An analysis of word formation in english and vietnamese terminology

23 Chapter Two: Word Formation Processes In English And Vietnamese Legal Terminology II.. In other words, this thesis generally is about showing similarities and differences between di

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF LAW FACULTY OF LEGAL LANGUAGES

GRADUATION THESIS B.A DEGREE IN ENGLISH

Major: Legal English

AN ANALYSIS OF WORD FORMATION

IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE TERMINOLOGY

Supervisor : Nguyen Thai Son, M.A

Ho Chi Minh City, 2019

Word Formation In E-V Terminology

Hong Viet Truc

Ho Chi Minh City University of Law

Supervisor’s Remarks

Acknowledgements

It has been a roller coaster to actually look back the whole journey of mine throughout these four tremendous years in Ho Chi Minh City University of Law During those years, I have met so many great new people with never ending passion; also at the same time, I have also got chances to reconnect with my beloved ones, who has never given up on me since Day one They have shaped me to a kind of person that I’m totally in love with at the moment: optimistic, cheerful and considerate Therefore, I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to give my sincere thank to every people who have shared their greatness to contribute and make my world such a happy place to live

First of all, I would want to dedicate myself to my family These four years sometimes did

go up and down, but whenever I’m with them, I always feel I’m cherished, protected and cared The least that I want is to be apart from any of you! Please stay for eternity!

Another sincere thank would go to Mr Nguyen Thai Son, our down-to-earth and “passio” lecturer during those four years in this university together! You have complimented me with real care and attention, though I sometimes feel very pressured as I thought I may make you disappointed Thank you for this “thesis” journey, which is, I have to admit, a huge huge project for someone really has problems with timing like me I truly appreciate to have your guidance since Day one You made it hard work but enough to make me work for it, but you still cared and was very soft-hearted when I make mistakes I would like to wish you the best for you and your upcoming journey May you still got time to explore places like you have always loved to do!

A sincere thank goes to my beloved LE40B! Thank you Phuong, Phuc, Thao, Thanh Truc, Van, Thuy, Thang, Tri, and every single member in our class! Thanks for being the memories, as your support, your appreciation really comforts me and urges me to do well for all of you!

Another thank goes to each and every single individuals I have met in these four years, including the whole group of Guitar Club, for always letting me in despite my “distance” for some times; the whole big big group of Ban Hoc Tap Doan Truong, who still get in touch with me, even after we had “resigned” from doing all the “hard” but fun work! Thanks to all my lovelies, Joe, Candie, our primary crew and so on, who have always been there for me since Day One!

I wish that my sincere thank could come across amazing journeys at Shin&Kim with Mrs Phuong Anh, lots of fun with Ms Jasmine, Ms Tuyen, Ms Tram, Mr Lap, Ms Dung, Mr Sean, Mr Khuong and so many more with our beloved lecturers from all faculties! Thank you for shaping me a wonderful person as now

Wishing you all the best that yet to come!

Abbreviation Index

Intro book Krois-Lindner, A., Firth, M & TransLegal (2008) Introduction to

International Legal English Cambridge University Press

ILE book Krois-Lindner, A & TransLegal (2011) International Legal English

(2 nd Edition) Cambridge University Press

Figures Index

Figure 1 Summary Of Word-Formation Processes In English Language 19 Figure 2 Summary Of Word-Formation Processes In Vietnamese Language 25 Figure 3 Irrelevant Words In English Legal Glossaries 29 Figure 4 Frequency Of Word Formation Processes Occurrence In The Intro Book

30 Figure 5 Frequency Of Word Formation Processes Occurrence In The ILE Book 30 Figure 6 Frequency Of Word Formation Processes Occurrence In The Glossary Of

Figure 7 Frequency Of Word Formation Processes Occurrence In The Glossary Of

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter One: Theory Of Word Formation In General

1.1 George Yule and his types of word formation processes in English 14

1.2 Nine ways plus to form English words – in details 14

Borrowing & loan-translation (calque / word-by-word translation) 15

2.1 Distinguished viewpoints of researchers in classifying Vietnamese’s word

Borrowing & loan words / calque words 23

Chapter Two: Word Formation Processes

In English And Vietnamese Legal Terminology

II Word Formation Processes Involving In English Legal Terminology 29 2.1 Findings of word formation processes within two English legal

Chapter Three: Some Applications Of Word Formation In Translating Law

1.2 General translating techniques and the outcome of a translation 35 1.3 Types of documents in need for legal translation 36

2.1 Concepts – Legal Concepts in its Three Dimensions’ Theory 37 2.2 Classification of terms to be translated and the issue of non-equivalence 38 III Aiding Legal Translation With Word Formation Processes 38 3.1 Short revision on word-formation processes in English and Vietnamese legal

Bibliography (P.44) Appendix (P.46)

