MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNVERSITY

M.A. THESIS

SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF
ENGLISH COMPOUND NOUNS WITH REFERENCE
TO THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS
(ĐẶC ĐIỂM CẤU TRÚC VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA DANH TỪ GHÉP TIẾNG
ANH LIÊN HỆ TƯƠNG TƯƠNG VỚI TIẾNG VIỆT)

NGUYỄN THỊ PHƯỢNG

Hanoi, 2016


Front hard cover
Back hard cover

NGUYỄN THỊ PHƯỢNG

ENGLISH LANGUAGE

2014 - 2016


MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNVERSITY

M.A. THESIS


THEIR

VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS ( Đặc điểm cấu trúc và ngữ nghĩa của
danh từ ghép tiếng Anh liên hệ tương đương với tiếng Việt) submitted in
partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in English
Language. Except where the reference is indicated, no other person’s work
has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis.

Hanoi, 2016

Nguyen Thi Phuong

Approved by
SUPERVISOR

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phan Van Que
Date:……………………

i


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phan Van Que, 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 all the lectures of the Master course

English compound nouns.

iii


LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
1.

ECNs:

English compound nouns

2.

VCNs:

Vietnamese compound nouns

3.

CP

Compound nouns

4.

RSU :

Red Star University


16

Table 2.4

Examples of ECNs and VCNs

25

Table 3.1

Information of the research participants

34

Table 4.1

Meaning formation of compound nouns

42

Table 4.2

Syntactic and semantic features of ECNs in their Vietnamese 45

equivalents
Table 4.3

The learners’ acquisition levels on the syntactic features

56

ii

Abstract

iii

List of abbreviations

iv

List of tables and figures

v

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION

1

1.1.

Rationale for the research

1

1.2.

Aims of the research

2


5

Review of previous studies

2.1.1. Previous studies overseas

5

2.1.2. Previous studies in Vietnam

6

2.2.

7

Review of theoretical background

2.2.1. Overview of English compounding

7

2.2.1.1. Definition

7

2.2.1.2. Distinguishing compounds from phrases

9



2.2.3.2. The classification of Vietnamese compound nouns

28

2.3.

31

Summary

Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY

32

3.1. Research-governing orientation

32

3.1.1. Research questions

32

3.1.2. Research setting

32

3.1.3. Research approaches

33


36

3.2.2.1. Selective material

37


3.2.2.2. The survey questionnaire

37

3.2.3. Data analysis techniques

40

3.3. Summary
Chapter 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
4.1. The syntactic and semantic features of English compound nouns

40
42
42

4.1.1. Syntactic features

42

4.1.1.1. The formation of compound nouns


4.2.1. Syntactic features

48

4.2.2. Semantic features

49

4.3. The similarities and differences on syntactic features between 49
English compound nouns and their Vietnamese equivalents.
4.3.1. Similarities

49

4.3.2. Differences

50

4.4. The similarities and differences of semantic features between 51
English compound nouns and their Vietnamese equivalents.
4.4.1. Similarities

51

4.4.2. Differences

52

4.5. Implications of findings



5.2.

Concluding remarks

64

5.3.

Limitation of the research

65

5.4.

Recommendations/Suggestions for further research

65

REFERENCES
APPENDICES


Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rationale for the research
In recent years, teaching English has been paid considerable attention
by many linguistic scholars and teachers. Various communicative approaches
have been applied with the hope to teach learners to use English as the native
speakers. However, the process of learning English involves not only

Because of its importance and complication, study on compound nouns
interests so many linguists and researchers. There have been a number of
studies on compound nouns conducted by many researchers for suggestions
dealing with compound nouns in commerce, science, technology and
software computer texts but there is no systematic research on compound
nouns of tourism terms. For those reasons, as a learner as well as a teacher of
teaching English in the Foreign language and Tourism Department, I would
like to do a research on this matter with the hope that I would
understand properly the features of English compound nouns and find out
an appropriate way to teach them to my students of ESP.
The title of the research is “Syntactic and semantic features of English
compound nouns with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents”.
1.2. Aims of research
The thesis is aimed to get the full knowlegde of syntactic and semantic
features of ECNs with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents. From that,
the author will give the suggestions for teachers to teach English compound
nouns and methods to learn English compound nouns for Vietnamese
learners.
1.3. Objectives of research
There are three main objectives in this study. The first objective is
pointing out the syntactic and semantic features of English compound nouns
with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents. The second one is helping
2


Vietnamese learners be aware of the differences and similarities between
English compound nouns and their Vietnamese equivalents. And lastly, it is
proposing some implications for mastering English compound nouns in
effective ways.
1.4. Scope of research

Chapter 3: “Methodology” that indicates research orientations and
research methods.
Chapter 4: “Finding and discussion” that analyzes and discusses to
answer the research questions
Chapter 5: “Conclusion” is the last chapter to summarize and close
our research.

