Syntactic and semantic features of run in english and chạy in vietnamese

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A. THESIS
SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES
OF “RUN” IN ENGLISH AND “CHẠY”
IN VIETNAMESE
(Đặc điểm cú pháp và ngữ nghĩa của từ “run” trong
tiếng Anh và “chạy” trong tiếng Việt)

DAO THI HUONG
Field: English Language
Code: 8.22.02.01
Supervisor: Đặng Nguyên Giang, Ph.D.

Hanoi, 2020


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

Đào Thị Hương

Approved by
SUPERVISOR

Đặng Nguyên Giang, Ph.D.
Date: ……………………

i


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the following people for
their great supports during my two-year time for the MA course.
First and foremost, I would like to express my deep gratitude to Mr. Đặng
Nguyên Giang, Ph.D, my supervisor, for his clear guidance, insightful
comments and dutiful supervision.
I would like to give my sincere thanks to all the lectures at Hanoi Open
University for their knowledge, experience and enthusiasm in their lectures,
from which I have acquired valuable knowledge and inspiration to fulfill this
minor thesis.
My deep thanks also go to the headmaster of Kien Thuy high school and
many of my friends and colleagues, whose support and encouragement help me
to have this thesis accomplished.
Last but not least, I must express my gratitude to my family. It is their
endless love and expectations that have motivated me to complete this thesis. I
am immensely thankful for all the assistance they have given me.

ii


TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Certificate of originality ……….…………………………………………. i

Acknowledgements .……...………………………………………………. ii
Table of contents …………………………………………………………. iii
Abstract ………...………………………………………………………... vi
List of tables ……………………………………………………………… viii
Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION………………………………………….. 1
1.1. Rationale……………………………………………………………... 1
1.2. Aims and objectives of the study…………………………………….. 2
1.3. Research questions…………………………………………………… 3
1.4. Methodology …...……………………………………………………. 3
1.4.1. Data collection ……….……………………………………….. 3
1.4.2. Research methods …………………………………………….

4

1.5. Scope of the study …………………………….………….………….. 4
1.6. Significance of the study ……………………………...……………... 5
1.7. Structure of the study………………………………….……………… 5
Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW………………………………….. 7
2.1. Previous study

7

2.2. Words and word classes…………………………….………………...
2.2.1. Polysemy of words……………………………………………. 7
2.2.2. Word classes………………………………………………….. 9
2.3. Underlying theoretical frameworks ….………………..……………... 14
2.3.1. Theory of contrastive analysis ……………………………….. 14
2.3.2. Theory of syntax and semantics ……………………………… 16
2.4. Chapter summary…………………………………………………….. 18
iii

20
Chapter 3: SYNTACTIC FEATURES OF “RUN” IN ENGLISH
AND “CHẠY” IN VIETNAMESE…………...………………………… 21
3.1. Syntactic features of “run” in English……………………………….

21

3.1.1. “Run” as a verb……………………………………………….. 21
3.1.2. “Run” as a noun ………………………………...…………....

29

3.1.3. “Run” as a component in a compound word ………………… 29
3.2. Syntactic features of “chạy” in Vietnamese………………………….. 30
3.2.1. “Chạy” as a verb………………………………………………. 30
3.2.2. “Chạy” as an adjective ………………………………………. 32
3.2.3. “Chạy” as a component in a compound word ……………….. 32
3.3. A comparison between “run” in English and “chạy” in Vietnamese in
terms of syntactic features……………………………………………….... 32
3.3.1. Syntactic features found in both languages…………………... 32
3.3.2. Syntactic features unique to English…………………………. 33
3.3.3. Syntactic features unique to Vietnamese……………………… 34
3.4. Chapter summary…………………………………………………….. 36
Chapter 4: SEMANTIC FEATURES OF “RUN” IN ENGLISH
AND “CHẠY” IN VIETNAMESE……………………...……………… 38
4.1. Semantic features of “run” in English…………..……………………. 38
4.1.1. “Run” as a verb………………………...…………………….. 38
4.1.2. “Run” as a noun…………………………………………...…. 42

4.2. Semantic features of “chạy” in Vietnamese………………………….. 45
4.2.1. “Chạy” as a verb………………………………….…………. 45
4.2.2. “Chạy” as an adjective ……………………………………… 47

iv


4.3. A comparison between “run” in English and “chạy” in Vietnamese in
terms of semantic features ……………………………………………….. 47
4.3.1. Semantic features found in both languages……………….....

