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

NGUYỄN THỊ VIỆT HOA

A STUDY ON THE PROSODIC FEATURES IN RESPONSES
VIA ENGLISH AND THE EQUIVALENT EXPRESSIONS
IN VIETNAMESE
(Nghiên cứu đặc điểm ngôn điệu trong sự phản hồi thông qua
tiếng Anh và sự thể hiện tương đương trong tiếng Việt) MA Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60.22.15

HANOI - 2010
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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

LIST OF TABLES viii

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1
1. Rationale 1
2. Aims of the study 1
3. Scope of the study 2
4. Method of the study 2
5. Structure of the study 2

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 4
1.1. Sentence and Utterance 4
1.1.1. Sentence 4
1.1.2. Utterance 5
1.1.3. Response as an utterance 6
1.2. Speech Acts 7
1.2.1. Classification of speech acts 7
1.2.2. Response as an act of speech 9
1.3. Prosodic Features 10
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1.4. Intonation 10
1.4.1. Definition of intonation 10
1.4.2. Structure of intonation 11
1.4.2.1. The falling tune 13
1.4.2.2. The first rising tune 14
1.4.2.3. The second rising tune 14
1.4.2.4. The falling rising tune 15
1.4.3. Functions of intonation 15

3.1.4.2.3. The discourse function 33
3.1.4.2.4. Grammatical function 34
3.2. Summary 34
PART C: CONCLUSION 35
1. Recapitulation 35
2. Limitations and suggestions for further study 36
REFERENCES 37
APPENDIX 1. I

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LIST OF SYMBOLS
1. Symbol of stress: '
2. Symbols of intonations
- The glide down:

- The glide up:

- The take - off:

- The Dive:


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PART A: INTRODUCTION
In this part, the rationale which explains the reasons for choosing this topic, the
aims of the study which illustrates typical goals, the scope of the study which narrows
down the research scale and the structure of the study which builds up a frame are
established clearly.
1. Rationale
Prosody plays an important role in communication. Through prosody, people can
express their emotion state or sentiment tone. People can use prosody to show their
attitudes such as happiness, sadness, anger, love or hate. However, during communicative
process, it is easy to recognize that many speakers cope with problems in using prosody.
They sometimes do not know exactly how to use prosody in speaking and even in some
cases not understand the real meaning of utterances from speakers. Consequently,

observes and describes mostly the actions and responses between teacher and students.
4. Method of the study
The study bases on quantitative research, which is to determine the relationship
between one thing and another. Quantitative research designs are either descriptive or
experimental, which means that we use personal observation and facts to form general
rules.
The participants of the study include teacher and students at Ischool Hatinh high
school.
5. Structure of the study
The study is divided into three main parts: Introduction, Development and
Conclusion.
Part A. Introduction:
As many other studies, this part introduces briefly the rationale, aims, the scope,
methods and organization of the study.
Part B. Development
This part includes three chapters:
* Chapter 1: Theoretical background
This is an overview of the related theories. It also concerns the previous works and
issues on speech acts and prosodic features. In each part, there are many sub-terms that
explain Speech Acts theory, sentence and utterance, similarities and differences in the
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responses between teacher and students, response as an utterance, definition of intonation,
structures and functions of intonation.
* Chapter 2: Methodology.
This chapter introduces quantitative method as the main method for the research. In
particular, it describes the research questions, participants, data collection and data analysis
framework.
* Chapter 3: Findings
This chapter presents findings on intonation in agreeing and disagreeing responses