4


Chapter 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
In this section, previously conducted research in the detail fields of
compound nouns will be presented and discussed. This must be done in order
to place the thesis in the context relevant to the research which will be
conducted. Furthermore, it will provide the reader with some basic
knowledge of the background and present state of this field of research.
2.1. Review of previous studies
2.1.1. Previous studies overseas
The amount of research conducted on the syntactic and semantic
features of compound nouns on tourism and hotel industry relevant to this
thesis is somewhat limited.
Charteris-Black , J (1999) reported that the second language learners
encounter comprehension problems with compound nouns and that
idiomatic, syntactic

and lexicalization factor may influence their

comprehension. And he also pointed out that the problems come from the
learner’s word combination. This problem is very similar with native

made to find a better way of teaching and learning compound nouns
in an English Second Purposes textbook. However, they are all minor thesis,
many other related issues cannot be discussed thoroughly.
Compared to those previous studies, this study will have more obvious
similarities and differences, namely analyzing English Compound Nouns in
term of their syntactic and semantic features denoting tourism terms.
Especially, this study will focus on the students in Red Star University and
the field of compound nouns is on the tourism and hotel in the textbooks
6


“English for the hotel and tourist Industry” by Nguyen Thanh Chuong and “
Hotel English” by Tuyet Son – Thu Ha.
2.2. Review of theoretical background
2.2.1. Overview of English compounding
Compounding, or also equally termed composition, is one of the major
English word-formation processes and also serves as an excellent source of
noun formations (formations created for a single occasion) and neologisms.
As mentioned by Štekauer (2000, p. 99) it is even often regarded as the most
productive process of the English word-formation. Plag (2002) also
maintained this opinion. Furthermore, Plag (2002, p.169) added that
compounding is the most controversial process in English in terms of
linguistic analysis. This is due to the fact that “numerous issues remain
unresolved and convincing solutions are generally not easy to find” (Plag,
2002, p. 169). Because of this, there is no universal definition of compounds
(Kavka and Štekauer, 2006), so an attempt to find one, which would be
highly unfeasible, will not be made.
2.2.1.1. Definition
Adams (1973) sees compound as "the result of the (fixed) combination
of two free forms, or words that have an otherwise independent existence" (p.

explanation of word composition. Although the different terminology is used
by each author, e.g. root, stem, base, element, the meaning is the same.
Concluded, a compound can be defined as a combination of two or
more elements. If the compound is composed of more than two elements it is
still analyzable into two-element structures. This characteristic of compounds
is called binarity. Other important factors that are being used to define
8


compounds (except for the number of their constituents) are their function
and meaning. Units that are labeled as compounds behave as single units in
regards to their syntactic and semantic function. Besides, it has been
received a lot of concern from linguistic scholars such as Yule(1985) ,
Fromkin, V; Rodmar, R.; Collins P. and Blair P. (1998), Hornby, A.S.
(1995), Jackson, H. & Amvela. E. Z. (2000), Leech, G,N. (1974), etc. They
have proposed a number of different definitions on compounding. In this
study the definition

of Quirk

et al. (1985) is considered

to be of

appropriate, sufficient and easy one to understand: “Compound is a lexical
unit consisting of more than one base and functioning both grammatically
and semantically as a single word” (1985:1567).
2.2.1.2. Distinguishing compounds from phrases
As stated before, sometimes it is really difficult to decide whether a
given formation is a compound or a phrase. While the definition itself is

compounds (e.g.: ‘trade ‘union). Moreover, Štekauer (2000) says that
number of compounds with this stress pattern is increasing and therefore it
would be convenient to use a more general criterion. As Matthews (1974)
pointed out, this criterion is highly subject to variation, as there tends to be
no consistency of stressing the compounds, even among native speakers. It
also often depends on “sentence stress and intonation” (Matthews, 1974, p.
98) and therefore this test of compoundhood is clearly not very reliable.
2.2.1.2.2. Spelling and lexicalization
Compounds

are

spelled in

three

different

ways (Lieber and

Štekauer, 2009, p.376) – they may be solid, i.e. written as one word (e.g.
blackboard), two hyphenated words (baby-sitter) or written as two separate
words (living room). That already indicates a problem, as not much effort is
needed to find a compound which can be written in either of the three above
10


mentioned ways. Example of this can be the word girlfriend where all the
forms girlfriend, girl-friend and girl friend are acceptable. Therefore,
spelling is often regarded as not particularly relevant and unreliable criteria

recognized as a compound in English.
Modification is closely tied to inseparability; when an arbitrary
modifier is inserted between elements of a compound, the resulting phrase is
unable to maintain compoundhood of the original (Lieber and Štekauer 2009,
p. 377), as shown above. Furthermore, as compound is treated as a single
unit, its elements cannot be modified separately. As seen in example taken
from Jackson and Amvela (2007, p. 93-94), air- sick can occur in a phrase
like seriously air-sick, where seriously modifies the whole compound, but it
cannot modify just the second element which means that phrase airseriously sick is not possible.
2.2.1.2.5. Semantic criteria
Semantic criteria are the last ones that are to be discussed in this part,
and since the formal criteria mentioned above are not satisfying in many
cases, semantics is often emphasized (Matthews 1974, p. 95). This leads to
Jespersen‟s (1974) supposition that “if the meaning of the whole cannot be
logically deduced from the meanings of the constituents the expression is a
compound”, as cited by Štekauer (2000, p. 101). Also Jackson and Amvela
(2007) stated that compounds tend to acquire very specialized meanings and
therefore their constituents may lose their original meanings. This works very
well for lexicalised compounds such as blackboard (as it may have also a
different color) or dustbin (it is not entirely restricted to dust), as exemplified
in Jackson and Amvela (2007, p. 94). However, this is not true for all
compounds as there are also expressions whose meaning can be easily
12