An investigation into syntactic and semantic features of advertising language in english with reference to the vietnamese equivalents

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNVERSITY

TRẦN THỊ THANH HÀ

AN INVESTIGATION INTO
SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF
ADVERTISING LANGUAGE IN ENGLISH WITH
REFERENCE TO THE VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS
NGHIÊN CỨU ĐẶC ĐIỂM CÚ PHÁP VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA
CỦA NGÔN NGỮ QUẢNG CÁO DU LỊCH TRONG TIẾNG ANH
TRONG SỰ LIÊN HỆ TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG VỚI TIẾNG VIỆT

M.A. THESIS
Field: English Language
Code: 60220201

Hanoi, 2015
1


MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNVERSITY

TRẦN THỊ THANH HÀ

AN INVESTIGATION INTO
SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF
ADVERTISING LANGUAGE IN ENGLISH WITH
REFERENCE TO THE VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS
NGHIÊN CỨU ĐẶC ĐIỂM CÚ PHÁP VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA

CỦA NGÔN NGỮ QUẢNG CÁO DU LỊCH TRONG TIẾNG ANH
TRONG SỰ LIÊN HỆ TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG VỚI TIẾNG VIỆT
M.A. THESIS

Field: English Language
Code: 60220201
Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phan Van Que

Hanoi, 2015
2


CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY
I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report
entitled An Investigation into Syntactic and Semantic Features of
Advertising Language on Tourism in English with reference to the
Vietnamese Equivalents 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, 2015

Tran Thi Thanh Ha

Approved by
SUPERVISOR

1

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This thesis could not have been completed without the help and support
from a number of people.
First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to
Assoc.Prof. Dr. Phan Van Que,

my supervisor, who has patiently and

constantly supported me through the stages of the study, and whose stimulating
ideas, expertise, and suggestions have inspired me greatly through my growth
as an academic researcher.
A special word of thanks goes to all my classmates and many others,
without their support and encouragement it would never have been possible for
me to have this thesis accomplished.
Last but not least, I am greatly indebted to my family, my husband for
the sacrifice they have devoted to the fulfillment of this academic work.

2


ABSTRACT
The thesis presents the investigation into syntactic and semantic features
of advertising language on tourism in English with reference to the Vietnamese
equivalents. The objective of the study is to investigate the syntactic and
semantic features of advertising language on tourism in English and
Vietnamese, then to work out the similarities and differences of those linguistic
devices in two languages. In order to achieve this objective, a corpus of 40
passages of tourism advertisements in both languages was collected to examine
and identify the syntactic and semantic features.
The findings of the study reveals that declaratives, complex sentences,

simile and metaphor appear the most frequently in tourism advertising of both
languages. Analyzing the syntactic and semantic features of advertising
language on tourism will not only benefit the advertisers and readers to better
understand advertising writing styles, but can serve as an informative source
for pedagogical and research purposes, and hopefully it becomes a motivation
for other learners to carry out further researches.

3


LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
e.g.:

for example

ads:

Advertisements

TAs:

Tourism Advertisements

ETAds:

English Tourism Advertisements

VTAds:

Vietnamese Tourism Advertisements

etc.:

et cetera

4


LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
Figure 4.1: Distribution of sentence types in ETAds

39

Figure 4.2: Distribution of ETAds sentence structure

40

Figure 4.3: Distribution of sentence types in VTAds

42

Figure 4.4: Distribution of sentence structure in VTAds

43

Figure 4.5: Distribution of stylistic devices in ETAds

50

Figure 4.6: Distribution of stylistic devices in VTAds

52

5


TABLE OF CONTENTS
Certificate of originality

i

Acknowledgements

ii

Abstract

iii

List of abbreviations

iv

List of tables and figures

v

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION

1

1.1.

Rationale for the research

1

1.2.

Aims of the research

2

1.3.

Objectives of the research

2

1.4.