47

4.3.2. Semantic features unique to English………………………… 50
4.3.3. Semantic features unique to Vietnamese……………………. 54
4.4. Chapter summary…………………………………………………….. 55
Chapter 5: CONCLUSION……………………………………………... 56
5.1. Recapitulation………………………………………………………... 57
5.2. Concluding remarks………………………………………………….. 60
5.3. Limitations of the study …………………………………………….

60

5.4. Recommendations and suggestions for further studies ………………. 62
5.4.1. For English teaching and learning…………………….…… 62
5.4.2. For translation from English to Vietnamese and vice
versa.………………………………………………………………. 63
5.4. 3. Suggestions for further research …………………………..

63

REFERENCES…………………………………………………………... 65

v


ABSTRACT
An investigation of run in English and chạy in Vietnamese is carried out
in the present study in order to clarify the features of those words and find out
the similarities and differences between them. Description and contrastive
analysis are regarded as the main methods used in the present thesis. Data used
for analysis were mainly collected from dictionaries and the internet. Our
investigation reveals that run in English and chạy in Vietnamese may function
as verbs. The biggest difference between run in English and chạy in Vietnamese
in terms of syntactic features lies in the verbal forms and the co-ordinate
possibility of each in the clauses. In terms of semantic features, the findings of
the study reveals that there are nineteen meanings in common conveyed by the
two verbs, run in English and chạy in Vietnamese. When working as a verb,
run in English has more meanings than chạy in Vietnamese. There are thirty
meanings conveyed by run, unique to English whereas chạy has four meanings
which are unique to Vietnamese. Run in English may be a noun which has
fourteen main meanings, and chạy in Vietnamese can function as an adjective
and has only one meaning. The thesis also presents the implications for English
teaching and learning as well as translation.

vi


LIST OF TABLES

Page
Table 3.1. Forms and functions of the verb “run” in English (adapted
from Quirk & Green Baum (1987) …………………………………..

vii

20


Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION

1.1. Rationale
It is a fact that language is an essential form of communication. It allows
people to convey and elaborate their perspective. It means that language is the
bridge to connect people all over the world. Therefore, language is a subtle and
complex instrument used to communicate an incredible number of different
things. Being a basic component of language, word plays an important role in
communication. Words help us to express many shades of meaning at different
levels of style. It means that word-meanings can be understood in different
ways depending on contexts. For that reason, learners, users or translators of
English often meet a lot of difficulties in expressing what need to be said or
written.
“Run” is one of the words that possess the biggest quantity of meanings
and highest used frequency in English. In the book “Word Frequencies in
Written and Spoken English”: based on the British National Corpus by
Leech, Rayson & Wilson (2001), “run” is one of the motion verbs considered
as the most common one with high frequency. However, this word is a kind of
fairly complicated words. For Vietnamese students, the differences in two
languages cause a lot of difficulties in using this word. They may feel confused

when encountering such a word or may not understand and use it effectively.
For example, in English we say “Would you run (= go quickly or in a hurry)
to the post office and get me some stamps?” or “The film runs (= lasts) for two
hours.” or “We've run (= operated) the computer program, but nothing
happens.” In these sentences, “run” is used as a verb with different meanings.
On the other hand, this word is also used as a noun like in the following
sentence: “Growing nervousness among investors led to a run on some banks.”

