Running head: NOUN PHRASES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF NOUN PHRASES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

Le Thi Hong Phuong

University of Education

English – Vietnamese Comparative Linguistics 2011

Instructor: Nguyen Ngoc Vu

Class: 4A08

December 30, 2011

 NOUN PHRASES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

Abstract:

Language is a complicated category. Only human beings can use language to express their

ideas, concepts and feelings. The use of this tool is for the communication between the

addresser and the addressee. There are more than two hundred languages and each language

has its own feature all over the world. Language itself is a complex system and it is dependent

to us culturally, socially and personally. Learning a language involves many things such as

pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar… The aim of this study is to discuss the noun phrases in

English and Vietnamese and their influence in teaching and learning English in Vietnamese

situation. I hope that this paper will provide as much information as possible on English and

Vietnamese noun phrases. It also attempts to state the similarities and differences in noun

phrases of the two languages. I pay attention to the analysis of the heads, the pre and post

modifications, their positions and functions of English and Vietnamese noun phrases. Finally,

there are some teaching implications made for those who are going to be English teachers.

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 NOUN PHRASES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

Definition of Noun phrases:

What is a noun phrase? According to Wikipedia, “In grammar, a noun phrase, nominal phrase,

or nominal group (abbreviated NP) is a phrase based on a noun, pronoun, or other noun-like

word (nominal) optionally accompanied by modifiers such as adjectives.”

Like all phrases, we can analyze the English noun phrase’s components into both functional

ones and formal ones. From a functional point of view, the noun phrase has four major

components, occurring in a fixed order:

 Pre modification, which comprises all the modifying or describing constituents

before the head, other than the determiners;

 the head, around which the other constituents cluster; and

 post modification, those which comprise all the modifying constituents placed

after the head.

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Noun phrases in English

In English grammar, a noun phrase has three components:

 Pre modification

 The head

 Post modification

 Pre modification: consists of all the words placed before the head. These words are

usually determiners, adjectives and nouns.

 Predeterminers:

The predeterminers occur before other determiners (as you can probably guess from their

name). They includes multipliers (double, twice, four/five times . . . .); fractional expressions

(one-third, three-quarters, etc.); the words both, half, and all; and intensifiers such as quite,

rather, and such.

The multipliers precede plural count and mass nouns and occur with singular count nouns

denoting number or amount:

 This van holds three times the passengers as that sports car.

 My wife is making double my / twice my salary.

 This time we added five times the amount of water.

In fractional expressions, we have a similar construction, but here it can be replaced with "of"

construction.

 Charlie finished in one-fourth of the time his brother took.

 Two-fifths of the respondents reported that half the medication was sufficient.

The intensifiers occur in this construction primarily in casual speech and writing and are more

common in British English than they are in American English. The intensifier "what" is often

found in stylistic fragments: "We visited my brother in his dorm room. What a mess!"
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 This room is rather a mess, isn't it?

 The ticket-holders made quite a fuss when they couldn't get in.

 What an idiot he turned out to be.

 Our vacation was such a grand experience.

Adjective
Example Determiner Adjective Noun Head
phrase

That sophisticated city woman That sophisticated city woman

Many honest down-and-out

Many honest down-and-out small-town businessmen
small-town businessmen

 Determiners are said to "mark" nouns. That is to say that a noun will follow a determiner.

Some categories of determiners are limited (there are only three articles, a handful of

possessive pronouns, etc.), but the possessive nouns are as limitless as nouns themselves. This

limited nature of most determiner categories, however, explains why determiners are grouped

apart from adjectives even though both serve a modifying function. We can imagine that the

language will never tire of inventing new adjectives; the determiners (except for those

possessive nouns), on the other hand, are well established, and this class of words is not going

to grow in number. These categories of determiners are as follows: the articles (an, a, the —

see below; possessive nouns (Joe's, the priest's, my mother's); possessive pronouns, (his, your,

their, whose, etc.); numbers (one, two, etc.); indefinite pronouns (few, more, each, every,

either, all, both, some, any, etc.); and demonstrative pronouns. The demonstratives (this, that,

these, those, such) are discussed in the section on Demonstrative Pronouns. Notice that the

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possessive nouns differ from the other determiners in that they, themselves, are often

accompanied by other determiners: "my mother's rug," "the priests' collar," "a dog's life."

