MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A. THESIS

A STUDY ON SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF SPORTS
NEWSPAPER HEADLINES IN ENGLISH WITH REFERENCE TO THE
VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENCE
(NGHIÊN CỨU ĐẶC TRƯNG CÚ PHÁP VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA TIÊU ĐỀ
BÁO THỂ THAO TIẾNG ANH TRONG SỰ LIÊN HỆ TIẾNG VIỆT)

HA NGOC THU HANG

Field: English Language
Code: 60220201

Hanoi, 2017


MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A. THESIS

A STUDY ON SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF SPORTS
NEWSPAPER HEADLINES IN ENGLISH WITH REFERENCE TO THE
VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS
(NGHIÊN CỨU ĐẶC TRƯNG CÚ PHÁP VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA TIÊU ĐỀ
BÁO THỂ THAO TIẾNG ANH TRONG SỰ LIÊN HỆ TIẾNG VIỆT)



ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First and foremost, I would like to express my great gratitude to my supervisor,
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ho Ngoc Trung, for his enthusiasm, kindness and helpful advice
which encourages me much during my time of implementing the thesis.
The second, I am greatly indebted to all my lectures at the Faculty of Graduate
Studies at Hanoi Open University for their useful lectures, supports, encouragement
and for inspiring me the love for English foreign language teaching and doing scientific
research.
Besides, I also offer my sincere thanks the friends and colleagues who helped me
along the way.
The finally and most importantly, I would like to express my whole-hearted
gratitude to my family. I could not have come this far without their love, their support
and their understanding.

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ABSTRACT
The present thesis discusses a certain field of linguistic focusing on a descriptive
– contractive approach which is applied to investigating and analyzing syntactic and
semantic features of headlines in English and the Vietnamese equivalence. As a
method of conducting the present research, contrastive linguistic analysis of headlines
in English and the Vietnamese equivalence, to figure out the similarities and
differences of headlines represented in these two languages. Similarities and
differences of headlines between two languages have been identified in this thesis.
The aim of this thesis is investigating on syntactic structures and semantic
features of conceptual ‘Simile’ and raising Vietnamese learners’ awareness these
conceptual. The use of conceptual ‘Simile’ in particular have not yet been the specific
focus in different researchers, so that is why this thesis seeks to make a contribution



Adj.P

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
Adjective Phrase

Adv.P

Adverb Phrase

E.g
N
N.P
P.P
V.P

Example
Noun
Noun Phrase
Prepositional Phrase
Verb Phrase

S

Sentence

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Rationale of the study
1.2. Aims and objectives of the study

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1.2.1. Aims of the study
1.2.2. Objectives of the study
1.3. Research questions
1.4. Methods of the study
1.5. Scope of the study
1.6. Significance of the study
1.7. Design of the study
CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

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2.1. Previous study
2.2. Overview of syntax and semantic theory


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3.1.1. In terms of syntactic features
3.1.1.1. Sentential headlines

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3.1.1.2. Non-sentential sports newspaper headlines

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3.1.1.3. Word
3.1.1.4. Phrase
3.1.1.5. Clause
3.1.1.6. Sentence
3.1.2. In terms of syntactic features of conceptual ‘Simile’

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3.1.3. In terms of semantic features
3.1.3.1. Stylistic Devices

3.3.2.1. Differences

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3.4. Similarities and differences between English ‘Simile’ and their Vietnamese
equivalents in terms of syntactic and semantic features
3.4.1. In terms of their syntactic
3.4.1.1 In terms of their sentence patterns
3.4.1.2 In terms of their sentence elements
3.4.2. In terms of their semantic

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3.5. Summary

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CHAPTER 4: COMMON ERRORS MADE BY STUDENTS AT AJC WHEN

5.2 Limitation of the study
5.3. Recommendations/ Suggestions for further research

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REFERENCES
INTERNET RESOURCES

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APPENDIXES
APPENDIX 1

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APPENDIX 2

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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Rationale of the study
There is a booming trend that the objective of studying foreign language is to



that help decide whether to continue on reading the whole report or to skip onto
another one. Each headline should be a summary of the news which follows. A
headline should be a sentence, and so it also should have a regular sentence structure
containing a subject and a verb with the exception that headlines normally does not
contain auxiliaries, pronouns, articles, or conjunctions. It means that only lexical, not
grammatical words are used. The major reason for that is the space. There is only
limited space provided for each headline and the problem of fitting the best words may
occur. Then the rule of a sentence may be broken, only minor sentences are used, and
such a headline can be rather difficult to understand. Sometimes this happens for a
good reason, as space, but more often this happens on purpose to make the headline
somehow special with the aim to attract the reader’s attention to the report or even to
buy the newspaper at all. In that case, readers are mystified, confused and in the end,
after reading the report they can feel disappointed as it did not fulfil their expectations.
This work studies grammatical features used in headlines but, as the space of this
paper is limited, it tries to focus mainly on the difference between metaphor and simile.
It analyses their structure in comparison with the common core. The analysis is based
on a corpus consisting of 500 randomly chosen abroad newspaper headlines. The
material used here is definitely limited and cannot exemplify all features; therefore the
aim is rather to establish general characteristic with respect to the main areas which
have been studied. In the first chapter the function of a headline is introduced and
readers will also learn some basic characteristic features of headlines.
For these above reasons, the topic: “A study on syntactic and semantic features
of sports newspaper headlines in English with reference to the Vietnamese
equivalence” is chosen with the purpose of finding out the equivalents of English and
Vietnamese. In this study, conceptual ‘Simile’ is described and analyzed in contexts
and situations. Hence, I do hope that the thesis will be a useful reference, to the extent
possible, for teaching and learning English and Vietnamese as foreign languages
1.2. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