1


In Vietnamese, the word “chạy” is not only a verb which indicates a
physical activity only but also other kinds of word implying different meanings
in real life communication. To some extent, it is not too difficult to find such
circumstances in which people use the word “chạy”: tàu chạy nhanh [the train
runs fast], chạy thầy chạy thuốc [to run about for a doctor and for medicines],
chạy chức chạy quyền [bribe to be promoted], or công việc rất chạy [the work
is running very smoothly], etc.
As a teacher of English, I find that learners may know a lot of English
lexical items by learning vocabulary word-lists by heart but they do not know
how to use them in appropriate contexts. The difficulties that Vietnamese
learners may meet are not only in semantic features but also in syntactic forms
as well.
For all the reasons above, the thesis entitled Syntactic and Semantic
Features of "Run" in English and "Chạy" in Vietnamese is chosen in order to
help the author successfully accomplish these challenging tasks. Moreover, the
researcher hopes that this attempt will help Vietnamese learners of English
have a better understanding of the two words and then use them more
effectively.
1.2. Aims and objectives

The aim of the study is clarifying the features of “run” in English and
“chạy” in Vietnamese to help the Vietnamese learners of English to study and
use these words correctly and effectively.
In order to achieve the aim, the study is expected to reach the following
objectives:
- To investigate syntactic features of “run” in English and “chạy” in
Vietnamese;
- To investigate semantic features of “run” in English and “chạy” in
Vietnamese;

2


- To uncover the similarities and differences between “run” in English
and “chạy” in Vietnamese in terms of syntactic and semantic features.
1.3. Research questions
The objectives of the study can be elaborated into the research questions as
follows:
1. What are the syntactic features of “run” in English and “chạy” in
Vietnamese?
2. What are the semantic features of “run” in English and “chạy” in
Vietnamese?
3. What are the similarities and differences between “run” in English
and “chạy” in Vietnamese in terms of syntactic and semantic
features?
1.4. Methodology
1.4.1. Data Collection
It is a matter of fact that we can make comparison of languages in various
ways. We may start from categories of traditional grammar, phrases, a whole
vocabulary or a collection of texts (Dirven & Verspoor, 2004, p. 250) with any

appropriate database and procedures. The usage-based or empirically based
(Bybee, 2009) foundation of cognitive grammar suggests that real linguistic
examples taken from genuine usage-data should form the basis for linguistic
analysis and theory construction (Langlotz, 2006; Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech,
& Svartvik, 1985).
Accordingly, the recent development of linguistics has witnessed the rise
of corpus-linguistics, which bases linguistic analyses on large computer-aided
corpora of both spoken and written language (Kemmer & Barlow, 2000).
Cross-linguistic corpus studies require comparable corpora. While there is a
wide range of corpora, such as the Bank of English (owned by Collins
COBUILD) or the British National Corpus for English (BNC), for the analysis
of English, no such corpora are readily available for Vietnamese. We
3


deliberately use standard reference works; granted, this choice limits the scope
of this study, the dictionaries are a significant part of public discourse and
dictionary entries are, by their nature, extracted from their natural context
(Deignan, 2005). They are thus representative of the way in which a speech
community constructs its cultural models through language – in this case the
way in which the English and Vietnamese cultures conceptualize or encode the
emotions in question.
The data for the present study comes from standard current
dictionaries in both English and Vietnamese, which are valuable tools for the
scientific study of languages (Anshen & Aronoff, 1999) due to their “objective
and readily verifiable reference” (Neumann, 2001, p. 126).
1.4.2. Research methods
Due to the main aims and objectives of the study, description and
contrastive exploitation would be mainly carried out throughout the process.
Also, the thesis makes use of the English language as the target and the

Vietnamese one as the source language (the base language).
Descriptive method is used to describe in details the syntactic and
semantic features of “run” in English and “chạy” in Vietnamese.
Contrastive analysis will be used to identify the similarities and
differences between “run” in English and “chạy” in Vietnamese in terms of
syntactic and semantic features.
1.5. Scope of the study
The present study investigates the syntactic and semantic features of
“run” in English and “chạy” in Vietnamese. The description and the analysis of
the features of the two words are from recently published dictionaries. All the
authors of these works affirm that all the forms and meanings of these words
are current and used, or understood by most native speakers. Most of the
examples of the word “run” given in this study are taken from Cambridge
Dictionary or Oxford Dictionary. Besides, the examples of “chạy” in
4


Vietnamese are taken from some online dictionaries and some of them are
given by the author. The study mainly focuses on the word “Run” in English
as a verb and a noun, and the word “Chạy” in Vietnamese as a verb and an
adjective.