Scope of the research

3

1.5.

Significance of the research

4

1.6.

Structural organization of the thesis

5

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1.

Review of previous studies

13

2.2.

Review of theoretical background

15

2.2.1. Advertising and Tourism Advertisements

15

2.2.1.1. Definitions of Advertising

15

2.2.1.2. Types of Advertising

15

2.2.2. Advertising language and its functions

17

2.2.3. Features of Advertising language

21

2.2.3.1. Syntactic Features

23

a) Sentence Types

23

b) Sentence Structures

25

2.2.3.2. Semantic Features

26

a) Simile

26
6

b) Metaphor

27

c) Hyperbole

28

2.2.4. Tourism and Tourism Advertisements

28

2.2.4.1. Definitions of Tourism

28

2.2.4.2. Tourism Advertisements

29

2.2.4.3. Language of Tourism Advertising

29

2.2.5. Summary

30

Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY
3.1.

Research-governing orientations

31

3.1.1. Research questions

31

3.1.2. Research setting

31

3.1.3. Research approach(es)

32

3.1.4. Principles/criteria for intended data collection & data analysis

32

3.2.

33

Research methods

3.2.1. Major methods vs. supporting methods

33

3.2.2. Data collection techniques

33

3.2.3. Data analysis techniques

34

3.3.

35

Summary

Chapter 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
4.1.

Syntactic and Semantic features in ETAds and VTAds

36

4.1.1. Syntactic features in ETAds

36

4.1.2. Semantic features in ETAds

40

4.2.

46

Similarities and Differences of Advertising Language on
Tourism in English and Vietnamese

4.2.1. Similarities of Advertising Language on Tourism in English

46

and Vietnamese
4.2.1.1. Similarities in terms of syntactic features

49
7


4.2.1.2. Similarities in terms of semantic features

51

4.2.2. Differences of Advertising Language on Tourism in English

51

and Vietnamese
4.2.2.1. Differences in term of syntactic features

53

4.2.2.2. Differences in term of semantic features

55

4.3.

Implications

58

4.4.

Summary

59

Chapter 5: CONCLUSION
5.1.

Recapitulation

60

5.2.

Limitation of the research

62

5.3.

Recommendations/Suggestions for a further research

63

REFERENCES
APPENDICES

8


Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1.

Rationale for the research
Nowadays, together with the development of the society and the world,

advertising becomes an important part in our life. You can see advertising with
different types from everywhere around us: adverts on TV, adverts in
newspapers and magazines, brochures in travel agencies, internet pages,
posters in stations and so on. Advertising could alert customers about new
products that come into the market because it contains information about what
the product is, what it does and why you should buy it. The main purpose of
advertising is to inform people about new products and services offered by an
organization, persuade people to buy these products or make use of the services
offered and then to remind people about the organization and encourage repeat

purchase and use. Therefore, advertisers use various linguistic devices to make
the message of an advertisement to be more colorful, legible, understandable
and memorable.
In the field of tourism, advertising plays a vital role in developing the
countries tourism by attractively presenting the nations points-of-interests,
historical and cultural. Advertising helps us introduce the various cultures and
societies abroad, as well the history, ancient, historical sites, and languages of
the advertised country to readers. So tourism advertisements have its own
characteristics and the language used in it must be believable and distinctive.

9


Many linguists so far have studied the linguistic perspectives of
advertising language. It can be studied in term of appearance, the language
used, structures and meaning. Advertisers use various writing styles in drawing
attention of the customers to the products and services. In addition to that, the
language used in advertising is different depending on the types of advertised
products and services. Because of the various kinds of language used, it is very
interesting to study how the advertisers produce pieces of advertising
efficiently.
Basing on the above facts and other acquired information I make the
decision to investigate more in detail about the syntactic and semantic
features of advertising language on tourism in English with reference to the
Vietnamese equivalents for my graduation paper, hoping that the results of the
study and analysis are useful for me and other learners farmiliarizing and
understanding the main issues connected with the technique of writing
advertising texts; and data of the study can provide information for those who
are working in advertising sphere. The main reason I choose this topic is my
interest in English language and advertising as I find advertising language is

very fascinating; therefore, I want to discover its meanings and grammar
structures.
1.2.

