of the adjective: too poor to feed themselves; too early for

breakfast; useful enough; funnier than the last show; and so on An adjective

phrase can contain a comparative clause, as in "The weather this winter has been

colder than I can remember"

According to Geoffrey Finch (2000), an adjective phrase is a phrase with an

adjective as head, as in “very happy” There are simple adjectives such as good, bad, big, fat, young, old, simple, etc and derived adjectives which are formed through adding suffixes to nouns and verbs, such as -able adorable, -fill careful, -ic economic, -ive talkative, -ous dangerous, etc

2.2.3.2.3 Structure of adjective phrases in English

According to Downing, A., and Locke (1992) in the book “English Grammar: A University Course”, the adjective phrase is composed potentially of three structural elements: modifier, head, and complement

Table 1: Full Adjective Phrases Structures

According to Kies (2009), the adjective phrase in English has four functional constituents:

 Pre-modification, those modifying, describing, or qualifying constituents

which precede the head

 The head, which is an adjective or participle serving as the focus of the

phrase;

 Post-modification, that modifying constituent which follows the head;

18

 Complementation, (the major subcategory of post-modification here) that

constituent which follows any post-modification and completes the specification of a meaning implied by the head

Figure 1: Functional constituents of adjective phrases

Table 2: Examples of the Adjective Phrases

Some Examples of the Adjective Phrase in English

FUNCTION Pre-modifier Head Post-modifier

19

S (i) quite worried about the results of the test

(j) unusually sunny for this time of year

FORM

Adverb Adverb Adjective Prepositional Phrase Adverb Phrase Infinitive Clause

2.2.3.2.4 Functions/Roles of adjective phrases in English

According to Geoffrey Leech (2006), in terms of their function, adjective phrases generally act as complements: either as subject complement, as in “The meeting

was too long”, or as object complement, as in “I found the meeting too long”

George Davison (2002) mentioned that adjective phrases have two main functions:

 Adjective phrases modify nouns:

For example:

A very exciting proposal

A surprisingly easy exam

A good enough result

 Adjective phrases function as subject-complements or object-complement For example:

Her proposal was very exciting (subject-complements)

The results were good enough (subject-complements)

You've made us very proud (object-complement)

That was awfully silly of you, wasn't it? (Object-complement)

Let's consider the subject pretty well closed (object-complement)

Pat the fruit completely dry with some kitchen paper (object-complement)

According to Biber, D (1999), adjective phrases may have the following syntactic roles

Do you see the mall green boat?

Sarah is my youngest sister

I know some very good restaurants

Where are the really big bowls?

 Post-modifier of noun, it occurs after nouns to modify for nouns in case

nouns are something, someone, somebody, somewhere, anything, anyone, anybody, anywhere, everything, everybody, everyone, everywhere, nowhere, nothing, nobody and no one

For example:

There’s nowhere nice to go for a walk here

I have nothing good to say about it as a holiday resort

There’s something terribly sad about saying goodbye, isn’t there?

Let’s go somewhere different

 Subject predicative (Subject complement), It complements for a subject For example:

Her hair was dyed blonde

Her behavior was absolutely unbelievable

 Object predicative (Object complement), It complements for an object

For example:

Sitting in traffic drives me crazy

The fire has made the room much warmer

Money doesn’t always make us happy

We considered her behavior completely unacceptable

 Verb predicative (Verb complement), It complements for a verb It completes the meaning of verbs that describe what the subject is, does or

experiences These verbs include be, seem, become, feel, smell, taste

21

(linking verbs) When adjective phrases complement verbs, this is called

their predicative function

For example:

I felt sad

This soup smells really wonderful

She thought the room was very strange

That coffee tastes too strong

2.2.4 Theory of adjectives (tính từ) and adjective phrases (cụm tính từ) in Vietnamese

predicates and subjects in sentences; however, the ability to be a predicate of adjectives is more limited than verbs There are two main types of adjectives: adjectives of relative characteristics (can be combined with degree words) and adjectives indicating absolute characteristics (cannot be combined with degree words)