1.6. Significance of the study
Theoretically, the findings of the study, to some extent, prove that the
theoretical frameworks (the theory of contrastive analysis and the theory of
syntax and semantics) are effective in studying languages in general and words
in particular. The two words are quite popular; therefore, the investigation is
highly reliable in terms of theoretical frameworks suggested.
Practically, for language teaching (both English and Vietnamese), the
study facilitates learners’

communication because language is

for

communication, and words are an indispensable part of expressions. The work
will provide assistance to English-speaking learners of Vietnamese and
Vietnamese learners of English to distinguish the uses of “run” in English and
“chạy” in Vietnamese. The work will also enable learners to tell when the two
words are similar and different, which is likely to be useful for their study.
Language teachers will be aided to help their learners reach this communicative
goal. For translation, knowledge of words from this work will help translators
find closest equivalents to the expressions in the source language.
1.7. Structure of the study
In addition to the references, the thesis is composed of five chapters:
Chapter 1, INTRODUCTION, gives the reason why this topic has been
chosen for the research as well as its aims and objectives, scope, significance
and organizational structure
Chapter 2, LITERATURE REVIEW, presents the previous studies
relating to the research area and theoretical background employed for
conducting the thesis
5


Chapter 3, SYNTACTIC FEATURES OF “RUN” IN ENGLISH AND
“CHẠY” IN VIETNAMESE, shows syntactic features of run in English and
chạy in Vietnamese and make a comparison between them
Chapter 4, SEMANTIC FEATURES OF “RUN” IN ENGLISH AND
“CHẠY” IN VIETNAMESE, shows semantic features of run in English and
chạy in Vietnamese and make a comparison between them

Chapter 5, CONCLUSION, makes a brief summary of the whole thesis,
points out some limitations and give recommendation as well as suggestions
for a further study.
References come at the end of the study

6


Chapter 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Previous study
Linguistics is the scientific discipline dedicated to the study of human
languages, and it comprises three main subfields. The first focuses on the forms
of languages, and it includes syntax, morphology and phonology. The second
deals

with

meaning

in

languages

and

includes

the

studies

of semantics and pragmatics. In the third branch of linguistics, researchers deal
with languages in different contexts, including history, human evolution and
neuroscience.
Since presenting particularly interesting syntactic and semantic
characteristics, the word “run” has been the subject of different studies by
linguists both in English and in Vietnamese. Many linguists have done research
into this linguistic field. The description and analyses are based on the starting
points from Chomsky (1957). The descriptions of syntactic and semantic views
are through different ages in the history of linguistic as Bullokar, William
(1785). Chomsky (1957) focuses on a "formalized theory of linguistic
structure". According to Dixon (1991), the word “run” is mentioned as a verb,
which refers to a mode of motion. In Vietnamese, there have been several
authors who mentions the issue in their Vietnamese grammar books such as
Nguyễn Hữu Quỳnh, Nguyễn Thu Minh (2001) and Diệp Quang Ban (2005),
etc. Besides, words have been recognized and explained systematically in the
studies of Vietnamese vocabulary by Nguyễn Thiện Giáp (1975/1985).
Moreover, a series of research works on Vietnamese syntax from different
theoretical perspectives have been carried out. It should be noticed the works
by Đỗ Hữu Châu (1986), highlighting the relationship between words and
functions, words and semantics, words and structure. In another direction, Võ
Đại Quang (2005) focuses on syntax, semantics and pragmatics.

