LINGUISTICS STUDENTS’PERSPECTIVE ON THE ROLE OF THE SYNTACTIC KNOWLEDGE IN DECODING ENGLISH AMBIGUOUS STRUCTURES

Authors

  • Thanh Thanh Mai
  • Le Bao Ngoc Nguyen

Keywords:

Abstract

: It is rather challenging for learners to know how to put words in a sentence in a
correct grammatical and logical sense but not ambiguous (Smith, 2015). Despite the need to
take into consideration the use of syntax in language learning, the study of Linguistics
students’ perspective on the role of the syntactic knowledge in decoding English ambiguous
structures has not been conducted in Vietnamese context. This paper reports on the study that
analyzed the type of ambiguous structures which cause the most difficulty to Vietnamese
linguistics students to identify whether the learned syntactic knowledge could help them
interpret these types. The study was conducted by quantitative method including surveys.
Besides, qualitative one involved interviews. The theory of X-bar syntax evolved by Noam
Chomsky (1950s) was adopted as the theoretical framework for the investigation. The results
revealed that the type of syntactic ambiguity that made the most confusion to English
linguistics learners is “transitive or ditransitive verb”. Furthermore, although most students
acknowledged the essential function of syntax in decoding ambiguous structures, some of
them were not accustomed to employing the learned syntax in analyzing sentence structures.
Lastly, the application of syntax in teaching grammar and reading skills was recommended
by a significant number of students.

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Published

2023-05-10