This descriptive and qualitative study, part of a big project, endeavored to explore the syntactic features of the English discourse marker only and its Vietnamese translational equivalents. It involved the development of a bilingual corpus, which consisted of 168 English and 168 Vietnamese instances of sentences containing only. The interpretive contrastive analysis was employed. | A SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS OF THE ENGLISH DISCOURSE MARKER ONLY AND ITS VIETNAMESE TRANSLATIONAL EQUIVALENTS Tran Quoc Thao*,1, Nguyen Van Muoi2 Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Education, 01 Vo Van Ngan, Thu Duc, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam 2 Buon Ma Thuot University, 298 Ha Huy Tap, Tan An, Buon Ma Thuot, Vietnam 1 Received 28 April 2016 Revised 09 May 2017; Accepted 16 May 2017 Abstract: This descriptive and qualitative study, part of a big project, endeavored to explore the syntactic features of the English discourse marker only and its Vietnamese translational equivalents. It involved the development of a bilingual corpus, which consisted of 168 English and 168 Vietnamese instances of sentences containing only. The interpretive contrastive analysis was employed. The findings reveal that only in English often comes in three positions, namely, initial, medial, final, whereas their Vietnamese equivalent usually appears in initial and medial positions. Additionally, there are more similarities than differences in terms of syntactic functions of only used in English and Vietnamese. Keywords: contrastive analysis, discourse marker, English, only, syntactic feature, Vietnamese 1. Introduction The English language, due to its hegemony throughout the world, has become an international language, a lingua franca, or a world language, so it is both the most common language and pivotal tool in international communication and integration. Moreover, much more demand, as a result of rapid globalization and increasing international trade, has been made for people who can communicate orally in English. Language, however, is the quintessence of cultural background. To understand any languages more deeply and clearly, language learners, therefore, should know not only people, customs, cultures, but also the theory of its language to get a thorough insight into the language. Language, furthermore, is one of the most effectively communicative means which makes everyone .
