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Running Head: The Structure of Noun Phrase in English and Vietnamese
Running Head: The Structure of Noun Phrase in English and Vietnamese
VIETNAMESE
Contrastive Analysis
Abstract
Words do not simply get together at random to form a meaningful unit. That is to say
they should be combined systematically and grammatically into phrases, and then
example, the group of words “the girls in their summer dresses” is a phrase. In
English and Vietnamese, there are three kinds of phrases whose names are defined
on the basis of the classes of the word that is the chief word or head of the phrase
namely noun phrase, verb phrase, and adjective phrase. Among those phrases,
noun phrase proves to be an interesting case that needs closer attention. The goal of
this study is to understand the structure of noun phrase in English and Vietnamese.
Attention is also given to the comparison and contrast between the structure of
English noun phrase and Vietnamese noun phrase. Finally, some implications for
George Yule (2006) defines a noun phrase as “a phrase in which the main
word is a noun and which is used as a subject or an object” (p.269). When analyzing
complements that can follow the main word, i.e., a noun (1995). For example, he
modifiers separately rather than arranges them into an order. Jackson (1989),
however, suggests all the possible elements that can combine into a single noun
and the Post-modification are optional. As their names have suggested, the function
meaning. Noun phrase gets its name from the head word. First, let’s have a look at
Head
The word noun phrase is self-explanatory. It is obvious that the most common
kind of head word in a noun phrase is a noun. In some cases, a pronoun may also
act as the central part of a noun phrase. There are four kinds of pronouns functioning
as heads: personal pronoun, (a) indefinite pronoun (b), possessive pronoun (c), and
a. he in he is a doctor
Noun Phrase 4
Usually, when a pronoun takes the role of head in a noun phrase, it is not
he who hesitates.
Pre-modification:
pre-determiners are all, both, half, and fractions. For example, in the noun phrase all
include articles (a, an, the), demonstratives (this, that, these, those) and possessives
(my, your, his, her, its, our, their), only one of which can occur in a noun phrase. It
means that they are “mutually exclusive in English”. One thing special about noun
phrase is that the article “the” can go with any head be it singular or plural (a). In
contrast, demonstratives must “agree in number with the common noun phrase”
(b) this book, that book but these books, those books
the numeral/quantifier can have more than one component. In general, this
(a) ordinal numeral + indefinite quantifier, e.g. the first few guests
Noun Phrase 5
(b) ordinal numeral + cardinal numeral, e.g. the first two guests
More than one adjective can co-occur in a noun phrase. In this case, adjectives are
arranged in a rather fixed order. Jackson has suggested an ordering for adjectives
with an example: a charming small round old brown French oaken writing desk. In
(charming) 2. size (small) 3. shape (round) 4. age (old) 5. color (brown) 6. origin
modifier is a noun that is placed immediately before a head noun to modify the head
noun. For example, in a country garden, the village policeman, and the news
agency, country, village and news are noun modifiers. Jackson also points out that
“it is unusual for more than one noun modifier to occur in a noun phrase” and that
“noun modifier + head noun constructions are often the first stage in the formation of
compound nouns”.
Post-modification
Usually, when people need an adjective to modify the head noun, they place
the head noun, especially in some few set phrases like blood royal, heir apparent.
Noun Phrase 6
prepositional phrase. For example, the time before can be understood as the time
refers back to the head noun of the noun phrase. The relative pronoun “who” and
“whom” refer to people. The relative pronoun “which” is used for plants and animals.
If the relative pronoun is an index of an object, it can be omitted. For example: in the
kinds of non-finite clauses according to the verb that introduces them: Infinitive
Clause (a), Present Participle Clause (b) and Past Participle Clause (c). For
example:
participle and a past participle clause are introduced by a present participle and a
past participle respectively. Non-finite clauses can be reconstructed into full relative
(b) the man talking to the teacher the man who is talking to the teacher
(c) the movie chosen by the teacher the movie that is chosen by the teacher
corner. Prepositional phrases are said to be the most frequent kind of post-modifiers
Noun Phrase 7
in noun phrases. For example: the man in the corner. A prepositional phrase can
also be rebuilt into a relative clause, e.g. the man who is in the corner.