Aims of the research
The graduation thesis is conducted with a view to find out some

syntactic and semantic features of advertising language on tourism in English,
and suggests some possible implications for teaching and learning English for
Tourism to Vietnamese learners of English as a foreign language at Hanoi
University of Business and Technology.
1.3.

Objectives of the research
10


With a view to achieving the mentioned-above aims, some specific
objectives have been put forward as follows:
(i)

Describing the syntactic and semantic features of advertising language on
tourism in English and in Vietnamese.

(ii) Pointing out the similarities and differences of advertising language on
tourism in English and in Vietnamese in term of syntactic and semantic
features.
(iii) Suggesting some implications for teaching and learning English for
tourism to Vietnamese learners of English as a foreign language.
1.4.

Scope of the research
(i) Academic scope: The study focused on analyzing and comparing

features of English and Vietnamese advertising language on tourism in terms
of syntactic and semantic perspectives. The similarities and differences are
withdrawn from this study could be explained on the basis of cultural and
linguistic features, thus helping us find out some implications in teaching, and
learning English for tourism.
(ii) Social scope: In the field of advertising, although there are many
previous studies that analyze grammatical structures, sentence structure, and
rhetorical mode in advertising, within the scope of my study in this thesis, I
only focus on some typical syntactic and semantic features used in tourism
advertisements such as sentence types, simile, metaphor and hyperbole; most
of those tourism advertisements are about destinations of different places. Due
to the duration of time and the length as well as the references available, I only
focus my study on the analysis and comparison of about 40 short tourism
advertising passages in two languages (20 short passages in English and 20
short passages in Vietnamese).
1.5.

Significance of the research
11


(i) Theoretically, the study helps to find out the syntactic and semantic
features used in advertising language on tourism in particular and in our social
life in general.
(ii) Practically, it helps to find out the effectiveness of those linguistic
features when applying to the act of advertising and hopefully suggests some

ways for learning, teaching and translating tourism advertisements.
1.6.

Structural organization of the thesis

The thesis consists of five chapters:
Chapter 1 – Introduction provides the reason why the topic is chosen. In
this chapter, it also provides the aims and objectives of the study; the scopes
and design of the study.
Chapter 2 – Literature Review presents an overview of some previous
researches on the same subject both in English and Vietnamese. At the same
time, it gives a theoretical background to the study with theoretical
preliminaries directly related to the investigation of syntactic and semantic
features of advertising language on tourism in English with reference to the
Vietnamese equivalents.
Chapter 3– Methodology refers to the researching approach of the study
and the method to collect and analyze the collected data to help me achieve the
best results in the study.
Chapter 4 – Findings and Discussion, in which I will summarize the
findings; discussion the similar and different features of advertising language
on tourism in two languages in term of syntactic and semantic features and
implications for teaching and learning as well as writing advertisements.
Chapter 5- Conclusion provides the recapitulations, concluding remarks
and limitation of the study, and suggestions for further studies.

12


Chapter 2
LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter provides a review of previous works related to the study,
dealing with theoretical framework of investigation such as concepts of
discourse, discourse analysis, text and context which are relevant to the
purpose of the thesis, as well as the definitions, types and features of
advertising language from the syntactic and semantic perspectives.
2.1.

