Circumstantial meanings in behavioral clauses in english and vietnamese

632 Circumstantial meanings in behavioral clauses in English and Vietnamese Nguyen Thi Tu Trinh*, Phan Van Hoa**, Tran Huu Phuc*** Abstract: This article discusses the characteristics

632

Circumstantial meanings in behavioral clauses in English and Vietnamese

Nguyen Thi Tu Trinh*, Phan Van Hoa**, Tran Huu Phuc***

Abstract: This article discusses the characteristics of circumstances in behavioral clauses

in English and Vietnamese in terms of lexicogrammatical structures and ideational meanings as well as making comparisons of them Attention has been paid to interpreting a wide range of lexicogrammatical choices as well as various strands of function of circumstances realized by these choices Each type of circumstances is interpreted (i) structurally, that is, according to rank, and (ii) semantically, according to type Due to the lexical and grammatical differences between English and Vietnamese, circumstantial elements that are commonly realized by prepositional phrases in English are more likely to

be realized by nouns or nominal groups in Vietnamese As compared with English circumstances, Vietnamese circumstances are less likely to be embedded or encoded in behavioral processes in the clause Analysis of circumstance characteristics is conducted

on twelve English and Vietnamese short stories and novels from the 19th century to present

in order to demonstrate the use of circumstances In the conclusion, we pointed out the new results from our investigation and we will also suggest some practical applications such as the efficient approaches to this domain, solutions to translation matters and language teaching and learning

Keywords: Circumstances; Behavioral clauses; Functional grammar

Received 27 th April 2017; Revised 16 th October 2017; Accepted 30 th October 2017

1 Introduction *

Being one of the three core elements in

ideational meaning analysis, circumstances

appear freely in six types of processes but

play an important role in meaning

contributions We examine the

characteristics of circumstances in terms of

lexico-grammatical diversity and

circumstantial meanings across our selected

data That is to say, we suggest a different

*

College of Transport II, Viet Nam; email:

trinhgtvt2@gmail.com

** University of Foreign Language Studies, University of

Da Nang, Viet Nam

***

University of Foreign Language Studies, University of

Da Nang, Viet Nam

interpretation of both types of lexico-grammar and circumstantial meanings A decision has been made to investigate the characteristics of circumstances in English and Vietnamese since we are English teachers and researchers within functional grammar model of language We frequently face some indeterminate and problematic cases when analyzing and categorizing English and Vietnamese circumstances Shedding light on this matter enables a different view of ideational meaning to have

a better understanding of the extent of these meanings in contexts and to offer a more effective way of teaching these meanings to students

1.1 Theoretical Background

Halliday and Matthiessen (2004)

classify circumstances into nine types:

Extent, Location, Manner, Cause,

Contingency, Accompaniment, Role, Matter,

and Angle Circumstances are very significant with special interpretations wherever they occur Table 2.11 illustrates the list of circumstantial elements and their realization

Table 1: Types of circumstantial elements

1 Extent Distance How far? for; throughout „measured‟; nominal group

Duration How long? or; throughout „measured‟; nominal group Frequency How many

times?

„measured‟ nominal group

2 Location Place Where? [there,

here]

at, in, on, by, near; to, towards, into, onto, (away) from, out of, off; behind, in front of, above, below, under, alongside

adverb of place: abroad, overseas, home, upstairs, downstairs, inside, outside; out, up, down, behind; left, right, straight ; there, here

Time When? [then,

now]

at, in, on; to, until, till, towards, into, from, since, during, before, after

adverb of time: today, yesterday, tomorrow;

now, then

3 Manner Means How? [thus] by, through, with, by means of, out of )+

material) from Quality How? [thus] n + a + quality (e.g dignified) + manner/way,

with + abstraction (e.g dignity); according to adverbs in -ly, -wise; fast, well; together, jointly, separately, respectively

Comparison How? What

like?

like, unlike; in + the manner of adverbs of comparison differently

4 Cause Reason Why? because of, as a result of, thanks to, due to, for

want of, for, of, out of, through Purpose Why? What

for?

for, for the purpose of, for the sake of, in the hope of

Behalf Who for? for, for the sake of, in favor of, against [„not

in favor of‟], on behalf of

5 Contingency Condition Why? in case of, in the event of

Default in default of, in the absence of, short of,

without [„if it had not been for‟]

Concession despite, in spite of

6 Accompanime

nt

Comitative Who/what

with?

with; without Additive And who/what

Else?

as well as, besides; instead of

7 Role Guise What as? as, by way of, in the role/shape/guise/form of

Product What into? into

8 Matter What about? about, concerning, on, of, with reference to, in

[„with respect to‟]