Introduction

I Study Questions and Necessity Of Research

Have you ever encountered the situation where no one was there to help you, because your major is all of what you know? Yes, the situation sometimes gets worse as terms and concepts and the exact equivalence do not always come along One of the most common thing in my learning, also working’s progress, is that not many English legal terms can be found when I need to either look it up in Vietnamese dictionary, or vice versa, to actually understand the Vietnamese concept while English itself does not have it in its legal system Robert Lado, in his “Linguistics across cultures” (1957), once said: all other features that are greatly alike to our mother tongue could be learned easily, while non-alikeness makes one learn the hard way Therefore, it is essential to learn the differences And we also need

to aware how to tackle such differences This is also the urgency of this thesis

Despite of the fact that theory and practices may sometimes create gaps, learning to solve such hard question must come from the broad sense, or the general knowledge L.V Secha once states that: “Such research helps us deepen our knowledge into the development process of a language, which then helps us understand its principles to govern such phenomena”1 Through discovery, it is said to have lexicology as the branch of linguistics that studies the stock of words (the lexicon) in a given language Lexicology deals with units of language, ranging from morphology, the study of the forms and words and their components, to semantics, the study of their meanings Its third field evolves etymology, the study of words with analysis of where and how it is originated from This research covers only that particular field of language, with word formation and in English – Vietnamese languages, specifically

Also, word formation process can be found within the range of historical events where people get familiar with different words from different cultures It varies from nation

to nation, in terms of how words are formed and how new words are created Word formation process contains a lot of derivation In another words, depending on the purposes

of the actor, words may be formed in a very significant way

1 Secha, L.V (1947) Teaching foreign languages in high schools Common issues on how to think and

make reasoning

Therefore, thanks to those background knowledge, learning about word-formation process is actually a good thing to do The questions by then should be raised are:

• Why shouldn’t Vietnamese and English legal terminology do not always go

hand-in-hand in the process of legal translation?

• How word formation processes may come as a great help in this matter?

II Scope Of Research

However, despite that being the case, this thesis will only mention and focus on Linguistic aspects, i.e word formation processes occurring in legal terminology In other words, this thesis generally is about showing similarities and differences between different kinds of ways in forming new English and Vietnamese legal terms The whole process is only to look at each language’s tight unit of communication, known as words, and in this case, as legal terms, much smaller than the field of common words First is to make sure general knowledge about word formation processes in both languages are fully covered Then, our goal is to dig it deeper to see the core values of such processes, and to see whether the process of forming general words may be adapted into legal fields in order to create new terms or not From there, with however and whichever the outcome will be, it is hoped

to be worthwhile, to give hopes to others in the process of finding their most appropriate ways to master English-Vietnamese legal terms, which will serve as their powerful yet challenging tools for a potential career with law-related in near future

Regarding the materials for legal terminology to be accessed in this thesis, I chose to work with mainly the books involving in our four-year curriculum at Ho Chi Minh University of Law, majoring Legal English Those two English-written book, the Intro book and the ILE book2, are the sources of English legal terms this research, while in terms

of Vietnamese, I chose to deal with the Glossary compiled by the group of lawyers from Vietnam Law and Legal Forum, one of the best law firm in Vietnam that has published almost every day with valuable news Though it may not have sufficient amount of words

to be compared and analyzed along with my thesis, to the amount of words within those materials, only civil and commercial cases shall be taken into consideration, and let alone

2 These two books’ information are fully cited as remarkable sources in the Bibliography at the end of this thesis

other issues irrelevant to what I have just mentioned One of the reasons for limiting the scope of research to such low level is that politics and law indifferences may vary with big margins Therefore, culture-centric legal fields such as criminal code, administrative and constitutional law shall not be mentioned herein

III Literature Review

This thesis relates to two different fields, one is linguistic-based and the other related

law-As in linguistics, Yule, G., with his book “Study of Language” (2010), clarifies multiple things within a singular field In his section relating to word formation, he points out nine to tine different processes that are happening along the development phase of English language Although his specific examples with comparison not only Latin-based writing system but also to the eastern side such as Chinese and Japanese languages, those study are quite broad so it is not very detailed in terms of reasoning For instance, he points out that compounded words would be one of the most common sources for generating new English vocabulary, but he does not state any specific reason for this matter Moreover, he does not have further research in the legal language itself

As in Vietnamese linguistics, Prof Ho Le and Prof Nguyen Thien Giap, along with other professors, have been working on the progress of learning the language as to maintain its true greatness of Vietnam’s language However, very limited sources can be found regarding the field of legal terminology Most of them are isolated, separate articles which were published by young researchers, which are only to claim certain aspects of the law and its terminology, having no intention to create a “masterpiece” in relation to this Regarding the matter of translating law, Cao, D., with her famous book “Translating Law” (2007), is actually very well-known in the field, mainly for her practical approach towards a harsh topic like language and law combined However, mostly the techniques in translating law are addressed in her books and articles, not much on the legal terminology itself Šarčević in her book “New approaches in legal translation” (1997) also shares the same interest, but somehow gives more detailed guidance on how to treat harsh translating issues when

it is relating to terms itself

Those are just some of the most influential researchers in the field that I might be able to know of However, giving theory relating to either to linguistics or to law could be much easier than having them combined Therefore, with my thesis, I hope somehow this tiny contribution of mine could be a meaningful source of reference for people in need, but it is obviously needs to be revised more and more to give better outcome of the knowledge

IV Research Methodology

Although this is a fully-conducted research itself, to the nature of the research, it still bears the outcome of a theory-based study, with no surveys, questionnaire or data collection that needs mathematically analyzed The purpose of the study, like having said above, is to figure out the implications of certain fields in linguistics to the field of law and see whether it may be a good fit

Hence, research tools within my study would go around these three basic techniques: reading and collecting data/information from various sources, including but not limited to

a great sources of books in local libraries, online articles from major reliable sites, and so

on After the process of data collecting, information shall be analyzed and rearranged into groups of projects for further research That is the act of recollect and rearrange legal terminology for both languages in concern Finally, the process of comparison is to be used most frequently and most effectively as this thesis is making an attempt to actually compare the element of words in both languages in nature