7


Relating to the words “run” and “chạy”, a study entitled “A Contrastive
Analysis between the Verb ‘Run’ in English and the Verb ‘Chạy’ in
Vietnamese” (Nguyễn Hùng Tiến, 2010) was also designed. However, this

study only mentioned “run” and “chạy” as the verbs only.
In this thesis, the words “run” and “chạy” are researched in different
aspects and with different methods. Not only their syntactic features but also
their semantic features are respectively investigated in details, which have
never been studied before. Basing on the features found, the similarities and
differences between English and Vietnamese are given in terms of the subjects
studied.
2.2. Words and word classes
We think of words as the basic units of language. When a baby begins to
speak, the way the excited mother reports what has happened is: ‘Tommy has
said his first word!’ We would be surprised at a mother who described little
Tommy’s first utterance as a sentence. Sentences come later, we are inclined to
feel, when words are strung together meaningfully. That is not to say that a
sentence must always consist of more than one word. One-word commands
such as ‘Go!’ or ‘Sit!’, although they crop up relatively seldom in everyday
conversation or reading, are not in any way odd or un-English. Nevertheless,
learning to talk in early childhood seems to be a matter of putting words
together, not of taking sentences apart. The following sections will discuss the
polysemy of words and their classes.
2.2.1. Polysemy of words
Semantics is traditionally described as the study of meaning
communicated through language (Saeed, 2009), in simpler terms, it is the
branch of linguistics that deals with the meaning of words and sentences. It is
true that meaning can be studied through different linguistic views, but it is
undeniable that semantics is an indispensable linguistic branch which deals
with this matter. “To understand a sentence we must know much more than the
8


analysis of this sentence on each linguistic level. We must also know the

reference and meaning of the morphemes and words of which it is composed,
naturally, grammar cannot be expected to be of much help here. These notions
form the subject matter for semantics” (Chomsky, 2002).
According to Cruse (2000), within the study of meaning there are many
areas of interest, the main ones are the following:
(1) Grammatical semantics: studies aspects of meaning closely related to
syntax;
(2) Logical semantics: studies the “relations between natural language
and formal logical systems such as the propositional and predicate calculi”;
(3) Linguistic pragmatics: which (for present purposes) can be simply
defined as the branch of linguistics that studies the way that context influences
meaning;
(4) Lexical semantics: studies the meaning of ‘content’ words.
The idea of a word containing multiple meanings dates back to the stoics,
who observed that “a single concept can be expressed by several different
words (synonymy) and that conversely, one word can carry different meanings
(polysemy)” (Ravin and Leacock, 2000). But the first time the term “polysemy”
appeared was in Michel Bréal’s Essai de Sémantique (1897), later translated
into English under the name of Semantics: Studies in the Science of Meaning
(1900), from which the following excerpt, containing the newly coined term, is
taken:
“The new meaning of a word, whatever it may be, does not make an end
of the old. They exist alongside of one another. The same term can be
employed alternately in the strict or in the metaphorical sense, in the
restricted or in the expanded sense, in the abstract or in the concrete
sense. In proportion as a new signification is given to a word, it appears
to multiply and produce fresh examples, similar in form, but differing in
value. We shall call this phenomenon of multiplication Polysemia1”
9