9 Angle according to, in the words of, to, in the

view/opinion of, from the standpoint of

(Halliday 2004: 262)

1.2 Previous Studies

Halliday and Matthiessen (2000) give an

in-depth explanation to how human beings

construe their experience of the world The

construction of experience is usually thought

of as knowledge, represented in the form of

conceptual taxonomies, schemata, scripts

and others Bloor and Bloor (1995) present a

short account to the analysis of English for

those starting out with functional grammar

Eggins (1994) introduces the principles and

techniques of the functional approach to

language Fowler (1996) figures out that

functional grammar is a semantic system to

analyze representations of reality in a

linguistic text and create the same

experience through various

lexico-grammatical options influenced by different

mind styles or authorial ideology In

Vietnamese, Hoàng Văn Vân (2012) adopts

functional grammar‟s framework to describe

the experiential grammar of Vietnamese

clauses of the system of TRANSITIVITY

He offers a close examination of

circumstantial TRANSITIVITY in

Vietnamese Although he doesn‟t make

comparisons between English and

Vietnamese circumstances, his approach

makes the door wider to the study and the

comparison between English and

Vietnamese in functional grammar One of

the core similarities of the above functional

ideology is the semantics of

TRANSITIVITY that Givón (1995) called

“the three features that define

semantically-transitive clause” Each of these semantic

dimensions correspond to what Hopper and Thompson (1980) call prototypical transitive event: Agent (as salient cause), Patient (as salient effect) and Verbal modality (as being perfective, sequential and realis) Such functional essentials have made research directions clearer to functional clauses in English and its contrastive languages like

the topic involved

2 Method

2.1 Data collection

Qualitative is adopted in this study because our attention is paid to interpret English and Vietnamese circumstances in behavioral clauses In other words, we focus

on analyzing and making sense of English and Vietnamese ones rather than seeking to count things

To determine behavioral clauses within this study, we start with behavioral processes because we look at behavioral clauses from Halliday‟s viewpoint The selection of behavioral processes began with selecting verbs that realize behavioral processes offered by Halliday (2004), Martin et al (1997), Thompson (2013), Eggins (1994) and Vietnamese behavioral processes suggested by Hoàng Văn Vân (2002), Lê Thị Hằng (2007), Tôn Nữ Bảo Khoa (2009) and from my dictionary collection Tables 1 and 2 illustrate the raw lists of behavioral processes in English and Vietnamese

Table 2: A list of English behavioral processes

English behavioral processes

Abuse, argue, blink, blush, breathe, burp, chat, chatter, cogitate, cough, criticize, cry, curse, dance, dream, embrace, faint, flatter, foam, frown, gasp, gawk, giggle, glimpse, gnash, gossip, grimace, grin, groan, hitcup, hug, insult, kiss, laugh, listen, mediate, moan, mumble, murmur, mutter, nod, observe, ponder, praise, puzzle, quiver, ruminate, scowl, scream, shit, shiver, shudder, sigh, sing, slander, smile, snarl, sneer, sneeze, sniff, snore, snort, sob, stammer, stare, stutter, sweat, think on, tremble, twitch, view, watch, whine, whinge, whisper, yawn, yell

Table 3: A list of Vietnamese behavioral processes

Vietnamese behavioral processes

Băn khoăn, bi bô, b u môi, b , cà lăm, ca ng i, c i, c i c , c i l n, c i vả, cân

nh c, cau c , cau mày, chê, chê bai, ch i, ch p m t, co, co r m, c i, c i kh y, dằn v t, dàn x p, i u nh, d i, ê a, g m g , g t u, g t g , gi t m nh, h t x , h t vào, ho, h h t, h la, h reo, khao kh t, khit m i, kh c, kh t khịt, l c u, l m

b m, l m b m, lăng m , l ng nh n, làu bàu, li c nh n, li c x o, lo, l m, m ng, m m môi, m , n c, nằm, n m, ng m, ng m ngh , ng m ngh a, ng p, ng y, nghe, ngh n,

ng , ng i, nhai, nhăn m t, nhăn nh , nh o bang, nhảy, nh y m t, nh n, n i, n i l p,

nu t, , h i, ôm, ph b ng, qu c m t, quan s t, qu t, qu , rên, rên r , r n r n, r , r

r , run, r ng m nh, s nh c, s vả, s , tâm s , t n d ng, t n g u, tâng b c, than v n, theo d i, th t, th , to t m hôi, tr m ngâm, tr m t , tranh c i, tr m t, tr ng m t, t

