VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY - HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL TUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATES STUDIES
***********
NGUYỄN THỊ LAN PHƢƠNG NOMINAL GROUPS IN SELECTED CHAPTERS
FROM “PRIDE AND PREJUDICE” BY JANE AUSTEN:
A SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS

CM DANH T TRONG MT S CHƢƠNG
TƢ
̀
“KIÊU HA
̃
NH VA
̀
ĐI
̣
NH KIÊ
́
N” CU
̉
A JANE AUSTEN:
PHÂN TI
́
CH THEO QUAN ĐIÊ

FROM “PRIDE AND PREJUDICE” BY JANE AUSTEN:
A SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS

CM DANH T TRONG MT S CHƢƠNG
TƢ
̀
“KIÊU HA
̃
NH VA
̀
ĐI
̣
NH KIÊ
́
N” CU
̉
A JANE AUSTEN:
PHÂN TI
́
CH THEO QUAN ĐIÊ
̉
M NGƢ
̃
PHA
́
P CHƢ
́
C NĂNG

ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express the deepest appreciation to Dr. Đỗ Tuấn Minh, my
supervisor, for invaluable and constructive guidelines during the planning as well as
the development of this research work.

My heartfelt thanks also go to my family, friends and colleagues whose
encouragement and support have made the completion of my thesis possible.

iv TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION
i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ii
ABSTRACT
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
iv
PART I: INTRODUCTION
1
1. Rationale for the study
1
2. Scope and objective of the study
2
3. Research methods
2
4. Design of the study
3
PART II: DEVELOPMENT

4.2.1. Deictic
9
4.2.2. Numerative
9
4.2.3. Classifier and Epithet
9
4.2.4. Thing
10
4.2.5. Qualifier
10
5. Nominal groups in Vietnamese
12
6. Similarities and differences between Vietnamese nominal groups and
English nominal groups
14
7. “Pride and Prejudice” & Analytical background
15
7.1. About the author Jane Austen
15
7.2. Pride and Prejudice
16
7.3. Vietnamese translated versions
17
7.4. Previous studies
17
CHAPTER II: DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
18
1. Data collection
18
2. Data analysis

2.2.3. Treatment of Pre-modification
33
2.2.4. Treatment of Qualifier
36
2.2.4.1. Treatment of prepositional phrases as Minor process
36
2.2.4.2. Treatment of Major process
39
PART III: CONCLUSIONS
42
REFERENCES
45
APPENDIX
I

1

PART I: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale for the study
A fundamental shift in linguistic research from focusing on forms to
exploring both forms and functions has been seen in recent years by linguistics.

As the title of the study suggests, the thesis will be conducted with a view to
describing the nominal groups in selected chapters, owing to the small scale, in
“Pride and Prejudice” following the framework of Systemic Functional Grammar
by Halliday. Besides, a contrastive analysis of the nominal groups and their
Vietnamese equivalents in the two Vietnamese translation versions are provided in
the hope that readers may have a better understanding and their own judgment over
which version gains more success in transmitting the message of the author in the
literary work.
The research questions, therefore, are posed as follows:
- What are nominal groups?
- How are the nominal groups in selected chapters in “Pride and
Prejudice” structured in the light of Systemic Functional Analysis?
- What changes are made to the structure of the English nominal groups
in the two translated versions?
- What are the similarities and differences between nominal groups in
English and their equivalents in the two Vietnamese versions?
3. Research methods
As the research is undertaken with the aim of investigating the nominal
groups in the novel, the descriptive and contrastive analysis with the qualitative
data will be employed. Also, the Vietnamese equivalents in the two translation are
put together for the purpose of comparison in terms of structure. In this way, the
use of nominal groups in this work will be extensively investigated while the
Vietnamese equivalents are correspondingly reviewed.
4. Design of the study
The first part of the study offers readers a quick look at the study with the
aims and methodology.
3