V Structure Of Thesis

With all that information being said, this thesis is to cover three separate part of information as the background knowledge, with some conclusions to “take-away” after each section being carefully analyzed The contents will be delivered in three iconic chapters with details as the following:

Chapter One, “Theory of Word Formation in General”, is to give general

knowledge on which way words are formed typically throughout the history Both languages will be assessed and broken down to the very details of its “morpheme”, the tiniest form of a language Throughout the process of listing, along with short analysis and

examples, there will be some comparison between the processes in both language themselves

The following Chapter, Chapter Two, regarding “Word formation process in

E-V legal terminology”, is sure to take a step further in the theory of forming not only new

common words but also new legal terms By giving words that are compiled from those books abovementioned and the provided glossary a try, the results are flourish, as it happens to be that two (out of nine to ten) processes having been used the most to make language’s vocabulary rich and more complex Further discussions can be found within the remarks for each language’s discovery

Last but definitely not least, Chapter Three, in relation with “Applications of word

formation processes in translating law”, is to show how crucial it is to study word

formation processes under the scope of law translation By putting English and Vietnamese onto a stray and let them be broken down for careful look, legal translators are well-advised

to a need in mastering the language of law while simultaneously working through its legal concepts Some alternative and practical solutions have also been raised by a number of researchers worldwide also provide guidance for solving current problems with non-equivalence and translating concepts across borders

CHAPTER ONE

THEORY OF WORD FORMATION IN GENERAL

In this Chapter, contextual background knowledge on theories of forming words in both languages shall be revised and compared To the outcome of this Chapter, one could collect information regarding what type of general word formation processes are in both English and Vietnamese language, with short but careful analysis of each being compared with each other

I Theory Of Word Formation In English Language

1.1 George Yule and his types of word formation processes in English

Having been said above, forming new words happens in every language from time to time, rather have fixed schedules or fixed formula However, George Yule, in his book

“Study of Language” (Yule, 2010), clearly makes some points with massive contents on how to arrange and classify some types of word formation processes in general English There are nine types of word formation processes in English language3, including coinage, borrowing, compounding, derivation, blending, clipping, backformation, conversion, and acronym, yet sometimes multiple processes can be used to form a single word Details and short analysis of each process will be discussed as follow

1.2 Nine ways plus to form English words – in details

Coinage is one of the least common sources, as it is to create entirely new terms

Trade names as to its referent and names of people or a place are coined to form new words, replicating the same thing as they are in real life For instance, regarding trade names,

Aspirin, one of the most common medicine to treat certain symptoms of flu or cold, has

been used as a usual act of someone taking medicine to low their fever (Have you take any

aspirins?) Words such as granola, vaseline, zipper are as well formed with the same

method of “decapitalization”

3 Yule, G (2010: 53)

Another concept may be coined to form natural word use is using names of people or

places, such as sandwich (from Earl of Sandwich having his bread stuffed while doing

gamble) and jeans (from the Italian city of Jenwa) This kind of process is called eponym

Some technical terms in physics and chemistry are also resulted from taking in-field

physicians’ names for each pf its measurement unit, such as celsius (“weather unit”, from Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius) and ohm (“electrical resistance unit”, from German

physician Georg Simon Ohm)

Borrowing, contrary to the above coinage, is actually “one of the most common

sources of new words in English”4 This kind of process is a two-way affection, which means English contains words lent from other languages while it also permits other languages to take some English to call what they do not have in their mother-tongue To illustrate for this, one should inspect from both sides As searching within English, many

words could be found with hindrances of other cultural aspects, such as café (French),

cartoon (Italian), cigar (Spanish), cookie (Dutch), anonymous (Greek), and many more

Likewise, other languages, obviously, borrow terms from English, as in the Korean use of 커피숍 (keopisyo) for “coffee shop” or in the Chinese use of 巴士 (bāshì) for “bus”, by

replicating the phonetic sounds of the words and adapting them to the borrowing language Sometimes, the borrowing process does not convey the same meaning as the original one,

as the German phrase Partnerlook (describing people in twining outfits) carries no equivalent meaning of such words in separate (partner and look) in English

However, there is another way of “borrowing” that is to make direct translation of each elements of such word while making it as a new word in the borrowing language

This special type of process is best called as loan-translation or calque 5 For instance, the

English word superman is actually a calque from the German utterance “Übermensch”

Another interesting example for this technique is in the American concept of “boyfriend”:

while the Japanese describes it as ボイフレンド (boifurendo) with slight sound

modification from English word (also known as the calque process), the Chinese chooses

to call such person as “male friend” or 男朋友 (nán péngyǒu), also known as

word-by-word translation

4 Yule, G (2010: 54)

5 Yule, G (2010: 54)

Many of English words are also formed by the process of compounding, a joining

technique to connect two separate meaningful terms into one single form Compounding could be considered very common in English Some common English compounds are

bookcase, fingerprint, textbook, wallpaper as nouns; good-looking, high-paid as

adjectives; and fast-food (stores) or short-term (journey) as combination of adjectives and

nouns, which also carry the function of adjectives

However, compounding is usually confused with derivation, a process in which

affixes (grammatical element with no meaning when it stands alone) are used in collaboration with original words to form new ones This is by far the most common word-formation process in the milestone of creating new English terms Affixes are available in

three types, which are called prefixes (e.g un-, mis-, pre-) to add to the beginning of the word, suffixes (e.g -ful, -less, -ism) to the end of the word and some infixes (e.g –bloody-,