This definition could nowadays be thought of as obsolete, but it was of
a vital importance in order to set the principles that govern the study of
polysemy in present days. From 1900 onwards, many studies have been carried
out concerning lexical ambiguity, but it seems that decades of psycholinguistic
research have focused on homonymy comprehension rather than polysemy
comprehension (Klepousniotou et al., 2008). This fact is curious as polysemy
is much more frequent in language than homonymy, in fact, according to Lee
(1990), 93 of the 100 most frequent words in English text are polysemous. This
little attention towards polysemy, in terms of research, could have been due to
“the predominance of generative grammar with its focus on the sentence as the
central unit of meaning. However, with the emergence of the cognitive
grammar during the 1980s polysemy emerged on the research agenda as a key
topic in lexical semantics” (Falkum & Vicente, 2015).
According to Cruse (2000) polysemy can be divided into two different
types: linear and non-linear. Linear polysemy accounts for a specializationgeneralization relation between senses and, in turn, is divided into four types:
autohyponymy, automeronymy, autosuperordination and autoholonymy.
Metaphorical and metonymous polysemy are thought to belong to the nonlinear category. In order to obtain a more in-depth description of these terms, a
full description will be given below.
Even though Cruse’s theory on Polysemy types is the most accepted one,
there are many other linguists who have made their own hypothesis. Among
these linguists we find Andreas Blank, who gives an alternative to Cruse’s
classification, in his article Polysemy in the Lexicon, providing seven different
polysemy types based on the origins of polysemous words. Blank agrees with
Cruse in that he also considers metonymic and metaphorical polysemy but, in
his theory, there are five more types: co-hyponymous, taxonomic, autoconverse, antiphrastic and auto-antonymic.

10

2.2.2. Word classes
Word classes are among the very few grammatical concepts that have
continuously played a central role in grammatical theory and grammar writing
throughout the two and a half millennia of documented linguistic enquiry in the
Western world. Their critical position is due to the fact that they provide central
building blocks for the architecture of grammars and of lexical entries in
dictionaries. Grammatical rules are stated in terms of word classes and there is
a mutual dependency between the grammatical rule system and the word class
system. Word classes are thus a typical interface phenomenon and their pivotal
role is reflected in the fact that there are a number of different terms used to
refer to them. These include, in particular, syntactic or grammatical categories,
lexical categories, and the traditional term parts of speech. These terms
highlight different aspects of grammatical word classification (morphology,
syntax, semantics, pragmatics/discourse). Some authors hold that they refer to
substantially different classifications, while others consider them largely
synonymous. It is common to distinguish between major word classes
(comprising nouns, verbs, adjectives, and sometimes also adverbs and
appositions) and minor word classes. The latter include, on the one hand, some
smallish, closed word classes which are internally tightly structured such as
pronouns, demonstratives and articles, and conjunctions. On the other hand,
they include interjections and idiophones, which are often seen to be at the
boundaries of the language system. Items that do not fit any of the other
categories are often lumped together under the term particles. Other large-scale
classifications are open versus closed classes and content versus function words
(lexical versus functional categories in some contemporary frameworks). These
roughly match the major/minor divide, but they draw the boundary somewhat
differently. Major controversies pertain to the ways word classes can and
should be identified and to their universality and variability.

11

Classifications can be based on syntactic (distributional), morphological,
semantic, or pragmatic criteria. The resulting classifications often fail to
correlate, with authors being divided as to how to deal with the incongruities.
Some opt for a single (type of) criterion, others make use of a combination of
criteria, and a third group argues that classifications on each level (or at least
the morphological and syntactic levels) have to be considered separately and
that the question of how the classifications fit across levels is subject to crosslinguistic variation. A further issue pertains to the further sub-classification of
major word classes, an issue not covered in this entry, as there is practically no
literature that discusses it specifically from the point of view of word
classification. Nouns, for example, may belong to different declension classes,
may obey different number-marking regularities in accordance with their
semantics (mass, count, collections, etc.), and so on.
Traditionally, words can be classified as follows:
(1) The verb
A group of words cannot be described as a sentence or a clause unless at
least one of the words is a verb. In some ways, we can describe it as the most
important part of speech because it is the 'action' word that tells the listener or
reader what is happening in the sentence. Verbs can be “action” words
like run, initiate, judge, throw, but they can also denote less active notions and
have

more

to

do

with

mental

processes

and

perceptions,

like see, know, think and so on.
(2) The noun
A noun is a word which is used to denote a person (traffic warden,
woman, Prime Minister, pianist etc.), a concrete or abstract entity (binoculars,
fork, field, truth, incoherence etc.) or a place (office, garden, railway station).
These are all common nouns; there are also proper nouns which are the
names of a specific person, place, event etc., usually starting with a capital
letter, for example, York, John, Christmas, Saturday.
12