that generally bear minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it''.
A sentence can include words grouped meaningfully to express a statement, question,
exclamation, request or command. As with all language expressions, sentences may
contain both function and content words, and contain properties distinct to natural
language, such as characteristic intonation and timing patterns. Sentences are generally
characterized in English by the presence of a finite verb for example in the following
sentence "She gives me a dollar", ''give'' is a finite verb. Crystal (1991: 321) classified
sentence into four main types basing on their structure:
* Simple sentence consists of a single independent clause with no dependent
clauses. The sentence below has one independent clause, which contains one subject: baby,
and one predicate: cried.
Eg: ''The baby cried''.
* Compound sentence consists of multiple independent clauses with no dependent
clauses. These clauses are joined together using conjunctions, punctuation, or both.
Eg: ''Do you want to stay here or go shopping with me?''.
* Complex sentence consists of at least one independent clause and one dependent
clause. As we can see in the following example:
Eg: ''I ate the meal that you cooked''.
. ''I ate the meal'' is an independent clause and ''that you cooked'' is a relative clause.
* Complex-compound sentence (or compound-complex sentence) consists of
multiple independent clauses, at least one of which has at least one dependent clause.
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Eg: ''The dog lived in the backyard, but the cat, who knew he was superior,
lived inside the house''.
Basing on their purpose, sentence are divided into five types, exclamative,
imperative, informative, declarative and interrogative sentences (Crystal. 1991: 322)
* Exclamative sentence: An exclamative or exclamatory sentence expresses the
speaker's emotion.
Eg: ''I'll never finish this paper in time!''

Following the ideas of Hurford and Heasley, from the beginning to the end of the
study, all utterances and sentence will be illustrated in the form above.
1.1.3. Response as an utterance
In Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics (1985: 273), Richards et al. defined
response as ''an act of answering or replying''. Response can be verbalized by physical
response or an utterance. For example, students may answer their teacher's question as
follows:
Teacher: (angry) '' How many of you complete the homework?''
Mai: ''I am sorry''
Lan: (looks down and doesn't say anything)
Lan and Mai answer their teacher's question in different ways and the teacher
understands that his/her students haven't finished their homework yet.
The content of the response is based on the meaning of the previous question as in
the example above. In some other cases, the question is an implication so that the hearer
must answer fitly to it. For example, during a lesson, while the teacher is teaching, Tu, a
school boy, is not paying attention to the lecture, and the teacher says to him:
Eg: Teacher: ''What is the meaning of not paying attention Tu?''
Tu: ''I am sorry"
In this case, Tu understands the implication of his teacher's question, which means
reminding him to concentrate on the lesson so that Tu apologies for not paying attention.
However, if Tu did not understand the real meaning of the question, he would explain the
meaning of "not paying attention".
In one another case, if the sentence is too long, the speaker may use intonation to
emphasize the key words for example:
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Eg: "this 'afternoon, I will have a dis'cussion with our 'headmaster about
studying English through extra curricular activities so that the
'deadline for the 'essay will be to'morrow''.
In answering, addressees may use body language to answer instead. However, with