-goddam-) to incorporate within another word expressing excessive emotional-attached

circumstances Sometimes, words formed by the act of derivation may contain any of those

affixes, or actually a combination of affixes Thus, misunderstanding has a prefix,

“Absogoddamlutely!” has an infix, impoliteness has both a prefix and a suffix, and

gratefulness has both suffixes

Another way of forming new words is “blend” it by combining two separate forms

of words (not two whole words, but mostly only the beginning of one word connecting

with the end of the other word) to produce a single new one This blending process occurs

in the word smog, which reflects the combined effects of smoke and fog, brunch from

breakfast and lunch, or motel from motor and hotel Modernized world also creates new

blends such as simulcast from simultaneous and broadcast relating to television, telex from

teleprinter and exchange in IT sector, or even Franglais from French and Anglais as a

language mixture

What actually happens in the blending process also involves clipping, as it cuts some

elements of one multi-syllable word in order to create a new word with such “shorter” form, while still bearing the same meaning as the original one One clear example for this

kind of process is the word advertisement, which can be shortened to the form of advert,

or even ad, and other people still fully understand what the speaker/writer wants to say A variety of clipped words can be found with school-related meanings, such as math

(mathematics), chem (chemistry) and prof (professor) Names of people are also clipped to make it more informal to say, e.g Al (for Albert / Alvin), Liz (for Elizabeth / Lisa) or Joe

(for Joseph), dependent on how people want to be addressed These shortened names might

be known as the result of hypocorism 6, or “to use child-talk” if there is an –y or an –ie added to the end, forming Albie, Lizzie or Joey This is a special type of reduction, most commonly used by Australians and British Words such as movie (“moving pictures”),

barbie (“barbecue”) and hankie (“handkerchief”) are the outcomes of such process, though

not many people aware of that

Reducing one word while still creating new word not only comes from the act of

clipping, but it can also be derived from the process of backformation As its names

suggests, a word (usually in a noun form) is cut to become a new word with different word

form Let’s take donation as an example Donation itself is a noun, meaning “the act of

giving money or food to help a person or an organization”7, and when the –tion element is reduced, it forms a verb of donate, carrying the same concept as its noun form One very regular source of backformed verbs in English is based on the common pattern of worker

– work It is assumed to have the possibility in creating a verb for what that noun with –er

does, but rarely a verb for that noun with –ist Thus, a teacher will teach, but an artist will

do the art One reason for this would lie in the meaning of the root of the word, while a teacher itself carries the action of “teaching”, but “artist” only represents the “art”, not the

action of coloring or doodling

Forming a new word might mean giving such word a change in its original grammatical function, without having the words cut or reduced in any form This type of

word-formation is called conversion, which may have a noun changed to a verb and vice

versa A number of nouns such as chair, butter, toast have come to be used, through conversion, as verbs: Aron chaired the meeting last night; Have you buttered the

sandwich?; It’s your ceremony Let’s toast for it! When it comes to the opposite way of

changing a verb into a noun, conversion is particularly productive in Modern English, as

Yule (2010, p.57) points out verbs such as guess, must and spy now came from the sources

of a guess, a must and a spy Even phrasal verbs (to take over) and complex verb (want to

be) can also be conversed effectively to make new terms as a takeover and a wannabe (as

in He isn’t in the group, he’s just a wannabe.)

Changing in function of words could also be seen through the process of forming an

adjective (a see-through material) from a verb (to see through); a verb (to empty) from an adjective (empty) and a noun (a crazy) from an adjective (crazy) Other forms such as up and microwave, can also become verbs, as in They’re going to up the price of petrol soon and Sally tried to microwave it, but failed

When discovering how new words are created, one certainly meet terms such as CISG (“Conventions of International Sales of Goods”), PIN (“personal identification number”)

or even a CD (“compact disk”), which are classified as a group of words formed from “the

initial letters of a set of other words” (Yule, 2010) and pronounced as each separate letter

This kind of creation is generally known as acronyms Those “capital letters” examples

are just one type of acronyms The other type of it carries very common terms such as laser (“light application by stimulated emission of radiation”) and zip (“zone improvement

plan”) code, with no capitalized as it has become people’s everyday phrases

Although one can easily identify the word-formation process occurred in one new but

simple word like NASA, it is necessary for one to acknowledge that multiple processes could also happen step-by-step in order to invent a new word Let’s take the word a decaf

as in Would you prefer a decaf? for an illustration The word decaf is actually formed by

multiple processes, namely calque, derivation, clipping and backformation It carries the

meaning of “a cup of decaffeinated coffee” At first, a noun caféine from French was

calqued to form caffeine as an English noun Next, in the process of derivation, prefix de-

and two suffixes –ate and –ed were added into caffeine to create its adjective form as

decaffeinated After that, simultaneously, decaffeinated is clipped to decaf and

backformed from an adjective (“status of having caffeine substance removed”) to a noun

