MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A. THESIS

A STUDY OF SOME ENGLISH NEGATIVE STRUCTURES
WITH REFERENCE TO THE VIETNAMESE
EQUIVALENTS BASED ON THE BILINGUAL STORY
“AN IDEAL HUSBAND”

LÊ THỊ PHƯƠNG ANH

Hanoi, 2016

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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A. THESIS

A STUDY OF SOME ENGLISH NEGATIVE STRUCTURES
WITH REFERENCE TO THE VIETNAMESE
EQUIVALENTS BASED ON THE BILINGUAL STORY
“AN IDEAL HUSBAND”

LÊ THỊ PHƯƠNG ANH

Field: English Language
Code: 60220201


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
Ph.D. Ly Lan, 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 Dr. Nguyen Dang Suu (my Teacher
and also my mother’s Teacher, to all my Teachers in Hanoi Open
University, 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 parents for the sacrifice
they have devoted to the fulfillment of this academic work.

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
Sample:
A.:

Adjective/ Adverbial

AmE:

American English

Aux:


Pr.:

Predicate

S.:

Subject

V.:

Verb

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LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
Table 1. Assertive and non-assertive negatives

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Table 2. The frequency of using modal verb with ‘not’ in negative

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structures in the story
Table 3. The frequency of using negators “không” and “chẳng” in

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translated version

1.4. Scope of the study ..................................................................................6
1.5. Significance of research ..........................................................................6
1.6. Organizational structure of thesis ...........................................................6
Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................7
2.1. Review of previous studies .....................................................................7
2.2. Review of theoretical background ..........................................................9
2.2.1. Overview of negation ..........................................................................9
2.2.2. Negation under some linguists’ viewpoint ........................................10
2.2.2.1. According to the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and
Applied Linguistics: .....................................................................................10
2.2.2.2. “Negation in English” by Klima .....................................................11
2.2.2.3. Halliday and Hassan ......................................................................12
2.2.2.4. Quirk et al (1973)............................................................................12
2.2.3. Characteristics of negation ................................................................14
2.2.3.1. Scope of negation............................................................................14
2.2.3.2. Focus of negation ............................................................................17
2.2.3.3. The relationship between scope and focus of negation ..................19
2.2.4. Negation in Vietnamese .....................................................................20
Chapter 3: METHODOLOGY ...................................................................23
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3.1. Research-governing orientations .........................................................23
3.1.1. Researh questions ..............................................................................23
3.1.2. Researh setting ...................................................................................24
3.1.3. Principles/criteria for intended data collection and data analysis .....24
3.2. Research methods .................................................................................24
3.2.1. Major methods and supporting methods ...........................................24
3.2.2. Data collection techniques .................................................................25
3.2.3. Data analysis techniques ....................................................................25

4.1.2.3. Tag questions ..................................................................................47
4.1.2.4. Negative commands .......................................................................48
4.1.3. The similarities and differences of negative structures between
English and Vietnamese...............................................................................49
4.1.3.1. Similarities ......................................................................................49
4.1.3.2. Differences ......................................................................................51
4.2. The structures of negations used in “An ideal husband” and their
equivalents in Vietnamese translated version ..............................................52
4.2.1. The structures of negations used in “An ideal husband” ..................52
4.2.1.1. The frequency of using the negators “NOT”, “NO” in the story and
in Vietnamese translated version ................................................................52
a. The frequency of using “NOT” in the story ............................................53
b. The frequency of using “NO” in the story ...............................................57
4.2.1.2. Negation with not ... any, not … at all, not…either, neither …nor,
never in the story..........................................................................................59
4.2.2. Syntactic features of English negative structures taken from the story
“An ideal husband” by Oscar Wilderwith reference to their equivalents in
Vietnamese translated version .....................................................................62
4.2.2.1. Negative statements in the story .....................................................63
a. Subject negation in the story ...................................................................63
1. Subject negation with NOT in the story .................................................63
2. Subject negation with NO in the story.....................................................65
b. Predicate negation in the story ................................................................67
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1. Predicate negation with modal verbs in the story ....................................67
2. Predicate negation with modal verbs “cannot” and “might not” ............68
3. Predicate negation with “will not, shall not” in the story ........................69
4. Predicate negation with “must not” in the story ......................................69

fundamental features of any human languages. As Larry Horn observes in
his “A Natural History of Negation” that all human systems of
communication contain a representation

of negation. No animal

communication system includes negative utterances, and consequently none
possesses a means for assigning truth value, for lying, for irony, or for
coping with false or contradictory statements (Horn2001:xiii). In English,
especially in the stories, negative sentences account for not a small
proportion. Much attention has been paid to the patterns and semantic of
negative sentences. However, there has been no investigation into a
particular literal work so far. For this reason, in this thesis I would like to
devote all my interest some English negative structures used in the bilingual
story “An ideal husband” by Oscar Wilder so as to point out their syntactic
and semantic features with reference to the Vietnamese equivalents in the
translated version “Người chồng lí tưởng” by Hoàng Nguyên in order to get
more understanding of negation in human languages and we can be able to
use negative structures flexibly and fluently.
1.2. Aims of research
This study is aimed at describing and classifying how negative structures of
English and Vietnamese are built and used in details, making a comparison
of English negation with Vietnamese one. The writer also carry out an
investigation into the structures of negation in the bilingual story “An ideal
husband” and its translated version “Một người chồng lý tưởng”.
1.3. Objectives of the research.