Review of previous studies
There have been a lot of authors whose studies relate to the language of

advertising. In “the discourse of advertising” by Guy Cook (2013, 2nd edition),
the author provides a framework for analysis of advertisements as a discursive
genre. Besides, there are some famous researches in this field which can be
mentioned here include “English in advertising: A linguistic study of
Advertising in Great Britain” by Geoffrey N.Leech, G.N (1996), “Advertising
as communication” by Gillian Dyer (1982), “The Language of Advertising” by
Vestergaard, T. & Schroder, K. (1985). In addition, there are some journals
focusing on the analysis of some certain features of advertising language such
as “Figures of Rhetoric in Advertising Language” by McQuarrie, E.F. & Mick,
D.G. (1996), “The Linguistic Features of English Advertising” by Zhu, L.
(2006).
In Vietnam, there are some doctoral dissertations and master theses
investigate various aspects of advertising language. For example: two PhD
theses done by Mai Xuan Huy (2000) on “Các đặc điểm của ngơn ngữ quảng
cáo dưới ánh sáng của lí thuyết giao tiếp (Cấu trúc ngữ nghĩa – ngữ dụng của
diễn ngôn quảng cáo)” and Ton Nu My Nhat (2005) on “A Discourse Analysis
of Travel Advertisements in English and Vietnamese”. Besides, there are some
studies directly related to the field of the study as follows:
13

“An

investigation

into

the

sentence

patterns

used

in

travel

advertisements on English and Vietnamese websites” by Phung Ngoc
Bich,VNU - CFL in 2008.
In the study, the author focused on the analysis of sentence structures
used in travel advertisements on the internet and made a comparison between
two languages. He mentions different approaches of sentence types on English
and Vietnamese websites including sentence classification by structure, by
purpose and clause patterns. The Theme – Rheme structure is also viewed and
analyzed carefully both in English and Vietnamese. The analysis of sentence
patterns also indicates the influences of culture on the writing styles of
advertisements in each language.
“An investigation into the style of the English language used in

advertising slogans issued by some world famous airlines” by Bui Thi Bich
Thuy,VNU - CFL in 2010.
In this paper, the author analyzed and discussed syntactic, semantic,
phonological and lexical features of the airline advertising slogans. She has
attempted to investigate the style of English language employed in the worldfamous airlines’ slogans and has come out with the most popular linguistic
features in advertising slogans’ language.
In addition, there are two scientific studies on tourism advertising
language in English and Vietnamese which are used as a reference in my study
including “An analysis of English Tourism Discourse” by Nguyen Phuoc Vinh
Co and Nguyen Xuan Vinh, Da Nang University; and “Phân tích diễn ngơn
quảng cáo du lịch trong Tiếng Anh và Tiếng Việt” by Nguyen Thi Dieu Ha,
Thai Nguyen University. Those studies help me a lot in making analysis and
comparison of tourism advertising language in two languages.
2.2.

Review of theoretical background
14


2.2.1. Advertising and Tourism Advertisements
2.2.1.1. Definitions of Advertising
“Advertising is a form of marketing communication used to persuade
an audience to take or continue some action, usually with respect to a
commercial offering, or political or ideological support” (Wikipedia 2015).
Thus, the function of advertising is not only to inform customers about
products and services, but also to persuade them to buy these products of
services, to increase the sales of products or services, to create and maintain a
brand identity or brand image, to communicate a change in the existing product
line, and last but not least to increase the buzz-value of the brand or the
company.

Another definition of the term presented by R.F.Taflinger, the author of
Principles and Practices of Advertising defined advertising as: “the nonpersonal communication of information usually paid for and usually persuasive
in nature about products, services or ideas by identified sponsors through the
various media."(Bovee, 1992, p. 7)
According to Otto Kleppner, advertising is “a method of delivering a
message from a sponsor, through an impersonal medium, to many people...”.
The above definitions from many experts show that advertising can
benefit both producers and customers, which means it informs about the
product to the customers and also publicizes the products in order to increase
the profit of the company. Moreover, the main purpose of advertising is to
draw attention from the reader to become familiar with and believe in the
products. Obviously, both small and big businesses have to plan advertising
strategies which are unique in order to create success for their products.
2.2.1.2. Types of Advertising