(“a cup of coffee that has had caffeine removed”8) Finally, a decaf is formed

8 Definition of “decaf” Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press

Retrieved from: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/decaf

To sum up, word-formation processes in English language adapted from Yule (2010) and discussed in this section, can be briefly explained as follows:

aspirin, granola, vaseline, zipper

Eponym: using

names of people or places

sandwich, jeans, celsius, ohm

word-by-word translation or a translation with modifications in sound

(German) Übermensch à superman(English) boyfriend

à boifurendo (Japanese): calque

à nán péngyǒu (Chinese – “male

friend”): word-by-word translation

3 Compounding (very common

in English)

A joining of two separate meaningful terms into one single new form (usually in nouns or adjectives)

N + N bookcase, fingerprint, textbook, washing machine

Adj + Adj good-looking, high-paid

Adj + N fast-food (stores)

Prefixes un-, mis-, pre-, etc

Infixes -goddam-, -bloody-, etc

Suffixes -ful, -less, -ism, etc

6 Clipping

Reducing some elements of one multi-syllable word

to a shorter form (same meaning as the original)

advertisement à ad / advert mathematics à math

professor à prof chemistry à chem

People’s names: Albert / Alvin à Al

No Type of process Features Example(s)

Hypocorism: a

clipped word which

is then added –y/-ie

to the end (Aus/British)

Albert / Alvin à Al à Albie Elizabeth / Lisa à Liz à Lizzie Joseph à Joe à Joey

“moving pictures” à movie

“handkerchief” à hankie

7 Backformation

A word is reduced to form a new word with different word form

N V

donation (n) à donate (v) television (n) à televise (v) babysitter (n) à babysit (v)

If nouns end in –er,

one can create a verb for what that noun

with -er does

worker (n) à work (v) teacher (n) à teach (v)

8 Conversion

Changing the word form without having the word reduced

N V

N à V to chair, to butter, to toast

V à N a guess, a must, a spy

* Multiple processes

A combination of processes caféine à caffeine (calque)

9 Tran Diep Tuyet Trinh (2017) Table of Word-formation process Introduction to Linguistics (Revision

Paper) Adapted with additions and alternations

Reduced

Stays the same

II Theory Of Word Formation In Vietnamese Language

2.1 Distinguished viewpoints of researchers in classifying Vietnamese’s word formation processes

In terms of Vietnamese language, words (i.e a collective utterances including radical words and phrases), as a tiny (not the tiniest) unit form of language, are the main study objective of lexicology Lexicology has been studied its origin, development and current status of words in general, and Vietnamese in particular Hence, Vietnamese word formation processes for recent era vary from time to time

Nguyen Thien Giap, in his first book relating to the matter “Lexicology in Vietnamese language” (2005), once mentioned a variety of ways to forming new words in Vietnamese Those are:

• creating new meanings from the original words via its lexical fields (p.299 – 302);

• creating new sounds modification from English-related tradenames (p.302 – 303);

• improving existing idioms to make new visualized ones (p.303 – 305);

• compounding process (p.305 – 306);

• blending process (p.306 – 307);

• clipping process (p.308 – 309);

• acronym (p.309);

• borrowing with calque and word-by-word translation (p.309 – 314)

In his later book “Textbook on Linguistics” dated 2008, the PhD Prof Nguyen Thien Giap did add into the list two more processes, such as: reduplication (“láy”) and meta-analysis (“phân hoá lại”), with some alternations in other former processes’ names

There is an alternative way of listing word-formation processes as well, like the one the author of the book “Word-formation process in modern Vietnamese” (2003), Ho Le, has mentioned According to his study, Vietnamese words are not the smallest unit, but its

“morphemes” are By saying this, he classified Vietnamese words into six major types of

“morphemes” in Vietnamese words, namely10: free morpheme (e.g nhà, đường, măng cụt, etc.), grammatical morpheme (e.g cũng, đang, nhưng, etc.), systematic morpheme (e.g

10 These following types of morphemes are translated to the extent of my knowledge on the field only Should only be considered as references for further explanation only

cái, mà, rằng, etc.), potential morpheme (i.e Chinese-originated morpheme: tiểu, trung, đại, etc.), emotional morpheme (e.g chao ôi, vâng, ái chà, etc.) and intentional morpheme

(e.g chứ, nhỉ, nhé, etc.), along with four other function-combined morphemes (2003: 157

– 177) As their names suggest, each type of morphemes carry its own function accordingly From there, Prof Ho Le tried to analyze word-formation processes in modern Vietnamese language in two main ways:

• forming radical words (using free – grammatical – emotional – intentional and function-combined morphemes); and

• forming complex words (using other types of morphemes) (p.180 – 181)

However, he also stated in his book that not all of them would be addressed within the scope of “word-formation” in terms of structure The reason for this is that some of the processes are relevant to language’s semantics, pragmatics and grammar sectors Likewise,

to the scope of this thesis, only some of the word-formation processes in Vietnamese language will be mentioned, discussed and compared with the ones in English for the same reasons

2.2 Vietnamese word formation – how are they differentiated from English’s processes?

Let’s just say there are a number of visions from specialists as the abovementioned, but in this section, only selective information of how Vietnamese words are formed will

be discussed Moreover, to the limitations of my intensive research, such information shall

be listed with short analysis and examples only, with primarily regards to PhD Prof Nguyen Thien Giap’s point of view, but not limited to other researchers’ philosophies

