A contrastive analysis of nominal substitution
in English and Vietnamese conversation

Trần Thị Khương Liên

Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ
Luận văn Thạc sĩ ngành: Ngôn ngữ Anh; Mã số: 60.22.15
Người hướng dẫn: ThS. Nguyễn Huyền Minh
Năm bảo vệ: 2012

Abstract: This thesis is aimed at nominal substitution in Conversation and equivalent
expressions in Vietnamese by using Contrastive Analysis as the major method.
Through the contrastive analysis, we state the similarities and differences of Ns in
English and Vietnamese on different forms of Ns, grammatical or syntactical functions
of substitute words as well as the role of making discourse as cohesive device in
conversation. The research is carried out using qualitative and descriptive methods.
The data of the study are collected from stories and novels as well as grammar books
in both languages. The findings of the study are mostly discussed on the theoretical
framework of the works by Halliday & Hasan (1976) and Halliday (1985). The thesis
also draws some implications for teaching and learning as well as suggestions for
further study. It will be useful for learners when investigating conversation in English
as well as in Vietnamese for successful communication.

Keywords: Phép thế danh từ; Tiếng Anh; Tiếng Việt; Ngôn ngữ học đối chiếu; Hội
thoại

Content
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
The history of linguistics has seen the everlasting development of different approaches
to linguistics and language teaching, each of which defines its own tasks, scopes and

1. What are the linguistics means used for nominal substitution in English
conversation?
2. What are the equivalent linguistics means used for nominal substitution in
Vietnamese conversation in contrast with those in English conversation?
3. The scope of the study
Since this study examines nominal substitution as a cohesive device, only substitution across
sentences is taken into account. Because of the limited time and knowledge, this study is only
focused on some domains as follows:
- Only nominal substitution in English and its equivalent expressions in Vietnamese
conversation are investigated.

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- I will take into consideration many cases of nominal substitution so the data used for
illustration exemplification are taken from various sources.
- I am going to deal with nominal substitution occured in the written transcription of this
conversation, not in a tape – recorded conversation.
4. Methodology of the study
Since the main purpose of the study is to contrast nominal substitution in English
conversation and Vietnamese conversation, the result of which will be exploited for language
learning and teaching, CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS (C.A.) is used as the major method of
the study. I will take English language as the base language and Vietnamese as the
comparative language.Besides, systemization and generalization are also used as sub-methods
to support C.A. method. Thus, in the comparative analysis of examples in both English and
Vietnamese, translation is the main technique given to highlight the similarities (or
differences) in the nominal substitution in the two languages.

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

Discourse analysis is concerned with the study of the relationship between language and the
contexts in which it is used. Zellig Harris, an American linguist, was the first person who
recognized discourse as one main object of study in linguistics. The linguistic philosophers
such as Austin (1962), Searle (1969) and Grice (1975) also made great impact in the study of
language and social action, which is reflected in speech act theory and the formulation of
conversational maxims and the appearance of pragmatics. It was in 1973 that discourse
analysis was dealt with perfectly and concretely in M.A.K Halliday’s functional approach to
language. Halliday's linguistic model emphasizes the social function of language and the
thematic and informational structure of speech and writing.
1.1.5. Spoken and Written Discourse
These two types of discourse above can be distinguished according to the type of
situation. Oral discourse is concerning face-to-face situation while a recorded transmission
situation involves in the written discourse. As mentioned above, in this study spoken
discourse (conversation) takes the form of written transcription. Written transcriptions and
written language are absolutely not like.
1.2. The theories of conversation
1.2.1 The concept of conversation
Conversation, as we have seen here, involves far more than knowledge of the language
system and the factors creating coherence in one-way discourse; it involves the gaining,
holding, and yielding of turns, the negotiation of meaning and direction, the shifting of topic,
the signaling and identification of turn type, the use of voice quality, face and body. For a
successful conversation, the partners must achieve a workable balance of contributions.

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1.2.2. Why is Conversation Analysis important?
The question Why is Conversation Analysis (CA) potentially very important when analyzing
cohesive devices in conversation? The answer will be attempted to describe based on data
from conversation taken from various resources in giving clear explanation the most
grammatical function of substitute words within a nominal group.
1.3. Cohesion

(1976) creating a surface and semantic relation between different parts of the discourse. It
could be understood that substitution across sentences does have a cohesive function and in so
doing create textuality since a substitute word almost cannot be interpreted when taken out of
context.
1.6. Contrastive Analysis
1.6.1. Definition
We concern the definition by James (1980:3) “ C.A. is a linguistic enterprise aimed at
producing inverted (i.e. contrastive, not comparative) two- valued typologies ( a C.A. is
always concerned with a pair of languages), and founded on the assumption that languages
can be compared”. Noticeably, contrastive analysis is not merely related to not only foreign
language teaching and learning but it can also make useful contributions to translation theory,
linguistics typology, the study of language universals and the description of particular
languages.
1.6.2. Why use C.A. in this thesis?
As I have explained above, C.A. plays very key role in exploring similarities and differences
between the source language and the target language, which is very important in learning
languages, especially in learning a foreign language like English. That is why C.A. is used as
the major study method in this study to analyze nominal substitution in English and its
equivalent expressions in Vietnamese conversation.
1.7. Summary
I have gone over all the fundamental notions of discourse, cohesion, substitution as well as
subtypes of substitution and nominal substitution as the core for discussion. All theoretical
background in this study has been drawn on the work by Halliday & Hasan (1976), Halliday
(1985), wherever suitable, Quirk et. al. (1972). The classification of these terms will be of
great importance with regards to the contrastive analysis in the next chapter.
nominal group has a maximum of three components: one Head and two optional modifiers.
Though central in the group, the Head which may be a common noun, a pronoun or a proper
noun can be substituted or even omitted
With reference to the Vietnamese nominal structure, the two models of the structure provided
by two influential Vietnamese linguists, namely Diep Quang Ban (1996) and Nguyen Tai Can
(1996) have been looked at. Diep Quang Ban (1996) states that the structure of the
Vietnamese nominal group is composed of three components: the Head, the Premodifier and
the Postmodifier. The presence of the last two is optional:
Premodifier / Head / Postmodifier: e.g. Tất cả những cái / chủ trương / chính xác đó.