l , v m hôi, vu kh ng, vu oan, xem, x u, xu nịnh

After building up our raw English and

Vietnamese behavioral lists, we adopt

bottom-up approach to recognize behavioral

clauses in English and Vietnamese short

stories and novels “Jane Eyre”, “The Great

Gatsby”, “Sons and Lovers”, “Women in

love” and “The rainbow” are the five

English novels written by Bronte, Fitzgerald

and Lawrence In their work, the characters

with their personal experience and behaviors

are brilliantly described via the lively

wording of the talented writers Besides, the

seven Vietnamese short stories and novels

“S ng m n”, “D m n phiêu l u k ”, “T t

n” “Ch Ph o”, “S ”, “Trong tim m t

s n ng vàng” and “Quê n i” are thoroughly

selected due to their popularity and

wonderful narrative device of personal experience and behaviors We have made the decision to carry out the research in stories and novels but not in other genres since stories and novels reflect the reality via the lens and skillful wording of talented writers

In this paper, sampling is a crucial step and we decided to adapt random sampling technique Wordsmith 5.0 and Navigation pane in Word documents and PDF are used

as powerful tools to select behavioral clauses Concord function in Wordsmith 5.0

is exploited to collect English behavioral clauses while Search engine is used to pick

up Vietnamese behavioral clauses since Wordsmith 5.0 is not applicable to

Vietnamese texts There are two main

reasons for choosing Wordsmith 5.0 and

Navigation pane because the above novels

and short stories are already available in

electronic versions so it is advantageous and

time-saving for us to process them In

addition, we can work on and store a huge

amount of collected data effectively

After processing English verb list in table

1 in Wordsmith 5.0, 1387 English

behavioral clauses are collected and saved

from the five novels As for Vietnamese

data collection, Navigation pane is used to

select Vietnamese behavioral clauses We

exploited the Navigation pane with the

remaining verbs in table 2, 1155 Vietnamese

behavioral clauses are selected and saved

2.2 Data analysis

A framework for data analysis is offered

in this section All selected English and

Vietnamese circumstances in behavioral

clauses are analyzed and categorized in

terms of lexico-grammar and circumstantial

meanings and then a comparison of them in

English and Vietnamese is made

Theoretically, the relationships between

lexico-grammar and function are very close

but complex In other words, function (or

meaning) is realized or expressed through

lexico-grammar or linguistic expressions

and according to Fontaine (2013) there is

not a one-to-one relationship between them

3 Results and discussion

3.1 Lexico-grammar

After we thoroughly investigate and

analyze circumstances in behavioral clauses

at their lexico-grammatical level based on

Halliday‟s account, adverbial phrases and

prepositional phrases are widely found in the selected data

3.1.1 Adverbial phrases

According to Morley (2000), lexico-grammar in FG is the stratum which handles the wording of a text It is the level at which different patterns of semantic structures are realized in word form and is concerned with the classes of grammatical unit This section pays attention to interpretation of lexico-grammatical wording of circumstances in English and Vietnamese behavioral clauses Attempts have been made to figure out the realizational rules which map circumstances into the lexico-grammatical wording

A majority of circumstances in our selected behavioral clauses are realized by adverbial phrases or groups For example:

(1) She smiled slowly and walking

through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye (Fitzgerald 1925)

(2) He glanced at me and frowned

slightly (Fitzgerald 1925)

In (1) and (2), “slowly” and “slightly” are examples of circumstances functioning

as manner realized by adverbial phrases As compared to English adverbial groups,

with-ly adverb as „Head‟, it is far more difficult

to classify Vietnamese adverbial groups due

to their formation and spelling While most

of English adverbs are accompanied with suffix-ly such as: quickly, slowly, easily, and some irregular adverbs without suffix-ly

such as well, fast, late, hard, amongst

others, most of Vietnamese adverbs are unidentified at word level They may be either adjectives or adverbs depending on particular positions in clauses Consider the following examples in Vietnamese

(3) Nụ cười toe toét l i n trên môi chị (4) Ph Ðoan nh n tr m n mà m m cười toe toét (V Tr ng Ph ng 1938)

“Toe to t” in (3) is a typical case of

adjectives since it modifies the noun “n

c i” whilst “Toe to t” in (4) is a common

example of adverbs modifying behavioral

verb or process “smile” This kind of

confusion in the examples is very popular in

Vietnamese and it can make identifying the

grammatical units within the clauses very

challenging at times

3.1.2 Prepositional phrases

This section briefly discusses the

wording or structural realization creating

different meanings of circumstances They

are typically expressed by prepositions as

shown in the following:

(5) Wright was grinning behind her

(Lawrence 1915)

(6) Gerald watched them with the steady

twinkle in his eyes (Lawrence 1920)

(7) She smiled slowly and walking

through her husband as if he were a ghost

shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in

the eye (Fitzgerald 1925)

These are examples of English

prepositional phrases including a preposition

and a nominal group Prepositional phrases

serve a wide range of circumstantial

meaning and they are thoroughly discussed

in section 3.2

In Vietnamese, “bằng, v i, c ng, , t i,

trong, trên”, inter alia, are the most common

prepositions Consider the following

examples:

(8) N kh c hu hu r i ch y quanh lồng

(Ngô T t T 1937)

(9) Chị D u th th n ng i trên chiếc chõng long nan (Ngô T t T 1937)

(10) Nghị Qu vểnh râu ứng trong sân gạch ng m ôi b câu g t g g nhau c a

chu ng (Ngô T t T 1937)

(11) R i chị l i ẵm n ra ngoài sân

(Ngô T t T 1937)

(12) Anh D u nằm c ng queo trên phản

(Ngô T t T 1937)

Prepositions “quanh, trong, ra, trên” in the above examples tell us about the locations or situations where something is going on

This section is a discussion of wording or structural realization of circumstances in English and Vietnamese behavioral clauses

Attention will be paid to interpretation of circumstances in terms of meanings

3.2 Circumstances

According to Halliday and Matthiessen (2004), there are nine subtypes of

circumstances : Extent, Location, Manner,

Cause, Contingency, Accompaniment, Role, Matter, Angle Some circumstances just go

with certain clauses For example, circumstances of Matter are fairly popular with mental, verbal and behavioral clauses but quite rare with the other process types

In our study, there are only four certain

types namely: Extent, Location; Manner;

and Cause in behavioral clauses

3.2.1 Circumstance of extent

(13)

A convulsed shiver ran through her once, twice, at his touch

behavioral

Range-phenomenon

(Lawrence 1919)

(14)

She stared broodingly into her tea-cup , twisting her

wedding ring

all the time

Phenomenon

Pro:

behavior

al

Range - Phenome non

Cir:

Extent

Pro: behavioral

(Lawrence 1919)

(15)

Behaver Pro: behavioral Range – Phenomenon Cir: extent

(Fitzgerald 1925)

In (13) and (14), the circumstances

“once, twice” and “all the time” tell us

something about the frequency of the

processes “ran through” and “twisting” in

the relations to the other participants and

circumstances whilst in (15) circumstance

“for a moment” tells readers about the duration of the process “stare at”

Consider the following example in Vietnamese:

(16)

Thỉnh

thoảng

behavioral

Location

Range - phenomen

on

(Nam Cao 1956)

There are three kinds of circumstances in

(16) namely: extent, manner and location

Among them, circumstance of extent “th nh

thoảng” and “l i” belong to the category of

frequency which is the extent of repetition

of the occurrence of the process “h t” For

example:

(17) Nh ng h không s h i, v n thản

nhiên ng a m t ứng th hai râu ra nghe

ngóng chốc lát r i l i chăm ch làm (Tô

Hoài 1941)

3.2.2 Circumstance of Location

Circumstance of location will answer

either „where?‟ or „when? Consider the

following examples:

(17) He hugged himself in his brown blanket (Lawrence 1920)

(18) All the while the peewits were

screaming in the field (Lawrence 1919)

shoulder, whilst he held her still, waiting (Lawrence 1920)

In the above examples, the three circumstances realized by prepositional phrases “in his own blanket”, “in the field” and “on his shoulder” give us information about the spatial location of the processes Consider the following examples in Vietnamese:

(20) Ch nh Tổng ng m tăm nằm cạnh

bàn đèn (Ngô T t T 1937)

(21) Nh c c i th n th y, h n m i

ch i r , th t m ng khắp làng cho oai (Ngô

T t T 1937)

As with English, Vietnamese location

circumstance also refers to a place It

typically answers the question âu/ ch nào?

