VIETNAM
N
N
A
A
T
T
I
I
O
O
N
N
A
A
L
LU
U
N
N
I
I
V
V
E
E
R
R

V
V
E
E
R
R
S
S
I
I
T
T
Y
YO
O
F
FL
L
A
A
N
N
G
G

N
N
A
A
T
T
I
I
O
O
N
N
A
A
L
LS
S
T
T
U
U
D
D
I
I
E
E

S
S
T
T
-
-
G
G
R
R
A
A
D
D
U
U
A
A
T
T
E
ES
S
T
T
U
U

T
H
H
U
UH
H
I
I
Ề
Ề
N
N
PROVERBS DENOTING FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS IN
ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE: A CONTRASTIVE
ANALYSIS AND TEACHING IMPLICATONS
CÁC TỤC NGỮ CHỈ MỐI QUAN HỆ GIA ĐÌNH: MỘT PHÂN TÍCH
ĐỐI CHIẾU VÀ NHỮNG ỨNG DỤNG TRONG DẠY HỌC

M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS
I
V
V
E
E
R
R
S
S
I
I
T
T
Y
Y
,
,H
H
A
A
N
N
O
O
I
I


L
A
A
N
N
G
G
U
U
A
A
G
G
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SA
A
N
N
D
DI
I
N

U
D
D
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SF
F
A
A
C
C
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YO
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S
S
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U
U
D
D
I
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S
S 

N
N
G
G
U
U
Y
Y

ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE: A CONTRASTIVE
ANALYSIS AND TEACHING IMPLICATONS
CÁC TỤC NGỮ CHỈ MỐI QUAN HỆ GIA ĐÌNH: MỘT PHÂN TÍCH
ĐỐI CHIẾU VÀ NHỮNG ỨNG DỤNG TRONG DẠY HỌC

M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS
Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60220201
Supervisor: Dr. Nguyễn Huy Kỷ HANOI, 2014
i

DECLARATION OF AUTHOR

Secondly, I would like to give my gratitude to all my lecturers at the Faculty of
Post-Graduate Studies, University of Languages & International Studies, Vietnam
National University, Hanoi for their useful lectures which helped me a lot for
accomplishment of the study. In addition, my thanks also go to my friends from
class K21HP for their ideas, materials and enthusiasm.
Last but not least, I want to give my special thanks to my family, especially to my
husband, for their support and encouragement so that I could finish my study.

iii

ABSTRACT
Mieder [15: 11] states that the wisdom of proverbs has guided people in their social
interactions for thousand years throughout the world. They obviously contain a lot
of common sense, experience, wisdom and truth, and as such they represent ready-
made traditional strategies in oral speech acts and writings from high literature to
the mass media [15: 4]. Proverbs in general and proverbs denoting family
relationships in particular are useful for not only old people but also young ones.
They give us good pieces of advice and precious moral lessons. The study on
proverbs denoting family relationships in English and Vietnamese is an attempt to
investigate their syntactic features as well as their semantic ones. A contrastive
analysis has been made for the purpose of finding out the similarities and

7. Organization of the study 3
PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1. An overview of precious study 5
1.2. Theoretical background 6
1.2.1. Definition of proverbs 6
v

1.2.2. Definition of proverbs denoting family relationships 7
1.2.3. Definition of idioms 8
1.2.4. Proverbs and idioms 8
1.3. Summary 10
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY
2.1. Restatement of the research questions 11
2.2. Data collection instruments 11
2.3. Procedures of data collection 12
2.4. Procedures of data analysis 12
2.5. Summary 13
CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
3.1. The syntactic features of English and Vietnamese proverbs denoting family
relationships 14
3.1.1. Conciseness 14
3.1.2. Symmetry 15
3.1.3. Sentential structures 16
3.1.4. Phrasal structures 21
3.2. The similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese proverbs
denoting family relationships in terms of syntactic features 22
3.2.1. Similarities 22
3.2.2. Differences 22
vi