A noun can be extended to a noun phrase. In the example phrases given
below, the noun (in the first example) and the noun phrase (in the remaining
examples) is in bold. Note how much the noun phrase can be extended by
adding extra information each time.
Dogs can be vicious.
Some dogs can be vicious.
Some of the dogs can be vicious.
Some of the bigger dogs can be vicious.
Some of the bigger dogs in the dog pound can be vicious.
(3) The adverb

The traditional approach to adverbs has been to assign mainly those
words which are made from adjectives by the addition of the ending –
ly (quickly, hopelessly), plus certain other words which are difficult to classify,
like not, just and soon. Their main function is to qualify the action of the verb
in the clause in some way, but they can also be used to add more information
to an adjective or other adverb e.g. awfully good, incredibly slowly. The class
of adverbs is very wide-ranging in form and is used to add comments to many
of the other word classes.
(4) The preposition
Prepositions allow us to talk about the way in which two parts of a
sentence are related to each other. They include words like in, on, under,
beside, through, inside, before, opposite. More often than not, these
relationships are to do with either time or space, but other types of relationship,
such as possession, cause and effect and method can be expressed by using
prepositions. The words themselves are generally short and simple but some
prepositions are multi-word units; for example, out of, by means of, in spite of,
instead of, up to etc. Unless they are part of a verb (get in, pick up, switch off),
prepositions are always followed by a phrase containing a noun – at school, in
the summer, over the moon and so on.
13


(5) The adjective
An adjective gives the reader or speaker extra information about a noun
or delimits it in some way. It can occur in two positions in a phrase:
- before the noun as in clear water, beautiful beaches, a terrible
decision. The adjectives in these examples are said to be attributive,
- following any form of the verb be (e.g. am, is, was, been) and similar
verbs (seem, appear, become) as in the water became clear, the
beaches are beautiful. These adjectives are in predicative position.

(6) The pronoun
Pronouns are usually treated as a special sub-class of nouns. This is
because they stand in for a noun or group of nouns. They are limited in number
and belong to what is called a closed set, that is, a group of words to which new
members are, for practical purposes, not allowed. Some examples of pronouns
are: I, you, he, she, our, its, something, anyone and so on. Thus, instead of
saying, Bill’s arrived. Bill’s in the lounge, we prefer Bill’s arrived. He’s in the
lounge. Or a person called for you; better would be someone called for you.
There are several other words which fall into this class; for example, (the)
one(s), when used to replace dishes in the example: pass me the dishes - the
ones on the top shelf.
(7) The conjunction
It would be very unusual for anyone to either speak or write completely
in simple sentences; instead we tend to use a mixture of simple, compound and
complex sentences. One way to create longer, more complicated sentences is
to use conjunctions. As we have already noted in the section on types of clause,
conjunctions serve to connect two or more clauses, phrases or words together
to make longer constructions. In the following examples, the conjunction is in
bold:
The coffee was strong, but sweet.
We can go to the match or watch it on TV.
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She has a dog and two cats.
When I arrived home, they had already eaten.
I had to stop driving because the rain was so bad.
Can I have a word with you, if you’ve got the time?
Although he can’t swim, he goes sailing.
There are two types of conjunction. The first is the coordinating

conjunction. This type is always used to connect elements that share the same
grammatical status, that is, main clause to main clause, verb to verb, noun to
noun,

adjective

to

adjective

and

so

on.

The

second

type

is

the subordinating conjunction, which most often joins two or more unequal
clauses to one another. Typically, a main clause will be connected to a
subordinate clause as we saw in the section on clause types. the subordinate
clause (which you will remember cannot stand on its own, but needs another
more important clause to complete the meaning) begins with a conjunction,
here when, because, if and although.