Part II , the Development, provides an overview of the theoretical foundation
to this research, the analytical background where the literary work is introduced

rather than as an abstract formal system”. This book also clarifies that the word
“systemic” refers to the view of language as a network of interrelated systems
5

while “functional” shows that the approach is concerned with the choices people
make with a view to exchanging meanings through language.
Crystal (2008) also equipped readers with the term “Hallidayan” to refer to any
linguistic principles of this British linguist. It is noteworthy that the application
of Hallidayan ideas has been widespread, especially in text analysis, stylistics
and language acquisition.
2. Basic notions
2.1. Noun
According to Trask and Stockwell (2007), traditional grammarians failed to
define this part of speech when describing it as „the name of a person, place or
thing‟. However, in “Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics” by Crystal (2008),
this vagueness no longer exists once nouns are construed as “items which
display certain types of inflection (e.g. of case or number), have a specific
distribution (e.g. they may follow prepositions, but not modals), and perform a
specific syntactic function (e.g. as subject or object of a sentence). It is also
added that nouns are generally classified into common nouns and proper nouns,
and analyzed in terms of number, gender, case and countability”.
2.2. Noun phrases in Traditional Grammar and Nominal groups in SFG
The constructions into which nouns most commonly enter, and of which they are
the head word, are generally called Noun phrases or nominal groups. The
structure of a noun phrase is featured minimally by the noun while the
constructions preceding and following the noun are put under the name of pre-
modification and post-modification, which would be discussed in the next parts.
(Crystal, 2008)
3. Noun Phrases in Traditional Grammar
6

noun and may come into three types: pre-determiners (e.g. all, both, half),
central determiners which may be the possessive, or articles, etc.) and post-
determiners (e.g. cardinal numbers, ordinal numerals, and quantifiers).
3.2. Complex Noun phrase
Take an example of a long sentence with the aforementioned information about
the girl in the previous part:
The pretty girl standing in the corner who became angry is Mary Smith.
It is easily seen that the complicated structure of the sentence is reshaped
because of the complex noun phrase. Then it comes to how a complex noun
phrase could be realized:
Complex Noun Phrase
Pre-Modification
Head Noun
Post-modification
Comprising all the items
placed before the head –
remarkably nouns and
adjectives
Around which the other
components cluster and
which dictates concord
and other kinds of
congruence with the rest
of the sentence outside the
noun phrase
In which reside all the
items after the head –
notably prepositional
phrases, non-finite clauses
and relative clauses

chair

The make-up of the nominal group is presented in the above example, where the
Head noun is bolded. In the simplest kind, a nominal group may consist of only a
Head. However, in this case provided, the noun does not stand alone; it also
contains modification, which may precede the Head (as the pre-modifier) or follow
the Head (as Post-modifier).
9

Those
Five
Beautiful
Shiny
Jonathan
Apples
Sitting on the
chair
Pre-modifier
Head
noun
Post-modifier
The following part would provide a thorough insight into the structure of nominal
groups in SFG by introducing the functional elements.
4.2.1 Deictic
This term derives from the Greek word for „pointing‟. In this manner, the
Deictic function is realized by determiners (e.g. this, that, these, those, the, etc.)
or possessive nouns or pronouns, such as „Sony‟s‟ in „Sony‟s latest model‟, or
„your‟ in „your home‟.
Besides, there may be a second Deictic element in the nominal group to “add
further to the identification of the subset”. (Halliday, 2013). This type of Deictic

4.2.4. Thing
When it comes to the head noun of the nominal group, Halliday termed it the
Thing. Yet, it is also revealed in his book that there is one very common type of
nominal group where Head and Thing do not coincide. This case is featured by
the „measure‟ of something.
A
Pack
Of
Cards
Numerative
Thing
Pre-modifier
Head
Post-modifier