‘Simile’ feature and their Vietnamese equivalence. Then examples foe illustrating the
description will be taken from the grammar and reference book written by
contemporary influential linguists in English such as
‘Newspaper headlines. A study in linguistic method. London’. S. Lander.
A number of general research methods such as metaphor, simile, synecdoche,
metonymy, repetition, parallelism, triple, euphemism, hyperbole and rhetorical
question. It will be applied to carry out the thesis. Besides, structural analysis, and
description which are usually used to study linguistics will be applied in the thesis.

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The second, quantitative method is used to quantify conceptual ‘Simile’ which are
found out in the research.
1.5. SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The study will present a theoretical background based on a number of materials
for teaching and terminology. Next, it will collect typical English and Vietnamese
journalist terms from materials for journalist, analyze their general features and main
structural features. In the process, the study will pay attention about sports newspaper
headlines in English with reference to the Vietnamese equivalence. After that, the
study will define common strategies applied in the English-Vietnamese journalist term
teaching.
This study focuses on some syntactic and semantic features found in the sports
newspaper headlines in English and Vietnamese to see how they are equivalence.
Besides that, the study only focuses on conceptual ‘Simile’ of sport headlines
particularly about language structures (forms) and functions of these newspaper
headlines.
Comparative method is used to analyze conceptual ‘Simile’ to explore the
Vietnamese using equivalence, hence pointing out syntactic and semantic feature which
cause difficulties for Vietnamese learners and suggesting some implications for

words, phrases, sentences, and discourses, and what these elements mean or stand in
for:— their denotations and senses.
The second, practical significance
In teaching English, syntactic and semantic features are an essential part of
English communication and they are important for the students to know and understand
conceptual ‘Simile’ is commonly used at the office, in the household and in everyday
conversation. They have become the beans and rice of English, so make sure the
students have more than conceptual ‘Simile’ in their English vocabulary.
In learning English, when they watch movie, cartoon without translating into
Vietnamese they sometimes do not understand whole the contents so students are most
likely using conceptual ‘Simile’ to understand, talk, share their ideas, put forward
opinions and learn different perspectives using English. They all want to be exceptional
English communicators.
The research study could provide information on the issues of journalist. Further,
this study would also be a review on Academy of journalism and communication. One
of my students showed me her journal on Live Journal and I noticed that many other of
our students also had journal there. Students are developing a whole community
through school that is outside of ‘school’. Can some of that community be harnessed
for ‘school’? Maybe it’s because I’m relatively new to teaching, but I am fascinated by
what the students are doing- and learning.

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1.7. DESIGN OF THE STUDY
According to the format of thesis. It will be divided into 5 chapters:
- Chapter 1: Introduction – gives the reason why this topic has been chosen for the
research as well as its aims and objectives, the scope, the significance and
organizational structure of the thesis.
- Chapter 2: Literature review – presents the previous studies relating to the research

2.1. Review of previous study
In this Chapter, review of related literature and theoretical background including
the syntactic and semantic features of sports newspaper headlines in English and their
Vietnamese equivalents will be provided.
Headlines are obviously one of the striking features of modern newspapers.
Therefore it is not surprising that they have been studied quite extensively not only by
journalists but also by linguists. Some of the few existing linguistic studies of headlines
will be reviewed below.
The headline is the text at the top of a newspaper article, indicating the nature of
the article below it (Wikipedia).
The complexity of headlines has been investigated by Brisau (1969). He
measured complexity in terms of clauses, which were thus singled out from other units
as a gauge of complexity. In 3,000 headlines, Brisau (1969) finds 264 examples of
headlines containing two or more clauses, which is less than 10% of the total number.
Brisau (1969) concludes that more complex structures than two very simple clauses
linked together rarely occur in headlines. He mentions, however, that the linguistic
makeup of the headline could vary widely from one newspaper to another.
Mardh (1980) offers an exhaustive study of the characteristic features of the
headlines of a range of English newspapers. She identifies the following linguistic
features as typical of headlines in English newspapers: the omission of articles; the
omission of verbs and of auxiliaries (the verb "to be" for example); nominalizations;

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the frequent use of complex noun phrases in subject position (in theme position);
adverbial headings, with the omission of both verb and subject; the use of short words
("bid" instead of "attempt"); the widespread use of puns, word play and alliteration;
the importance of word order, with the most important items placed first, even, in some
cases, a verb; and independent "wh" constructions not linked to a main clause (an