(where) It may be a definite location such

as cạnh bàn đèn (next to the modest opium

layout tray) or khắp làng (all over the

village) as in (20) and (21)

3.2.3 Circumstance of manner

Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) figure

out that there are four subcategories in

Manner, namely, Means, Quality,

Comparison and Degree

a Quality

Quality is typically realized by an

adverbial group, with-ly adverb as Head

Phrasal expressions of quality in the

following examples modify the

specifications of manner of behavioral

process in terms of speed, shape, tone,

sound and so on

(39) He smiled, uncomfortably,

cynically (Lawrence 1915)

(40) And he trembled delicately in every

limb (Lawrence 1920)

(41) Then he nodded, a little suddenly

(Lawrence 1920)

In Vietnamese, a lot of adverbial groups

serving as Circumstance: Quality are found

in this paper since they are all-purpose devices which help writers describe their characters‟ behaviors efficiently Below are some examples:

(45) L o ngo c m ra c i khà khà r i

nói (Tô Hoài 1941)

(47) M y ứa trẻ xem ch i d c i ha

hả (Tô Hoài 1941)

(48) Ch ng n v a thổi phù phù v a c n ngấu nghiến (Ngô T t T 1937)

(49) Thằng D n v c u v a thổi v a

húp soàn soạt (Ngô T t T 1937)

As far as we are concerned, adverbial senses are closely related to the quality of actions or behaviors they modify That is to say, adverbial phrases modify the quality of behaviors Interestingly, the interpretation of adverbial senses is mostly determined by the various behaviors they modify in Vietnamese For examples:

Table 4: Contrasting examples of accompanying manner- quality of process “cry” and “smile” in Vietnamese

Khóc l t m t

Khóc tru tréo

Khóc lu loa

Khóc thảm thi t

Kh c ng t

Khóc hu hu

Kh c th m

Kh c s t m t

Kh c m

Khóc om sòm

Khóc nhè

Kh c s ng cả m t

Khóc than

Kh c thổn thức

Khóc gào

Khóc ai oán

Khóc thút thít

C i h h

C i khanh kh ch

C i ph

C i khúc khích

C i vang

C i gi n tan

C i ru i

C i n

C i hoa

C i t nh

C i m m

C i h h

C i toe to t

C i t i

C i nh t

C i kh y

C i khà khà

C i th m

C i ha hả

In Vietnamese, the typical accompanying

manner circumstances of process “cry” are

“hu hu”, “tru tr o”, “lu loa”, “thảm thi t”,

“hu hu” while the typical ones of process

“smile” are “toe to t”, “ch m ch m, “ kh y”

…and “laugh” are “hi h ”, ha ha”, “r ”, “hô

h ”, “kh c kh ch” and others Moreover, there is a sharp distinction between English and Vietnamese behavioral clauses analysis

in terms of experimental meta-function Let

us consider the following examples:

(50) She giggled

(Lawrence 1919)

(51) Cô c i khúc khích

(50) and (51) are agnated in terms of

meaning in English and Vietnamese but they

are distinctive in terms of experimental analysis In (50), circumstance of manner is

absent and is embedded in behavioral

process “giggle” whilst manner

circumstance “kh c kh ch” is available and

falls apart from behavioral process “c i”

In many cases, English circumstances of

manner are embedded or encoded in

behavioral processes while Vietnamese ones

are separated from behavioral processes and

are labeled as Circumstance of Manner

Interpreters and experiential analysts should

take this case into consideration when

working on translating it

Last but not least, grammar functional analysts have to face some challenges when interpreting Vietnamese circumstance since

it is extremely difficult for us identify whether it is a compound or are separated words In other words, some circumstances are firmly bounded up with behavioral processes and embedded in them while others are freely tied with behavioral processes Let us consider the following examples:

(52)

Lexico grammar

Adverbial phrase Pronoun Verbal phrase

Ideational

meta-function

Cir: Time Behaver Process: Behavioral

(Cẩm Thương 2011)

(53)

Ông Bảy Hoá

khẹc

Lexico

grammar

Proper noun

Adverb Verbal

phrase

Noun phrase Verbal phrase Adverbial

phrase

Ideational

meta-function

Behaver Cir: Time Process:

Behaviora

l

Range-Phenomenon

Process:

Behavioral

Cir:

Manner

(Võ Quảng 1974)

It is interesting that both “kh y” and

“kh c kh c” stands behind the behavioral

process “c i” but “kh y” in (52) is

definitely fixed with the process “c i” and

forms a phrasal verb whilst “kh c kh c” in

(53) is not joined to the process “c i” and

is labeled as Circumstance-Manner It is

highly advisable that these analysts should

look up these expressions to make sure that

the elements behind the process are fixed or not

b Comparison

Comparison is typically expressed by a prepositional phrase with like or unlike For example:

(54) He breathed lightly and regularly

like an infant (Lawrence 1920)

(55) Gudrun cried, in a strange, high

voice, like a gull, or like a witch creaming