First and foremost, compounding (“ghép từ’) and derivation are considered as the

most common process when one thinks of creating new terms in Vietnamese Prof Nguyen Thien Giap (2005, p.305) and Prof Ho Le (2003, p.452) shares the same viewpoint regarding this matter, although they did not actually mention the process of derivation in forming new Vietnamese words Compounding process creates both composite words, or

“từ ghép” (e.g mua bán, trao đổi, nhà cửa, etc.) with each component words carrying full meanings, and derivational words, or “từ phái sinh” (e.g cải thìa / cải bó xôi / cải thảo, ớt

chỉ thiên / ớt chuông / ớt hiểm, etc.) with one element standing as “root” (i.e “cải”, “ớt”)

while the underlined as “affix” representing different types of “cải” and “ớt” This type of forming words with a combination of “root” and “affixes” is in fact a representation of

derivation process as it is in English However, no research has yet to be found restating

this matter Besides, there is another source for composite words, which is very

Chinese-related Some examples for this source would be: bệnh viện, binh lính, ca hát, súng trường,

etc with the underlined parts are Chinese-originated, while the other Vietnamese-based

Less common than compounding process is the act of borrowing (“mượn từ”) words

from foreign sources Due to great influence the Vietnamese has had among all of those years being a colony of the French and the Chinese invaders, our language has captured tons of “foreign words” from the outside world Also, being in a globalization era, Vietnamese people should also be able to adapt and create new terms for boundless interaction and understanding In particular, as the same to English, Vietnamese words can

be derived from loan words and calque words Hence, loan words can be transcribed, as

Ô-xtrây-li-a, or be in its original form, as Australia Calque words are more complicated

with its meaning shifted, as to touch (“to get somebody emotionally attached”) which becomes xúc động in Vietnamese, or with its word-by-word translation, as cold war in English becoming chiến tranh lạnh in Vietnamese

Another process that can create new words in Vietnamese is blending (“phức hợp” /

“trộn”11), though this kind of process is quite complex and different from English itself While English is a syllabic language, Vietnamese carries one word with its own meaning/grammatical function, and cannot be further divided into “morphemes” like blending process does in English Therefore, words in Vietnamese can be blended provided

that such word/phrase actually has more than one element For example, văn học and nghệ

thuật, since both composite words consist of two elements, blending process can occur,

forming new word văn nghệ Other examples would be ngữ văn from ngôn ngữ blended with văn học, and công nông binh from the triplet công nhân – nông dân – binh sĩ 12

Another special type of blended words could be FAHASA as from the phrases “Tổng công

ty Phát Hành Sách Việt Nam”

11 Nguyễn Thiện Giáp (2005: 237)

12 Nguyễn Thiện Giáp (2005: 238)

The fourth ways to form new words in Vietnamese is clipping (“rút gọn”) process

Words such as đảm (as in “đảm đang”), hạn (as in “kỳ hạn”), and lệnh (as in “mệnh lệnh”)

are examples for this Words that are resulted from blending process are usually confused

with this process’s result, since công nông binh as said above seemed to look like it has

been trimmed to its shorten form However, it is not Blending process actually involves

clipping, but not only clipping If the word generally stops at công (as in “công nhân”),

then it is clipped, but it doesn’t stop until it is connected with other shorten word forms

Therefore, công nông binh came as the result of blending, not clipping

In Vietnamese, acronym (“viết tắt”), a process of taking all initial letters of a group

of words, also takes place ĐHL TPHCM standing for “Đại học Luật Tp HCM”, TTXVN standing for “Thông tấn xã Việt Nam”, TTg as for “Thủ tướng” are some common phrases

one could possibly meet in daily life Acronym and clipping processes in Vietnamese so far share the same outcomes as they have in English, with no big difference

Prof Ho Le, in his book “Word formation in modern Vietnamese” (2003), mentioned

an alternative way to invent new Vietnamese words that is conversion (“chuyển loại từ”)

(p.288 – 301), a process of changing the word form without having the original word reduced in any form He listed out more than four stereotypes of conversion, but only three

of them have structure-related Those are the process of conversing nouns to verbs, verbs

to nouns and nouns to adjectives The author claims that no other than those three types are yet to be found to be effective in forming new words in Vietnamese via conversion process

For instance, cuốc (“hoe”) as a noun referring to “an agricultural hand tool to shape soil”13can be converted to a verb cuốc as “to shape soil using a specialized hand tool” Other examples could be taken into consideration, including the conversion of yêu cầu (“a request”) as a verb to yêu cầu (“a request”) as a noun, or the transformation of thơ (“a poem”) as a noun to thơ (“to be very artistic”) as an adjective

There is also a process of reduplication (“láy từ”) in creating Vietnamese words

This type of word-formation is quite complex, and according to Prof Ho Le in his book

“Word formation in modern Vietnamese” (2003), there are specialized rules to follow (see

Section 3: p.193 – 276) with some basic highlights relating to duplicate sounds of the

13 Hoe (meaning) Wikipedia: Hoe (tool) Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoe_(tool)

original word Some reduplicated words can be found including ào ào (from “ào”), rung

rinh (from “rung”), sạch sành sanh (from “sạch”), hấp ta hấp tấp (from “hấp tấp”) These

duplicates express either the exposure of the main word or give great intensity to the main word Reduplication also appears in English language, but with very rarity, mostly used as

reference to the sounds of animals or in nature, such as, murmur, buzz-buzz,

mua bán, trao đổi, nhà cửa Derivation

process in Vietnamese is not yet

mentioned as one official type of word-formation

Derivational words (“từ phái sinh”)

cải thìa / cải bó xôi / cải thảo

ớt chỉ thiên / ở chuông / ớt hiểm

originated + Vietnamese

Chinese-bệnh viện, binh lính, ca hát, súng trường

3 Borrowing

(“mượn từ”)