Determiners are used in front of nouns to indicate whether you are referring to something

specific or something of a particular type.

Determiners are different to pronouns in that a determiner is always followed by a noun.

Therefore personal pronouns (I, you, he, etc.) and possessive pronouns (mine, yours, his, etc.)

cannot be determiners.

The definite and indefinite articles a/an/the are all determiners.

We use a specific determiner when people know exactly which thing(s) or person/people you

are talking about.

The specific determiners are:

the definite article : the

demonstratives : this, that, these, those

possessives : my, your, his, her, its, our, their

For example:

"The dog barked at the boy."

"These apples are rotten."

"Their bus was late."

You use general determiners to talk about people or things without saying exactly who or

what they are.

The general determiners are:

the indefinite articles : a, an

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few

fewer
a few both
less neither
a little each
little no
all either
many other
another enough
more several
any every
most some

much

For example:

"A man sat under an umbrella."

"Have you got any English books that I could have?"

"There is enough food to feed everyone."

 Post determiners:

Post-determiners, as their name suggests, come after regular determiners in a Noun Phrase .

They come before nouns but follow regular determiners in a Noun Phrase .

Cardinal numbers like one, two, three, four, etc… and ordinal numbers like first, second,

third, etc… are post-determiners . Examples:

The first three apples

The first six boys

Please note ordinals always come before cardinals general ordinals like last, next other,

another etc are also post-determiners .

The important thing for an English learner to note is the order of various determiners in a pre-

modification structure .

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The first three boys

The next four days

Another interesting case

If there is an adjective in the Noun Phrase it immediately precedes the noun, but follows post-

determiners .

The first three famous novels

The last six happiest days

Quantifiers like “many, few, several, much, little etc” are post-determiners and they precede

nouns in a Noun Phrase.

 The head:

The word “noun phrase” means that a noun is the central element of a noun phrase. That word

is called “the head”. It may be mass or count noun. Beside that, the head of the noun phrase

can be a pronoun. Without a noun or a pronoun, it can not be called “noun phrase”. There are

some kinds of pronouns functioning as heads: personal pronoun, indefinite pronoun,

possessive pronoun, and demonstrative pronoun.

Type Examples

Personal I/ me, he/ him

Possessive Mine, hers

Reflexive Myself, themselves

Demonstrative This, those

Indefinite Someone, no one

Interrogative Who, that

Relative Which, that

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a. she in she is my teacher.

b. someone in someone at the meeting.

c. his in his is expensive.

d. that in that will affect his life.

 Post modification: contains words in the noun phrase that follow the head. These words

usually consist of prepositional phrases, nonfinite clauses, and relative clauses. Thus:

Example Post modification Category

The talkative man in the center

in the center of the room prepositional phrase
of the room

All the women walking on the

walking on the bike path non-finite clause
bike path

The house that I purchased for that I purchased for my third

restrictive relative clause
my third husband husband

The house, which my partner

which my partner and I bought a non-restrictive relative
and I bought a month after we
month after we met clause
met

The third important component of a complex noun phrase is post-modification, called post-

modifiers, comprising all the items placed after the head. These post-modifiers are mainly

realized by prepositional phrases, finite clauses (or relative clauses), nonfinite clauses,

adjective phrases, noun phrases or adverbial phrases:

determiner head post modification category

1 a book with yellow covers prepositional phrase

2 the man who told you the secret finite clause

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3 the girl speaking English fluently nonfinite clause

4 a shelf full of books adjective phrase

5 the opera “Carmen” noun phrase

6 the road back adverbial phrase

Here are some more examples:

Some examples of the Noun phrase in English

function determiner premodification head postmodification

(a) lions

E (b) the young

X (c) the information age

A (d) each of the children

M (e) some badly needed time with the family

P (f) this conclusion to the story

L (g) all my children

E (h) several new mystery books which we recently enjoyed

S (i) such as marvelous data bank filled with information

(j) a better person than I

Pronoun Participle Noun Prepositional phrase

FORMS Article Noun Adjective Relative clause

Quantifiers Adjective phrase pronoun Nonfinite clause

Complementation

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Noun phrases in Vietnamese

In Vietnamese, noun phrases also have 3 components which are:

 Pre modification

 The head

 Post modification

However, the elements in each component have a little difference from the components of

English noun phrases.

