MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

NGUYỄN THỊ PHƯỢNG

A CONTRASTIVE STUDY ON
INTERJECTIONS IN ENGLISH AND
VIETNAMESE
NGHIÊN CỨU SO SÁNH ĐỐI CHIẾU THÁN TỪ
TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT
M.A. THESIS

Field: English Language
Code: 60220201

Hanoi, 2015
i


MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

NGUYỄN THỊ PHƯỢNG

A CONTRASTIVE STUDY ON
INTERJECTIONS IN ENGLISH AND
VIETNAMESE
NGHIÊN CỨU SO SÁNH ĐỐI CHIẾU THÁN TỪ
TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT
M.A. THESIS


This thesis could not have been completed without the help and
support from a number of people.
First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to
Dr. Hồ Ngọc Trung, my supervisor, who has patiently and
constantly supported me through the stages of the study, and
whose stimulating ideas, expertise, and suggestions have inspired
me greatly through my growth as an academic researcher.
A special word of thanks goes to the teachers at Faculty of Post
Graduate, Hanoi Open University and many others, without whose
support and encouragement it would never have been possible for
me to have this thesis accomplished.
Last but not least, I am greatly indebted to my family, my husband,
for the sacrifice they have devoted to the fulfillment of this
academic work.

ii


ABSTRACT
This study sets out to focus on finding out the grammatical,
pragmatic and cultural features of English and Vietnamese
interjections and discussing the similarities and differences of
interjections in English and Vietnamese. To achieve this end,
descriptive method and contrastive analysis are employed as the
major methods. In addition to that, experimental method, error
analysis and statistical technique are applied as the supporting
ones to carry out the research efficiently. Basing on the qualitative
and quantitative approaches, the study has pointing out the various
features of English and Vietnamese interjections. Morphologically,
both English and Vietnamese interjections can be reduplicative,

Table 4.2. Interjections as partial reduplication in English

27

Table 4.3. Interjections as loan words in English

28

Table 4.4. Interjections as onomatopoeia in English

30

Table 4.5. Interjections as complete reduplication in Vietnamese

32

Table 4.6. Interjections as partial reduplication in Vietnamese

32

Table 4.7. Interjections as loan words in Vietnamese

35

Table 4.8. Interjections as onomatopoeia in Vietnamese

36

Table 4.9. Interjections as word groups in English



TABLE OF CONTENTS
Certificate of originality

i

Acknowledgements

ii

Abstract

iii

List of tables and figures

iv

Table of contents

v

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION

1

1.1.

Rationale for the research


4

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

5

2.1.

Review of previous studies

5

2.2.

Review of theoretical background

8

2.3.

Summary

18

Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY

19

3.1.


4.1.1.1.

Morphological features of interjections in English

25

4.1.1.2.

Morphological features of interjections in Vietnamese

30

4.1.2. Syntactic features of interjections in English and Vietnamese

36

4.1.2.1.

Syntactic features of interjections in English

36

4.1.2.2.

Syntactic features of interjections in Vietnamese

40
v



4.3.1. Cultural features of English interjections

65

4.3.2. Cultural features of Vietnamese interjections

66

4.3.3. Cultural similarities and differences of English and Vietnamese

69

interjections
4.3.4. Summary

70

4.4.

70

Implications of the research for the teaching, learning and translating
of English interjections at HUBT

4.4.1. Questionnaire reports

70

4.4.2. Implications of the research for the teaching, learning and translating



76

5.3.

Limitation of the research

77

5.4.

Recommendations for a further research

78

REFERENCES

vii

APPENDICES

xii

vi


CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
1.1.

Rationale

For all the reasons above, I have the desire to do research into the
field. With the study entitled A Contrastive Study of Interjections in
English and Vietnamese, I do hope the research can help my students in
HUBT use and translate English interjections appropriately in every single
context.
1.2.

Aims of the research
The study is aimed at finding out the grammatical, pragmatic and

cultural features of English and Vietnamese interjections and discussing the
similarities and differences of interjections in English and Vietnamese in
order that Vietnamese students in general and HUBT students in particular
could have a better understanding of interjections and translate them
properly according to contexts given.
1.3.

Objectives of the research

The study is intended to:
- describe the grammatical, pragmatic and cultural features of
interjections in English and Vietnamese.
- point out the similarities and dissimilarities between English and
Vietnamese interjections in terms of grammar, pragmatics and
culture.
- propose the implications of the research to the teaching, learning and
translating of English interjections into Vietnamese at HUBT.

