HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
Noun Formation in English and
Vietnamese
Instructor:
Nguyen Ngoc Vu
Student:
Dinh Thi Hoang Vy
Noun formation in English and Vietnamese 1
Introduction
As we all know, word are the most important unit in one language. We use
words everyday, in many various fields of life: from work to studying, form
informal situation to formal situation. From word, we can create phrases,
sentences to communication with each other under many forms. Amongst words,
noun is a rather crucial part. Nouns have several functions in sentences. “They
can be the subject, an object, an appositive, or a complement” (Rakoczy).
Therefore, noun-formation can be recognized as the sub process of wordformation, and it will share some same characteristic of word formation. My
essay is aimed at identifying, analyzing and contrasting the noun formation
between English and Vietnamese to magnify the similarities and differences.
Based on this paper, I hope to help my readers clear about noun formation and
help the educators have a universal perspective of the unavoidable errors of
learning process in both Vietnamese and English learners.
Noun formation in English and Vietnamese 2
NOUN-FORMATION IN ENGLISH
Because noun-formation is the sub-process of word-formation, it also
follows the same morphological rules of word-formation. Nouns are formed by
morphemes as well. According to the classification, we have compounding,
affixation or derivation, and conversion. More specifically:

Affixation or derivation, forms nouns with affixes.

Compounding is the combination of two or more morphemes.

Conversion, “also called zero derivation, is the creation of a word from an
existing word without any change in form” (Conversion, 2001). For
example, word shifts from verb to noun without change of its morphemes.
There is other noun-formation such as reduplication, clipping, blending,
acronyms, and borrowing. Reduplication is repeating an item with a change in
the beginning consonant or change in the middle vowel. Clipping is “a process
which consists in the reduction of a word to one of its parts (Marchand:1969).
Clipping is also known as "truncation" or "shortening."” (Clipping, 2001), without
changing its meaning. Blending is combining of shortened of two or more
morphemes to form a new word. On the other hand, acronyms are nouns using
the initial letters in words, phrases, or proper names. Last is borrowing, which
actually has two types: using the exact word from another the language and
translating it literally, we often called the second type “calque” or “loan
translation”.
NOUN FORMATION IN VIETNAMESE
Noun formation in English and Vietnamese 3
Similar to English, noun in Vietnamese was also formed by morphemes.
However, the noun-formation from affixation does not appear in Vietnamese as it
is in English. The free morpheme and bound morpheme in Vietnamese are
defined differently. More particularly, the bound morpheme in Vietnamese can be
used as a separate word. In English, when the bound morpheme stands alone, it
doesn’t make a full word. In Vietnamese, noun was formed by combining two free
morphemes, two bound morphemes, or one bound morpheme and one free
morpheme. As a result, noun is formed by compounding, conversion together
with other methods such as reduplication, clipping, acronyms, and borrowing.
Moreover, because of the long-term domination of the Chinese’s dynasties and
French colonist, the vocabularies which Vietnamese borrowed from Chinese and
French are numerous and various.
Noun formation in English and Vietnamese 4
CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS BETWEEN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE
1. Affixation (Derivation)
In this part, I will discuss the affixation in English. The affixes involve
prefixes and suffixes. For example, from the adjective literal, we only need to add
the suffixes –cy to form the noun “literacy”. Together with the suffixes, the
prefixes also contribute to the noun formation. When we offer a new add-on il-,
we immediately have a new noun “illiteracy” which has the opposite meaning to
the noun “literacy”. Consequently, the prefix of noun can change the meaning of
the origin, but it still maintains the word class. The suffix, on the other hand,
when be attached to the base, it can transform a verb to a noun or other word
class. Some typical suffixes for noun are: -ant, -er, -or, -ment…. In addition,
prefixes and suffixes contain some given meanings which were displayed below:
Prefixes
Meaning
Suffixes
Meaning
Anti-
Against
-tude
state of
Mis-
wrong, astray
-ist
dealer, doer
Post-
After
-ism
doctrine, belief
Dis-
not, opposite of
-ity
state of being
Inter-
between, among
-cy
state of being
De-
get rid of
-eer, -er, -or
person who
2. Compound nouns
Noun formation in English and Vietnamese 5
In English, except some single words are noun themselves, noun can be
formed by many methods, such as some in table
Compound patterns
Examples
Noun + Noun
bloodstream, seashore, cupboard
Adjective + Noun
hardboard, blueberry, softball
Verb + Noun
swimming pool, washing machine
Preposition + Noun
inbox, outbox, overcoat
Verb + Verb
make-work, drop-kick
Verb + Preposition
breakaway, hideout, takeaway
Phrases Compound
stock-in-trade, mother-in-law
Special Compound
tetragon, archeology
According to the table, there are many patterns to form a noun. However,
we can classify all the patterns into 3 categories:

The "solid" or "closed" form: two words were combined as one word.
Ex: timetable, blackboard.