Loan words Ô-xtrây-li-a

Australia bít tết (“beef steak”)

The same

Calque words xúc động (“to touch”)

chiến tranh lạnh (“cold war”)

word/phrase has more than one element

văn nghệ (from “văn học” +

“nghệ thuật”)

ngữ văn (from “ngôn ngữ” +

“văn học”)

công nông binh (from “công

nhân” + “nông dân” + “binh sĩ”)

Applicable for all words

FAHASA (from “Tổng công ty

The same

No Type of process Features Examples with English Compared

(Yule, 2010)

6 Acronym

(“viết tắt”)

ĐHL TPHCM (“Đại học Luật Tp HCM”) TTXVN (“Thông tấn xã Việt Nam”) TTg (“Thủ tướng”)

V à N yêu cầu (v) à yêu cầu (n)

N à Adj thơ (n) à thơ (adj)

8 Reduplication

(“láy từ”)

Duplicating sounds of the original word with some special rules

ào ào (from “ào”), rung rinh (from “rung”) sạch sành sanh (from “sạch”) hấp ta hấp tấp (from “hấp

tấp”)

Very rare, mostly using this to express sounds of animals or nature

Figure 2 Summary of Word-formation Processes in Vietnamese Language

III Chapter One In Brief

In a nutshell, Vietnamese language shares the same knowledge with English on making words’ variety by making alternations in word formation processes Despite each being classified differently into groups of processes, the majority of processes are all included among timelines of each language’s development stage In general English language, derivation and borrowing by far are the most common source of forming new words Meanwhile, in the language of Vietnam, compounding, along with derivation (within the scope of compounding), are considered to be the most effective ways to create new terms While English’s coinage, hypocorism and backformation do outweigh the number of processes in creating new words when compared to Vietnamese, Vietnamese language takes advantage in reduplication to the most of it Also, as Vietnamese is a monosyllabic language, multiple processes of word formation could not take place within

the same word like the situation with a decaf phrase in English However, it is not yet to

be certain that those types of processes would be like this forever In fact, it may be altered, diminished and replaced by other processes as languages grow itself Therefore, keeping one updated is necessary to fully aware of what to expect in each research or release, especially when one is employed in the legal-related field

CHAPTER TWO

WORD FORMATION PROCESSES

IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE LEGAL TERMINOLOGY

In last Chapter, what was mentioned is the theory of word-formation processes in both English and Vietnamese languages in general In this Chapter, specific field of words will be pointed out and discussed Such field would be named as law-related; therefore, legal terminology will be tested and analyzed to see if there is any similarity between both languages

I Theory Of Terminology

1.1 Definitions of terms and legal terms

1.1.1 What are terms?

According to Prof Nguyen Thien Giap in his “Textbook on Linguistics” (2008): Terms (“thuật ngữ”) are the essential parts of a particular language It comprises

of words and fixed phrases representing the exact concept and other objectives relating to a variety of technical fields within society (221)

Some examples of terms can be listed within particular fields, such as 4P Concept (Price – Product – Place – Promotion), customer insights in Marketing; equity, inventory in Finance

& Banking; solicitor, felony in Law, etc

It is necessary to differentiate whether it is a term or a nomenclature (“danh pháp”) The difference here is nomenclature normally includes proper names which are used, in a specified field, only to name that particular thing, not concept-related like terms For

instance, in geography, names of rivers such as Nile, Amazon, (sông) Hồng, (sông) Đà, etc are known as “nomenclature”; while river, lake, ocean, mountain, etc are called “terms”

In addition, concepts of terms may be created in conjunction of its surface meanings, like

A A Reformatskiy once defined in his article named “What are terms and terminological systems?”, published in “Issues relating to terms” in Moskva (1961: 49 – 51)

Based on Wuster (1979), a term consists of one or several word elements, known as morphemes These morphemes are not determined by their meaning, but by their origin Wuster states four different kinds of word elements: hereditary words, foreign words/ loan words and transferred designations Also, “the concept-term relationship, by the traditional theory, starts with the concept and aims at the strict delineation of each concept” (Packelser, K., 2009: 33) Each concept should be designed by only one term and one term should only refer to one concept

1.1.2 What are legal terms?

Like the above definition of terms in general, “legal terms” conveys concepts to the accuracy of law or other communications in a legal setting

Legal terminology can be classified in several ways They can be purely technical

(Galdia, M., 2017: 155), i.e be used only in law, e.g promissory estoppel, renvoi,

certiorari or replevin Other terms may carry meanings differed from the ordinary meaning

of such words, e.g consideration, damages, equity Legal terms may differ within one language (e.g domicile in US and UK shares partial overlapping concepts), or display preferences in use within one natural language (e.g warranty preferred in the US while

guarantee in the UK) Such terms also appear to be polysemic within one legal language,

e.g civil law meaning either “private law” or “continental legal tradition in legal English”

1.2 Characteristics of legal terms

Legal terms share the same characteristics as general terms, regarding its accurate, systematic and international features (Lê Hùng Tiến (1999: 83-84)