utterance without intending to have an effect". So in the utterance "I want to drink an
orange juice, the speaker certainly wishes the act of bringing a glass of orange juice to be
done. That action is called perlocutionary act.
Beside the theory of Austin, Searle (1976: 54) divided speech acts into five types:
(1) Commissives are acts that commit the speaker in doing something in the future
such as promising, swearing, threatening etc.
Eg: ''I will come back tomorrow, I promise''.
(2) Declaratives are acts that can change the available situation via utterance.
Eg: ''I now pronounce you husband and wife''.
(3) Directives are acts that get the hearers to do something because they are acts of
offering, requesting or ordering.
Eg: "Could you open the door?"
(4) Expressives are the ways that speakers express their feelings and attitudes such
as apologizing, thanking, congratulation etc.
Eg: "Congratulation! You've passed your examination".
(5) Representatives/ assertives are acts that the speakers utter the assertions, reports
or conclusions and they are responsible for that situation.
Eg: ''I am sure that he is wrong''
Yule (1996: 49) classified acts into direct and indirect acts. He stated direct acts as
''the direct relationship between a structure and a function'' meanwhile ''indirect
relationship between a structure and a function is indirect act'' (Yule, 1996: 49). For
example:
Eg 1. Student: "I think the topic ''friendship'' is related to culture shock''.
Teacher: ''Really? I do not agree with you''. (a)
Eg 2. Student: "In my opinion, we should come back to the bus stop to find
the boy".
Teacher: "Actually, we can find another way''. (b)
Eg 3. Student: I think the girl should apologise the boy
Teacher: ''Good! How about others' opinions?'' (c)
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the surrounding words or syllables. A stress word or syllable is produced by using more
air from the lung''.
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Rhythm, on the other hand, is ''creating by the contracting and relaxing chest,
muscles'' (Richard, J. C et al. 1992: 346).
Intonation is defined as ''raises and falls in pitch level'' (Richard, J. C et al. 1992:
155) and will be clarified in the next part.
Stress, rhythm and intonation are important factors in prosodic features in which
each factors have private functions. However, within the limitation of the study, the thesis
will mostly focus on intonation in the following part.
1.4. Intonation
1.4.1. Definition of intonation
Intonation is a famous component in making every utterance. This is also an
interesting topic for researchers. There are different definitions about intonation.
According to Quang and Tam (2009: 37) English intonation was ''the rises and falls
in pitch level''. This means that when we utter any sentences, intonation is presented.
O'Connor (1973: 78) pointed out '' when we talk about English intonation we mean the
pitch patterns of spoken English, the speech tunes of melodies, the musical features of
English''. Intonation is a feature of spoken language.
Richard, J. C et al. (1992: 190) explained, "When speaking, people generally raise
and lower pitch of their voice, forming pitch patterns. They also give some syllables in
their utterances a greater degree of loudness change their speech rhythm. These
phenomena are called intonation. Intonation does not happen at random but has definite
patterns, which can be analyzed according to their structure and functions. Intonation is
used to carry information over and above which is expresses by the words in the sentence''.
Intonation is related to sentence, stress is related to word but tone is related to syllable.
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish words. According to Roach (1983: 62),
''a unit of speech bounded by pauses has movement, of music and rhythm, associated with
the pitch of voice''. This certain pattern of voice movement is called tone. Through tones,

In this case, there is no stressed syllable before the head preceding the tonic
syllable (hour), so that there is no head. "In an" in the example above is called pre-head.
Pre-head includes all the unstressed syllables before the head in a tone-unit.
Therefore, we can find out pre-head in two cases: The first is in the last example above.
The second is "in a" in the following example:
Eg: In a 'little 'less than an hour (Roach, 1988:124)
The pre-head is "in a", the head is "little" and "less than an" and the tonic
syllable is "hour".
Tail is between of tonic syllable and the end of tonic unit (''did you say" in the
example below). Tonic syllable is the most important and obligatory part of tonic unit.
Eg: What did you say? (Roach, 1988:124)
O' Connor (1973) argued that there are four basic shapes of tunes, which express
the speakers' feeling and intention. He furthermore, found out shapes of tune when having
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a look at the dependence of important words, which are given stresses, in an utterance and
the attitude of the speaker. An utterance spoken words with different kinds of focus on
important syllables have different ways to be interpreted. As a result, there may be many
different tunes in utterances.
In short, catching intonation in conversation is necessary because it helps the
addressee to avoid misunderstanding in mutual relationship.
O' Connor (1973) proposed four shapes as follow:
1.4.2.1. The falling tune
The falling tune (the Glide-down) shows the definite assurance of the speaker.
It is mostly used in WH questions, exclamations, tag questions, yes-no questions,
responding to something previously informed or commands. The falling tune consists of a
fall in the voice from a high pitch to a very low one. The fall is on the stressed syllable or
from the stressed syllable to a following one:
Eg: Teacher: ''Definitely''
/'definitli/