The hyphenated form: two words are connected by a hyphen.
Ex: son-in-law, stitch-up.

The open or spaced form: the word consists of two longer words,
and often written separately. Ex: high court, slow motion.
Meanwhile, in Vietnamese we have the coordinated compound noun and
the principal-and-accessory compound noun, which were also known in
Vietnamese are “từ ghép đẳng lập” and “từ ghép chính phụ”. The coordinated
Noun formation in English and Vietnamese 6
compound noun is the noun was built from two components with equal meaning,
for example: chợ búa, quần áo…. The coordinated compound noun often
expresses the general and synthetic meaning which was one main point that
makes it different from the principal-and accessory compound noun. The
principal-and accessory compound noun is the noun that involves two
components, in which one component depends on the other. The secondary
component will classify the main component. For instance: we have the first
component is “đường”, which means the way to go, and the second one is “sắt”,
a kind of metal that made this kind of way. When we combine those two
components, we will have the new noun: “đường sắt”, which actually means
railway in order to distinguish with đường không, đường thủy, đường bộ…
3. Conversion
The conversion is a very interesting process of forming new word. It
occurs in both English and Vietnamese. Without changing its forms, we can
change the meaning of the word, even the word class (but I don’t talk about word
class-change because this essay is focused on the noun formation, not the word
formation) more specifically, let’s examine these two examples:
Ex 1: Firstly, in English, with the word “stop” in 2 sentences
It is time to put a stop to the violence.
I get off at the next stop.
In the first one, “stop” means “the act of stopping the violence”, but in the
second sentence, “stop” actually means “a place where a bus or train stops
Noun formation in English and Vietnamese 7
regularly for passengers to get on or off”. Clearly, the form of the noun “stop”
doesn’t change.
Ex 2: In Vietnamese, take the word “phở” as example
Mẹ tôi nấu phở rất ngon.
Khá nhiều người đàn ông hiện nay có tư tưởng chán cơm thèm
phở.
“phở” in the first sentence is a Vietnamese dish, but the second sentence
connotes the meaning of something new, especially another women, not their
wives.
Thus, English and Vietnamese resemble each other on this process of
forming new nouns. Being used under many various circumstances, the word
itself generates many different metaphorical meanings.
4. Other formation
a. Reduplication
Both English and Vietnamese have reduplication. However, reduplication
only seizes a small number of nouns in English. Vietnamese reduplication has
two types: repeating the whole word (ba ba, châu chấu, cào cào…) and
repeating some components of the word. Moreover, we don’t find many
Vietnamese nouns which belong to the second types. The maximum length of
Vietnamese reduplicative words is no more than four, and the minimum length is
two. Most of the reduplicative words are two-word length. Some of reduplicative
English words are: ping pong, flip flop, tick-tock….
Noun formation in English and Vietnamese 8
b. Clipping
According to Vũ Đức Nghiệu, Vietnamese only considers this process as
temporary form or the spoken form of word. By definition, it doesn’t happen with
every word (Nghiệu 2007).
bươm bướm  bướm
ki-lô-gam  kí lô
Đảng cộng sản Việt Nam  Đảng
Whereas, English have lots of words was formed by clipping such as:
photo from photograph, rhino from rhinoceros…
c. Acronym
By using the initial letters of a phrase as one word, acronym has produced
a massive number a word. Because those words were created by acronym are
more memorable than the phrases, many people like this type of noun-formation,
especially in names of some organizations. In English, we have “AIDS”,” radar”….
In Vietnamese, we also have some acronymic words such as “TW” from trung
ương, “CLB” for “câu lạc bộ”.
d. Blending
Blends deal with the action of abridging and then combining various
lexemes to form a new word . This process combines shortened of two or more
morphemes to form a word. For instance, “brunch” is the combination of
“breakfast” and “lunch”, “motel” is the combination of “motor” and “hotel”. This is
one special feature of English which doesn’t exist in Vietnamese at all.
e. Borrowing
Noun formation in English and Vietnamese 9
English and Vietnamese borrowed a vast number of words. In Vietnamese,
because of the Chinese and French domination, the borrowed vocabularies are
mainly from those two countries. It was divided into two layers: Chinese origin
and Indo-European origin. Some examples should be taken into account are
described in the tables below