many ways to approach a new culture. One of them is studying its proverbs and
sayings. Bank [3:1] claims that “Proverbs are condensed culture”. Furthermore,
Mieder [15:11] states that “The wisdom of proverbs has guided people in their
social interactions for thousand years throughout the world.” We can say, therefore,
proverbs are a very precious heritage of every nation, every ethnic group that should
be respected and preserved.
Vietnamese proverbs are not known for sure of the origin in term of their inception
and authors. They are orally transmitted and incessantly edited throughout
generations [10:5]. The content of Vietnamese proverbs are various, often reflect
human experiences about labor and production, about family and social
relationships in which proverbs denoting family relationships account for relatively
large numbers in Vietnamese folk songs store. Proverbs about the relationship
between husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters have been in
company with us during our whole lives. From the cradle, I was familiar with some
proverbs: “Chị ngã em nâng” [24:43], “Anh em như thể tay chân” [8:26] or “Một
giọt máu đào hơn ao nước lã” [18:276]. We were taught not only to love our
brothers and sisters but also to respect spiritual family sentiment. Furthermore,
some other proverbs gave us the lessons of respecting and being grateful to our
parents such as: “Công cha như núi Thái Sơn, nghĩa mẹ như nước trong nguồn chảy
ra” [18:274]. And there are still a lot of valuable proverbs which provide us with
many precious lessons in the treasure of Vietnamese proverbs. It is clear that family
proverbs have carved deeply into everyone’s mind. Therefore, they play an
2

important role in educating people to respect ancestors, history and traditional
cultures.
From the above reasons, I was attracted to study the thesis: Proverbs denoting
family relationships in English and Vietnamese: A contrastive analysis and some
teaching implications.


English and Vietnamese.

5. Significance of the study
With the purpose of studying the syntactic and semantic features of proverbs
denoting family relationships in English and Vietnamese, the study will be able to
provide Vietnamese learners of English with better mastering of how to apply this
kind of proverbs in sensible ways, how to thoroughly understand, effectively and
naturally use them in receptive and productive skills.

6. Scope of the study
In this research, the author expects to find out, analyze and contrast syntactic and
semantic features of English and Vietnamese proverbs denoting family relationship.
The author will also make great efforts to discover the proverbs which have
contents related to the relationships of family members although they do not carry
family words. Contrastively, the proverbs which just carry family words do not
convey the contents of family relationships are not mentioned.

7. Organization of the study
The study consists of three main parts in addition to appendices and references.
Part A, introduction, introduces the rationale, the objectives, the research questions,
the methods, the significance, the scope and the organization of the study,
4

Part B is the development of the study which contains three chapters. The first
chapter focuses on an overview of literature review and theoretical background of
proverbs. Definition of idioms and the distinguishing between proverbs and idioms
are also mentioned in this chapter. The second chapter is methodology in which
data collection instruments, procedures of data collection, procedures of data
analysis are presented. The last chapter in part B is data analysis and discussion.
This chapter shows syntactic and semantic features of proverbs denoting family

is presented. Then, the definitions of idioms and the distinguishing between
proverbs and idioms are also mentioned in this chapter.

1.1. An overview of previous study
Proverbs have attracted many scholars all over the world. There are some books
whose authors mentioned some aspects of proverbs. “Proverbs and their lessons”
written by Richard [21] presents an important survey of the origin, nature,
distribution, meaning and significance of proverbs in the English speaking world.
On the other hand, “American proverbs about women” by Kerschen [8] is an
examination of how women are treated by popular sayings that perpetuate folk
wisdom. Furthermore, “The fact on file dictionary of proverbs” by Martin [14]
provides full meanings of common proverbs arranged in the alphabetic order. The
book “Proverbs: A Handbook” by Mieder [15] is an inclusive and comparative
survey of paremiology and focuses on Anglo American proverbs in English
language context.
In Vietnam, many linguists have paid much attention to proverbs. Thu [24] and Lân
[9] shared the same ideas of classifying Vietnamese proverbs as every aspect of our
lives in two books “Ca dao, tục ngữ Việt Nam” and “Tục ngữ, ca dao Viêt Nam”
respectively. In addition, Lân [10] compiled a dictionary in which proverbs were
both literally and figuratively explained in the alphabetic order. Hùng [7] collected a
number of English proverbs and their Vietnamese equivalences which were helpful
for learners of English. Sa [22] focused on rhetorical simile between English
6

proverbs and Vietnamese ones. Finally, Phan [18] made a collection of proverbs
and folksongs in terms of content and classified them into many categories.
However, there have been few works relating proverbs denoting family
relationships particularly so far, to my knowledge. That is the reason why I attempt
to investigate the syntactic and semantic features of English and Vietnamese
proverbs denoting family relationships.

which contains wisdom, truth, morals, and traditional views in a metaphorical, fixed
and memorizable form and which is handed down from generation to generation.
[15: 3]

1.2.2. Definition of proverbs denoting family relationships
In my opinion, family relationships are emotional connections between members in
a family in general. It consists of emotional connections between parents and
children, husbands and wives, siblings and other kinships. Proverbs which convey
the emotional connections are called proverbs denoting family relationships. They
are found in both forms of Vietnamese and English. For example, “Vợ chồng như
đũa có đôi” [24: 37]; “Anh em hòa thuận là nhà có phúc” [24: 43]; “Chị em dâu như
bầu nước lã” [17:44] are known as Vietnamese proverbs denoting family
relationships, and “As is the father, so is the son” [14:13]; “The family that prays
together stays together [14:85] as English ones.