2.3. Theoretical frameworks
We will apply a select range of theories to the investigation of the
syntactic and semantic features of “run” in English and “chạy” in Vietnamese:
the theory of contrastive analysis and the theory of syntax and semantics.
2.3.1. Theory of contrastive analysis
According to Krzeszowski (1990. p. 35), ‘No exact or reliable
exploration of facts can be conducted without a theoretical background,
providing concepts, hypotheses, and theories which enable the investigator to
describe the relevant facts and to account for them in terms of significant
generalizations’ (cited in Nguyễn Văn Trào, 2009, p. 12).
In the present inquiry, the theories of contrastive linguistics of König and
Gast (2008) and Chaturvedi (1973) are applied to the investigation of the
syntactic and semantic features of “run” in English and “chạy” in Vietnamese.
König and Gast (2008) suppose that contrastive linguistics is a branch of
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comparative linguistics that is concerned with pairs of languages which are
‘socio-culturally linked’. According to these authors, two languages can be said
to be socio-culturally linked when (i) they are used by a considerable number
of bi- or multilingual speakers, and/or (ii) a substantial amount of ‘linguistic
output’ (text, discourse) is translated from one language into the other. English
and Vietnamese are socio-cultural linked because they satisfy both criteria
given above.
Contrastive linguistics invariably requires a socio-cultural link between
the languages investigated, but that it is not restricted to pair wise language
comparison. Contrastive linguistics thus aims to arrive at results that carry the
potential of being used for practical purposes, e.g. in foreign language teaching
and translation. As it provides the descriptive basis for such applications, its
research programme can also be summarized as ‘comparison with a purpose’.

‘Comparison’ in the present study is understood as the identification of
similarities and differences between two or more categories along a specific
(set of) dimension(s) (König and Gast 2008). We mean that the categories
compared must be of the same type, i.e. there has to be a set of properties that
they have in common in both languages.
In order to carry out a contrastive study, Chaturvedi (1973) suggests
some guiding principles as follows:
(i) to analyse the mother tongue and the target language independently
and completely; (ii) to compare the two languages item-wise-item at all
levels of their structure; (iii) to arrive at the categories of a) similar
features, b) partially similar features, c) dissimilar features - for the target
language; and (iv) to arrive at principles of text preparation, test framing
and target language teaching in general.
The contrastive analysis emphasises the influence of the mother tongue
in learning a second language and translation. This type of study will provide
an objective and scientific base for second language teaching as well as
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translation. For knowing the significantly similar structural and semantic
properties in both languages, the first step to be adopted is that both languages
should be analysed independently. After the independent analysis, to sort out
the different features of the two languages, comparison of the two languages is
necessary. From this analysis it is easy to make out that at different levels of
structural and semantic properties of these two languages there are some
features quite similar and some quite dissimilar.
2.3.2. Theory of syntax and semantics
Theory of syntax
Syntax is a set of rules in language. It dictates how words from different
parts of speech are put together in order to convey a complete thought.

According to Dixon (1991), syntax deals with the way in which words are
combined together. Syntax is understood to be the 7 theory of the structure of
sentences in a language. This view has its direct antecedents in the theory of
immediate constituents, in which the function of syntax is to mediate between
the observed forms of a sentence and its meaning. Bloomfield (1933), he states
“we could not understand the form of a language if we merely reduced all the
complex forms to their ultimate constituents”. He argued that in order to
account for the meaning of a sentence, it is necessary to recognize how
individual constituents such words and morphemes constitute more complex
forms.
Syntax is now the study of the principles and rules that govern the ways
in which words are combined to form phrases, clauses and sentences in a
language. Syntax, which is a subfield of grammar, focuses on the word order
of a language and the relationships between words. In other words, morphology
deals with word formation out of morphemes whereas syntax deals with phrase
and sentence formation out of words. Syntax structures are analyzable into
sequences of syntactic categories or syntactic classes, these being established
on the basic of the syntactic relationships and linguistic items have with other
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