And the noun phrase has the following structure:

Pre modification Head Post modification

Totality Article quantifier Classifier Noun Attributive Demonstrative Prepositional

modifiers phrase/

Possessive

Example:

cả hai cuốn từ điển Anh Việt này của anh ta

totality quantifier classifier noun attributive demonstrative prepositional phrase

 Pre modification

 Article: Many researchers claim that Vietnamese doesn’t have lexical articles. But

according to T. H. Nguyen (2004) and Nguyen T. C. (1975), Vietnamese has an article lexical

category slot that occurs before a quantifier. Those lexical articles are “những, các, …”. When

they are used, they come before the classifiers and the noun. For example:

những ý nghĩ

article noun

các căn nhà

article noun
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 Quantifier:

Quantifiers (also known as numerals) are words that can occur before a head noun (with or

without a classifier). Cardinal numerals are concluded in quantifiers and there are other words

which indicate some quantity. Here are the table of Vietnamese quantifiers and their

equivalence in English:

Quantifier English gloss

Một, hai … Cardinal numeral

Vài, vài ba “few”

Dăm, dăm bảy “several, few”

Mọi “every”

Mỗi “each”

Từng “each in turn”

Mấy “few, how much/ many”

Bao nhiêu “how much/ many”

Bây nhiêu/ bấy nhiêu “this much/ many”

Here are some points about quantifiers (or numerals) that we should take in to consideration:

The first thing is that the quantifiers don’t come before the focus marker “cái”. For example:

vài cái con trâu, bao nhiêu cái căn nhà…

The second thing is a quantifier (a numeral) doesn’t go before collective nouns. For example,

we can not say “hai gia súc, ba quần áo…”. We can use quantifiers (numerals) before

collective nouns when the collective nouns refer to the members of a family. For example, it

can be said that “hai vợ chồng, ba anh chị em…”.

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The last thing is that when a classifier co-occurs with a following head noun, the quantifier

word must come before the classifier. For example: we must say “hai cuốn từ điển, mấy con

cá…”

 The head:

There is one thing that we have to agree the head of the noun phrases must be nouns.

However, in Vietnamese noun phrases, the head can be a single noun or a classifier + a noun.

Classifiers are some words such as “cái, con, người…”. There is a little difference between

the uses of these classifiers. “Cái” is used before the inanimate objects, for example “cái bàn,

cái ghế…”. And “con” is used to combine with the nouns which refer to animate objects such

as “con gà, con ngựa…” when “người” is used for human being, for example “người lính,

người dự thi…”.

There are some more common classifiers:

 cái : used for most inanimate objects

 chiếc: almost similar to cái, usually more connotative (e.g. when referring to a cute

object, chiếc might be more suitable than cái)

 con: usually for animals and children, but can be used to describe some inanimate

objects (con dao = knife, con đường = street, con vít = screw)

 bài: used for compositions like songs, drawings, poems, essays, etc.

 câu: sentential constructs (verses, lyrics, statements, quotes, etc.)

 cây: used for stick-like objects (plants, guns, canes, etc.)

 tòa: buildings of authority: courts, halls, "ivory towers".

 quả/trái: used for globular objects (the Earth, fruits)

 quyển/cuốn: used for book-like objects (books, journals, etc.)

 tờ: sheets and other thin objects made of paper (newspapers, papers, calendars, etc.)

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 lá: smaller sheets of paper (letters, playing cards)

 việc: an event or an ongoing process

 chuyện: a general topic, matter, or business

The classifier cái has a special role in that it can extend all other classifiers, e.g. cái con, cái

chiếc.

There are some special noun phrases that the classifier can be absent such as in the noun

phrases “1 cà phê, 1 sinh tố…”. In these examples, the classifier “ly” is omitted.

 Post modification:

Unlike the pre modification which all the positions are in order, the post modification is more

complicated.