Regarding accuracy, legal terms carry meanings to the exact concept of a referent in real life The concept condensed in legal terms are defined and determined under the scope

of that particular legal field It has been stated that this accuracy makes legal terms monosemous (having one meaning) and mononymous (consisting of one word); therefore, the concept of the word is fully understood Systematic feature of a term is shown both in its meaning and its structural form One should be able to collect and rearrange the terms

in a particular system with its group of alike concepts

What is more, legal terms and legal concepts are closely related According to Mattila

in his “Comparative Legal Linguistics” (2006: 108), fundamental to the analysis of legal

terminology has been the distinction between legal concepts and legal terms It enables to access the legal language, especially its legal terms in respect of their content and in respect

of their form

II Word Formation Processes Involving In English Legal Terminology

2.1 Findings of word formation processes within two English legal glossaries

To the limitation of this thesis, only legal terms within the glossaries of two books namely “Introduction to International Legal English” (2008: 155-160), hereinafter called

“the Intro book”, and “International Legal English” (2011: 307-314), hereinafter called

“the ILE book”, will be analyzed and discussed In particular, terms relating to constitutional law, criminal law and administrative law shall not be mentioned as well Those words are:

Introduction to International Legal English (2008)

International Legal English (2011)

Figure 3 Irrelevant words in English legal glossaries

In the Intro book’s glossary (see Annex 1) and excluding the above irrelevant terms,

there are a total of 211 English legal terms Including:

No Type of process occurred in the list Number of words Percentage

Figure 4 Frequency of word formation processes occurrence in the Intro book

In the other book’s glossary (see Annex 2) and excluding the above irrelevant term

(i.e criminal law), there are a total of 413 English legal terms Including:

No Type of process Number of processes occurred in the list Percentage

2.2 Remarks

It is easy to spot the significant differences among those ways of forming English terminology Compounding process takes the advantages of both the Intro and the ILE book, with more than half of the total terms representing composite words and compound words in each textbook Following the trend is borrowed terms from Latin, French, German and Italian, ranging from 23% to 25% of the total words compiled in the glossary Results from Figure 4 and 5 show how learning how to master word forms of English legal terminology is much easier, as more concern will be driven into the combined words /

phrases Sometimes, one such word can contain up to four elements, for example, debtor

and creditor law, estate pur autre vie, or interference in contractual relations Within this

selective, it can also be seen that the number of “separate” compound words outweighs the number of “joined together” phrases One of the reason for this is about terms’ systematic and precise features As having said above, one term can only represent one concept, in order not to confuse any person while using said term What is more, legal terms in English language not only comprises of simple words only, but they also have a combination of words (e.g a plain English word with a French-originated element) to carefully state a

concept Some clear examples regarding this matter are fee tail or fee simple, with the word

“fee” borrowed from French, while “tail” and “simple” are just simple English words

III Word Formation Processes Involving In Vietnamese Legal Terminology

3.1 Findings of word formation processes within two major legal glossaries in Vietnamese

In this section, contrary to what has been done with English legal terms, glossaries of Vietnamese legal terms will be taken from Vietnam Law & Legal Forum’s website14, as it has been one of the most reliable and fulfill sources for legal terminology collected from most recent Vietnam’s laws Likewise, only civil-and-commercial-related legal terms are taken from that website, comprising legal terms of Competition Law 2018 and Commercial Arbitration Terms

14 Vietnam Law & Legal Forum Retrieved from:

http://vietnamlawmagazine.vn/legal-glossary/22.html?p=1

In the glossary of Competition Law 2018 (see Annex 3), there are a total of 201 legal terms Including:

No Type of process Number of processes occurred in the list Percentage

No Type of process Number of processes occurred in the list Percentage

Figure 7 Frequency of word formation processes occurrence in glossary of Vietnam’s

Commercial Arbitration Term

3.2 Remarks

According to the tables, Vietnamese legal terms also have the most common form as compounding and borrowing, which occur in almost half of the total terms within one specific legal fields When it comes to much more commercial-related, the frequency of borrowing words from Chinese has increased dramatically, to nearly as much as compounded terms themselves Though the survey conducted within this thesis does not cover enough all fields in law, it is still understandable why Vietnamese legal terms mostly rooted from Chinese language, as Le Hung Tien once mentioned it in his Doctor’s Thesis regarding “Some features of Vietnamese language in legal texts” published in 1999 He stated that almost 93% of legal texts prefer using Chinese-Vietnamese words to form legal terms One of his reasons regarding this matter was because Chinese terms are well-structured and concise Furthermore, Chinese influence on the formality of the language use in legal texts15 They save time and effort for lawyers, judges and layperson in dealing with long-detailed terms, which sometimes might even have the opposite effects

IV Chapter Two In Brief

Although the amount of terms discussed in this Chapter are not many to illustrate how English and Vietnamese legal terminology are formed in the most effective way, Chapter Two is to be closed with an expectation that readers may retain some insights about the most common way of creating new terms for both languages in speaking In short, compounded and loan words are almost the likeliest to occur in the majority of English and Vietnamese language in general and in creating new legal terms particularly

It is believed to be fascinating and useful to be fully familiarized with those two processes, especially if one is a legal translator By doing so, one could utilize the best of their knowledge to maximize the process of the performing great English – Vietnamese – English translation More details will be discussed further in the next Chapter

15 Lê Hùng Tiến (1999: 88-89)