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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
For 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 language teaching and language learning will be
under discussion.
George Yule (2006) defines a noun phrase as “a phrase in which the main
well as complements that can follow the main word, i.e., a noun (1995). For
examines modifiers separately rather than arranges them into an order. Jackson
(1989), however, suggests all the possible elements that can combine into a
head, post-modification. In a noun phrase, the head is obligatory but the Pre-
Head
pronoun may also act as the central part of a noun phrase. There are four kinds
a. he in he is a doctor
Usually, when a pronoun takes the role of head in a noun phrase, it is not
Pre-modification:
following:
common pre-determiners are all, both, half, and fractions. For example, in the
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
(b) this book, that book but these books, those books
identifier, the numeral/quantifier can have more than one component. In general,
this constituent of noun phrase may have the three favorite sequences:
(a) ordinal numeral + indefinite quantifier, e.g. the first few guests
(b) ordinal numeral + cardinal numeral, e.g. the first two guests
adjectives. More than one adjective can co-occur in a noun phrase. In this case,
ordering for adjectives with an example: a charming small round old brown
French oaken writing desk. In this example, the adjectives appear in an order
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
Post-modification
can go after the head noun, especially in some few set phrases like blood royal,
heir apparent.
of a prepositional phrase. For example, the time before can be understood as the
which 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
For example: in the noun phrase the girl whom I met yesterday, “whom” is
optional.
three 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
(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
the corner. Prepositional phrases are said to be the most frequent kind of post-
modifiers 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
determiner modifier
Indefinite Relative clause
quantifier
Non-finite clause
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.
issues. With no exception, noun phrase has been at the center of debate for
long. Now I’d like to present the viewpoint of some established figures in this
field.
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
special 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
quality. The head of a noun phrase can be a word or a group of words in which a
Basing on the analysis of those linguists together with Mai Ngoc Chu, Vu
Duc Nghieu, and Hoang Trong Phien, this paper will discuss in detail the
modification. In this part, I will take “tất cả những cái con mèo đen ấy” as an
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
animate objects, e.g.: con rùa. “Người” is used for human being, e.g.: người lính.
It is worth noticing that although người refers to human being, we say “con”
người.
hợp từ tự do miêu tả), the head is the classifier, eg: hai người đang ngồi đọc
together constitute the head, eg: toàn thể cán bộ, giáo viên, công chức
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
that 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” can only go with T2 which are inanimate objects.
Numerals 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/
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.
except 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 should say năm đàn trâu bò, mười bộ quần áo instead.
(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
can refer to the collection of many things (plural) (a) or the collection of many
Post-modification
Unlike pre-modification in which all the positions are relatively stable, post-
should bear in mind that there is no rigid formula for the post-modification.
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
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.
sequences are:
(a) adjective phrase + prepositional phrase, e.g.: một cái võng đắt tiền ở
sau vườn
(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
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.
determiner modifier
Indefinite Relative clause
quantifier
Non-finite clause
Prepositional
phrase
tả)
Tất cả những cái con mèo đen ấy
-3 -2 -1 0 1 2
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-modification to the right. Let’s consider the following
examples:
a. a house on the hill (English)
In the two examples, the heads are house and ngôi nhà. House is
prepositional phrase “on the hill”). In the same pattern, ngôi nhà is placed
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 form whether it is singular or plural. This is well-
demonstrated in this example: một 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
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 classifier “con” and “đàn” also give us a hint about plurality.
participation 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.
to demonstratives ấy, nọ, kia, này, ấy which have the equivalent in English (this,
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
demonstrative and adjective(s) usually occur to the left of the head noun (a).
occur to the right of the head noun (b) as in the following examples:
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
Consequently, they may overgeneralize the rule and not be aware that we cannot
add “-s” or “-es” to an uncountable noun. For example they may use an advice/
language, we say một/ nhiều lời khuyên, một/ nhiều thông tin. These examples
show clearly how the mother tongue can interfere in the process of learning
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
sentence, it is vital 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
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
identify the head noun, they will not make subject-verb agreement mistakes.
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 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. Fortunately, Jackson has suggested a rule: 1.
epithet (charming) 2. size (small) 3. shape (round) 4. age (old) 5. color (brown) 6.
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 in writing and knowing how
Conclusion
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 the function of noun phrases because a
thorough understanding of the function of noun phrases can give learners more
References
Diệp Quang Ban. (2005). Ngữ pháp tiếng Việt-tập 2. Nhà xuất bản giáo dục.
Jackson, H. (1982). Analysing English: An Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics,
Mai Ngọc Chừ, Vũ Trọng Nghiệu & Hoàng Trọng Phiến. (2007). Cơ sở ngôn ngữ
Nguyễn Tài Cẩn. (2004). Ngữ pháp tiếng Việt. Hà Nội: Nhà xuất bản đại học
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrase
Oxford