2


and survey questionnaires. The survey questionnaires designed in this
research focus primarily on the use of English and Vietnamese interjections
and on the translation of English interjections into Vietnamese ones in the
scope of family and society. The participants of the research would be 100
English-major students in their second academic year at HUBT. They are in
their early twenties and the number of females participating in the research
is equal to the number of males.
1.5.

Significance of the research
Theoretically, apart from completing my M.A course, the research

helps my colleagues and my students use and translate English interjections
more accurately; it might also help adjust the curriculum in my faculty.

3


Practically, through the research, I can have extensive knowledge
about English interjections to help my students use and translate English
interjections properly in the relevant context.
1.6.

Structural organization of the thesis
This thesis shall be presented in five chapters, starting with

Introduction and ending with Conclusion. The second chapter, named
Literature Review, gives a critical review of the previous studies relating to
the research problem under investigation and presents the theoretical
background employed as tools for conducting the whole research. The

interjections: primary and secondary interjections. The primary ones are
words or non-words that can stand alone as an utterance and do not
come into other word classes. Secondary interjections ―are those words
which have an independent semantic value but which can be used

5


conventionally as utterances by themselves to express a mental attitude or
state‖ (Ameka, 1992: 111).
Goffman (1981: 99), the sociolinguist,

proposes that an interjection

―doesn‘t seem to be a statement in the linguistic sense.‖ He discusses
interjections according to socio-communicative roles they play rather
than according to any linguistic content they may have.
Wharton (2000, 2001, 2003) proposes that interjections do not have
conceptual meaning, but a procedural meaning that helps the hearer
recover the higher-level explicatures of the utterance they accompany.
As a consequence, interjections have no contribution to the truthconditions of the utterance which they accompany. In his own words,
interjections encode an instruction which ―merely encourages the hearer to
embed the proposition expressed under speech-act or propositionalattitude description by constructing higher-level explicatures‖ (2001:
148). Therefore, he regards interjections as ―indicators of higher-level
explicatures containing speech-act, or propositional-attitude information‖
(2003: 54).
Lin (2006) studied the language of emotion in Kavalan and found that
the four primary interjections in Kavalan, one of many aboriginal languages
in Taiwan, signal different attitudes of the speaker.
Chao

complaints, swears… and they are also used as addressing terms.
From the review of all previous studies above, it is obvious that
researchers in Vietnam as well as in other countries have gained deep
insights and made significant findings in this field. However, the contrastive
study of Interjections in English and Vietnamese still awaits deeper
investigation, which is why the present study hopes to fill in the gap to make
significant contribution to the teaching, learning and translating English
Interjections in Vietnam in general and at HUBT in particular.
7


2.2.

Review of Theoretical Background

2.2.1. English and Vietnamese parts of speech
According to Quirk et al. (1972, 1985), parts of speech are usually
grouped into two categories: the major and minor word classes. The major
word classes - nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs - are termed "major"
because they carry most of the content or meaning of a sentence. Such
classes are also "open" in that new words are added as they are coined. The
other category, the minor word classes, plays a more structural role in a
sentence and each of its classes is more "closed," in that normally no new
words are added. Classes in this category include, but are not limited to,
auxiliary verbs, prepositions, pronouns, determiners, conjunctions and
interjections.
The

open–closed


Vốn từ Tiếng Việt

Thực từ

Dan
h từ

Động
từ

Tính
từ

Hư từ

Số
từ

Đại
từ

Phụ
từ

Định
từ

Quan
hệ từ


something is to do something, or in saying something we do something and
even by saying something we do something.‖ According to his view, any
utterance is composed of the following acts: the locutionary act (the actual
words the speaker is saying), the illocutionary act (the intention of the
speaker) and the perlocutionary act (the effect of utterance on the hearer).
According to Ho Ngoc Trung (2013), Austin and Searle respectively
grouped speech acts into five classes as in the table below.
Table 2.1. Speech Acts Classification by Austin and Searle
Austin’s
Speech Acts

Verdictives

Searle’s
Representatives

Exercitives

Directives

Commissive

Commissives

Behabitives

Expressives

Expositives


which do not enter into syntactic relations"; Trask (1993:144) describes
an interjection as "a lexical item or phrase which serves to express emotion
and which typically fails to enter into any syntactic structures at all"; Crystal
(1995:207) defines an interjection as "a word or sound thrown into a
sentence to express some feeling of the mind".
Biber (1999) noted that interjections have many functions including
the followings: greetings and farewells, e.g. good morning, goodbye,
discourse markers, e.g. well, right, attention signals, e.g. alright, okay,
responses, e.g. yeah, alright, hesitators, e.g. er, various speech act formulae,
e.g. thank you, please, sorry and expletives, e.g. Jesus.
One definition of interjection given by Bruti and Pavesi (2008) is:
―an outcry to express pain, surprise, anger, pleasure or some other emotion,
interjections belong to the oldest forms of speech and represent the most
primitive type of sentence‖ (p.104)

or

―Interjections

are

generally

uninflected function words and have sometimes been seen as sentencewords, since they can replace or be replaced by a whole sentence (they
are holophrastic)‖ (p. 105).