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Nguyen Tai Can (1996) also shared this functional view. He holds the view that the two
nouns, the classifier and the one following it, are equally important. Therefore, he points out
that in this case the Head is a combination of Head 1 and Head 2.
2.2. Personal Pronouns
2.2.1. Subjective Personal Pronouns and Objective Personal Pronouns
The third person pronouns obviously carry cohesive force as any use of them always requires
the listener or reader to look backwards (i.e. anaphoric) in order to retrieve what has gone
before. Thus, the third person pronouns are seen as one of the main cohesive devices used for
the creation of discourse. Further more, my study centres around only common substitute
words as cohesive devices in conversation discourse and because it is not a study of personal
pronouns, I am going to work on only on the third person ones.
To sum up this subsection, I would like to go over several points which are taken into
account with regard to the English third person pronouns and their Vietnamese counterparts:
 Vietnamese has more pronouns and pronominalized lexical items to address the
third person as compared with English, and as a result these Vietnamese equivalents have
more restrictions on their use.
 The Vietnamese equivalents of the English third person pronouns are governed
by the so-called principle of formality in conversation. They reflect not only the relationship
between the addressor and the person he/she is talking about, the education background of the

of the English possessive pronouns has as its members the following forms: mine, yours, his,
hers, its, ours, and theirs. All these possessive pronouns function as Head in the nominal
group and work to substitute for the corresponding possessive adjectives plus the noun which
is mentioned previously for the purpose of avoiding unnecessary repetitions.
To conclude, we see that the English possessive pronouns and their Vietnamese
counterparts are doubly anaphoric as they all substitute for both the possessor and the
possessed. Besides, because the Vietnamese personal pronouns and pronominalized lexical
items vary to a great extent, the English possessive pronouns undoubtedly have various
realizations in Vietnamese conversational discourse. In addition, normally, the numeratives
(especially những) can be used before indexical CÁI/ Head 1 to show the plural number of the
nominal group being substituted. The relationship between the English possessive pronouns
and their Vietnamese equivalents is shown in the following table:
ENGLISH
VIETNAMESE
Possessive pronouns as
Head (mine, yours, ours,
etc.)
Indexical CÁI/ Head 1
Qualifier
(của)
Personal pronouns/
Pronominalized lexical item
mine ~ my cell phone
his ~ his bed room
yours ~ your toys
cái
phòng
đồ
namely some, what I have talked about the indefinite one goes equally for some. The
Vietnamese equivalent of some can be stated as (một) vài + Head 1 for countable nouns and
as một ít/ một chút ít + (Head) for uncountable nouns; in the latter case the whole Head is
either repeated or left out.
2.4. The same
In English, as Halliday & Hasan (1976) point out, the item same, which is often accompanied
by the definite article the, is also used to substitute for a nominal group. But unlike the
substitute one/ones which replaces only the Head noun, the same can substitute for the whole
nominal group.
2.4.1. Say the same
Halliday & Hasan (1976: 107) propose that the same can be used in place of the fact if it
occurs “in the environment of process in which a fact is involved
With the exception of say the same, in English conversation the same can still be found in a
number of expressions which also substitutes for the fact. Let us have a look at the
commonest ones:
 Think the same
 The same applies to /The same goes for…
It can be said that the Vietnamese equivalent of the same in the expressions mentioned in
these conversations above still adopts the form cũng …thế/vậy. What is to be noted here is the
position of the pronouns thế/vậy in the sentence. I see that when thế/vậy substitutes for a
noun, it does not mean that they will become nouns. Substitution here should be understood

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as that of the syntactical functions of the presupposed item. It means that if thế/vậy substitutes
for a noun or a nominal group, they can function as objects/complements, or as subjects in
sentences.
2.4.2. Do the same
The same in the expression do the same, as pointed out by Halliday & Hasan (1976:108) can
substitute for a process in some kinds of clause. As far as the Vietnamese equivalence of do
the same is concerned, in Vietnamese the verb làm is quite similar to the general verb do in
PART C: CONCLUSION

3.1. Concluding remarks:
Nominal subsituttion as a cohesive device takes a very active role in the construction of both
English and Vietnamese Conversation. From what has been analyzed, in this part I would like
to draw some conclusions for the aims set forth at the beginning of the thesis:
My first aim to carry out this minor thesis is to help Vietnamese learners of English
have a thorough knowledge of linguistics means of English Ns used in conversation and use
them appropriately in order to achieve communicative purposes.
The second aim isto investigate the similarities and differences of Ns in English
conversations and Vietnamese ones in terms of on different forms of Ns, grammatical or
syntactical functions of substitute words as well as the role of making discourse as cohesive
device in conversation. From the contrastive analysis by using translations of many English

Moreover, it is possible for further study to study in term of contrastive analysis or in
comparison with Vietnamese for example. I do hope that nominal substitution will be studied
more in the future. More work needs to be done in terms of linking a conversation analytic
framework with issues and concerns in cohesion analysis.

References
In English:

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Sources of extracted examples:
1.
2.

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3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8. (Dịch giả: Nguyễn Tuyên, Bản dịch Jane Eyre, 2008, NXB Văn
Học, www.thuvien-ebook.com)
9.