a study on deontic modality expressing means in english and vietnamese declarative and interrogative sentences = nghiên cứu các phương tiện diễn đạt tình thái chức phận trong câu tường thuật và câu hỏi tiếng anh

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
  


BÙI THỊ ĐÀO

A STUDY ON DEONTIC MODALITY EXPRESSING
MEANS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE DECLARATIVE
AND INTERROGATIVE SENTENCES


(NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC PHƯƠNG TIỆN DIỂN ĐẠT TÌNH THÁI CHỨC PHẬN
TRONG CÂU TƯỜNG THUẬT VÀ CÂU HỎI TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT)

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 62.22.15.01


A dissertation submitted in total fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics at Vietnam National University, Hanoi


Supervisors: 1. Prof. Dr. Tran Huu Manh
2. Dr. Nguyen Duc Hoat




HANOI, February 2014

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
  


BÙI THỊ ĐÀO

A STUDY ON DEONTIC MODALITY EXPRESSING
MEANS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE DECLARATIVE
AND INTERROGATIVE SENTENCES


(NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC PHƯƠNG TIỆN DIỂN ĐẠT TÌNH THÁI CHỨC PHẬN
TRONG CÂU TƯỜNG THUẬT VÀ CÂU HỎI TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT)

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 62.22.15.01


A dissertation submitted in total fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics at Vietnam National University, Hanoi

HANOI, February 2014

i

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY


A dissertation submitted in total fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy in Linguistics at Vietnam National University, Hanoi




Hanoi, February 2014


Bùi Thị Đào

ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS



I would like to express my thanks to Prof. Dr Nguyễn Hòa, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Lê Hùng Tiến who
awoke in me the interest in language, provided me with a basic knowledge of linguistics and
advised me to take it seriously in my academic study.


To my supervisors, Prof. Dr. Trần Hữu Mạnh and Dr. Nguyễn Đức Hoạt, I gratefully
acknowledge a special indebtedness and sincere thanks for their insightful comments, kind-
hearted guidance and knowledgeable suggestions.

My deepest gratitude also goes to Prof. Dr. Hoàng Vân Vân, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phan Văn Quế,
Dr. Đỗ Tuấn Minh, Dr. Kiều Thị Thu Hương, Dr. Đỗ Thanh Hà, Dr. Hà Cẩm Tâm for their
enthusiastic support and invaluable remarks on my initial proposal. Their comments
significantly contributed to improving the quality of this research.


I am particularly indebted to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vũ Thị Thanh Hương, Prof. Dr. Nguyễn Văn
Hiệp, Assoc. Prof. Tôn Nữ Mỹ Nhật, Dr. Nguyễn Huy Kỷ, who generously shared the views
and materials during the process of preparing this research. I have also greatly benefited from
discussions with them.


I take this opportunity to thank all the lecturers and members at CFL - VNU, Hanoi for their
whole hearted support and guidance. Thanks are also due to my colleagues, friends for their
great support and encouragement throughout my study.


My special thanks and love go to my parents, my husband, my daughter and son, my brother
and sisters who have supported me in the completion of this dissertation.





iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 1

1. Background to the study 2
2. Aim of the study 3
3. Scope of the study 3
4. Methodology 5
4.1. Methods of the study 5
4.2. Data collection procedures 6
4.2.1. Description of corpus 6
4.2.2. Compilation of a corpus procedure 7
4.3. Data analysis 9
4.3.1. Describing the data 9
4.3.2. Comparing the two sources of data 9
5. Structure of the study 11

CHAPTER I 12
LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1. Historical perspectives of modality 12
1.2. Modality 16

1.2.1. Definitions and different viewpoints 16
1.2.2. Types of modality 21
1.3. Deontic modality 24
1.3.1. Definitions and various viewpoints 24
1.3.2. Types of deontic modality 26
1.4. Types of deontic modality in English 28
1.4.1. Commissives 28
1.4.2. Directives 29
1.4.2.1. Deliberatives 29
1.4.2.2. Imperatives 30

1.4.2.3. Jussives 31
1.4.2.4. Obligatives 32
1.4.2.5. Permissives 33
1.4.2.6. Precatives 34
1.4.2.7. Prohibitives 34
1.4.3. Volitives 36
1.4.3.1. Imprecatives 36
1.4.3.2. Optatives 37
1.5. Types of deontic modality in Vietnamese 37
1.5.1. Commissives (tình thái cam kết/ hứa hẹn) 38
1.5.2. Directives (tình thái cầu khiến) 38
1.5.2.1. Deliberatives (yêu cầu) 38
1.5.2.2. Imperatives (mệnh lệnh) 39
1.5.2.3. Jussives (khuyến lệnh) 40
1.5.2.4. Obligatives (ép buộc) 40
1.5.2.5. Permissives (cho phép) 41
iv

1.5.2.6. Precatives (khẩn cầu) 41
1.5.2.7. Prohibitives (cấm đoán) 41
1.5.3. Volitives (tình thái ý nguyện) 42
1.5.3.1. Imprecatives (không mong muốn/nguyền rủa) 42
1.5.3.2. Optatives (ước vọng/ mong mỏi) 42
1.6. Contrastive framework 43
1.7. Summary 45

CHAPTER 2
COMMISSIVES AND VOLITIVES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE 46

2.1. Commissives in English and Vietnamese 47

2.1.1. Modal verbs in English and Vietnamese commisives 47
2.1.1.1. Syntactic features 48
2.1.1.2. Semantic features 50
2.1.2. Hedge verbs in English and Vietnamese commissives 53
2.1.2.1. Syntactic features 54
2.1.2.2. Semantic features 56
2.1.3. Performative verbs in English and Vietnamese commisives 56
2.1.3.1. Syntactic features 58
2.1.3.2. Semantic features 59
2.1.4. Modal adverbs in English and Vietnamese commisives 60
2.1.4.1. Syntactic features 61
2.1.4.2. Semantic features 62
2.1.5. Modal adjectives in English and Vietnamese commisives 63
2.1.5.1. Syntactic features 64
2.1.5.2. Semantic features 64
2.1.6. Expletives in English and Vietnamese commisives 66
2.1.6.1. Syntactic features 66
2.1.6.2. Semantic features 67
2.1.7. Modal conditionals in English and Vietnamese commisives 68
2.1.7.1. Syntactic features 69
2.1.7.2. Semantic features 70
2.2. Volitives in English and Vietnamese 73
2.2.1. Syntactic features 73
2.2.2. Semantic features 74
2.3. Summary 77


CHAPTER 3 DIRECTIVES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE 80

3.1. Modal verbs in English and Vietnamese directives 80

3.1.1. Syntactic features 81
3.1.2. Semantic features 85
3.2. Hedge verbs in English and Vietnamese directives 102
3.2.1. Syntactic features 102
3.2.2. Semantic features 102

v


3.3. Performative verbs in English and Vietnamese directives 104
3.3.1. Syntactic features 104
3.3.2. Semantic features 106
3.4. Modal words 109
3.4.1. Syntactic features 111
3.4.2. Semantic features 113
3.5. Modal adverbs in English and Vietnamese directives 116
3.5.1. Syntactic features 116
3.5.2. Semantic features 117
3.6. Modal adjectives in English and Vietnamese directives 118
3.6.1. Syntactic features 118
3.6.2. Semantic features 119
3.7. Modal nouns in English and Vietnamese directives 120
3.7.1. Syntactic features 121
3.7.2. Semantic features 123
3.8. Particles 123
3.8.1. Syntactic features 125
3.8.2. Semantic features 125
3.9. Modal idioms in English and Vietnamese directives 129
3.9.1. Syntactic features 130
3.9.2. Semantic features 131

3.10. Expletives in English and Vietnamese directives 133

3.10.1. Syntactic features 133
3.10.2. Semantic features 134
3.11. Modal conditionals in English and Vietnamese directives 135
3.11.1. Syntactic features 135
3.11.2. Semantic features 135
3.12. Summary 139
CHAPTER

CONCLUSIONS 142

6.1. Recapitulation 142
2. Contributions 146
3. Pedagogical implications 147
4. Limitations of the study 149
5. Suggestions for further research 150


REFERENCES i

APPENDIX A x


APPENDIX B xxv


vi

LIST OF FIGURES


Fig. 1.1. Types of modality 12
Fig. 1.2. A spatial model tense, aspect and modality 17
Fig. 1.3. Description of modality 19
Fig. 2.1. Set model for modal verbs, auxiliary verbs and verbs 47
Fig. 2.2. String matching of WILL in the English corpus 50
Fig. 2.3. String matching of SHALL in the English corpus 51
Fig. 2.4. String matching of WOULD in the English corpus 52
Fig. 2.5. String matching of SẼ in the Vietnamese corpus 53
Fig. 2.6. String matching of THINK in the English corpus 56
Fig. 2.7. String matching of PROMISE in the English corpus 59
Fig. 2.8. String matching of CERTAINLY in the English corpus 62
Fig. 2.9. String matching of PROBABLE in the English corpus 65
Fig. 2.10. String matching of SURE in the English corpus 65
Fig. 2.11. String matching of IT in the English corpus 67
Fig. 2.12. String matching of IF in the English corpus 70
Fig. 2.13. A distribution of linguistic means of expressing commisives in English 71
Fig. 2.14. A distribution of linguistic means of expressing commisives in Vietnamese 72
Fig. 2.15. A contrastive analysis of commissives in English and Vietnamese 72
Fig. 2.16. A distribution of linguistic means of expressing volitives in English 74
Fig. 2.17. String matching of HOPE in the English corpus 75
Fig. 2.18. String matching of WISH in the English corpus 75
Fig. 2.19. A contrastive analysis of volitives in English and Vietnamese 76
Fig. 3.1. String matching of MUST in the English corpus 86
Fig. 3.2. String matching of HAVE TO in the English corpus 86
Fig. 3.3. String matching of HAD TO in the English corpus 86
Fig. 3.4. String matching of PHẢI in the Vietnamese corpus 88

Fig. 3.5. String matching of WOULD in the English corpus 89
Fig. 3.6. String matching of MUỐN in the Vietnamese corpus 90
Fig. 3.7. String matching of MAY in the English corpus 91
Fig. 3.8. String matching of MIGHT in the English corpus 91
Fig. 3.9. String matching of CÓ LẼ in the Vietnamese corpus 92
Fig. 3.10. String matching of SHOULD in the English corpus 94
Fig. 3.11. String matching of OUGHT TO in the English corpus 94
Fig. 3.12. String matching of NÊN in the Vietnamese corpus 95
Fig. 3.13. String matching of CAN in the English corpus 96
Fig. 3.14. String matching of COULD in the English corpus 97
Fig. 3.15. String matching of CÓ THỂ in the Vietnamese corpus 98
Fig. 3.16. String matching of NEED in the English corpus 98
Fig. 3.17. String matching of CẦN in the Vietnamese corpus 99
Fig. 3.18. A distribution of linguistic means of expressing directives in English 137
Fig. 3.19. A distribution of linguistic means of expressing directives in Vietnamese 138
Fig. 3.20. A contrastive analysis of directive expressions in English and Vietnamese 139

vii



LIST OF TABLES

Table 1.1. Types of modality 23
Table 1.2. Palmer’s theoretical framework for deontic modality 27
Table 1.3. Means of expressing deontic modality in English and Vietnamese 44
Table 3.1. Types of English modal verbs 81
Table 3.2. Directives in the interrogatives in English and Vietnamese 84
Table 3.3. Directives in the declaratives in English and Vietnamese 84
Table 3.4. The distribution of modal verbs in English and Vietnamese 100

Table 3.5. The distribution of hedge verbs in English and Vietnamese 102
Table 3.6. The distribution of performative verbs in English and Vietnamese 106
Table 3.7. Distribution of Vietnamese modal words 114
Table 3.8. The distribution of modal adverbs in English and Vietnamese 117
Table 3.9. The distribution of modal adjectives in English and Vietnamese 119
Table 3.10. Distribution of Vietnamese particles 126
Table 3.11. The distribution of modal idioms in English and Vietnamese 132
Table 3.12. The distribution of Expletives in English and Vietnamese 134
Table 3.13. The distribution of modal conditionals in English and Vietnamese 135

viii

ABBREVIATIONS


The following abbreviations are used chiefly in glossed language data examples:

Ibid the same author/ resources
Aux auxiliary
S subject
Mod modal verb
V verb
O object
MW modal word
HV hedge verb
VP verb phrase
MN modal noun
C commissive
D directive
V volitive
ECMAux1 English commissive modal auxiliary in English story 1
ECMAux4 English commissive modal auxiliary in English story 2
ECPV18 English performative verbs in English story 8
CADV23 English modal adverbs in English story 23
ECADJ34 English commissive adjective in English story 34
ECE15 English commissive expletives in English story 15

ECMC34 English commissive modal conditionals in English story 34
EDMAux4 English directive modal auxiliary in English story 4
EDHV4 English directive hedge verbs in English story 4
EDPV31 English directive performative verbs in English story 31
EDAdv25 English directive modal adverbs in English story 25
EDAdj23 English directive modal adjective in English story 23
EDMN35 English directive modal nouns in English story 35
EDP18 English directive particles in English story 18
EDMI12 English directive modal idioms in English story 12
EDMC23 English directive modal conditionals English story 23
EV2 English volitives in English story 2
VCMAux1 Vietnamese commissive modal auxiliary in Vietnamese story 1
VCPV1 Vietnamese commissive performative verbs in Vietnamese story 1
VCMC1 Vietnamese commissive modal conditionals in Vietnamese story 11
VDMAux5 Vietnamese directive modal auxiliary in Vietnamese story 5
VDPV8 Vietnamese directive performative verbs in Vietnamese story 8
VDMW42 Vietnamese directive modal words in Vietnamese story 42
VDAdv22 Vietnamese directive modal adverbs in Vietnamese story 22
(VDMN10) Vietnamese directive modal nouns in Vietnamese story 10
VDP8 Vietnamese directive particles in Vietnamese story 8
VDMI14 Vietnamese directive modal idioms in Vietnamese story 14
VDE17 Vietnamese directive expletives in Vietnamese story 17
VDMC36 Vietnamese Directive Modal Conditionals in Vietnamese story 36
EV26 Vietnamese Volitive in Vietnamese story 26
ix

ABSTRACT

This research is an attempt to identify, describe, compare and contrast various linguistic means
of expressing deontic modality in English and Vietnamese within the theoretical frameworks

and typological studies by pioneering linguists, both foreign and Vietnamese, on deontic
modality. This study is both descriptive and contrastive in nature. Its main aims are to identify,
describe and compare the various linguistic resources available in English and Vietnamese in
indicating deontic modality and its three main types i.e. commissives, volitives, directives, and
their sub-types.


The main data used in this research are taken from the two corpora (421 declarative and
interrogative sentences in English), built on 50 English stories, a total of 2.060.389 words and
(422 declarative and interrogative sentences in Vietnamese) in 50 Vietnamese stories, a total of
2.003.486 words. The data collected are then qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed to show
similarities and differences in terms of syntactic - semantic features and equivalences and non-
equivalences in the use of linguistic means to express deontic modality in English as a source
language and Vietnamese as a language of reference. Statistics also show the frequencies of
occurrences of various linguistic means in the respective languages to show their relative
importance in expressing deontic modality in the two languages under study.

Research findings show that while English and Vietnamese share some main linguistic devices
i.e., modal verbs, adjectives, adverbs, hedge verbs, etc. in the declaratives, the two languages
also show major differences and non-equivalences in the interrogatives in the availability and
the extent of the usage of various means to indicate deontic modality. While English relies more
on modal verbs, modal auxiliaries and moods, among others, Vietnamese relies more on its
system of sentence particles (mood words), modal words to indicate different meanings of
deontic modality.

It is hoped that the findings from this study will contribute to further understanding linguistic
resources available in English compared to Vietnamese and their shared and unshared features
in the use of linguistic devices in expressing modality in general and deontic modality in
particular.
1

INTRODUCTION

1. Background to the study

Modality as an important component of linguistics has been extensively studied from syntactic,
grammatical, semantic and pragmatic perspectives. The study of modality expressions within
linguistics is one of the complicated problems. As Palmer (2003: 4) says “modality is realized
by linguistic terms from a wide range of grammatical classes, covering not only modal
auxiliaries and lexical verbs, but also nouns, adjectives, adverbs, idioms, particles, mood, and
prosody in speech.”

There are three types of modality that can be distinguished in the modal system of English. i.e.,
epistemic, deontic and dynamic that can be interpreted in terms of possibility and necessity
(Palmer, 2003: 7). This research will focus on one important type of modality i.e. deontic
modality. The term deontic modality “is a cover term for a range of semantic notions such as
ability, possibility, hypotheticality, obligation, and imperatives” (van der Auwera & Plungian,
1998: 81). In Vietnamese, deontic modality is rendered as “tình thái chức phận/ đạo nghĩa”
(Nguyễn Văn Hiệp, 2008: 103) denoting obligations, duties, necessity and the need for actions
which is also chosen as the working definition for this research.

A large number of studies have focused on theories of modality in general and deontic modality
in particular such as the works by Chung & Temberlake (1985), Palmer (1979, 1986, 1990,
1994, 2003, 2004, 2005) who have studied on modality both theoretical and corpus-based:
syntactic and semantic theory figured in various contributions. Palmer’s theory is applied
widely in linguistics and in many languages. Lyons (1977) also has a great concern with
semantic related to deontic modality. Lyons’ theoretical discussion finds ample confirmation in
various examples mostly from subjective and objective modality. Still within the field of
modality, van der Auwera & Plungian (1998) identify and describe the two types of modality
i.e., participant - internal modality and participant - external modality. This classification is seen

as a significant contribution to linguistics.

2

So far, many comparative studies on modality have been carried out in different languages other
than English such as those in Korean and Japanese (Wymann. A.T, 1994), and in Chinese (Li,
2004). In Vietnam, many scholars have also studied modality in general and types of modality
in particular such as Nguyễn Thị Lương (1996), Cao Xuân Hạo (1999), Nguyễn Văn Hiệp
(2001, 2008), Ngũ Thiện Hùng (2003), Phạm Thị Ly (2003), Nguyễn Thị Cẩm Thanh (2003),
Bùi Trọng Ngoãn (2004), Võ Đại Quang (2009), who have studied modality in the Vietnamese
language.

However, no attempt has been made to conduct a contrastive study on linguistic means of
indicating deontic modality in English and Vietnamese. Therefore, this study is carried out to
address that research gap in order to provide a more articulate insight into similarities and
differences of deontic expressing means in the two languages, and to serve as a framework for
implicational purposes, which can be both theoretical and practical.

Regarding theoretical values, this dissertation is the first research into three types of deontic
modality in the English language compared with the Vietnamese language. Though deontic
expressing means have been touched upon by many reputed linguists, the description and
application of the three types of deontic modality in the study of Vietnamese have rarely been
found in the works by Vietnamese linguists.

With respect to practical purposes, a contrastive analysis on the three types of deontic modality
in English and Vietnamese helps teachers, students of English and those who are interested in
the field of linguistics understand deeply the language they deal with as well as the speakers’
attitudes or contexts that they refer to. In other words, this contrastive analysis will help EFL
(English as a Foreign Language) learners better understand of the similarities and differences in
the use of deontic expressing means in both languages. The insignts gained from the study,

hopefully, will help to find out error analysis in the English language teaching and learning.

2. Aim of the study

This study is aimed at finding the similarities and differences in deontic expressing means in
English and Vietnamese.
3

In order to achieve the proposed aim, the objectives of the study are set as follows:

 To analyze and describe linguistic means of expressing deontic modality in English and
Vietnamese.
 To compare and contrast linguistic means of expressing deontic modality in terms of
grammatical and lexical features and frequencies of usage in expressing deontic
meanings in English and Vietnamese.

To achieve the above objectives, the following research questions are to be addressed:

1. What are the linguistic means of expressing deontic modality in English and in
Vietnamese?
2. What are the similarities and differences in linguistic means used in the three types
of deontic modality in terms of the syntactic and semantic features and the
frequencies of usage in English and Vietnamese?

3. Scope of the study

This study is focused on the descriptive account of syntactic and semantic features of linguistic
means of indicating three types of deontic modality in English and Vietnamese based on the
classification of Palmer (1994). They are commissives, directives and volitives with the seven
sub-types of directives (deliberatives, imperatives, jussives, obligatives, permissives, precatives,

prohibitives) and the two sub-types of volitives (imprecatives and optatives).

According to Chung & Temberlake (1985: 25), modality in English may be expressed
grammatically or semantically by auxiliaries, verbs, adjectives, nouns or adverbs. Nguyễn Văn
Hiệp (2008: 128) states that means of expressing modality can be categorized into grammatical
and lexical means. Prosody is said to have played a role in expressing modality in languages.
However, as Palmer (1986: 6) states, “prosody is a separate study and only rarely interacts in a
systematic way with grammatical systems of modality”, and modality or linguistic means of
indicating modality can be studied separately from prosody elements. Furthermore, in this
study, due to the nature of the data taken from the short stories and the usage of devices of a
4

corpus-based method, prosody elements are not covered. This is also the limitations to the
scope for this study.

Modality is realized either by lexical or semantic means such as modal auxiliaries, adverbs,
adjectives, nouns, modal words, particles, etc. In terms of semantic features, the author will
describe and analyze deontic expressing means in English and Vietnamese i.e. modal
auxiliaries, hedge verbs, performative verbs, modal words, adverbs, adjectives, nouns,
particles, modal idioms, expletives, and modal conditionals.

In English, mood (indicative, imperative, interrogative … moods) is an important means of
expressing deontic modality. It also means that, to some extents, sentence types including the
declaratives and interrogatives can also be considered means of expressing modality in general
and deontic modality in particular. Therefore, the main focus of this research is not on
comparing and contrasting how linguistic means of expressing deontic modality operate in the
two sentence types: declaratives vs interrogatives. Declarative and interrogative sentences are
then used to provide samples of linguistic means used within these two sentence types.

In this research, the author compares and contrasts deontic expressing means taken from 421

declarative and interrogative sentences found in 50 English stories and 422 declarative and
interrogative sentences found in 50 Vietnamese stories. Based on the identification and the
descriptive accounts of deontic expressing means in the two languages, a comparative and
contrastive study on the similarities and differences of deontic expressing means in 421
declaratives and interrogatives in English and 422 declaratives and interrogatives in Vietnamese
will be conducted.

In this study, the main criteria to recognize declarative and interrogative sentences in English
are based on the theory of Palmer (1986: 26- 30). i.e., English sentences are the major
grammatical units used by speakers to make statements or ask questions. The exchange of
information is characteristically expressed by the indicative mood or the imperative mood.
Within the indicatives, making a statement is typically concerned with the declaratives, and
asking a question is associated with the interrogatives. More exactly, it is one part of the
structures concluding the subject and the finite element. In declarative structures, the subject
5

precedes the finite, and in the interrogative structures, the positions of finite operator and
subject are reversed. The finite is the element which associates with the content of the sentence
relating to time, tense, or attitudes of the speaker.

The criteria to recognize declaratives and interrogatives in Vietnamese are based on the work of
Cao Xuân Hạo (1991: 128) i.e., the basic word order of a declarative sentence in Vietnamese is
subject - verb - object. Also, a declarative can be expressed by a number of final particles đi/
nghen/ nhé. An interrogative can be expressed by a noun/ noun phrase; or an adjective/
adjective phrases; or a verb/ verb phrases or a sentence, which is realized by question marks có/
đã…… không/ chưa, có phải (là)… không?, ( có) phải không?, or question with particles
à,chứ, nhé, nào,hả,…

For the purpose of describing, comparing and contrasting the use of linguistic means for
expressing deontic modality in the declarative and interrogative sentences in English (as a

source language) and Vietnamese (as a reference language), the data are collected from two
main sources. For descriptive purposes, the samples of deontic sentences used by linguists are
used alongside the samples collected from stories. For comparative and contrastive purposes, a
corpus is built with the aim of collecting modal samples from two types of sentences:
declaratives and interrogatives in 50 English stories and 50 Vietnamese stories with the help of
the software: TexSTAT-2 that has been extensively used by reputed researchers in this field
(McEnery & Wilson (1996), Palmer & Facchinetti (2003), McCarthy (2005), and McCarthy
(2007)).

4. Methodology


4.1. Methods of the study


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.

6

Fisiak (1981: 1) defines contrastive linguistics as “a sub-discipline of linguistics concerned with
the comparison of two or more languages or subsystems of languages in order to determine both
the differences and similarities between them”. Johansson and Hofland (1994: 25-37) states that
“contrastive linguistics is the systematic comparison of two or more languages, with the aim of
describing their similarities and differences”. Thus, a combination of descriptive, comparative
and contrastive methods is used in this research.

For the comparison of the frequencies of usage in the two languages under study, a quantitative
analysis of the corpus is adopted. Corpus means “a collection of texts held in electronic form,
capable of being analyzed automatically or semi-automatically rather than manually” (Baker,
1996: 225). A corpus-based method emerged in the years of 1990s and 2000s as a new area of
research in the discipline of studies. It is informed by a specific area of linguistics known as
corpus linguistics which involves the analysis of the corpora of authentic running text by means
of computer software. According to Steinberger et al. (2005: 529), a corpus can be used to
count occurrences and frequencies for machine translation, cross-lingual information retrieval,
multilingual lexical extraction, and sense disambiguation.


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 syntactic as well as semantic
features and frequencies of usage. Therefore, a corpus based method is also used in this study
for comparative and contrastive purposes.

4.2. Data collection procedures

4.2.1. Description of corpus

The corpora used in this study are built on the following general principles regarding size,
number of languages, sources:

 The size of the corpus: The two corpora used in this research consist of 50 English
stories, a total of 2060389 words and 50 Vietnamese stories, a total of 2003486
words. Thus, the corpus includes 50 English stories and 50 Vietnamese stories. This
corpus size is viewed as not too large or too small so that a close reading of the
whole texts can be undertaken.

7

 The number of languages: The corpus in this research is considered as a bilingual
corpus; hence it contains the two languages: English and Vietnamese. This corpus is
specialized in that it includes only written records and its samples only are
declarative and interrogative sentences found in the included English and
Vietnamese stories.

 The sources of the corpus: As mentioned in the scope of the study, the
comparisons which will be made in this study are linguistic means of expressing
deontic modality in English and Vietnamese stories. The reason, the researcher
assumes, is that conversations in stories are too frequent a way of expressing deontic
modality. Moreover, according to Van Dijk (1988), famous stories present a factual
account of events that typically contain an element of comments. Lexical choices,
for example, can reflect the attitudes towards the events described and the actors
involved. For these reasons, stories are considered as the main source of the data
used in the present study.

The stories in this research are taken from e-books of contemporary works on different sources
(see appendix A & B). One of the criteria for the selection of stories is that they were written
by native speakers. These stories were published in the years of 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. It,
therefore, assumes that the use of deontic expressions in stories may have changed over the
time.

4.2.2. Corpus compilation procedure

In this section, the author conducts a process of extracting the data from a 2060389 - word
corpus in English and a 2003486 - word corpus in Vietnamese as follows:

As clarified in details the eleven types of deontic linguistic means in the theoretical framework,

the author lists all the devices used in those means, such as can, could, may, might, shall, will,
etc. belonged to the first means (modal auxiliaries); think, believe, know, etc. is the second
means (hedge verbs), etc. Then, the author uses a tool for doing lexical analysis named
TexSTAT-2 program. This program can show the string matching and the concordance to count
the frequency of a certain device in the whole 50 stories and also find related collocation of
other words together with a certain device in English or Vietnamese.

8

The corpus supplies the number of words in each means, in each category of sorted devices and
shows a general overview of the distribution of modal linguistic means quickly and accurately
so that the researcher can extract all of the declaratives and interrogatives used in each means as
well as all of the means used in the stories. An illustrated example of a means of modal
auxiliary is shown in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 below:





Fig. 1. String matching of CAN in the English corpus






Fig. 2. String matching of CÓ THỂ in the Vietnamese corpus

The results of data processing are stored in the database for sorting and analyzing. From the
corpus, the researcher can collect 378 declaratives and 43 interrogatives expressing deontic

meanings in 50 English stories and 382 declaratives and 40 interrogatives conveying deontic
expressions in 50 Vietnamese stories.



9

4.3. Data analysis

4.3.1. Describing the data



After extracting the data from the corpus, a descriptive method will be used at first to exploit all
means and expressions of deontic modality used in English and Vietnamese declarative and
interrogative sentences in terms of categories in the theoretical framework. Basing on devices
processed in the corpus, the author distinguishes eleven means of deontic modality within 421
declaratives and interrogatives in English and 422 declaratives and interrogatives in Vietnamese
and then, categorizes them at three different types of meanings: commissives, directives and
volitives. This type of analysis is emphasized throughout the contextual translation in the stories
with various types of illocutionary forces.

The researcher labels examples of declaratives and interrogatives in English and Vietnamese
with the different forms. Letters and numbers signal the meanings of deontic expressions and
numbers indicate the story. For example, ECMAux1 stands for English modal auxiliary
denoting commissive meanings of the story one of 50 English stories. Vietnamese examples
comprise texts labeled VCMAux1 (Vietnamese modal auxiliary expressing commissive
meanings of the story one of 50 Vietnamese stories.). All the stories will be clearly specified in
each case in the appendixes such as the writer’s name of the stories and the year of publication.

4.3.2. Comparing the two sources of data


Fisiak (1981: 2-3) explains “drawing on the findings of theoretical contrastive studies they
provide a framework for the comparison of languages, selecting whatever information is
necessary for a specific purpose.” According to Johansson and Hofland (1994: 25), “language
comparison is of great interest in theoretical as well as applied perspectives”. It reveals what is
general, what is specific and what is important both for the understanding of language in
general and for the study of the individual languages compared. They further explain that a
comparative linguistic analysis differs considerably from a contrastive linguistic analysis. “A
comparative study is a diachronic comparison of two or more linguistic systems with a view to
classifying languages into families”. It is related to the history and evolution of languages, and
involves in establishing the similarities or correspondences between languages. “A contrastive
linguistic analysis is the comparison and contrast of the linguistic systems of two or more
10

individual languages in order to bring out points of contrast as well as points of similarity
between them,” and they also argue that “a contrastive linguistic study is a synchronic
comparison that studies languages belonging to the same period, without paying much attention
to their histories or language families.” It is more concerned with dissimilarities than
similarities.




Fisiak (1981: 2) also states that contrastive analysis was used extensively in the field of second
language acquisition in the 1960s and early 1970s, as a method of explaining an exhaustive
account of the differences and similarities between two or more languages, providing an
adequate model for the comparison, and determining how and which elements are comparable.
It is expected that once the areas of potential difficulty have been mapped out through

contrastive analysis, it would be possible to design language courses more efficiently.

In this study, therefore, 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 deontic modal expressions in
order to determine the similarities and differences of deontic expressing means used in English
and Vietnamese stories.

To compare eleven means of deontic modality with regards to the three types of meanings:
commissives, directives and volitives, the author takes the English language as the base
language and Vietnamese as the comparative language. The reason for the choice is that deontic
linguistic means in English have been extensively studied from different linguistic approaches
by reputed linguists in the world. Thus, the researcher collects these deontic expressions in the
theoretical framework to compare with Vietnamese. The examples analyzed are taken from
declarative and interrogative sentences in English and Vietnamese stories.


The statistical calculations are made and classified by the figures for each pattern. The results in
English are then compared to those in Vietnamese basing on the computation of various
percentages in the corpus. The similarities or differences will be analyzed in details with
specific data and then to indicate any conclusions.

11

5. Structure of the study

Apart from the introduction and conclusion, the research consists of three chapters:

The introduction presents the background for the study, aim, objectives and the scope of this
work. An account of the methods and data collection is provided.

Chapter one provides the preliminaries to this study by giving a brief of previous research and
basic overview of the general concepts of modality and, in more details, the specific framework
of deontic modality with different types of deontic modality and deontic linguistic means in
English and Vietnamese under study.

Chapter two is concerned with a detailed description and comparative analysis on the two types
of deontic modality in English and Vietnamese i.e. commissives and volitives based on both the
semantic and the formal aspects of modal expressions, including a systematic inventory of
means available for expressing deontic attitudes in English and Vietnamese.

Chapter three explores the similarities and differences in terms of syntactic and semantic
features and frequencies of occurrences of various linguistic means of expressing directives in
English and Vietnamese basing on the theoretical framework and the results of corpus data
collection provided.

The conclusion provides the summary of the results of the study with research implications,
contributions and suggestions for future research.









12

CHAPTER I

LITERATURE REVIEW


1.1. Historical perspectives of modality



Like most of theoretically-based historical studies, modality has been pursued from the
perspectives of both semantic and grammatical theories of linguistics. The term “modality”
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 modality. He has
researched the grounding in different perspectives on syntax more than semantics. Functionally-
oriented views of syntactic aspects of English modality 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 modality has mainly focused on grammaticalization.






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 modality and main types of modality and their relationships. This is illustrated

in Fig. 1.1 below:




Fig. 1.1. Types of modality. (Van der Auwera & Plungian, 1998: 111)
13

Still in the domain of modality, a distinction between “mood” and “modality” has been
proposed by Palmer (1979, 1986, 1990, 1994, 2003, 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
volitives with 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 modality 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 modality 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 corpus, Palmer &
Facchinetti (2003) analyze the similarities and differences as regards of semantic features of
modal verbs in English and Greek.

14

Van der Auwera et al. (2009) provide 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 modality. (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 (non-
factuality vs factuality: might and may, existential modality such as “footballers can be sex
maniacs” (van der Auwera et al, 2009: 2), 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 modality 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 modality in general (i.e. epistemic, deontic and dynamic) in English and
Chinese.

In Vietnamese, 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 on
semantic perspectives in questions. Based on the forms, she divides Vietnamese particles in
questions into three groups: particle à used to greet or ask for information, particles ư, hả, sao,
phỏng, chắc, chăng used to predict what will happen or express irony, and particles chứ, nhỉ,
nhé used to ask for affirmation or remind somebody of something. She uses a descriptive
method to describe examples taken from short stories, plays, novels and recorders. The criteria
to indentify the meanings of sentence particles in her research are based on Searle theory of
speech act (1975). i.e., (i) propositional content, (ii) preparatory content, (iii) sincerity content
and (iv) essential content. She concludes that the meanings of particles are generally formed
according to contexts and attitudes of the speakers in communicating.