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An investigation into the syntactic features and the uses of English and Vietnamese negative sentences in literary works

This study investigates the syntactic features and the uses of English andVietnamese negative sentences. This is a descriptive study executed in a contrastiveanalysis with English chosen as the source language and Vietnamese as the targetlanguage. First, we describe major syntactic features and the uses of negativesentences in English and Vietnamese. | JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, Hue University, Vol. 70, No 1 (2012) pp. 193-206 AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE SYNTACTIC FEATURES AND THE USES OF ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE NEGATIVE SENTENCES IN LITERARY WORKS Tran Van Phuoc1, To Thi Vinh2 1 2 College of Foreign Languages, Hue University College of Foreign Languages, Danang University Abstract. This study investigates the syntactic features and the uses of English and Vietnamese negative sentences. This is a descriptive study executed in a contrastive analysis with English chosen as the source language and Vietnamese as the target language. First, we describe major syntactic features and the uses of negative sentences in English and Vietnamese. Then, we draw out some similarities and differences of the two languages in terms of their syntactic features and uses. Based on these findings, implications about syntactic features and the uses of negative sentences in English and Vietnamese have been proposed to the Vietnamese learners of English for the purpose of understanding communicative significance of negative sentences. 1. Statement of the problem Vietnamese learners of English, especially learners at the levels of elementary and pre-intermediate often produce some ill-formed sentences in expressing their negative ideas in English as follows: (1) Haven’t you written to Mary? [1, p. 346] Yes. I haven’t. (to express agreement with previous utterance) (2) I not agree. (3) Never I can do that. The ungrammatical sentences (1), (2) and (3) result from the transfer of the Vietnamese patterns respectively: (4) Bạn chưa viết thư cho Mary à? Vâng. Tôi chưa viết. (5) Tôi không đồng ý. (6) Không bao giờ tôi có thể làm được như thế. 193 An investigation into the syntactic features and the uses of 194 Sentences (1), (2) and (3) are ill-formed and certainly unacceptable in English, whereas sentences (4), (5) and (6) are well-formed and highly acceptable in Vietnamese. The syntactic errors in (1), (2) and (3) are the result of