4.2.5. Qualifier
11

While the part preceding the Head may be words or word complexes, what
follows the Thing is either a phrase or a clause, which are often referred to as the
Qualifier. For most cases, Qualifier is featured with embedded clauses. With the
function of characterizing the Thing, Qualifier may be a major process (i.e. a
relative clause) or a minor one (i.e. a prepositional phrase) in which the thing
would be a participant though directly or not.
The most special thing about Qualifier is that the majority of Qualifier is rank-
shifted. It is to say that the Qualifier is of a higher rank than, or at least
equivalent to that of the nominal group, which is addressed as „embedded” in
formal grammar.
Bloor & Bloor (2004), in their book “The Functional Analysis of English: A
Hallidayan Approach” provided a number of examples of nominal groups

Several
Dirty

Ones

The

Complete

Dismantling
Of the
gearbox
The Keyboard
Layouts

12

An

Careful

Study
Of this
matter
an

Effective

understanding:
Front elements
Nucleus
End elements
Ba
Người
Này
Tất cả những cái
Chủ trương
Chính xác đó

13

Another Vietnamese grammarian, Diep Quang Ban (2005) claimed that the
order of the elements in a nominal group could be clearly presented in this chart:
Tất cả
Những
Cái
Con mèo
Đen
Ấy
-3
-2
-1
0
1
2

It is remarkable that noun nucleus in Vietnamese nominal groups are notably
characterized with a classifier. From this feature, it is obviously seen that this

Classifier: cái, Noun: kéo
Con chó
Classifier: con, Noun: chó
Người chị
Classifier: người, Noun:
chị

Also, they are mutually exclusive; that means they do not co-occur in one same
nominal group as follows:
Cái cây thước
Not: cây cái thƣớc

To bring a thorough formulation for a nominal group in Vietnamese, Le Thi
Hong Phuong (2011) provides the following chart:
Pre-modification
Head
Post-modification
Totality
(thành tố
phụ chỉ tổng
lượng)
Article

Classifier
(loại từ)
Noun
Attributive
modifier
(thành tố phụ nêu
đặc trưng miêu tả)

underlines that in the case of non-finite clauses, they tend to be much more
common in English than in Vietnamese whereas the passive voice with “bị” and
“được” are employed in Vietnamese though the Vietnamese people have a
preference for the active voice. Similarly, when it comes to prepositional phrases
as post-modification, it is highlighted that the genitive “của” in Vietnamese
bears the tendency to be omitted, such as in the following case:
A boy of talent
Một cậu bé (của) tài năng

7. Pride and Prejudice - Analytical Background
7.1. About the author Jane Austen
Jane Austen, an accomplished writer whose writings are deeply rooted in the
years of her youth. She was born on December 16, 1775 in the English county of
16

Hampshire, west of London. She was the seventh of eight children who were
brought up by her father, a clergyman and her mother who came from a family
of landed gentry and clergy. Encouraged by her parents to cherish her own
literary efforts, she kept writing long fictional pieces, and finally finished her
first novel at the age of 19. Her most noticeable novels are Sense and Sensibility
(1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1815),
Northanger Abbey (1817) and Persuasion (1817), all of which primarily dealt
with the lower nobility, a leisured class in the eighteenth century.
In terms of language use, she possessed the sharp and sarcastic wit which slowly
built up the vivid image of everything appearing in her novels. Austen scholar
Le Faye once described her gift in creating “the sensation that we are visiting
genuine places and joining in the lives of genuine people” (Le Faye, 2006).
Though considered as a well known writer, Jane Austen is believed to polarise
her readers. It is to say that they either adore her with big affection or
completely abhor her. In evaluating Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte (1848)

under the name of “Kiêu Hãnh và Thành Kiến” by Thu Trinh, an overseas
Vietnamese, in 2008.
7.4. Previous studies
As a literary treasure of mankind, “Pride and Prejudice” earns a credited place in
the literature of the world. It is, therefore, obvious that a big number of studies
have investigated into a wide range of topics about this novel. Teachman (1997)
debated the social issues in that time of the work, such as the eighteenth-century
views of marriage or how to choose a marriage partner. Love and marriage
continue to be examined in Anne Crippen- Ruderman‟s work (1990). Hundreds
of reliable websites, among which are Neboliterature and Sparknotes, provide