15


There are many types of advertising, each has different attributes, such
as price, viewing demographic, and medium. To better understand the nature
and purpose of advertising, it can be divided into various types of advertising
as described below (Buzzle: 2015)
1. Print Advertising: Newspapers, Magazines, Brochures and Fliers
- Print media has always been a popular advertising option. Advertising
products via newspapers or magazines is a common practice. In addition to
this, the print media also offers options like promotional brochures and fliers
for advertising purposes. Often, newspapers and magazines sell the advertising
space according to the area occupied by the ad, its position in the publication
(front page/middle page, above/below the fold), as well as the readership of the
publication.

2. Outdoor Advertising: Billboards, Kiosks, Tradeshows and Events
- this type of advertising makes use of several tools and techniques to attract
the customers outdoor. Billboard advertising is very popular. However, it has
to be really terse and catchy, in order to grab the attention of passersby. Kiosks
not only provide an easy outlet for the company's products, but also make for
an effective advertising tool to promote the company's products. A company
can organize trade fairs, or even exhibitions for advertising their products. If
not this, the company can organize several events that are closely associated
with their field. For instance, a company that manufactures sports utilities can
sponsor some tournaments to advertise its products.
3. Broadcast Advertising: Television, Radio and the Internet Television advertisements have been very popular ever since they were
introduced. The cost of television advertising often depends upon the duration
of the ad, the time of broadcast (prime time/lull time), sometimes the show on
which it will be broadcast, and of course, the popularity of the television
16


channel itself. The radio might have lost its charm owing to new-age media,
however, it remains the choice of small-scale advertisers.
4. Covert Advertising: Advertising in Movies - this is a unique kind of
advertising, in which a product or a particular brand is incorporated in some
entertainment and media channels like movies, television shows, or even
sports. There is no commercial advertising as such in the entertainment, but the
brand or the product is subtly (or sometimes evidently) showcased in the
entertainment show.
5. Surrogate Advertising: Advertising Indirectly - this is prominently
seen in cases where advertising a particular product is banned by law.
Advertisements for products like cigarettes or alcohol, which are injurious to
health, are prohibited by law in several countries. Hence, these companies
come up with several other products that have the same brand name, and

indirectly remind people of the cigarettes or alcohol of the same brand, by
advertising the other products.
6. Public Service Advertising: Advertising for Social Causes - it is
used to convey socially relevant messages about important matters and social
causes like AIDS, energy conservation, political integrity, deforestation,
illiteracy, poverty, and so on.
7. Celebrity Advertising: Using celebrities for advertising involves
signing up celebrities for campaigns, which consist of all sorts of advertising
including television or even print ads. How effective these ads are, is
something that each consumer himself can determine.
8. In-Store Advertising: This is also a popular advertising method for
large malls and departmental stores, popularized by stores such as Wal-mart.
Also known as 'point of purchase advertising', the products are usually
displayed prominently at checkout counters and packaged attractively. They
17


aim to influence the customer to make an impulse purchase, rather than
actively create a need for the product.
9. Coffee Cup Advertising: A relatively new form of mass advertising
is the placement of small ads or promotional material on paper cups for coffees
or onto the tabletops of the diner or cafe. Its origins can be traced to Australian
companies, and is now gaining popularity in Asia and America.
10. Digital Out of Home Advertising: This is a new type of
advertising, which is gaining in popularity and effectiveness as a quick way to
get the customers' attention. Digital out of home advertising can take many
forms, but is essentially a systematic arrangement of media at different venues
across a geographic location, where there is a lot of foot traffic such as cafes,
bars, gyms, gas station, and many others.
11. Digital Signage: Already a very widely used form of information