11


Cuenca (2000:332) defines interjections as ―communicative units

(Interjections are words – signals reflecting the psychological –
physiological state, they are similar to spontaneous sounds. The unique
syntactic feature of interjections is that they themselves can form a simple
sentence, or a clause combined with another clause to make a compound
sentence.)
According to Lê Biên (1999:173), interjections are words or phrases like
ái, ối, ôi, ồ, chà, vâng, dạ, than ôi, ối trời ơi, and the like.
2.2.3.2. Classification of interjections
Ameka (1992) categorised interjections in terms of functions into three
types. They are:
(i)

Expressive interjections

(ii)

Conative interjections

(iii)

Phatic interjections

David Cram (2008) considers interjections as a peripheral part of speech,
as minor sentence type, and a unit on the margins of language.
Diệp Quang Ban (2009) classifies interjections in terms of their
formation into three groups:
(i)

Thán từ gần nguyên dạng


meaning of thing or action by a vocal imitation of the sound associated with
it (Whitman: 2001). However, onomatopoeia can be defined as formation of
word or words whose sounds are like the action or thing they name or refer
to. Linguists suggest that onomatopoeia included in sound-symbolic which
refers to a direct correlation between the sounds and the senses of language.
Therefore, they argue that onomatopoeia may reverse the theory of
arbitrariness because of the direct link between the form and the meaning.

14


Regarding the relationship between interjections and onomatopoeia,
interjections may relate to onomatopoeia in some ways. As interjections
express our emotional world, it can be words or group of words resembling
a sound. Accordingly, some onomatopoeia may be interjections like ẹc, ha
ha. However, onomatopoeic words are various, only some of this type can
play the role of an interjection.
2.2.3.5. Politeness Principles and Interjections
The phenomenon of politeness has been defined and interpreted from
various perspectives. So far, many other scholars have made significant
contribution in theorising the concept of politeness.
Leech (1983) defines it as ―strategic conflict avoidance, which can be
measured in terms of the degree of effort put into the avoidance of a conflict
situation, the establishment and the maintenance of comity‖.
Leech (1983) classifies politeness in four different categories
according to the inherent functions of communication acts. The convivial
function of politeness manifests in cases when illocutionary and social
communication aim coincide, as in when interactants are greeting,
congratulating, offering, inviting, and so on. The collaborative function
refers to contexts in which the illocutionary and the social aim are

can be enhanced, preserved, damaged or even lost.
Face-threatening acts are acts which in some way threaten the 'face' or
self-esteem of another person. Some people think that all communicative
acts are potentially threatening. In fact, the potential does exist to threaten
'face' with every act of communication. Whether the act is actually a threat
depends not so much on the intent of the speaker but on the perception of
the listener.
16


Face-threatening acts include acts rather than spoken or written
language. Very often we can threaten others' face by a look, an expression
or some other non-verbal communication.
Everyday communication involves the use of face-threatening acts
(FTA), ―that by their nature run contrary to the face wants of the addressee
and/or of the speaker‖ (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 65). FTAs can threaten
both the speaker‘s and the hearer‘s face. Also, they can obstruct both
positive and negative aspect of one‘s face.
Negative FTAs obstruct the speaker‘s or the hearer‘s freedom of
action and freedom from imposition. FTAs which threaten the speaker‘s
negative face are those that pose an offence to one‘s face, for instance,
expressing thanks, accepting the hearer‘s thanks, apology or offers, excuses,
responses to hearer‘s faux pas, unwilling promises and offers.
Positive FTAs inflict damage to one‘s face by denoting the
interlocutor‘s lack of appreciation and/or approval for one‘s feelings, wants,
desires, and the like. The speaker‘s positive face is threatened by acts which
indicate that one has made a transgression or lost control over the situation,
for example, apologies, confessions, admissions of guilt or responsibility,
acceptance of compliments, self-humiliation, selfcontradiction, and emotion
leakage.