Head Post-
Pre-modification
Noun modification
Pre- Identifier Numeral/ Adjective Noun Adjective/adverb
Prepositional
phrase
Vietnamese have an old saying “Qua bao phong ba bão táp không bằng ngữ
pháp Việt Nam”, which means Vietnamese grammar is very complicated. The fact is
no exception, noun phrase has been at the center of debate for long. Now I’d like to
In the book Vietnamese grammar (Ngữ pháp tiếng Việt), Nguyễn Tài Cẩn
points out that Vietnamese noun phrases have two parts: the head and the
about his finding is the head noun. He claims that if the noun is preceded by a
classifier, both the noun and the classifier form the head. So the head is the
Head
Pre-modification Post-modification
T1 (classifier) T2 (noun)
một đoàn sinh viên khoa Văn
một cuốn sách này
According to Diệp Quang Ban, a noun phrase consists of three constituents:
modifiers add more information in terms of quantity. In contrast, all the elements of
post-modification give more information about quality. The head of a noun phrase
Nghieu, and Hoang Trong Phien, this paper will discuss in detail the structure of
take “tất cả những cái con mèo đen ấy” as an example to analyse the structure of
Noun Phrase 9
xuất) tả)
Tất cả những cái con mèo đen ấy
-3 -2 -1 0 1 2
Head
The head of a noun phrase can be a single noun (e.g.: mèo) or a classifier + a
noun (e.g.: con mèo). Classifiers are words such as cái, con, người. There are sharp
distinctions between these classifiers. “Cái” usually combines with inanimate objects,
e.g.: cái chén. In contrast, “con” is likely to be accompanied by animate objects, e.g.:
con rùa. “Người” is used for human being, e.g.: người lính. It is worth noticing that
tự do miêu tả), the head is the classifier, eg: hai người đang ngồi đọc sách đằng kia,
constitute the head, eg: toàn thể cán bộ, giáo viên, công chức
Noun Phrase 10
In some special noun phrases such as ba sôi, hai lạnh, hai đen (ba phần
nước sôi, hai phần nước lạnh, hai cốc cà phê đen), the heads are the
Pre-modification
The focus marker “cái” (“cái” chỉ xuất) is used to emphasize the noun
appears after the head noun. For example: cái con người bạc ác ấy. It is advisable
that we distinguish the focus marker “cái” (“cái” chỉ xuất) from the classifier “cái”
(“cái” loại từ). The focus marker “cái” can go with any T2, whereas the classifier “cái”
are một (one), hai (two), ba (three), etc. Indefinite quantifiers are vài, dăm ba, mọi,
những, tất cả, các, mấy, etc. Here are some points about numerals/ quantifiers that
Firstly, the focus marker “cái” does not co-occur with mỗi, từng, mọi, or các.
For example, it is ungrammatical to say mỗi cái con mèo, các cái con mèo.
when the collective nouns refer to the members of a family. For example, we can say
hai vợ chồng, bốn anh chị em, but we do not say năm trâu bò, mười quần áo. We
(except for những, các) and a collective noun, eg dăm cái quần áo, mấy con gà vịt.
The position (-3) can be occupied by the following words: hết thảy, tất thảy,
tất cả, etc. They express totality. The word totality is ambiguous in the sense that it
Noun Phrase 11
can refer to the collection of many things (plural) (a) or the collection of many parts of
Post-modification
Unlike pre-modification in which all the positions are relatively stable, post-
The attributive modifiers can be a noun phrase (a), a verb phrase (b), an
adjective phrase (c), a prepositional phrase (d), or a pronoun (e). Its function is to
(c) chiếc áo đẹp, khu vườn xanh tốt. It is noticeable that an adjective phrase
may be preceded by the intensifier “rất”, e.g. chiếc áo rất đẹp, khu vườn rất
xanh tốt.
A relative clause can also serve as an attributive modifier. In this case, the
relative pronoun is “mà”. The word “mà” is optional as illustrated in cuốn sách (mà)
tôi rất thích, sách báo (mà) thư viện đặt mua.
When more than one attributive modifier co-occurs, the common sequences
are:
(a) adjective phrase + prepositional phrase, e.g.: một cái võng đắt tiền ở sau
vườn
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(b) adjective phrase + relative clause, e.g.: cuốn sách mới mà tôi rất thích.
(c) the smaller unit + the larger unit, e.g.: vấn đề cấp bách / số một/ về sản
ấy, nọ, kia, này, ấy, etc. Usually, demonstratives can follow any of the attributive
modifiers, e.g.: hoàn cảnh (của) chị ấy, những cái con mèo đen ấy.
Vietnamese, I will juxtapose the structure of English noun phrases and Vietnamese
Head Post-
Pre-modification
Noun modification
Pre- Identifier Numeral/ Adjective Noun Adjective/adverb
Prepositional
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phrase
Vietnamese language belongs to the Austro-Asiatic family (Lan, n.d.), the two
languages’ noun phrases have many things in common. First, both are endocentric
structures (cấu trúc hướng tâm), which means they both have a head noun. Second,
in both languages, the head noun can have pre-modification to the left and post-
In the two examples, the heads are house and ngôi nhà. House is preceded
phrase “on the hill”). In the same pattern, ngôi nhà is placed between a pre-
đồi”).
