HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

Basic sentence patterns
in English and Vietnamese
Instructor : Nguyen Ngoc Vu
Student : Nguyen Thi Ai Thu
HCMC, 30/12/2009
Basic sentence patterns
in English and Vietnamese
A contrast analysis
“I give to him some sweets. (Tôi cho nó mấy cái kẹo)”
This sentence above extracted from a Vietnamese student’s translating
Vietnamese sentence into English. Why did this student make errors? In dealing with
learners’ errors, Lado states “since the learner tends to transfer the habits of his native
language structure to the foreign language, we have here the major source of difficulty
or ease in learning the structure of a foreign language. Those structures that are similar
will be easy to learn because they will be transferred and may function satisfactorily in
the foreign language. Those structures that are different will be difficult because when
transferred they will not function satisfactorily in the foreign language and will therefore
have to be changed.”
Vietnamese students usually make errors when translating Vietnamese sentence
into English because there are some differences between Vietnamese and English
grammar. This paper will focus on these differences and classify some error types that
students often meet.
2
In the first part of this paper, we will discuss types of the basic sentence patterns
in English and Vietnamese and make comparison between English and Vietnamese to
find out whether Vietnamese has the same basic sentence patterns or not.
The second part focuses on some errors types that students often meet and how
to conduct teaching translating Vietnamese sentence into English.

as a noun phrases and always precedes the verb in the sentence. In Vietnamese, the
subject has two types: the subject that co-occurs with verb and the subject that co-
occurs with copulas là. In first type, the subject can be a noun (Cầu sập) or a noun that
show person’s parts of body (Chân anh ta gẫy rồi), pronoun (chúng nó đi học) and
“subject-verb structure” (Nhà cháy làm bị thương hai người). In this type, the subject
always precedes the verb in sentence. The second type, the subject can be a noun (Ba
là sinh viên), a verb (Học tập là nhiệm vụ chính) or a pronoun (Họ là công nhân). In this
type, the subject can change its position.
4
In short, the subject in Vietnamese and English sentence has both similarities
and differences. Similarly, the subject is a noun, pronoun, noun phrases and always
precedes the verb in the sentence. However, in Vietnamese, the subject can co-occur
with copulas là and can changes its position. In addition, subject in Vietnamese
sentence can be “subject-verb structure”
Verb
In English, verb is the main part of verb phrase and always combines with tense
in the sentence. Verb can be intransitive verb, transitive verb or state verb/state of being
verb. In Vietnamese, there are three types of verb. First, verb combines directly with the
subject that does not need copula in the affirmative and negative form (Tôi đọc sách/Tôi
không đọc sách). Second, verb combines with the subject that has copula in the
affirmative and negative form (Tôi là sinh viên/Tôi không phải là sinh viên). Third, in the
affirmative form verb combines directly with the subject, but in the negative form it
combines the subject that have copula (Anh ấy 30 tuổi/Anh ấy không phải 30 tuổi).
The conclusion here is that the verb in Vietnamese and English sentence is
different. In my opinion, the verb in English sentence is more complex than in
Vietnamese because we must distinguish intransitive verb, transitive verb and state
verb. Verbs that can be followed by direct objects are considered transitive. The
intransitive verb is not followed by a direct object (or an indirect object) although it is
often followed by adverbs that express time or place.
Object