1.2.3. Definition of idioms
According to Oxford dictionary [11], an idiom is a group of words in a fixed order
that have a particular meaning that is different from the meanings of each word on
its own. Furthermore, Michael and Felicity [16] stated that idioms are “expressions
which have a meaning that is not obvious from the individual words”. Like foreign
researchers, Phan [18] also states that an idiom is a part of a sentence and it cannot
express a complete idea itself. Lân [9] claims that idioms are fixed phrases to
express a concept.

8

1.2.4. Proverbs and idioms
When studying the proverbs, the researcher got much confused to distinguish
proverbs from idioms. So in this part, the differences between them will be pointed
in the hope of helping the readers have more knowledge of proverbs. Both idioms

Example (5) concludes three literature functions. The perception function helps the
readers understand the loyalty and affection between members of the same family
are much stronger than any other relationship. Regarding educational function, it
educates people to have awareness of sacred family relationships and then
encourages them to live in harmony with family members. The methods of
exaggeration and symbolization used so as to attract the readers’ attention can be
understood as the function of aesthetics. Example (6) is an idiom expressing “get on
extremely well with someone”. It does not have the functions of perception as well
as education because it does not convey a comment, a piece of advice or a criticism.
It just owns the aesthetic function which is performed by using simile.
Let’s have a look at table 1 that summarizes the distinguishing criteria between
proverbs and idioms.

Features
Idioms
Proverbs
Structural realization
fixed phrases
usually complete sentences
Literature functions
aesthetic function
- aesthetic function
- perception function
- educational function
Expression
pure concepts
general truths, comments,
advices, experiences,
criticisms…
Table 1: Distinguishing criteria between proverbs and idioms 11

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

The methods of study are very important to find out the findings and conclusion of
the study. Therefore, the clearer methodology is given, the deeper the study is
understood. This chapter mainly aims at restating the research questions and
describing the procedures of collecting and analyzing data in the study.

2.1. Restatement of the research questions
This study is designed to analyze and describe syntactic and semantic features of
proverbs denoting family relationships in English and Vietnamese. The author made
use of contrastive analysis in qualitative and quantitative approaches to meet the
needs of the study. Data are collected, classified and analyzed both in English and
in Vietnamese to recognize the similarities and differences between English and
Vietnamese proverbs denoting family relationships. In other words, three following
research questions must be answered:
1. What are syntactic and semantic features of English and Vietnamese proverbs
denoting family relationships?
2. What are the similarities and differences in syntactic and semantic features of
English and Vietnamese proverbs denoting family relationships?
3. What are the implications of teaching and learning English and Vietnamese
proverbs denoting family relationships?

2.2. Data collection instruments
Most of the proverbs used in the study were collected from dictionaries, books,

foreigners to get a couple of proverbs that were useful for the research.

2.4. Procedures of data analysis
After finishing the collection of data, the author carries out some research methods
to analyze the data so as to answer the research questions set up early in the study.
13

Firstly, contrastive analysis is used to estimate the differences in syntactic features
of English and Vietnamese proverbs. Each structure has at least one example for
illustration. By contrastive analysis, the author will discover the similarities and
differences in proverbs denoting family relationships in terms of syntactic features.
Secondly, the data will be analyzed qualitatively into semantic field. The data
collected are typical and representative for sematic characteristics of family
proverbs in English and Vietnamese. With the help of contrastive method, the
similarities and differences between them will be explored.
Finally, the author will draw some conclusions about proverbs in English and
Vietnamese due to carrying the methods of analyzing and synthesizing the data.

2.5. Summary
In the second chapter, the author would like to present the methodology of
the study. Data were collected from numerous sources such as dictionaries, books,
articles, websites… The proverbs were chosen and classified into different
categories so that the readers could follow the content easily. Description,
contrastive analysis and synthesis quantitatively and qualitatively were carried out
so as to find out the answers to the research questions.
Sảy cha còn chú, sảy mẹ ấp vú dì. [9: 22]
Sometimes, a few long proverbs consist of over ten words, making up of two
sentences. They account for few numbers and are close to folksongs such as:
Khôn ngoan đối đáp người ngoài,
Gà cùng một mẹ chớ hoài đá nhau. [10: 280]
As can be seen from the above examples, the meaning of the proverbs will be
changed if we add or take away just one word in the proverbs. In conclusion, there