LUẬN VĂN CHUYÊN NGÀNH NGÔN NGỮ ANH

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A. THESIS

MODALITIES IN ENGLISH AND
VIETNAMESE OFFERS
(Tính tình thái trong lời đề nghị tiếng Anh
và tiếng Việt)

HO THI MINH THAI
Field: English Language
Code: 8.22.02.01

Hanoi, 11 / 2020


MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A. THESIS

MODALITIES IN ENGLISH AND
VIETNAMESE OFFERS
(Tính tình thái trong lời đề nghị tiếng Anh
và tiếng Việt)
HO THI MINH THAI
Field: English Language
Code: 8.22.02.01
Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Hoang Tuyet Minh

Hanoi, 11 / 2020



CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY
I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitled
“Modalities in English and Vietnamese offers” submitted in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of Master in English Language. Except where the
reference is indicated, no other person’s work has been used without due
acknowledgement in the text of the thesis.
Hanoi, 2020

Approved by
SUPERVISOR
(Signature and full name)

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Hoàng Tuyết Minh
Date:…………………………..……

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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I would like to express my sincere thanks to many people who have
supervised, advised and encouraged me during my research, and acknowledge their
contribution directly or indirectly to the accomplishment of my thesis.
First and foremost, I am really grateful to my supervisor, Assoc. Prof. Dr.
Hoang Tuyet Minh for her insightful questions, comments and advice for me right
from sketching out the plan of the research, and especially her enthusiastic
supervision during the time I composed my research, at various stages of

developing my thinking and writing this thesis. Without her supervision, this thesis
would not have been led to itssubmission.
Also, I deeply indebted to all my lecturers at HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY
for their useful lectures as well as their constant support and insightful suggestions .
In addition, I am also grateful for my friends who gave me unconditional
encouragement and inspiration.
Last but not least, I wish to express my thanks to my family. With their
support and invaluable help, I could pay more attention on my studies and thesis.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Certificate of originality
Acknowledgements
Table of contents
Abstract
List of abbreviations
List of tables and figures

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Rationale

1.2 Aims and objectives of the study
1.3. Research questions
1.4. Methods of the study
1.5. Scope of the study
1.6. Significance of the study
1.7. Structure of the study
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Previous studies
2.2. An overview of modalities
2.2.1. Classification of modalities
2.2.2. Linguistic means to express modalities
2.3. An overview of offers
2.3.1. Offering as a speech act
2.3.2. Offering and forms of offers.
2.3.3. Politeness in offering
2.4. Summary
CHAPTER 3: A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF MODALITIES
IN OFFERS BETWEEN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE
3.1. Modalities in English offers
3.1.1. In direct offers
3.1.1.1. Lexical markers in direct offers
3.1.1.1.1. Modal verbs
3.1.1.1.2. Other lexical markers
3.1.1.2. Grammatical markers in direct offers
3.1.1.2.1. Imperative mood

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3.1.1.2.2. Vocative
3.1.1.2.3. Precatives
3.1.1.3. Prosodic markers – Intonation

3.1.2. In conventionally indirect offers
3.1.2.1. Lexical markers
3.1.2.1.1. Modal Verbs
3.1.2.1.2. Other lexical markers
3.1.2.2. Grammatical markers
3.1.2.2.1. Interrogative
3.1.2.2.2. Conditional
3.1.2.3. Prosodic markers – Intonation
3.1.3. In non-conventionally indirect offers
3.1.3.1. Lexical markers
3.1.3.2. Grammatical markers
3.1.3.3. Prosodic markers– Intonation
3.2. Modalities in Vietnamese offers
3.2.1. In direct offers
3.2.1.1. Lexical markers in direct offers
3.2.1.1.1. Modal verbs
3.2.1.1.2. Other lexical markers
3.2.1.2. Grammatical markers in direct offers
3.2.1.2.1. Imperative mood
3.2.1.2.2. Vocative
3.2.1.2.3. Precatives
3.2.1.3. Prosodic markers – Intonation
3.2.2. In conventionally indirect offers
3.2.2.1. Lexical markers
3.2.2.1.1. Modal verbs
3.2.2.1.2. Other lexical markers
3.2.2.2. Grammatical markers
3.2.2.2.1. Interrogative
3.2.2.2.2. Conditional
3.2.2.3. Prosodic markers – Intonation