/'rait ɔ: 'rɔη/

1.4.2.3. The second rising tune
The second rising is called Take-off. After the glide-down and the glide-up, we
have the take-off. This also ends with a rise in the voice, like the Glide-Up, but any words
and syllables before the rise are low. The Take-off tune, moreover, is often used in
utterance with anger and annoyance of the speaker.
Eg: Student: ''Yeah, I see your opinion"

/ jeə ai si: jɔ: ə'piniən/
We call it the Take-Off because, like an aeroplane taking off, it starts by running
along at a low level and finally rises into the air. The rise, as in the Glide-Up, either takes
place on one syllable, like everything, or it is spread over several syllables.
1.3.2.4. The falling rising tune
The falling rising tune is called the Dive. The falling-rising tune is mostly used in
hesitated or uncertain utterance. In this part, the voice falls from high note to low then rises
to about the middle of voice.
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Eg: Teacher: ''That is right''

/'ðæt iz 'rait/

1.4.3. Functions of Intonation
Intonation is especially important for who is speaking, for who will speak in the
next turn, for how the act will be understood as an apology, thank or explanation etc. In
conversations in general and in a specific case as in a class, the use of intonation is much
more paid attention.
According to Arne Vanvik (1979: 64), there are three fundamental functions of
intonation: grammatical, delimiting and expressive. When pitch variations constitute the

(a) '' That is a good idea"
/ ðæt iz ə gud ai'diə /

(b) " That 'isn't a good idea"
/ ðæt 'iznt ə gud ai'diə /

1.4.3.3. Grammatical function
Intonation provides information based on grammatical structure. By using a
particular pattern of intonation, the speaker can imply a statement, a question, an ordering,
or an exclamation as the following example:
Eg 1: She is coming
/∫i: iz 'kʌmiη/

With the falling tune, it shows a statement
Eg 2: She is coming
/∫i: iz 'kʌmiη/

With the rising tone, it implies a question
1.4.3.4. Discourse function:
In this function, intonation makes the speaker and the hearer to achieve what is
called new information (unknown information) and old information (already known
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information). Normally, "the falling tones indicated new information while rising tones
indicated given information".
Eg: Teacher: "your first answer about extend family is good"
/ jɔ: fə:st 'ɑ:nsə ə'baut iks'tend 'fæmili iz 'gud /

1.5. Summary
Since the main idea of this chapter is establishing viewpoints of related theories, all

This is a private high school with fourteen classes in three grades 10, 11 and 12 under the
control of Nguyen Hoang group, a famous group in education and information technology.
Here "I" means "Innovative", "Intelligent" and "International".
There are three classes in grade 11 of which students are taken acquainted with
studying condition in this school. Therefore, class 11A will be chosen to study. All
students are in medium level of English.
Moreover, this is a high school where the researcher is working. Lifestyle,
psychology and ability of students are understood clearly. Although, the level of students is
in medium, the technology for teaching and studying are well invested such as stereo,
computer and other teaching facilities.
As the students' ability is limited, the Headmaster decided to teach four periods of
English per week instead three classes as in other high schools in the city. Besides teaching
lessons in textbook, five English teachers have to hold the reflex classes, workshops,
English-speaking club to improve the students' language skills. Therefore, in this study, the
researcher joins reflex classes to take note and to record conversations between teacher and
students. The conversations were joined in May 2010.
2.2. Participants
One American teacher whose name is Rory Bradley, is 35 years old and has taught
for many years as volunteer teacher in Vietnam and now he is invited to join the study.
Bradley is an enthusiasm teacher, who gives out many new methods in studying English.
His pronunciation, moreover, is excellent. Therefore, it is believed that all his utterances in
communication in class context are perfect.
In the study program, Bradley teaches in reflex class. He is in charge of discussions
three topic about "family", "friendship" and "love" The time for each period is forty-five
minutes. With these topic discussions, Bradley teaches in three periods, which are on
Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday afternoon.
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The students involved are forty-two students in class 11A. Their English skills are
medium but they all are very eager to study English in extra activities.