For semantic function, adjectives in Vietnamese are nearly as same as those in English They also describe feelings, things, characteristics, size, shape,

measurement, etc They express a judgment or value, either For instances: buồn, giận, vuông, tròn, hay, thú vị…

 According to Nguyen Huu Quynh (2001) in “Ngu Phap Tieng Viet”, a work

is considered as an adjective when it describes characteristics, features,

shapes, colours of something or somebody, such as mệt mỏi, cao, xanh, đỏ,

vui buồn…

22

 While as for Nguyen Tai Can (1999) in “Ngu Phap Tieng Viet”, adjectives are words expressing characteristics about quality, property, colour, smell, taste and relationship between noun and pronoun

 According to Nguyen Minh Thuyet at al (2014) in “Tieng Viet 5”, in term of semantic functions, there are two notable types of adjectives in Vietnamese:

Adjectives indicating the general properties without degree (xanh, tím, sâu,

vắng, ) and Adjectives indicating properties that determine the level, the

highest level such as (xanh lè, tím ngắt, sâu hoắm, vắng tanh, ) He also

mentioned that based on the general meaning, adjectives are divided into categories:

Adjectives indicate value:

Adjectives indicate psychological characteristics: hiền, ác

Adjectives indicate the quality of things: tốt, xấu, hay, dở

Adjectives indicate physiological characteristics: ốm, yếu, khoẻ

Adjectives of color: đen, trắng, vàng

Adjectives indicate physical properties: dẻo, cứng

Adjectives indicate the taste: thơm, hôi, mặn, ngọt

Adjectives of size: to, nhỏ

Adjectives only qualitative: cao, thấp

For syntactic functions, adjectives in Vietnamese are not so complicate as English, specifically:

 Vietnamese adjectives almost always come after nouns

23

Cục gôm trắng

Cô ấy mệt

 In some cases, we can find that a noun also stand before an adjective, for

instance, ‘xanh lá cây’ or ‘hươu cao cổ’ In these cases, we have to see that these are adjective phrases with ‘xanh’ and ‘cao’ are the main words The

nouns ‘lá cây’ and ‘cổ’ here are the modifiers of which the main function is

to make clear the meaning for the adjectives

As in English, if there are many adjectives appear in a sentence, they can be followed these suggesting orders:

1) Universal quantifier : tất cả, cả …

2) Numerative: một, hai, đôi, những…

3) Classifier: cái, con…

4) Head noun: bàn tay, trái cam…

5) Subhead noun: thiết bị…

Tất cả những cái thùng thiếc Trung Quốc cũ màu nâu kia đều của tôi

Position of Adjectives in Vietnamese

Table 3: Position of adjectives in Vietnamese

Measure word + Noun + Adjectives + this ( này)/ that ( kia)

24

Let's now capitalise on this knowledge about positions of adjectives to translate the

phrase this book cover Given that cover translates into bìa and we have already known that book translates into sách, this translates into này, what's your

translation for the phrase?

If your translation is sách bìa này or quyển sách bìa này or the likes, I believe you

understand the materials well so far although it's not the correct answer yet Let's ask a couple of questions to clarify the translation process: what's the main noun in

this phrase? In other words, are we talking about book or cover? It's cover, right? Then we need to find out the measure word for this principal noun It's cái

The next question: book functions like an adjective in that it modifies the main noun cover, doesn't it? Then, our formula right above gives us the following

translation:

Translation:

Table 4: Translation for example

measure_word "cover" "book" "this"

2.2.4.2 Adjective phrases in Vietnamese

2.2.4.2.1 Definition of the phrase in Vietnamese

In Vietnamese, phrases consisting of two or more words and freely associated with each other according to certain apparent grammatical relations and not containing the word relations at the beginning

Elements in a smallest Vietnamese phrase can have the following three common types of syntactic relation:

 The relationship between the subject and the predicate about grammar,

referred to as subject-predicate relation (quan hệ chủ - vị)

 Relationship between the main element and secondary element about

grammar, referred to as principal - auxiliary relation (quan hệ chính - phụ)

 The relationship between two grammatical equality factors, called the

coordinative relation (quan hệ đẳng lập)

