A contrastive analysis of syntactic structures
employed in describing trends in English and
Vietnamese business articles
Phạm Thị Hà Trang
Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ
Luận văn Thạc sĩ ngành: Linguistics; Mã số: 60 22 15
Người hướng dẫn: M.A. Đinh Hải Yến
Năm bảo vệ: 2010 Abstract. This research aims at finding out the distinctive features of syntactic structures
in English and Vietnamese grammar and contrasting the syntactic structures used in describing
trends in English and Vietnamese business articles. The contrastive analysis focuses on two
categories of syntactic structures, i.e. clause and phrase employed to describe trends in up-to-date
issues of four English and four Vietnamese business newspapers. The tables and figures play an
important role in highlighting the similarities and differences in the two news languages. The
distinction among each newspaper group (English and Vietnamese) is also enclosed to enhance
the specification of the thesis.
Keywords. Phân tích đối chiếu; Cấu trúc ngữ pháp; Thương mại; Tiếng Anh

Content
1. Rationale for the study
As Heraclitus (540 BC – 480 BC), a Greek philosopher, once said „nothing endures but change‟,
the world we live in today is the world of changes and development – the world of trends. It is
therefore necessary to keep pace with the flow of life everyday by gathering changeable

design a lot of activities and exercises relating to describing changes for students as the way
Peter Grundy (1993) does in his resource book Newspapers.
Finally, it is my curiosity to explore the differences and similarities between syntactic structures
used in describing trends in English and Vietnamese business articles. For one thing, I could
diagnose the difficulties my students may encounter when using such structures due to language
transference. Thus, remedies would be prescribed timely and properly. For the other, I hope to
apply some of the findings into improving the accuracy and appropriateness in translation works.

2. Aims of the study
This research is directed to accomplish three goals:
- To investigate the syntactic structures used in describing trends in English and in Vietnamese
from the perspective of traditional grammar
- To make a contrastive analysis between English and Vietnamese syntactic structures used in
describing trends in business articles to deduce their differences and similarities
- To propose some pedagogical implications for better teaching and learning of describing charts
or graphs and some recommendations for more effective translation works

3. Scope of the study
Due to the constraint of time and effort, the study only investigates the English and Vietnamese
syntactic structures on the levels of clauses and phrases.
Also, as suggested in the title of the thesis, the object of the research is narrowed down to
syntactic structures used in trend description in business news. The trends are either concerned
with specific statistics and figures or with general remarks about changes or tendency.
The resources of the analysis are English and Vietnamese business articles from business and
economic newspapers.

4. Methodology of the study
As the title of the thesis suggests, the study is aimed at comparing and contrasting the syntactic
structures used in describing trends in English and Vietnamese business articles; therefore, three
methods namely descriptive, comparative and contrastive are employed.

as well as helping students how enhance their skills of describing charts and graphs in English.
Lastly, the Conclusion part includes a review of the study, some concluding remarks and
suggestions for further research. References
Vietnamese
1. Diệp Quang Ban (1991), Ngữ pháp tiếng Việt (tập 1), Nxb Giáo Dục, Hà Nội.
2. Diệp Quang Ban (1992), Ngữ pháp tiếng Việt (tập 2), Nxb Giáo Dục, Hà Nội.
3. Vũ Quang Hào (2009), Ngôn ngữ báo chí, Nxb Thông Tấn, Hà Nội.
4. Trần Hữu Mạnh (2007), Ngôn ngữ học đối chiếu: Cú pháp tiếng Anh-tiếng Việt, Nxb Đại
học Quốc Gia Hà Nội, Hà Nội.
5. Nguyễn Thị Thảo (2008), Tác phẩm báo chí đại c-ơng, Đề tài khoa học cấp viện, Học
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Nội, Hà Nội.
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Quốc Gia Hà Nội
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9. Hoàng Văn Vân (2005), Nghiên cứu dịch thuật, Nxb Khoa Học Xã Hội, Hà Nội.
English
1. Alexander, L G et al (1975), English grammatical structure - a general syllabus for
teachers. Longman Group Limited, London.
2. Borsley D.R. (1999), Syntactic theory A unified approach (2
nd
edition), Arnold,
London.
3. Bùi Nguyệt Anh (2003), Some discourse features of newspaper headlines and articles in

19. Reah, D. (2002), The language of newspapers, Routledge, New York.
20. Richards, J. C. et al. (1992), Longman dictionary of language teaching & applied
linguistics. Longman, London.
21. Tallerman M. (1998), Understanding Syntax. Arnold publishers, London.
22. Valin, R. D. Van and Randy J. L. (1997) Syntax-structure, meaning and function.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.