3.2.3. In non-conventionally indirect offers

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3.2.3.1. Lexical markers
3.2.3.2. Grammatical markers
3.2.3.3. Prosodic markers– Intonation
3.3. A comparison between modalities in offers
in English and Vietnamese
3.3.1. In terms of direct offers in English and Vietnamese
3.3.2. In terms of conventionally indirect offers
in English and Vietnamese
3.3.3. In terms of non-conventionally indirect offers
in English and Vietnamese
3.4. Inplications of the study
3.4.1. For teaching
3.4.2. For learning
3.5. Summary
CHAPTER4: CONCLUSION
4.1. Recapitulation
4.2. Concluding remarks
4.3. Limitation of the study
4.4. Recommendations and suggestions for further research

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REFERENCES
APPENDIX

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ABSTRACT

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Natural languages offer speakers many and various linguistic devices to

facilitate their communication. It can be said that modalities play an important part
in communicating activities. This study investigates how speakers of English and
Vietnamese express the modal meaning in different offering strategies in terms of
linguistic means. It attempts to seek what are the similarities and differences of the
modal tools in English and Vietnamese offers. Data used in this study are collected
from various sources of textbooks, literature works, internet, especially English
practical textbooks, articles, and novels, stories in English and Vietnamese. To
obtain the main objective of the study which is to show the similarities and
differences of the modal tools in the two languages, we take examples in both
English and Vietnamese into consideration. The results show that in offers, both
two languages have three kinds of modal markers, which are lexical markers,
grammatical markers, and prosodic markers. However, the usage of these markers is
not the same in English and Vietnamese. This study wishes to help teachers and
learners of English have more knowledge of modalities in English and Vietnamese
offers when teaching and learning English. The most important thing is to help them
improve their skills by providing some applications for teachers and learners.

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
CA:
E.g :
EFL:
Etc :
Fig :
Ibid:
I.e:
M.A:
VS:

Contrastive analysis
For example
English as a Foreign Language
Et cetera
Figure
The same author/ resources
That is
Master of Arts
Versus

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LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
Table 2.1. The commodity exchanged & the speech function and
the types of intermediacy
Table 2.2. Palmer’s classification of modalities in modal system
Table 2.3. Halliday’s modality system of modalization and modulation
Table 2.4. The three basic sentences types in English
Table 3.1. The contribution of modalities in English offers
Table 3.2. The contribution of modalities in Vietnamese offers
Table 3.3. The contribution of modalities in direct offers in
English and Vietnamese.
Table 3.4. The contribution of modalities in conventionally indirect
offers in English and Vietnamese.
Table 3.4. The contribution of modalities in non- conventionally
indirect offers in English and Vietnamese.

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Figure 2.1. A spatial model tense, aspect and modality

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CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rationale
A language is used as a means of social interaction and it expresses various
social roles and performs various communicative functions like questioning,
requesting, offering or commanding somebody or telling somebody something.
Such types of interpersonal functions of language are reflected in various sentence
types like declarative, interrogative and imperative and also through the system of
modals. The three choices in the mood system perform various communicative
functions like declaring, asking a question, making a request or giving a command.
With these sentence types, modal verbs like “can”, “may”, “will”, “must” help in
expressing various social functions such as making a request, seeking permission,
expressing rights, obligation and possibility. Sentence types, mood choices and
modal verbs are examples of modal markers. Thus, it can be said that modalities are

directly related to the social functions of language. The notion of modality as well
as linguistic means to express modalities has been studied by a lot of scholars so far;
however, research on the way of using modal tools in a specific kind of speech act
has been limited.
Offering is one common type of speech act, which shows consideration
towards each other and therefore it can reinforce social relationship. In different
countries, or cultures, people make offers in different ways. Modalitiesare closely
related to the emotion and attitude of the speaker; therefore, in offering, modal tools
are usually used. When thinking of modalities, what appear first in our mind may be
the modal verbs, which is a familiar concept. Besides modal verbs, there are many
other lexical markers such as modal adverbs, modal adjectives…, grammatical
markers such as mood and vocative, and prosodic markers. However, the use of
linguistic means to express modalities in offering is not the same in all languages.
English and Vietnamese have their own specific features, which leads to a lot of
differences in using language.
For the above reasons, the author would like to choose the topic “Modalities
in English and Vietnamese offers” with the attempt to find out the similarities and
differences of the modal tools in English and Vietnamese offers. It’s also hopeful
that this study will be of some help to those who are interested in this aspect of
language.

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1.2. Aims and objectives of the study
The research aims at helping learners gain better knowledge of modalities in
English and Vietnamese offers.
In order to gain the above aims, the following objectives are put forward:
- To explore the modality markers in making offers in English and Vietnamese.
- To compare and contrast the range of modality markers in order to clarify the

similarities and differences in the ways Vietnamese and English people use
linguistic means to express modalities in offering in their own language and culture.
- To contribute to promoting awareness among foreign language teachers and
learners of the mentioned issue.
1.3. Research questions
1. What are modalities in English and Vietnamese offers?
2. What are the similarities and differences between modalities in English and
Vietnamese offers?
3. What are the suggested implications for foreign language teachers and learners
understanding modalities in English and Vietnamese offers?
1.4. Methodology
1.4.1. Research approaches
To reach the goal of the study, two main research approaches are used. They are
quantitative and qualitative approaches. According to Saville-Troike (1982), one of
the best methods of getting to know one’s own “ways of speaking” is by comparing
and contrasting with those of others. This process will reveal the shared and
unshared features of linguistic patterns and their meanings. Thus, contrastive
linguistics with its associated research method – Contrastive analysis (CA) - will be
used as the primary research framework for this study. For the comparison of the
frequencies of usage in the two languages under study, a quantitative analysis of the
corpus is adopted. By virtue of the quantitative method, data have been collected for
the study including both modalities in English and Vietnamese offers. The
qualitative method is applied to describe and analyze the data of the study. Corpus
based methods prove to be very effective in cross-language comparative study. It
allows us to access to a large sample of texts and compare various features and

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frequencies of usage. Therefore, corpus based method is also used in this study for

comparative and contrastive purposes.
1.4.2. Methods of the study
1.4.2.1. Major methods
In order to achieve the aims and objectives, descriptive and contrastive
methods are used in the thesis. The descriptive method is used to describe
modalities in English and Vietnamese offers being studied. In this thesis, it is
utilized in order to give a full account of lexical markers, grammatical markers, and
prosodic markers of modalities. And the contrastive method is to find out the
similarities and differences between modalities in English offers with reference to
the Vietnamese equivalent.
1.4.2.2. Supporting methods
The supporting methods are analytical, synthetic method and others. As a
matter of fact, to investigate in details the modalities in English and Vietnamese
with their different features with various nuances of meanings, analytical method
is also employed, and then the synthetic method is used for grouping them on the
basis of certain criteria according to lexical markers, grammatical markers, and
prosodic markers. Moreover, quite a few of research techniques have been
combined, such as statistics, componential analysis, and contrastive analysis.
In conducting the investigation, setting up a regular consultancy with
supervisor for a guidance and academic exchange is a critical technique to find out
a right direction for doing the research successfully.
1.4.3. Data collection
Samples of data containing modalities taken from sources of English and
Vietnamese textbooks, articles, literature works, and internet, especially English
practical textbooks, articles, and novels, stories in English and Vietnamese. Besides,
the examples to illustrate the offers are also taken from works of Kiefer.F (1994),
Joan. L. Bybee.J, Revere. D, Perkins, & William Pagliuca (1994), Palmer. F (1986).
The corpus used in this study are built on the following general principles
regarding size, number of languages, sources: (i) The size of the corpus: Some data
used in this research consist of 25 stories, articles, literature works, conversations in

internet in English and 20 stories, novels, articles, textbooks... in Vietnamese. (ii)
The number of languages: The corpus in this research is considered as a bilingual

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corpus; hence it contains the two languages: English and Vietnamese. (iii) The
sources of the corpus: The data in this research are taken from e-books of
contemporary works, stories, novels, grammar books, magazines, newspapers,
textbooks... on different sources.
1.4.4. Data analysis
The data will be described, analyzed in terms of lexical markers,
grammatical markers, and prosodic markers of modalities and compared with
Vietnamese equivalents under a process of statistical analysis to find the answers to
the research questions. It took several months for gathering useful data as well as
months for analyzing and discussing the result from the data collections. Finally,
certain conclusions and implications for learning and teaching modalities in offers
in an effective way are withdrawn. In order to successfully achieve all the aims of
data analysis process, the three following stages are implemented.
1.4.5. Procedure of the study
After extracting the data from the corpus, a descriptive method will be used
at first to exploit all means and expressions of modalities used in English and
Vietnamese offers in terms of categories in the theoretical framework. Basing on
devices processed in the corpus, the author distinguishes the similarities and
differencies between English and Vietnamese offers and then, categorizes them at
three different types of meanings: lexical markers,grammatical markers, prosodic
markers.This type of analysis is emphasized throughout the contextual situations
with various types of illocutionary forces.
In this thesis, a contrastive analysis is carried out together with a qualitative
analysis in the analytical framework and a quantitative analysis from the corpus in

an effort to understand how contextual variables of this corpus may influence
modalities in order to determine the similarities and differences of modalities used
in English and Vietnamese. The author takes the English language as the base
language and Vietnamese as the comparative language. The examples analyzed are
taken from offers in English and Vietnamese.
The statistical calculations are made and classified by the figures for each
pattern. The results in English are then compared to those in Vietnamese. The
similarities or differences will be analyzed in details with specific data and then to
indicate any conclusions.

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Analytic stage is the main step. First, the researcher counts up the total
number of modalities in offers in English and Vietnamese, demonstrated it to make
a pure comparison on the quantity. Next, the researcher shifts through the materials
to identify the similarities and differences between the modalities in English and
Vietnamese offers.
After analyzing the remarkable features of both modalities in English and
Vietnamese offers, the researcher synthesizes all similarities and differences to
make a generalization about the range of modality markers in order to clarify the
similarities and differences in the way Vietnamese and English people use linguistic
means to express modalities in offering in their own language and culture.
1.5. Scope of the study
The study gives a description and analysis modalities in offers in terms of
lexical markers, grammatical markers, and prosodic markers. It centers on the
similarities and differences in using modality markers in the speech act of offering
between English and Vietnamese.
The materials on offers in English are taken from some English practical
textbooks such as, English Grammar in use, Functions of English, Headway

Intermediate, LifeLines, Business Objectives, English stories, novels… and
examples of offers in textbooks as Tiếng Việt 3, Tiếng Việt 8, Vietnamese short
stories, magazines, novels, internet…
1.6. Significance of the study
Theoretically, this study gives a selected definitions and explanations by
linguists related to the notions of modalities and speech act of offering. Through the
study, readers can also see the comparison of modalities in offers between English
and Vietnamese.
Practically, this study will provide information that can help teachers and
learners of English gain an insight into modalities in general and modalities in the
speech act of offering in specific, which contributes to the teaching and learning
English.

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1.7. Structure of the thesis
This study consists of four chapters:
Chapter 1, Introduction, introduces the rationale for choosing the field for
studying, the aims and objectives, the scope of the study, the research questions,
research methods and the organization of the study.
Chapter 2, Literature review, discusses the previous studies on modalities relating
to the area of the research and presents some theoretical preliminaries that could be
used as foundation for the process of conducting the research.
Chapter 3, A contrastive analysis of modalities in offers between English and
Vietnamese, represents the study that focuses on the similarities and differences
between English and Vietnamese in term of modalities in English and Vietnamese
offers and discussing specific uses of modalities between the two languages.
Chapter 4, Conclusion, summarizes the main points in the study, the major
findings of the investigation, concluding remarks, limitation and suggestions for

further study.

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CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter provides the theoretical background including the notions of
modalities and the speech act of offering. It consists of two main sections :(i)
Previous studies in the world and in Vietnam; (ii) Theoretical background in the
world and in Vietnam.The first section reviews the definition, classification of
modalities and linguistic means to express modalities, the issues on speech act and
classification of speech acts. The second section reviews the offers and forms of
offers.
2.1. Previous studies
Modalities as expressed by modal verbs are an interesting, but complicated
linguistic phenomenon in both English and Vietnamese. Because of the importance
and wide aspects, modalities have been studied by various scholars in the world .
Up to now, modalities in the English language has been studied by a number of
researchers such as Langacker (1987, 1991ab, 2003, 2008, 2013),Talmy (1985),
Depraetere, L & Reed, S. (2006), Sweetser (1987, 1990), Johnson (1987), Coates
(1983, 1995), Lakoff, R. (1972) , Rabinowitz J. F. (1993), Van der Auwera &
Plungian (1998), Halliday.M.A.K (1994), Declerck (2011), Coates. J. (1983),
Kiefer. F (1987), Quirk et al. (1985), Perkins, Michael. R(1983), Joan. L, Bybee.J,
Revere. D, Perkins, & William Pagliuca (1994), Palmer. F (1986) and some others.
Like most of theoretically-based historical studies, modalities have been
pursued from the perspectives of both semantic and grammatical theories of
linguistics. The term “modalities” derives from the postclassical Latin words
modalitas or modus in more than one sense that was used by scholars in the Middle
Ages. However, this Latin term was very rare, and its current linguistic use was the
earliest attestation in 1907. The history of English modal auxiliaries in general and

of modality in particular had prestigious place in studies since the nineteenth
century.
Chomsky (1957) devotes much of his research to syntactic structures of
modalities. He has researched the grounding in different perspectives on syntax
more than semantics. Functionally-oriented views of syntactic aspects of English
modalities include works by Denison (1993), Hopper and Traugott (2003),
Peyraube (1999) in Chinese, Beninca and Poletto (1997) in Italian. In these works,
the study of modalities has mainly focused on grammaticalization.

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Van der Auwera & Plungian (1998) come up with the semantic map
including an account of connections between lexical and grammatical categories
with the aim to represent an entire semantic area of modalities and main types of
modalities and their relationships.
Still in the domain of modalities, a distinction between “mood” and
“modality” has been proposed by Palmer (1979, 1986, 1990, 1994, 2003, and 2005).
Palmer’s work (1979) is regarded as a “pioneer work on modality” related to the
notions “epistemic’ and “deontic” modality which is generally accepted as relevant
linguistic categories. Palmer (1994) sets out a general theoretical framework of the
three types of deontic modality i.e. commissives, directives, and volitiveswith its
subtypes. However, he has not analyzed any deep insight these types of deontic
modality with regard to semantic and syntactic meanings. He only provides a brief
account of examples of these types in English.
Palmer & Facchinetti (2003) study and analyze the cross-linguistic features
of modalities in the collection of evidence drawn from the corpus. Their works are
the first one of a series fully dedicated to corpus-based studies of languages.
Corpora, in their study, have been widely carried out in a great variety of fields,
from the study of grammatical and lexical features to the compilation of contrastive

analysis and translation theory, from historical linguistics to language acquisition.
They state that the great amount of naturally occurring language applied by the
corpus shows clearly comparisons between different varieties of a language and
between languages as well. The corpus helps them count typical words and word
patterns of a specific genre.
The final paper in Palmer & Facchinetti’s work is an insightful study on the
interaction of tense, aspect and modalities in English and Greek. The data are based
on a corpus of written Greek (the Hellenic National Corpus) concluding over 650
instances of modal verbs. They compare the definitional properties of the modal
system in English and Greek. From the corpus, they examine the factors affecting
the disambiguation of modal verbs in the two languages. (i) the meanings of modal
verbs. (ii) the form of modal verbs (interrogatives or negatives, present or past. (iii)
types of modal verbs (epistemic modality or agent-oriented modality). (iv) the
grammatical person of the subject. (an utterance interpreted in the third person in
comparison with the first person). Overall, studying of the Greek data from the

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corpus, Palmer & Facchinetti (2003) analyze the similarities and differences as
regards of semantic features of modal verbs in English and Greek.
Van der Auwera et al. (2009) provides some of the papers presented at the
Second International Conference on Modality in English. There are three general
themes described in their work: (i) the definition of modalities. (ii) the study of
English modals. (iii) the analysis of modal constructions. Discussing general
approaches to modal notions, the authors argue that it is important to distinguish
between modality and modalization. The former is a modal system based on the
notions of possibility and necessity. The latter is divided into five types (nonfactuality vs factuality: might and may, existential modality such as “footballers can
be sexmaniacs” (van der Auwera et al, 2009), subjectivity vs objectivity (may, can,
must, should).In the analysis of modal constructions, they describe the structures of

non-factual modality such as until and before clauses. Authors conclude that
subjective modals involve more pragmatic than the objective uses.
For non-western languages, Wymann (1994) surveys modal constructions in
Korean and Japanese. He classifies modalities using the parameters “possibility”
versus “necessity” and “situational” versus “epistemic”. Li (2004) compares
modality types in terms of grammatical features, semantic functions, pragmatic
variation, logical representation, and diachronic development in English under a
typological perspective in comparison with Chinese. In his thesis, the comparative
analysis goes from lexical forms to syntactic features including negation, voices,
subjects, main verbs, aspects, tenses and styles. His research focuses on various
types of modalities in general (i.e. epistemic, deontic and dynamic) in English and
Chinese.
In Vietnam, many scholars have also studied modalities in general and types
of modalities in particular such as Nguyễn Thị Lương (2006), Cao Xuân Hạo
(1999), Nguyễn Văn Hiệp (2001), Ngũ Thiện Hùng (2003), Võ Đại Quang (2009),
Diệp Quang Ban (2004), Đỗ Hữu Châu (1996), Nguyễn Thị Thìn (2003), Nguyễn
Minh Thuyết & Nguyễn Văn Hiệp (2004), Diệp Quang Ban & Hoàng Dân (2000),
Nguyễn Thị Thuận (2003), Phạm Thị Thanh Thủy (2008), Nguyễn Văn Hiệp (2007,
2009), Bùi Minh Toán & Nguyễn Thị Lương (2010), Bùi Trọng Ngoãn (2004), Bùi
Thị Đào (2014), etc.
Nguyễn Thị Lương (1996) describes the uses of particles in questions with
various illocutionary forces. It can be said that it is a research investigating particles

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