 The attributive modifiers:

The attributive modifiers are used for describing thr head noun. They are can be a noun

phrase, a verb phrase, an ajective phrase, a prepositional phrase, or a pronoun. For example:

a. căn nhà xây năm trước (verb phrase)

b. phòng tạp vụ (noun phrase)

c. cây khế ở sau vườn (prepositional phrase)

d. khu vườn xanh tốt (adjective phrase)

e. phòng của họ (pronoun)

 Demonstratives:

Another post modification in Vietnamese noun phrases is demonstrative. It is considered the

rightmost post modification. They are “ấy, nọ, này, kia…” and follow the head noun as in

“con ngựa đó, cái cặp kia…”.

When there are other modifiers co-occurring with demonstratives, the demonstratives often

occur after those mofifiers. For example, in the phrase:

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Căn nhà mới kia

Attributive modifier demonstrative

 Possessives:

In Vietnamese grammar, we usually use “của + a possessor” to express the possession. The

possessor can be a personal pronoun, a proper name, or a full noun phrase… For example:

Nó là bạn học của tôi.

To avoid confusion and the grammatical mistakes, we can leave out or keep the first

preposition “của” when there are mpre than two possessive phrases in the same noun phrase.

For example:

Nó là cháu của mẹ của tôi.

The second word “của” can be left out. So that sentence becomes “Nó là cháu của mẹ tôi.”

This way is often used in spoken Vietnamese because it makes a smooth speech.

Here are an example of Vietnamese noun phrase with almost elements.

Pre-modification Head Post-modification

Totality Article Classifier Noun Attributive Demonstrative

(thành tố (loại từ) modifier (thành tố phụ chỉ

phụ chỉ tổng (thành tố phụ nêu định)

lượng) đặc trưng miêu tả)

Tất cả những con mèo đen ấy

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Contrast between English noun phrases and Vietnamese noun

phrases

 Similarities:

English and Vietnamese noun phrases have some similar elements such as article,

demonstrative, possessive, … They may be in different word order but they have the same

functions which help the head noun have the clear meaning.

 Differences:

Word order in noun phrases:

Word order Classifier

English Determiner – adjective - noun

Vietnamese Classifier – noun - adjective 

We see that the big gap between English noun phrases and Vietnamese noun phrases is the

order of modifiers as we can see clearly in the essay.

Moreover in Vietnamese noun phrases, there is the focus marker “cái” which is used foe

emphasizing the noun mentioned in the head. In addition, the focus marker “cái” is often

accompanied by a demonstrative that appears after the head noun. For example, “cái con

người tệ bạc ấy”. It is advisable that we should distinguish the focus marker “cái” from the

classifier “cái”. The focus marker “cái” can go with any noun, whereas the classifier “cái” can

only go with noun that are inanimate objects.

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Implications in teaching and learning English

In short, according to the differences between English and Vietnamese language, the structure

of noun phrases also differentiates, which students have to pay attention when learning the

target language.

When students learn the second language, they usually understand the target language based

on the knowledge of his mother tongue. Because they use their first language to study the

second language, the analysis will base on the mother language. We know that English and

Vietnamese have their own value and feature and each is different from the other.

Vietnamese learners of English will have errors when they study English because of their

Vietnamese structure how they can overcome this problem. I think that Vietnamese people

have the habit of using clause or sentence when speaking or writing. Because noun phrases

contain many adjectives and they have to be in the correct order. Therefore, as English

teachers we should give students the clear explanation about the organization of both English

noun phrases and Vietnamese noun phrases. Teachers are the person who can affect the

wrongness of student because we can correct the error directly in class. We must be the

correct model of students. When the students are confused about noun phrase, teachers can

help them by giving some funny examples or real examples to show the similarities and

differences between English and Vietnamese noun phrases to help them remember easily.

When they can see and understand the situation they will do it correctly and make their brain

used to the correct form.

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References

Ban, D. Q. (2005). Ngữ pháp tiếng Việt-tập 2. Nhà xuất bản Giáo dục.

Can, N. T. (2004). Ngữ pháp tiếng Việt. Hà Nội: Nhà xuất bản quốc gia Hà Nội.

Jackson, H. (1999). Analyzing English: An Introduction of Descriptive Linguistics .

Clark, M. (1978). Coverbs and case in Vietnamese: Pacific Linguistics. The Australian

University.

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