 Noun phrases: phrases with nouns as the main elements, for examples::

Những chú công nhân ấy, mấy anh này

 Verb phrases: phrases with verbs as the main elements, for examples: hãy đưa đây, đã ăn rồi

 Adjective phrases: phrases with adjectives as the main elements, for

examples: rất giỏi, giàu kinh nghiệm…

 Number phrases: phrases with numbers as the main elements, for examples:

chừng 5 phút, khoảng 30 tuổi,…

 Pronoun phrases: phrases with pronouns as the main elements, for examples:

tất cả chúng tôi đây,

Each type of phrase, usually, can be divided into 3 distinct elements:

 Pre-modifier (Phần phụ trước): precede the main element/ the head

 Head (Phần trung tâm): is the main element/ the head

 Post-modifier (Phần phụ sau): occur after the main element/ the head

In its operation, the phrase may be absent the premodifier or the postmodifier

2.2.4.2.2 Definition of Adjective phrases in Vietnamese

In the Vietnamese language, adjective phrases, also known as “cụm tính từ”, are principal-auxiliary phrases with adjectives as the central element and one or some

auxiliary elements For examples: sáng vằng vặc; vẫn có màu đỏ chói, sun sun như con đỉa, chần chẫn như cái đòn càn, bè bè như cái quạt thóc, sừng sững như cái cột đình, tun tủn như cái chổi sể cùn, rất giỏi, giàu kinh nghiệm, etc

As stated by Diệp Quang Ban, the formation of an adjective phrase is built up from three particular components: “phần trung tâm” (Head), “phần phụ trước (Pre-

26

modifier) and “phần phụ sau” (Post-modifier) To sum up, we can illustrate the structure as follow:

Table 5: The formation of an adjective phrase

Phần phụ trước (Pre-modifier) + Phần trung tâm (Head) + Phần phụ sau

(Post-modifier)

In fact, the adjective phrase can only have the head and the Premodifier or the Postmodifier

Table 6: The adjective phrase in examples

2.2.4.2.3 Structure of adjective phrases inVietnamese

The structure of the adjective phrase also consists of 3 parts: the Pre-modifier, the Head and the Post-modifier

Table 7: Full structure of the adjective phrases in Vietnamese

Pre-modifier + Head + Post-modifier

 The head (Phần trung tâm)

The center of the adjective phrase is the adjective The adjective subcategories all have the ability to be the central part (the head) of the adjective phrase

For example:

Vẫn còn nguyên đó

Quả bóng đang to thêm

Bầu trời hôm nay cao vời vợi

Chiếc xe này máy còn tốt lắm

 The Pre-modifier (Phần phụ trước)

27

The Pre-modifiers of the adjective phrase are usually from adverds, they can add the

meaning of time (đã, sẽ, vừa, mới…), or the meaning of affirmation, negation (không, chưa, chẳng…), or the level meaning (rất, hơi, khá…)

For example:

đang còn mới

rất chăm chỉ

vẫn xinh đẹp

 The Post-modifier (Phần phụ sau)

The Post-modifiers of the adjective phrase can be words, expressions, predicate structure, and coordination The Post-modifiers of the adjective phrase can

subject-indicate the position (này, kia, ấy, nọ,…), the comparison ( như…), the level ( lắm, quá,…), scope or cause of characteristics or properties

For example:

sâu thăm thẳm

đẹp cực kỳ

chăm chỉ nhất

2.2.4.2.4 Functions/Roles of adjective phrases in Vietnamese

As with adjectives, adjective phrases can handle various functions in sentences:

 Be the predicate (làm vị ngữ), which is the second part of the sentence, describes the state, nature, characteristics, etc of a person, object or object mentioned in the subject

For example:

Những ngôi nhà ấy rất tiện lợi và đẹp

Cô ta thông minh

Ngôi nhà đẹp quá

Gỗ vẫn đẹp lắm

 Be the adjunct (định ngữ), an auxiliary component of a Vietnamese sentence,

is responsible for modifying the noun (noun phrase) The adjunct could be a word, a phrase or a subject-predicate phrase

For example: