an investigation into idiomatic expressions containing numbers in english and vietnamese = nghiên cứu những thành ngữ có các từ chỉ số trong tiếng anh và tiếng việt

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
POST – GRADUATE FACULTY
******



NGUYỄN THỊ THỦY TIÊN


AN INVESTIGATION
INTO IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS CONTAINING
NUMBERS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE


(NGHIÊN CỨU NHỮNG THÀNH NGỮ CÓ CÁC TỪ CHỈ SỐ
TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT)

M.A. Minor Thesis

Field : English Linguistics
Field code : 60 22 15





Ha Noi – 2011
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
POST – GRADUATE FACULTY

******


NGUYỄN THỊ THỦY TIÊN


AN INVESTIGATION
INTO IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS CONTAINING
NUMBERS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

(NGHIÊN CỨU NHỮNG THÀNH NGỮ CÓ CÁC TỪ CHỈ SỐ
TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT)

M.A. Minor Thesis


Field : English Linguistics
Field code : 60 22 15


Supervisor: Dr. Hà Cẩm Tâm


Ha Noi – 2011

iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS

CANDIDATE’S STATEMENT………………………………………………………….i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……… …………………………………………………….ii

ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………… ……….… iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS…… … ………………… …… ……………………… …iv
LIST OF TABLES…………….………………………………………… ……….…….vi

PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the study………….…….………… ……………….…………… 1
2. Aims of the study …………….…………… … ……….…………………………….2
3. Scope of the study…………………………………….………………… ….…………2
4. Methods of the study.……………….…… ………… ……………… … …………2
5. Design of the study…… …………………………….…………………….… ………3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1.1. Meaning……………………………………………………………………………… 4
1.2. Senses ………………………… …………………………………………………… 6
1.3. Definition of idioms ……………………………… ………………………… …… 7
1.4. Characteristics of idioms ……………………………… ………………………… …8
1.5. Classification of idioms …………………………………………………… …………9
1.6. Idioms and proverbs.……………………………………….…………………………11
1.7. Idioms and collocations ………………………………… ………………………… 12
1.8. Idiom and 'dead' metaphor………………………………… ……………… ………13

v
1.9. Number in English and Vietnamese…………………… ………………………… 13
1.10. Review of previous studies on idioms.…….…….…… ………………………… 16

CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY

2.1. Research question….……………………… ……………………………………… 18
2.2. Data collection…….………………………………………………………….…… 18
2.3. Analytical framework…………………………………………………………………18
2.4. Data analysis.……….………………………………………………….……… …….20
2.4.1. Ideational, interpersonal and relational numerical idioms in English and
Vietnamese … ………………………………………………………………………… 20
2.4.2. The frequency of appearance of numbers in English and Vietnamese
idioms…………… 23
2.4.3. The connotative meanings of numbers in English and Vietnamese
idioms.…………………………………………………………………………………… 28

PART C: CONCLUSION

1. Major findings…………………………………… ………………………………… 33
2. Implications ……………………………………… ………………………………….33
3. Suggestions for further studies……………………… ……………… …………… 34

REFERENCES ………… ……………………………….………………………35
APPENDICES






vi
LIST OF TABLES

Table
Names of table

Page
Table 1
Types of numerical idioms in English and Vietnamese by
Fernando’s model
20
Table 2
The frequency of appearance of numbers in English idioms

24
Table 3
The frequency of appearance of numbers in Vietnamese idioms

26
Table 4
The connotative meanings of numbers in English and
Vietnamese idioms by Spangler and Werner’s model

29




1
PART A
INTRODUCTION

1. Rationale of the study

English has been a very important international means of communication in almost
fields of life such as economy, politics, culture and education. English bridges people over

the world together. Consequently, the mastering of English has been the desire of modern
people who wish to join the international community in order to broaden their knowledge,
promote in their career and have wider net of relationship.
Having the desire of becoming a member of international community in many
fields to develop aspects of life, Vietnam is clearly aware of the importance of English as
an international communicative means. Learning and teaching English have been drawing
a lot of attention of the whole Vietnam society. English has been an official and
compulsory subject in education curriculum. Vietnamese people wish to have a good
command of English so that they can have the key to the open world.
The mastering of English is not an easy matter because it requires a large number
of linguistic issues such as grammar and pronunciation to have effective communicative
activities. Among these issues, vocabulary plays a vital role due to its meaning creating. In
fact, teaching and learning vocabulary are always emphasized. In vocabulary teaching and
learning, idiom is an issue with which English learners and teachers are concerned because
idioms are frequently used to make conversations more natural, interesting and concise in
daily communicative activities. Thus, the effective use of idioms is a necessary
requirement for any language learners who have desire to master it.
Numbers which are very common in our daily life and have certain cultural
characteristics also appear in idioms. Idiomatic expressions containing numbers bring
about interesting diverse meanings to our utterances and writings. Moreover, personally, I
myself am extremely interested in idiomatic expressions containing numbers. In daily life
of Vietnamese and English, I see that numbers have certain significance. People admire
some numbers and vice versa. All of those are factors that give me the inspirations to
choose this topic.

2

2. Aims of the study

The study is to explore the role of numbers in creating the meanings of idioms in

English and Vietnamese. Based on that, a brief comparison between idioms in English
and Vietnamese is carried out to find out the similarities and differences in the
contribution of numbers to their meanings. In summary, this study is aimed at:
 To explore the roles of numbers in the meanings of idioms in English and
Vietnamese.
 To find out the similarities and differences in the contribution of numbers to the
meanings of idioms in English and Vietnamese.
In order to achieve these aims, the following question should be answered:
 What are senses do numbers contribute to the meanings of idioms in English and
Vietnamese?

3. Scope of the study

Because of the limitation of time, material resources, my knowledge and academic
ability, this study is only focused on the senses of numbers contribute to the meanings of
idioms. Specific speaking, the study is focused on revealing what types of English and
Vietnamese idioms numbers appear in and their connotative meanings in these idioms.
That is the foundation for a brief comparison between the contribution of numbers to the
meanings of idioms in English and Vietnamese.

4. Methods of the study

In order to achieve those above-mentioned aims, the study employs both
quantitative and qualitative methods. By virtue of quantitative method, data have been
collected from, literary works, books of idioms and semantics and newspapers, websites
and dictionaries in both English and Vietnamese. The qualitative method is adopted to
interpret the collected data.

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5. Design of the study

The study is consisted of three parts:
The first part is Part A “INTRODUCTION”. This part provides a brief account of
issues which are rationale, aims, scope, methods, and design of the study.
The second part is Part B “DEVELOPMENT”. This part is consisted of two
chapters. Chapter 1, theoretical background, provides the theoretical information about
meanings, sense, idioms, brief information about numbers in English and Vietnamese and
the review of previous studies on idioms. Chapter 2 is concerned with research question,
data collection, analysis framework, data analysis.
The last part, Part C, “CONCLUSION”, summaries the major findings of the
study, provides implications and suggestions for further studies. .

4
PART B
DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

This chapter has provided the theoretical framework for the following analysis of
numerical idioms in the main chapter. In this chapter, theoretical background is consisted
of matters related to meaning; senses; idioms (the definition, the classification, the
characteristics; the distinguishing between idioms and proverbs, idioms and collocations,
idioms and dead metaphors); brief introductions about numbers in English and Vietnamese
and the brief review of previous researches about idioms.

1.1. Meaning

Lyons (1997:1) said, “Semantics is generally defined as the study of meaning, and
this is the definition which we shall initially adopt”. Thus core issue in the field of
semantics is the meaning. In Understanding English Semantics by Dr. Nguyen Hoa (2004),
the definition of meaning is explained as follow: “According to C.K. Ogden and I.A.
Richards (1923) in “The meaning of meaning”, a number of meanings can be associated
with this term”:
 An intrinsic property
 The other words annexed to a word in a dictionary
 The connotation of a word
 The place of anything in a system
 That to which the user of symbol ought to be referring
 That to which the interpreter of a symbol
- refers
- believes himself to be referring

- believes the user to be referring

5
In terms of meaning classification, Hoa, Nguyen (2004: 51-54) divided meaning
into seven types with different functions in communication. In this study the writer
concerns only connotative meaning because the study is aimed at revealing the significance
of numbers in numerical idioms. Specific speaking, because numbers can be lucky or
unlucky numbers in daily life, the study has the desire to explore the role of numbers in
creating positive, negative, and neutral meanings for idioms to assess whether they are
lucky numbers in idioms or not. Spangler and Werner (1989:50) states that one can have
three main attitudes: positive (favourable), neutral (impartial), or negative (unfavourable).
They provide the following example of a table containing the same characteristics of a
woman described in three different ways depending on the attitude the writer has (i.e.
words with positive, neutral and negative connotation):
Positive
Neutral
Negative
lady
pleasingly plump
jolly, entertaining
highlights her assets
confident, friendly
brilliant, clever
woman
overweight
a sense of humor
wears makeup
outgoing
intelligent
dame

fat
silly, dizzy
paints her face
domineering
know-it-all

Leech (1974:23) defines that “connotative meaning is the communicative value of
an expression according to what is referred to, exceeds the above contents that are purely
conceptual”. Keith Alan, (2001:147) states “the connotations that arise from encyclopedic
knowledge about its denotation and also from experiences, beliefs, and prejudices about
the contexts in which the expression is typically used.” For example, the word BOY has
the connotation „STRONG‟ – positive meaning and LION the connotation „CRUEL‟ –
negative meaning.
Siregar (2005) claims that there are two kinds of meaning in semantics: Linguistic
meaning and Speaker meaning. Linguistic meaning is determined by the meaning of its
constituents and their grammatical relations. For example:
- Be careful of a sharp bend in the road.




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- Please don‟t bend this paper
Speaker meaning is what a speaker means in producing an utterance. It consists of
literal meaning and non-literal meaning. Literal meaning does not make hearers have
difficulty understanding what the speaker means. However, we mean something different
from what our words mean by speaking non-literally. In that case, it is called non-literal
meaning. Using idioms is a way of using non-literal meaning because the meaning of an
idiomatic expression cannot be predicted either lexically or grammatically. This study is
concerned with idioms so non-literal meaning is focused on.

1.2. Sense

According to Hoa, Nguyen (2004), sense is a philosophical term for meaning. Sense is
the realization of meaning in speech. Sense relationship is also an important of the study of
language because a word does not only have meaning but also contribute to the meaning of
a larger unit, a phrase, a clause, a sentence. For example, the senses of the word “library”
in the two sentences are different:
- He has a quite large library. ( a collection of books)
- The library is at the end of this street. ( a building where books
are kept and organized)
According to Palmer (1976), sense “relates to the complex system of relationships
between linguistic elements themselves (mostly the words)”. Hoa, Nguyen (2004) suggests
that there are two kinds of sense relation. They are substitutional and combinational which
correspond to the two Saussurean terms of paradigmatic and syntagmatic. Substitutional
relations exist between members of the same grammatical category and syntagmatic
relations hold between items of different grammatical categories. For example:
The was bought yesterday.


- Substitutional relation is the relation among “book, car, pen”. They can
replace each other and belong to word class “noun”. Grammatical relation is the relation
among “ the, book, was, bought, yesterday” which are different grammatical categories.
book
car
pen


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1.3. Definitions of idioms

In English, there are a large number of idioms often used in daily communicative
activities. Thus, idioms have been a concern of any English learners because they can not
understand idioms by inferring from the literal meanings of words, which leads to
difficulty in communicating in both spoken language and the written form. People often
talk about idioms during the process of learning English, so what is idiom in English?
According to Cruse (1986: 37), an idiom is an “expression whose meaning cannot
be inferred from the meanings of its parts when they are not parts of idioms”. Cruse (1986:
37–38) claims that an idiom must have two compulsory features: „Lexically complex‟
showing that each idiom has to be consisted of more than one lexical constituent and
„semantically simplex‟ that is „a single minimal semantic constituent‟. As a result, a non-
idiomatic expression can be divided into several semantic constituents. For example, the
meaning of the expression „at the eleventh hour‟ can not be deducted from the meanings of
any its constituent or from its structure. The expression means that something happens
when it is almost too late, or at the last possible moment. Fernando (1996) shares the same
view of the definition of idioms. At the same time, he has a broad view when considering
idioms as multi-word expressions whose meanings are not derived from the meanings of
their constituents or their syntactic structures or consist the meaning of one of its
constituents while the other constituent denotes a concept which it does not denote in other
linguistic contexts. Idioms even accept restricted variation such as literal idioms „on the
contrary, a happy new year‟.
Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary provides the definitions of “idiom” as “a
group of words whose meaning is different from the meanings of the individual words”.
In Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, idiom is defined as “a group of
words in a fixed order that have a particular meaning that is different from the meanings of
each word understood on its own”. Idiom, a colorful way of using English, is used in
informal and formal, spoken and written languages to bring about stronger meaning than
non-idiomatic phrases in an impressive way by conveying both ideas and implying the
attitude of the language user such as disapproval, admiration or humor. For instance, “look
daggers at someone” is more interesting than “look angrily at someone” although they

express the same meaning.

8
Palmer (1990) defines idioms as group of words whose meaning can not be inferred
from the meanings of separate words. Semantically, an idiom is a language unit like a word.
However, grammatically, an idiom does not function like a word. Idioms are
grammatically restricted. A word can be added suffix or prefix or its form can be changed.
For instance, the idiom “take a hand” in past simple is “took a hand”. However, it can not
be changed into “take hands”, “hand” does not accept plural form “s”.
In Vietnamese dictionary by Vietnam Linguistics Institute (1997), idioms are
defined as commonly used fixed expressions whose meanings can not be simply inferred
from the meanings of constituents. In Vietnamese, this is the definition “thành ngữ là tập
hợp cố định đã quen dùng mà nghĩa của nó không thể giải thích một cách đơn giản bằng
nghĩa của các từ tạo nên nó”. In Vietnamese, most of the idioms are incomplete meaningful
groups of words so they can not stand alone. Idiom often appears in a sentence as a part so
as to contribute to the complete meaning of the sentence such as “Cái mặt búng ra sữa mà
bày đặt bàn bạc chuyện yêu đương” In Vietnamese, idioms are frequently used in proverbs,
literature, and fork songs.

1.4. Characteristics of idioms

According to Nunberg, Sag & Wasow‟s (1994, p. 492-93), six characteristics of
idioms are as follow:
• Conventionality: The meanings of idioms can not be deducted from “knowledge of the
independent conventions that determine the use of their constituents when they appear in
isolation from one another”
• Formal inflexibility: The numbers of syntactic frames in which idioms appear are
limited. Thus, idioms are syntactically restricted.
• Figuration: The meanings of idioms are non-literal, or figurative thanks to the
involvement of idioms in metaphors (take the bull by the horns, time as a substance, time

as a path, love as war, and up is more), metonymies (lend a hand, count heads),
hyperboles (not worth the paper it‟s printed on).
• Proverbiality: Idioms are used to illustrate familiar situations of social life. The
situations are similar to folksy, familiar images (climbing walls, chewing the fat, spilling
beans).

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• Informality: Idioms have a tendency to appear in colloquial speech.
• Affect: Evaluative or affective stances can be inferred from the use of idioms.

1.5. Classification of idioms

Based on the scalar categorization, Fernando (1996: 35) divides idioms into three
types: Pure idioms, semi-idioms and literal idioms.
 Pure idioms: They are multi-word expressions whose meanings are not derived
from the meanings of their constituents or their syntactic structures. For example, idiom
“shoot the breeze” has the meaning which is not related to the meaning of the words
“shoot” and “breeze”.
 Semi-idioms: “A semi-idiom has one or more literal constituents and at least one
with a non-literal subsense, usually special to that co-occurrence relation and no other.”
In other words, the meaning of a semi-idiom consists of the meaning of one of its
constituents while the other constituent denotes a concept which it does not denote in
other linguistic context. For example, the meaning of greenhouse includes the literal
meaning of “house” but not the meaning of “green”. A greenhouse is not a house of
green color, but a house for growing plants. However, when “green” co-occurs with
other words like “window, door, trees, pencil…”, it is an adjective denoting color and
modifying these nouns.
 Literal idioms: “They are …less semantically complex than pure and semi-idioms”.
They accept restricted variation. For instance, some literal idioms are such as “on the
contrary, a happy new year…”

Based on the Halliday (1985), Fernando (1996: 72) suggests the functional
categorization of idioms which divides idioms into ideational idioms, interpersonal idioms
and relational idioms.
 Ideational idioms: They “either signify message content, experiential phenomena
including the sensory, the affective, and the evaluative or they characterize the nature of
message, for example, as being specific or non-specific”. For example, mess about with
expresses an action or have blood on one‟s hands demonstrate an event.


10
Message content:
 Actions : Tear down, wear different hats
 Events : Have blood on one‟s hands, turning point
 Situations : Be in a pickle, be up a gum tree
 People and thing : A red herring, a man about town
 Attributes : Matter – of – fact, lily-white
 Evaluations : Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, a watched pot never boils
 Emotions : Tear one‟s hair, lose one‟s heart
Characterizing the message:
 Specific information : What I am saying is, my guess is
 Non-specific information : And so on, kind of
 Interpersonal idioms: The kind of idioms has interactional function or
“characterize the nature of the message” such as say no more and as a matter of
fact.
Interactional strategies are concerned with:
 Greetings and farewells : See you later, bye for now
 Directives : Never mind, say no more
 Agreement : Say no more, that‟s true
 „ Feelers‟, eliciting opinions : How do you feel?, what do you think?
 Rejections : I wasn‟t born yesterday, you‟re joking

Characterizing the message involves:
 Newsworthiness: Guess what!, what do you know?
 Sincerity : As a matter of fact, believe you me
 Calls for brevity : Get to the point, cut the cackle
 Uncertainty : Mind you, I daresay
 Relational idioms: They make the discourse have coherence. Thus, they can be
“grouped with conjunctions” such as and, but, because as having a textual function.
They can also be divided into :
Integrative information:
 Adversative : On the contrary, far from
 Comparison : On the other hand, on the other
 Causal : So that when, no wonder

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 Concessive : At the same time
 Addition : What is more, in addition to
Sequencing or chaining information
 Sequencing meta-discoursal information : In the first place, last but not least
 Sequencing temporal information : One day, up to now

1.6. Idioms and proverbs

It is essential to distinguish idioms and proverbs because language users tend to
find it difficult to make differences.
In Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary, a proverb is defined as “a well-known
phrase or sentence that gives advice or says something that is generally true, for example
„Waste not, want not‟”. In Cambridge Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary, a proverb is “a short
sentence, etc., usually known by many people, stating something commonly experienced
or giving advice”. Another definition by Vu Ngoc Phan (2000: 39) is that a proverb as “a
complete saying expressing one idea of comment, experience, morality, justice or

criticism”.
Proverbs and idioms have many in common so there have been books introducing
the collection of both proverbs and idioms. Firstly, both idioms and proverbs are the
product of human‟s thought cultures and the life experience and are orally exchanged from
generation to generation as the matter of fact or the truth without any doubt. Secondly, they
have fixedness showing that any changes such as constituent substitution or word order
may lead to the change in meaning. Another similarity is the use of metaphor to have non-
literal or figurative meaning. Thus, their meaning must be understood in metaphorical way
without being based on the literal meanings of compositional words.
Despite those aforementioned similarities, both proverb and idiom has their typical
characteristics. The first difference is grammatical structure. Whereas an idiom is an
equivalent unit to a word or a phrase as parts of sentence, a proverb is a complete sentence
or a phrase expressing a full idea. The second one is the function. A proverb is “a well-
known phrase or sentence that gives advice” and expresses “one idea of comment,
experience, morality, justice or criticism”. As a result, it has perceptive function, aesthetic
function and educational function. For instance, the proverb “Money makes the mare go”

12
expresses a comment about the negative aspect of money. Its perspective function helps
people realize the harmful power of money controlling things immorally. Educational
function advises people not to be blinded by the power of money and to avoid its bad
affects. Besides, its aesthetic function is making people be aware of abstract message
through a lovely, exaggerative, figurative way. On the contrary, idioms have no the three
functions because of not demonstrating judgments, giving advice or stating general truth
about life. For example, the idiom “be on cloud nine” expresses the happiness of a person
when a wonderful thing happens but it provides no educational lessons or life experiences.
In summary, the differences in structures and functions make proverbs and idioms
distinguishable.

1.7. Idioms and collocations

Idiom and collocation have both similarity and difference. Howard Jackson (1990:
256) regards collocation as “a lexical relationship of mutual expectancy, the presence of a
particular lexical item gives the rise to the greater chance likelihood that other lexical items
belonging to the same area of meaning will also occur.” Mc Carthy (1996: 16) regards
collocation as corruption-occurrence between words. Besides, Chistra Fernando (1996:27)
views collocation as the company words keep. In terms of difference, the meaning of an
idiom can not literally derive from the meanings of its constituent; however, the meaning
of a collocation is the combination of the literal meanings of its separate words. Moreover,
collocations are not as restricted as idioms in terms of word substitution. Whereas, word
substitution can make an idiom lose its idiomatic meaning and no longer be an idiom, a
collocation accepts that despite the change in its meaning but remains as another
collocation. There are some examples such collocations „catch a bus/ a train, strong/ weak/
black/ white/ hot coffee, a cold/an icy/a chill/a biting etc wind‟.
Despite the differences, Fernando Chistra (1996: 36) suggests that both idioms and
collocations “show a habitual co-occurrence of words”. These combinations of words are
widely acknowledged naturally and can be recognized without difficulty such as idioms
„spill the beans, foot the bill‟ and collocations „heavy/torrential rain, heavy
/traffic/rain/snow‟.


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1.8. Idiom and 'dead' metaphor

Cruse (1986) suggests that idioms and dead metaphor should be distinguished.
While a metaphor, a kind of hidden comparison is an expression referring to one particular
thing or object which is different from the thing or the object literally described in this
expression, a dead metaphor is a metaphor in which words lose direct meanings and have
only figurative meanings. In Hoa, Nguyen (2004), the word „ponder‟ originally meant
„weigh‟, but now it has the meaning „ consider thoughtfully‟. Thus, idioms and dead

metaphors are interpreted in the same way. As far as syntax is concerned, both dead
metaphors and idioms are fixed. A dead metaphor will no longer be a dead metaphor if its
syntactic structure is changed.


1.9. Numbers in English and Vietnamese

This part is aimed at providing brief introduction about numbers, their functions in
daily life and cultural roles. Based on that, the relationship between numbers and the
meanings of idioms containing numbers in English and Vietnamese can be established and
made clearer.

1.9.1. Numbers in English

Because the study is concerned with only idioms containing cardinal numbers and
ordinal numbers, only cardinal and ordinal numbers are taken consideration into.
According to Graham Flegg (2002) in the book “Numbers: Their history and meaning”,
cardinal numbers are the basic numbers used for counting such as one, two or nine. Ordinal
numbers are used for indicating order. The majority of ordinal numbers are formed by
affixing the -th suffix onto the cardinal number such as tenth and eighth except for the
irregular cases such as first (1st), second (2nd), third (3rd), and fifth (5th).
Numbers are a part of language. They are frequently used in daily activities such as
counting, arranging orders, making measurements or giving assessment. As the

14
relationship between language and culture is inseparable, numerical words play a role in
human cultural communication.
In English culture, there are certain numbers considered as lucky numbers in
human psychology. In “Handbook of international research in mathematics education”, by
Lyn D. English, Maria Giuseppina Bartolini Bussi (2008), the world is made of three parts

involving the land, the sea and the sky; nature is consisted of three parts which are animals,
plants and minerals; the spirit, the flesh and the soul compose a human. Thus, number
“three” appears in quite a lot of sayings like „the third time is the charm‟, „number three is
always fortunate‟ and „all good things go by threes‟. “Three‟ is seen as a perfect number in
the eyes of Pythagoras, an ancient Greek philosopher because he suggests that everything
can be divided into numbers and the best number choice is the number „three‟ symbolizing
three stages of a process including the beginning, the middle and the completion.
According to Sin-wai Chan and David E. Polland ( 2001) in “ An encyclopedia of
translation : Chinese- English, English – Chinese”, there is another lucky number which is
“seven” because seven refers to the planets such as Sun, Moon, Venus, Jupiter, Mercy,
Mars, and Saturn that are accompanied with the God. Furthermore, according to Christian
religion, it took the God seven days to create the world. Consequently, in the western
religion, there are seven virtues consisting trust, hope, tenacity, prudent, control, fair, and
benevolence and seven sins including gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, pride, lust, and envy.
On the contrary, the number „two‟ is considered as an unlucky number or as source of evil
so the meanings of English numerical idioms containing „two‟ are often something not
good such as two by four and two bits. Besides, thirteen is also the first avoided number in
western culture due to its unlucky meaning. That dated back to the old story from Holy
Bible that Jesus was betrayed by his thirteenth follower while having the last dinner with
the other twelve followers. Here are brief introduction about cultural significance in Bible
in the book “Numbers in the Bible: God‟s Design in Biblical Numerology” by Robert
Johnston (1999):
In Bible, the number “1” is the symbol of unity. As a cardinal number it denotes
unity; as an ordinal it denotes primacy. It can be inferred that in English culture, that
number can be seen a number with positive meaning or neutral meaning.

15
Number „two‟ can be considered as an unlucky number or as source of evil so the
meanings of English numerical idioms containing „two‟ are often something not good such
as two by four and two bits.

In English, number “3” is considered as a lucky number and people often use it to
divide things into three parts.
In the West, four represents the physical world, as the 4 elements (Fire, Water, Air,
Earth), the 4 seasons and as the 4 cardinal points (North, South, East, and West). It can be
seen as a significant number.
Five is four plus one (4+1). We have had hitherto the three persons of the Godhead,
and their manifestation in creation. Now we have a further revelation of a People called out
from mankind, redeemed and saved, to walk with God from earth to heaven. Hence,
Redemption follows creation. Inasmuch as in consequence of the fall of man creation came
under the curse and was "made subject to vanity," therefore man and creation must be
redeemed. Thus we have:
1. Father
2. Son
3. Spirit
4. Creation
5. Redemption
These are the five great mysteries, and five is therefore the number of GRACE.
Six is man's number, because God created man on the sixth day. It often
symbolizes imperfection, because it falls short of the perfect number seven. So it can be
concluded that in English culture, “6” is not considered as a lucky number.
Seven represents the number of perfection because God rested on the seventh day
and it is the symbol of virtue, and self-sacrifice. It is believed in some western cultures,
that the seventh son of a seventh son has the power of healing and that the seventh
daughter of a seventh daughter has the gift of interpreting dreams.
In Christianity, eight represents rebirth or resurrection. It can be considered neither
lucky number nor unlucky number.
In Christianity, there are nine choirs of angels, nine gifts of the Holy Spirit, and
nine; as in 3 times 3, as it refers to the Holy Trinity. Thus, “9” can be seen as a lucky
number.

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1.9.2. Numbers in Vietnamese

In daily life, we can see that numbers are usually used in Vietnamese daily
activities such as talking about age, sizes of shirts and shoes. In addition, they bring about
certain cultural colors. According to Mingtan (2002) in “How to attract Asian women”,
there are unlucky numbers such as three and four. It can be seen that number „three‟ is not
lucky number in Vietnamese culture. When people get married or start going out to do
something important, they avoid the date having „three‟. In addition to, the number „ four‟
represent many things such as natural phenomenon ( four directions : East, West, South,
North; weather : Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter ), social phenomenon ( job : solider,
farmer, cadre, business man ; art : music – chess – poetry ), human being ( moral,
citizen‟s responsibilities ). However, it can be seen as unlucky number because it is related
to „death‟. People often say „birth, age, illness, death‟. For example, people do not want
this number „four‟ appearing in their number plates. On the contrary, in the book “ Viet
Nam Culture” by Bobbie Kalman ( 2002) and the book “ The little Sai Gon cook book :
Vietnamese Cuisine and Culture in Southern” by Ann Le, Julie Fay (2006) , Vietnamese
consider numbers „six, eight, nine‟ are lucky numbers : The number „six‟ represents
luckiness, happiness and material benefits; the number „ eight‟ symbolizes achievements
and becoming rich ; the number „ nine‟ represents power.

1.10. Review of previous studies on idioms

Studies on idioms have been paid a lot of attention by many researchers. Thus, it
can be said that the collection of idioms researches is not small.
In Viet Nam, there have been studies on English and Vietnamese idioms. The
research “Idiomatic expressions containing the word „dog‟ in English and Vietnamese” by
Tu, Dao Thanh ( 2007) was aimed at studying idiomatic expressions containing the word

„dog‟ in English and compare with those in Vietnamese to establish their similarities and
difference and show the specific features of English and Vietnamese cultures about dog.
The study found out that in English culture, dog was the symbol of night, darkness and
afterworlds – the world of death whereas in Vietnamese culture, dog was one of the pure
Vietnamese relics to protect houses as well as the spiritual life of the Vietnamese. At the

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same time, the study also explored that in both English and Vietnamese, idiomatic
meanings of the phrases and sentences containing “dog” had more negative meanings than
positive ones. However, there were some differences. In English, many idiomatic
expressions containing “dog” expressed more good personal characteristics or high status
of people and the convenient conditions and good luck but these idiomatic meanings were
hardly seen in Vietnamese.
Another study is “An investigation into the English words and idioms denoting
happiness.” Lam, Nguyen Thi Van (2002). The purpose of the study was to find out the
answers to the research question “What are the grammatical features and semantic
structures of „happy‟ and other words and idioms denoting happiness?”. The study found
out that „happy‟ was an adjective to denote „happiness‟. It was a neutral, generic term. It
was descriptively synonymous with „glad, pleased, delighted, elated‟; nearly synonymous
with „cheerful, gay, merry, exultant, gleeful, jubilant‟, and antonymous with „unhappy,
sad‟. In terms of words and idioms denoting happiness, there were 8 adjectives denoting
happiness, 6 nouns denoting happiness, and 2 verbs denoting happiness and 6 idioms
denoting happiness. Their grammatical features depended on the sub-classes they belonged
to
Gap identified here is in Vietnamese, there seems to be the shortage of numerical
idiom researches. Thus this study on idiomatic expression containing numbers in English
and Vietnamese was carried out to find out the contribution of numbers to the meanings of
idioms in English and Vietnamese.

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CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY

This chapter focuses on the discussion and analysis of the collected data to explore
the contributions of numbers to the meanings of idioms in English and Vietnamese. In
other words, numbers contribute to what types of idioms (ideational, interpersonal and
relational), contribute what types of connotative meanings (positive, neutral, negative) to
the overall meanings of idioms. Moreover, a brief comparison between English and
Vietnamese numerical idioms will be carried out to reveal similarities and differences
between the roles of numbers in non-literal meanings of idioms of two languages.

2.1. Research question

In order to the above aims, the study tries to find out the answers to the following
question:
What are senses do numbers contribute to the meanings of idioms in English and
Vietnamese?

2.2. Data collection

This study is about idioms so idioms are collected from many sources such as
books on semantics and idioms, newspapers, websites, dictionaries and literal works.
Popular idioms containing lucky and unlucky numbers in English and Vietnamese were
collected. 157 idioms were collected. There are 72 English numerical idioms and 85
Vietnamese numerical idioms.

2.3. Analytical Framework

The analysis of data is based on the following theoretical framework by Fernando
(1996) introduced in the literature review. Thus, the part will provide the brief summary of
this theory.

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Fernando (1996) divides idioms into ideational idioms, interpersonal idioms and
relational idioms in order to explore the meanings of idioms and their functions. Based on
that, it can be inferred what the roles of the numbers appearing in idioms are. There are
three types of idioms:
- Ideational idioms: They are idioms expressing message contents such as
actions, events, situations, people and thing, attributes, evaluations and
emotions or characterizing the message such as showing specific or non-
specific information. For example, the idiom “have blood on one‟s hand” is an
idiom to describe an event which is „someone must be responsible for
someone's death or is guilty of causing someone's death‟ because an event is
that something important happens (Oxford Advanced Dictionary Online).
Another example, the idiom „be in a pickle‟ is an idiom to describe a situation.
The idiomatic meaning is being in a difficult situation.
- Interpersonal idioms: They are idioms performing interactional strategies
such as greetings and farewells, directives, agreements, „ feelers‟, eliciting
opinions, rejections or characterizing the message by expressing
newsworthiness, sincerity, calls for brevity, uncertainty. For example, the

idiom „bye for now‟ is a farewell. Another example is „say no more‟ that means
„I agree; I will do it; I concede, no need to continue talking‟. Thus it is used to
express agreement.
- Relational idioms: Relational idioms provide integrative information such as
addition or comparison, adversative, causal, concessive and supply sequencing
meta-discoursal information and sequencing temporal information. For example,
„in addition to‟ means „furthermore, besides, moreover‟. Thus, it is an idiom that
denotes „addition‟. Another example is „in the first place‟ that is an idiom to denote
„the beginning‟. It has the function of pointing out the order of information
mentioned. Thus, it is called an idiom of sequencing meta-discousal information.
In order to explore the contribution of numbers to the connotative meanings of
idioms in English and Vietnamese, the study also takes the theoretical view of connotative
meanings by Spangler and Werner (1989). There are three types of attitudes when a word
or a phrase is used. Thus, the meanings of numbers in idioms in English and Vietnamese
are analyzed and divided into three types: Positive meaning (expressing favorable attitude),

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neutral meaning (expressing impartial attitude), and negative meaning (expressing
unfavorable attitude).

2.4. Data analysis

There are 157 idioms containing numbers which are collected. Among which, there are
72 English numerical idioms and 85 Vietnamese ones. Here are some results of data
analysis which will be discussed in the following each section. Comments will follow
tables of showing results of data analysis.

2.4.1. Ideational, interpersonal and relational numerical idioms in English and
Vietnamese

Table 1: Types of numerical idioms in English and Vietnamese by Fernando’s model
Types of idioms


English
Vietnamese
Ideational idioms
62
80
Interpersonal idioms
4
1
Relational idioms
6
4

Table 1 introduces the total numbers of collected numerical idioms in English and
Vietnamese and these idioms are classified according to their functions: Ideational,
interpersonal and relation. There are 72 English numerical idioms and 85 Vietnamese
numerical idioms which are analyzed. The first column is three types of idioms. The
second column is the number of English numerical idioms. The third column is the
numbers of Vietnamese numerical idioms.
Three functions of idioms are introduced in the above table and the number of each
type. The clarification of the function of each idiom will help to make the meaning of each
idiom much clearer. Based on that, the role of each number in each idiom containing it can
be inferred. It can be found that a number contributes to what kind of idiomatic meaning.