In the M.A thesis by Trần Thị Lệ Thương (2009) the sport commentaries was
investigated and research in detail. She studied her thesis in the scale of discourse.
In the M.A thesis, Nguyễn Thị Kiều Ngân (2011) has also chosen sports as her
field of investigation. She fully paid her attention to the synonymy between English
and Vietnamese sports commentaries used in the newspaper and magazines.
Up to now, although a number of research topics about syntactic and semantic
features of English headlines with their Vietnamese equivalents have been done. In this
paper, I am especially interested in researching about the syntactic and semantic
features of the conceptual ‘Simile’ because ‘Simile’ is one of common newspaper
headlines. It is not easy for learners to understand deeply and clearly. The manifold
using of the conceptual ‘Simile’ is showed the using in English. This research will be
effective for us to teach English to Vietnamese learners as a second language as well.
2.2. Overview of syntax and semantic theory
2.2.1 Theory of syntax
Within traditional grammar, the syntax of a language is described in term of a
taxonomy of the range of different types of syntactic structures found in the language.
The central assumption underpinning syntactic analysis in traditional grammar is that
phrases and sentences are built up of a series of constituents, each of which belongs to
a specific grammatical category and serves a specific grammatical function.
Syntax is a set of rules in language. It dictates how words from different parts of
speech are put together in order to convey a complete thought. According to R.M.W.
Dixon (1991), syntax deals with the way in which words are combined together. Verbs
have different grammatical properties from language to language but there is always a
major class verb, which includes word referring to motion, rest, attention, giving and
speaking Syntax is understood to be the theory of the structure of sentences in a
language. This view has its direct antecedents in the theory of immediate constituents,
in which the function of syntax is to mediate between the observed forms of a sentence
and its meaning.
Syntax is now the study of the principles and rules that govern the ways in which

even to writers on the subject. Leech (1990).
Semantics is a branch of linguistics, which deals with meaning or the content of
communication. According to Hurford and Heasley (1983:1), “semantics is the study of
meaning in language”. Language is a means of communication, and people use
language to communicate with others by making conversations, giving information,
and other things to make social relationship. Human beings have been given the
capacity to talk, to communicate with each other, to make meaningful utterances, so
that they are understood by other human beings. They communicate about the world in

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which they live, about themselves, about their thought and feeling, about what has
happened, about what might happen or what they would like to happen, and a lot more.
Hurford and Heasley (1983:5) state, “the giving of information is itself an act of
courtesy, performed to strengthen social relationships”. This is also part of
communication. There are some linguists that try to define semantics. Moreover, as
quoted by Lyons (1977) at first defines semantics as the study of the relations of signs
to the objects to which the signs are applicable. And then he revises his definition,
saying that, semantics is that portion of semiotic which deals with the signification of
sign in all modes of signifying.
David Crystal (1992:347) defines that “semantics is the study of meaning in
language”. Structural semantics applied the principles of structural linguistics to the
study of meaning through the notion of semantic relations (also called sense relation),
such as synonymy and antonyms. In generative grammar, the semantic component is a
major area of the grammar’s organization, assigning a semantic representation to
sentences, and analyzing lexical terms of semantic features. The theory of semantic
field views vocabulary as organized into areas, within which words (lexical items)
interrelate and define each other.
These semantics features of conceptual ‘Simile’ are the basis of analyzing the

Danuta’s (1998:121) opinion about a headline is that is a unique type of text. It
has a ranger of functions that specifically dictate its shape, content, and structure and it
operates within a range of restrictions that limited the freedom of the writer. In other
words, headline should encapsulate the story in minimum words, attract readers to the
story.
According to Ungerer (2000:48), “a headline describes the essence of a
complicated news story in a few words. It informs quickly and accurately and arouses
the reader’s curiosity”.
In brief, headline is the title given to a news item or an article. It is a condensed
form of writing. It is in fact a part of a whole. The specific functional and linguistic
traits of the headline provides sufficient ground for isolating and analyzing it in a
specific “genre” of journalism.
Let’s see the following examples:
“Johanna Konta’s struggles on clay continued as a final – set slump saw her
close to Laura in the first round of the Marid Open.”
“80% wage of each player will be paid less than last month.”
[Retrieved Sunday, 18th March 2012, mirror.co.uk]
The use of the conceptual ‘Similes’ in the above examples are: ‘as, than’
2.3.2. Classification of headlines

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For the last few years, text mining has been gaining significant importance. Since
knowledge is now available to users through variety of sources. For example:
electronic media, digital media, print media and many more. Due to huge availability
of text in numerous forms, a lot of unstructured data has been recorded by researchers
and have found numerous ways in literature to convert this scattered text into defined
structured volume, commonly known as text classification. Focus on full text
classification. For example: full news, huge documents, long length text etc. is more

the English simile “(as) strong as a horse” is only a semantic simile.

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