Luận Văn A study on downtones in English

Khóa luận tốt nghiệp
Đề tài: A study on downtones in English


Part one: introduction 1
1. Rationale of the study 1
2. Scope of the study 2
3. Method of the study .2
4. Application places .3
5. Design of the study 3
Part two: development .4
Chapter one: theoretical background .4
1.1 An overview of English downtoners 4
1.1.1 Definition .4
1.1.2 Types of English downtoners .5
1.1.2.1 Compromizers .5
1.1.2.2 Diminishers .6
1.1.2.3 Minimizers 7
1.1.2.4 Approximators 8
1.2 Syntactic features of downtoners 9
1.3 Positions of downtoners 11
1.4 Homonyms of intensifiers 13
Chapter two: An investigation into analysis English
downtoners and Vietnamese equivalence .15
2.1 Notion of English downtoners 15
2.2 Vietnamese downtoners 21
2.3 English downtoners versus Vietnamese downtoners 25
2.3.1 Similarities .25
2.3.2 Differences .28
2.4 An analysis on English downtoners and Vietnamese equivalence 30
2.4.1 Equivalence case 30
2.4.2 Non-equivalence case .33
2.4.3 Benefits of downtoners 34
Chapter three: Solution for non-equivalence case 37
Part three: conclusion .39
Summary of the study .39
Suggestion for the further study 40
List of references 41


Part I: Introduction
1. Rationale of the study:
Nowadays, in the era of science and technology, language as a means of
communication, has shown its great effects in many fields of our life. It takes part
in people’s activities, such as economy, education, society and so on. Thus,
language is also considered as a decisive factor for the development process of the
society. When a language is developed, its vocabulary is always in constant
development. At that time, the vocabulary is used to express new ideas, concepts to
reflect people’s activities, characters and mentalities.
However, in the grammatical system, there is a distinction which is called
language barrier. Especially, the important distinction is downtoners. During my
study time at University I have found that many students meet problems in usi ng
English downtoners and Vietnamese equivalence. They, maybe, don’t understand
clearly enough the types of downtoners, which lead to misunderstand the usages of
these words.
Therefore, being aware of the importance of vocabulary in communication and
the distinction in the grammatical system, I finally decided to choose English
vocabulary as the study for B.A research paper. My objective focuses on
downtoners and analyze on English downtoners and Vietnamese equivalence.
In this paper, the word ―downtoners‖ is defined as the lowering effect on the
force of the verb and many of them scale gradable verbs. Besides, in this
graduation paper, errors and mistakes are unavoidable. All remarks and
contribution are always welcome gratefully.
2. Scope of the study:
Because of my frame of knowledge, experience, size and time, it is very difficult to
study all classes of intensifiers. That’s why; my graduation paper is only focused
on downtoners.
The way of using English downtoners is so considerable that the people of Englishspeaking countries usually use downtoners in everyday conversation.
The core of this paper is to study on downtoners and find out the analysis of
English downtoners and Vietnamese equivalence. Concerning downtoners, there
are many aspects such as definition, types, syntactic features, position, and
homonym of intensifiers and so on. Therefore, this research is aimed at:
Helping the learners identify some characters, types, and positions of
downtoners.
Expressing the similarities and differences between English and
Vietnamese downtoners.
Analysis on equivalence in usage of English downtoners into
Vietnamese
Expressing the benefits of downtoners.
3. Methods of the study:
In fact, I myself find that English is the most popularly used language for all
aspects in our society: economy, society, culture, science, and education, etc. I
have been doing my best to study for further fields of English. This paper is
based on a lot different sources specialized in English downtoners.
Thanks to the knowledge gained from:
Discussion with my supervisor and friends
My own experiences
Internet accessing
Personal observation
Documents and reference books
4. Application places:
The role of downtoners is very important and necessary in our life.
Furthermore, this paper is studied in order to apply not only in education, but
also in the social exchange. Importantly, it helps us gain a better insight into the
structures and limit mistakes by the students.
5. Design of the study:
This graduation paper provides a clear organization consisting 3 main parts that
the second part is the most important one.
 Part I: is Introduction, which gives the rationale for choosing this
topic on study not only brings out the aims, the scope but also
provides the method of the study.
 Part II: is Development that consists 3 chapters:
 Chapter I: Theoretical background.
 Chapter II: An investigation into analysis on English
downtoners and Vietnamese equivalence.
 Chapter III: Solution for non-equivalence case
1 Part III: Conclusion:
1. Summary of the study
2. Suggestion for further study
3. List of references