A contrastive analysis of English and Vietnamese noun phrase

Abstract

The English syntax, a part of structural linguistics plays an important role in language studies. That students could master the syntax enables them to speak and write English more accurately. Its areas cover the English phrases and clauses. The English phrases have various divisions, such as Noun Phrase (NP), Verb Phrase (VP), Adjective Phrase (Adj P), Adverb Phrase (Adv P), and Prepositional Phrase (Prep P). This study was intended to provide sufficient information about syntactic features of the noun phrase in English and Vietnamese and clarify the similarities and differences between them as well. The results show that both English and Vietnamese noun phrases have a head noun; a noun phrase may consist of only one word in both languages; a noun phrase can be made from 2 nouns. It also indicates that English and Vietnamese noun phrases differ in classifiers and numerals, focus marker, and the order of the constituents.