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negation in terms of linguistics; and providing Vietnamese learners of
English with a further understanding and using English negative structures.
1.6. Organizational structure of thesis
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The thesis divided into five main chapters:
Chapter I is the introduction of the study. It includes the rationale for
choosing the topic, the aims, the objective, the scope, the significance of the
research and the organizational structure of the thesis.
Chapter II is the literature review. It includes the review of previous
studies and the review of theoretical background.
Chapter III is the methodology. It includes the research orientations,
research questions, major methods, supporting methods and techniques of
the research.
Chapter IV is findings and discussions. It describes the main results of the
research.
Chapter V is conclusion. It gives a brief summary of the whole research.

CHAPTER II - LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Review of previous studies
Jesperson (1917) in “Negation in English and Other Languages” paves
the ways for studies of negation later. He provides the readers with general
tendencies of negation, strengthened and weakened negatives, indirect and
incomplete negation and the meaning of negation. He also shows that
negation can be complete with nuclear negators like “not”, “no”, “never”, or
incomplete with semi-negations as “hardly”, “scarcely”, “little”, “few”.
Among them, “not” is followed by auxiliary verbs to negate the whole
sentence.


perspectives but mainly focus on traditional, structural or logical
perspectives such as Hoàng Trọng Phiến (1980), Nguyễn Đức Dân (1996),
Đỗ Thị Kim Liên (1999) Diệp Quang Ban (2004, 2006), Mai Ngọc Chu, Vũ
Đức Nghiệu. In addition, Nguyen Quang has also investigated negative
sentences in English and Vietnamese on a contrastive analysis in his master
thesis. Especially, Tran Van Phuoc in his doctor thesis “Phân tích đối chiếu
câu phủ định tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt trên bình diện cấu trúc ngữ nghĩa”
systemized the syntactic-semantic features both in English and Vietnamese
declarative sentences as well as analyzed the differences and similarities of
syntactic-semantic features in the two languages. He suggests 17- negative
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sentence structures and 61 variations in English as well as 64 variations in
Vietnamese.

Then Ms Tran Phuong Thao from Danang University

conducted “An Investigation into English Lexical Devices Denoting
Negation versus Vietnamese Equivalents” (2010), in which the ways that
express the conception of negation in English and Vietnamese equivalents
are clarified. All those books and studies have revealed typical and very
interesting features of negation in general as well as negation in English and
Vietnamese in particular. However, there has been no investigation on a
particular story so far. Therefore, the investigation into some English
negative structures used in the bilingual story “An ideal husband” by Oscar
Wilder so as to point out their syntactic and semantic features with reference
to the Vietnamese equivalents in the translated version “Người chồng lí
tưởng” by Hoàng Nguyên.
2.2. Review of theoretical background


straightforward: it negates parts of or the entire sentence or clause.
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, published in 1994 shares
the same and adds some more information that “Negation is the act of
stating that something does not exist or is untrue”, furthermore the
Vietnamese Dictionary, published in 1998 by the Centre of dictionary and
Danang Publishing House says that negation is the act of rejecting the
existence, the necessity of something; the opposition of affirmation. Collins
Cobuilt (Collins Cobuild, 1990, p.206) concludes, “Negation is used when
you want to say something is not true, is not happening, or not the case”.
Although there is wide variety of definition of negation, I myself totally
agree to some main points as follows:
Negation is a part of people’s cognition activity and communication
process. It is a basic category of thinking, of formal logic. It is the
opposition of the affirmative category.
2.2.2. Negation under some linguists’ viewpoint
2.2.2.1. According to the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching
and Applied Linguistics
The dictionary shows that “The main negator (negator is a word that
makes a negative sentence”) is “not”, often in its contracted form “n’t” and
combined with an auxiliary, for example: isn’t going/ hasn’t gone/ didn’t
go/ doesn’t want to go. But there are other negators such as: “hardly ever”,
“never”, “seldom”, “neither”, “nothing”.
E.g. Although they lived quite close, they never visited us.

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Besides, negation can be expressed by negative pronouns, e.g:“There was
nobody there”, or by negative affixes, e.g. “That was unkind!”