Vietnamese
French
xà phòng
Savon
pê-đan
pédale
mùi xoa
mouchoir
Vietnamese
Chinese
độc giả
讀者(dúzhě)
ký giả
記者(jìzhě)
Vietnamese also translate literally some vocabulary in Chinese and French into
Vietnamese for necessary usage, it usually was known as “quá trình Việt hóa
hoàn toàn” such as:
Ex:
飛機 (fēijī) - phi cơ, phi = bay, cơ = máy móc  máy bay (Vietnamese)
(Đào Duy Anh, 2005)
聽者 (tīngzhě) - thính giả (Chinese), in Hán-Việt từ điển giản yếu, thính =
nghe, giả = chỉ về người  người nghe (Vietnamese) (Đào Duy Anh, 2005)
English also have two types of borrowing vocabulary: the exact foreign word and
calque. According to different sources, around 30% of all English words have a
Noun formation in English and Vietnamese 10
French origin (Calque, 2001). Some of the French words that were used in
English are ablation, accent, bonnet, desert…. Similar to Vietnamese, English
also translate the words literally from many other languages for usage. We can
take some calques as examples:
Latin: Lunae dies => Old English: Monan dæg (day of the moon) =>
Modern English: Monday (University of Oxford, 2005)
French: gratte-ciel and Spanish: rascal cielos (both literally means:
scrape-sky) => English: skyscraper. (Calque, 2001)
Noun formation in English and Vietnamese 11
TEACHING IMPLICATIONS
The aim of contrastive analysis between English and Vietnamese is to
draw out the linguistic same and differences. However, it also has another
valuable practical basis for teaching and learning. By contrasting those two
languages, we can forecast the potential difficulties that the learners may
encounter when learning foreign languages. Firstly, Because of the differences in
word order, Vietnamese pupils tend to produce error such as
“room dinning” instead of “dinning room”, which means “phòng ăn” in
Vietnamese
“pie apple” instead of “apple pie”, which in Vietnamese it is “bánh táo”.
This error often happened in compound noun.
Secondly, when we want to mention the plural forms of nouns in Vietnamese, we
usually use the word “nhiều” before nouns such as: nhiều người, nhiều hy vọng….
That is the point. In English, we must add –s or –es behind countable nouns, for
example: girls, boys… and preserve the uncountable nouns. Therefore,
Vietnamese learners have a tendency to “forget” the -s and –es for countable
nouns and vice versa for uncountable nouns. This also elucidates the reasons
why Vietnamese pupils misuse two words “many” and “much” for countable and
uncountable nouns.
Thirdly, in Vietnamese, we can say “Chim đang hót” without any determiners.
This sentence conveys the full meaning and is grammatical right. Otherwise, if
we apply this rule in to English, which requires the determiners for noun, it is
Noun formation in English and Vietnamese 12
completely wrong. We cannot say “Bird is singing” (the right sentence should be
“The bird is singing”).
Finally, I want to emphasize that, besides the methods of teaching and learning,
the syllabus, one of the major causes of the above errors is the differences in
English and Vietnamese, or we can call it the linguistic cause.
Noun formation in English and Vietnamese 13
CONCLUSION
Vietnamese and English show similarities as well as differences, and noun
formation is a complicated process in both languages. It demands the learners to
master the rules and apply it in the proper place. Vocabulary in English and
Vietnamese are copious. However, Vietnamese have more types of noun
formation in English, which makes the Vietnamese is more difficult for the
foreigners. If you understand these linguistic characteristics of theses two
languages, you make a further step in “absorbing” them.
Noun formation in English and Vietnamese 14
WORKS CITED
Anh, Đ. D. (2005). Hán Việt từ điển giản yếu. Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam: Nhà xuất
bản văn hóa thông tin (CIP-HOUSE).
Blend. (2001). Retrieved 12 18, 2010, from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blend
Calque. (2001). Retrieved 12 18, 2010, from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calque
Clipping. (2001). Retrieved 18 12, 2010, from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipping_%28morphology%29
Conversion. (2001). Retrieved 12 20, 2010, from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_%28linguistics%29
Nghiệu, V. Đ. (2007). Cơ sở từ vựng học và từ vựng tiếng Việt. In V. Đ. Mai
Ngọc Chừ, Cơ sở ngôn ngữ học và tiếng Việt (pp. 213-219). 2007: Viet Nam
Education Publishing House.
Rakoczy, C. compound-noun. Retrieved 12 15, 2010, from yourdictionary:
http://www.yourdictionary.com/grammar/nouns/compound-noun.html
University of Oxford. (2005). Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current
English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.