dissemination in both public and private areas, digital signage is growing ever
more prevalent, as it is a cheap alternative to the costly excesses of television
commercials. It is primarily done through the installation of LED or plasma
screens in public places, such as railway and subway stations, cafes, airports,
retail stores, hotels, and many other similar locations.
12. Smartphone Advertising: The world of smartphones is an evergrowing and changing one. The mobile connectivity it offers to consumers
makes it fertile ground for advertising. Advertisers are striving to make ads
which are more adaptable to smaller screens, and make them available across a
range of operating systems such as Android, iOS and Windows.
13. Niche Advertising - this type of advertising deals with targeting
these select groups of customers with tailored ads. Companies are taking
advantage of online blogs and websites which cater to exclusive content such
as exotic travel or wines or regional cuisine, and using these as platforms to
18


advertise their products. The use of Internet marketing for these niche offerings
ensure that potential customers are exposed to the ads whenever they search for
related terms or log on to a particular site.
14. User-Generated Advertising - This is a radically new form of
advertising that is interactive to the point of letting customers create their own
ads for the brand, one of which is chosen as the brands official ad for a
particular time period. User-generated ads are not cost prohibitive, and allow
the company to generate a lot of publicity via word-of-mouth.
2.2.2. Functions of Advertising Language
It is generally acknowledged that language has a powerful influence over
people and their behavior, especially in the field of advertising. The choice of
words and phrases to convey specific message with the purpose to influence
people is very important. Thus, language of advertising is supposed to be
colorful, impressive and powerful to persuade a potential customer to buy a

product or service.
According to Leech (1966:25), most advertising language comes under
the broader heading of “loaded language” that is aimed to change the will,
opinions or attitude of its audience….etc. What is characteristic of advertising
and what distinguishes it from other types of loaded language such as political
journalism is the main objective, to sell a product (Leech 1966:26). Cook (in
Okeke2006:13) sees advertising as a part of discourse. In the book the
Discourse of Advertising, Cook argues that discourse has to do with text,
content, interaction and persuasion and advertising performs all these
functions.
In order to fulfill its functions, an advertisement must also meet the
criteria of a successful persuasive text. According to Leech, four major
functions of a successful advertisement are identified as follows:
19


• Attention Value (Attention) - an advertisement has to attract addresses’
attention. It must be in the limelight, and it relies on the unconventional
usage of language. To draw attention to itself, an advertisement can
contain unusual illustration or distinctive typographical features.
Advertisers also invent new words, i.e. neologism which can motivate
the reader to encode their meaning. Similarly, literary devices such as
metaphor can be exploited by advertisers (Leech 1966: 27-8)
• Readability (Interest) - the reader need be motivated to sustain reading
the adverts. The ads must be pleasurable and easy to read in order to
maintain the interest it has evoked. Therefore, simple sentences prevail
and lexis, too, is far from the complex. The style has to be personal and
colloquial, and also the vocabulary needs be familiar (Leech 1966:28).
• Memorability (Desire), i.e., an ad must be perceived as familiar. The
message of an advert needs to be remembered by the recipient and

recognized as familiar. An advertising message has to make an appeal,
an impression on the reader and importantly, this appeal has to be
remembered, has to last and lead to the act of buying the product. Thus,
repetition is one of the most frequent techniques used in advertising to
enhance memorability.
• Selling power, i.e., an advert must prompt the reader to purchase the
product, it also must facilitate the customers to buy and promote the
advertised item or idea. Imperatives are ideally suited to tell people
clearly what kind of action to take and therefore feature very frequently
in advertising language.
2.2.3. Features of Advertising Language
20