Halliday and Hassan (1976) looked at the issue of negation and polarity.
They pointed out that polarity is normally expressed at the beginning of the
verbal group. A negative verbal group will have “n’t” or “not” attached to
the first word if it is finite e.g. could not come. If it is non-finite, it has not;
it usually appears as the first word e.g. not having eating, not to have eaten.
Other negative adverbs like never, hardly, hardly ever may occur in place of
“not”.
According to their findings, the category of negative is not clearly defined,
but is revealed by the choice of tag.
2.2.2.4. Quirk et al (1973):
Quirk et al (1973) keeps the opinion of negative sentences entailing the
operator, requiring the insertion of “not” (or in its contracted form “n’t”)
between the operator and the predication. His makes intensive contributions
to the study of negation. He discovers the ambiguity in negation as well as
the similarity between questions and negations. Quirk et al also states that
questions like statements can be positive or negative.
Moreover, negative preposition such as from, off, out of were also
identified. According to Quirk et al, those prepositions may be defined by
simply adding the word “not” to the corresponding positive preposition.
E.g. She was away from work for a week.
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= She was not at work for a week.
Especially, Quirk et al are among the few who have looked into this area
and they say most disjuncts can be modified and several can be premodified
by “not”, especially “surprising” and some

with negative prefixes



One or the Either

Neither

other
3.

Pronoun

Some

Any

4.

Pronoun

One or the Either

None
Neither

other
He also provides the overview of negative structures (Including predicate,
subject, complement and adverbial negation.

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“The scope of the negation normally extends from the negative word itself
to the end of the clause, or to the beginning of a final adjunct”. (Quick,
p.187)
In the view of Eagleson, the part of a sentence or clause that is controlled by
“not” or other negative words is called the scope of negation.
The scope of negation is mentioned to indicate the stretch of language
over which the negative has its effect. The relation between negative words
and non-assertive words that they govern will happen in scope of negation
(that is part of language that the negative meaning operates through). The
scope of negation formally extents from the negative words to the end of the
clause or to the beginning of a final adjunct. The subject and any adjuncts
occur before a final predication often lies outside it. Hence, the operator can
be within or outside the scope. Some following examples are given for
illustration:
E.g.: I definitely didn’t speak to him. (1) (Quirk, p.188)
Versus I didn’t definitely speak to him (2) (Quirk, p.188)
In (1), the scope of negation stretches from “not” to “him”, subject (I),
adjunct (definetely), operator (did) are excluded, the predication takes full
negative effect:
(1) = It’s definite that I did not speak to him
Sentence (2) “I” and operator “did” are put outside while adjunct is inside,
negative meaning extends from negative word to the end of the clause. It’s
not definitely that I did.
The scope of negation also extends to the beginning of a final adjunct.
E.g.: Jim did not arrive at office in the morning (3)
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Versus: Jim did not arrive at office in the morning (4)
In two examples above, final adjunct as adverbial maybe within and outside

2.2.3.2. Focus of negation
Beside the scope, the focus of negation is also needed to incorporate.
Focus of negation places a stress on particular part of a negative clause,
which helps to make the notice of the contrast of meaning implicited in the
negative, at the same time indicates the rest of the clause in the positive. The
focus in a negative clause may be the subject, the main verb, the object, the
complement, the adjunct or any words or phrases under the constrative
stress. In other words, the focus of negation is to place effect on single
word, which belongs to either open-class item in clause. Grammatically, the
focus of negation in English is devided into two types: end- focus and
contrastive focus.
End-focus
Richard Nordquist states that “End- focus is the principle that most
important imformation in a clause or sentence is placed at the end. It is a
normal characteristic of sentence structures in English”. (Richard,
About.com Grammar and Composition)
Mentioning the definition of end focus, Quirk (1974; 407) states that end
- focus is the chief prominence on the last- open items (verbs, adjectives,
nouns, adverbs) and proper noun. "To be technically accurate, end focus is
given to the last open-class item or proper noun in a clause” (Quirk and
Greenbaum 1973). In other words, the end focus is used to withdraw
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hearer’s attention to information that speaker wants to convey; when a
negative clause has end-focus, only last item is negated the rest is positive.
E.g.: Jim wasn’t in his office ≈ (Jim was somewhere, not in his office)
They haven’t been to Da Nang City ≈ (They have gone somewhere, but not
to Da Nang City)
Contrastive-focus

negation.
2.2.3.3. The relationship between scope and focus of negation
The scope and focus are so interrelated that the scope must be inside the
focus. Scope is connected to all elements whose individual falsity would
make the negated statement strictly true. Focus is the element of the scope
that is intended to be interpreted as false to make the overall negative true.
In other words, they are interconnected in such a way that the scope must
include the focus. In an independent clause the scope of negation covers all
the negative effect.The extent of the scope is identified by the position of
the focus. Indeed, since the scope of negation is often not clearly signaled,
“we can indicate it by where we place the information focus” (Quirk,
p.188). The following is an example of the scope of negation which is
extended to include a subordinate clause of reason, with a contrastive fallrise to emphasize this:
I didn’t leave home because I was afraid of my father. (Quick, p.189)

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