The difference in language family also accounts for the differences between
The first distinct feature that makes Vietnamese noun phrases different from
the English noun phrases is the head noun itself. As we all agree, Vietnamese nouns
cannot indicate number. That is to say while English needs the morpheme “-s” or “-
es” to indicate the plural form of a noun, a Vietnamese noun does not change the
con mèo (one cat), hai con mèo (two cats). However, it does not mean that we
cannot differentiate a singular noun from a plural noun in Vietnamese. The numeral
and the classifier are responsible for this function. For example:
In (a) the numeral “một” (one) precedes a singular noun while in (b), the plural
marker “những” (many) signals the appearance of a plural noun. In (c) and (d), the
of the focus marker “cái”. From the two tables above, we can see that there is no
element called focus marker “cái” in the English language. However, the focus
nọ, kia, này, ấy which have the equivalent in English (this, that, these, those)
This brings me to the next point. The difference between English and
Vietnamese noun phrases also lies in the order of the constituents of noun phrases,
and adjective(s) usually occur to the left of the head noun (a). Meanwhile, in a
Noun Phrase 15
Vietnamese noun phrase, adjective(s) and the demonstrative occur to the right of the
purpose. The intensive study of the structure of English and Vietnamese noun
phrase provides us with food for thought in terms of implications for language
Firstly, Vietnamese nouns do not have the same mechanism with English
nouns when it comes to the plural form, so Vietnamese tend to “forget” the
morphemes “-s” or “-es” after a plural noun. For example, they may say two book
instead of two books because in their mother tongue they can safely say một
quyển sách (singular) and hai quyển sách, những quyển sách, các quyển sách
(plural). The instance indicates that Vietnamese nouns remain unchanged despite
the change in the plurality and that Vietnamese people use the plural markers
“những”, “các” to convey plurality. That’s why they may produce ungrammatical
English phrases. Moreover, Vietnamese people are very unfamiliar with the concept
Noun Phrase 16
rule and not be aware that we cannot add “-s” or “-es” to an uncountable noun. For
without knowing that advice and information are uncountable nouns; therefore, we
cannot add “-s” or “-es” to advice and information. This raises a problem to
Vietnamese because in our language, we say một/ nhiều lời khuyên, một/ nhiều
thông tin. These examples show clearly how the mother tongue can interfere in the
long and complicated noun phrases such as a beautiful young girl who is standing
by the window. It’s a fatal weakness if students cannot point out the head noun.
that English learners can identify the head noun and match it with the main verb. It is
obvious that subjects and verbs are the fundamental elements of a sentence.
Therefore, unless students can make subjects accord with main verbs, they cannot
produce correct sentences. In order for students to deal with this problem, teachers
should guide them through the process of describing the organization of English
noun phrases. If students can successfully identify the head noun, they will not make
English structure, they usually come before head nouns. That is something I have
presented above. The problem here is sometimes we need more than one adjective
to describe the head noun. In such an occasion, English learners are often confused
because they do not know how to put a string of adjectives into a right order. While
Noun Phrase 17
native speakers can use many adjectives to describe things without difficulty, English
learners find this a real challenge. For example, English people can say a long series
of adjective with ease: a charming small round old brown French oaken writing desk.
shape (round) 4. age (old) 5. color (brown) 6. origin (French) 7. substance (oaken) 8.
present participle (writing) (Jackson, 1982, p.13). I have to admit that we do not have
many sequences of adjectives like this in real life. However, these are very common
As a result, teachers should remind students of how to use adjectives to make their
Conclusion
Vietnamese is a head noun. If we want to add more color to a noun phrase, we can
the structure of noun phrases in English and Vietnamese gives us an insight into the
similarities and differences between the two equivalent linguistic units in the two
languages. It also helps us to draw out some implications for language teaching and
language learning. I hope that this paper in some way can be useful for ESL and EFL
teachers and students. What I want to suggest more is that new researches focus on
noun phrases can give learners more confidence in their language competence.
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References
Diệp Quang Ban. (2005). Ngữ pháp tiếng Việt-tập 2. Nhà xuất bản giáo dục.
Mai Ngọc Chừ, Vũ Trọng Nghiệu & Hoàng Trọng Phiến. (2007). Cơ sở ngôn ngữ học
Nguyễn Tài Cẩn. (2004). Ngữ pháp tiếng Việt. Hà Nội: Nhà xuất bản đại học quốc
gia Hà Nội.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrase
Yule, G. (2006). Oxford Practice Grammar Advanced With Answers. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
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