2.2.3.1. Syntactic Features
Syntactic features are the features involving the rules governing the
structure of a language such as the form of words, the structure of phrases,
clauses and sentences, word order, collocation…etc. The major features of
English used in advertising on the syntactic level in this study will be presented
from the aspect of sentence types and sentence structures.
a) Sentence types
According to Quirk & Greenbaum (1990:231), sentences may be divided
into four major syntactic types: declaratives, interrogatives, imperatives and
exclamatives. Their use mostly corresponds with four different discourse
functions (Quirk & Greenbaum 1990)
Declaratives are sentences in which a subject is present and generally
precedes the verb. They are primarily used to convey information.
For example: I feel Slovenia Naturally Nepal - Once is not enough
(International Journal of Geography and Geology: 2014)
Interrogatives are sentences which are formally marked in one of two

ways: yes-no interrogatives or wh-interrogatives. They are primarily used to
seek information on a specific point.
For example: Did Pauline give Tom a digital watch for his birthday?; or
What did Pauline give Tom for his birthday?
Imperatives are sentences that normally have no overt grammatical
subject, and whose verb has the base form. Their discourse function is
primarily a directive which means that they are mostly used to instruct
somebody to do something.
For example: Jump into Ireland Visit Bangladesh before tourists come
(International Journal of Geography and Geology: 2014)

21


Exclamatives are sentences which have an initial phrase introduced by
what or how, usually with subject-verb order. They are primarily used for
expressing the extent to which the speaker is impressed by something.
E.g.: Smile! You are in Spain! Incredible (International Journal of
Geography and Geology: 2014)
In Vietnamese, according to Diep Quang Ban (1989)“câu là đơn vị cấu
trúc lớn nhất trong tổ chức ngữ pháp của một ngôn ngữ”. Regarding the
classification of sentences, he wrote “câu có thể được phân loại theo hai
phương diện: phương diện cấu tạo ngữ pháp và phương diện mục đích nói”. In
term of classification of sentences by communication purpose, the sentences
are divided into the four following sentence types [2:161]:
- Câu trình bày (hay cịn gọi là câu trần thuật, câu tuyên bố)
(declarative): e.g., Con đi đây.
- Câu nghi vấn (interrogative): e.g., Vì sao mà họ vẫn chưa đến?
- Câu cầu khiến hay câu mệnh lệnh (imperative): e.g., Con đi đi!
- Câu cảm thán (exclamative): Ô hay! Bà cứ tưởng con đùa (Nam Cao)

b) Sentence structure
Sentence structure is the order and arrangement of the clauses in a
sentence, which is a group of words that express a complete thought.
According to Quirk and his colleagues (1985) in the book “a
Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language”, sentences are either
simple or multiple. A simple sentence consists of a single independent clause.
A multiple sentence contains one or more clauses as its immediate constituents.
The major types of multiple sentences are the compound and the
complex sentences. A compound sentence consists of two or more coordinated
main clauses; the clauses of a compound sentence provide classic instances of a
paratactic relationship that is they have equivalent function.
22


A complex sentence is like a simple sentence in that it consists of only
one main clause, but unlike a simple sentence it has one or more subordinate
clauses functioning as an element of the sentence. For example:
You can put the dish on the table. (simple sentence)
I admire her reasoning but I reject her conclusions. (compound
sentence)
Although I admire her reasoning, I reject her conclusions (complex
sentence)
In Vietnamese, according to Diep Quang Ban in terms of grammatical
structures, sentences can be divided into simple, compound and complex ones
based on the number of subject and its predicate in the sentence. Simple
sentences are the ones consisting of one subject and predicate. Compound and
complex sentences have more than one subject and predicate. However, with
regard to the relation between subject, predicate and others in a sentence, a
compound sentence is the one consisting of one subject and predicated
embedded within another while complex sentence is not. For example:

Tay xách nón, chị ấy bước lên thềm nhà [2:99] (simple sentence)
Cơn bão ấy to quá làm ngã khá nhiều cây [2:93] (complex sentence)
Vì trời mưa, họ đến muộn [2:99] (compound sentence)
2.2.3.2

Semantic Features

According to Yule, semantics is the study of the relationships between
linguistic forms and entities; that is how words literally connect to things.
Semantic analysis also attempts to establish the relationships between verbal
descriptions and states of affairs in the world as accurate or not, regardless of
who produces that description.

23