1. Student's full name: Nguyen Minh Nguyet
2. Gender: Female
3. Date of birth: March 8, 1989
4. Place of birth: Hanoi
5. Decision on student admission No. 2705/2020/QD-XHNV dated December 24, 2020, by the Rector of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hanoi.
6. Changes in the training process: None
7. Thesis Title: Idioms Expressing Non-Real Cognitive Modality in Vietnamese and Equivalent Expressive Means in Italian
8. Major: Linguistics; Code: 8229020.01
9. Scientific supervisors: Dr. Vo Thi Minh Ha, Dr. Doan Thi Thu Ha
10. Summary of thesis results: Through corpus analysis, we obtained a list of 50 idioms expressing non-existent cognitive modality in Vietnamese and 47 equivalent expressions in Italian. After describing, analyzing, and comparing these units, we basically arrived at the following conclusions:
- Regarding syntactic behavior, non-existent Vietnamese idioms and equivalent expressive means in Italian share similarities in their dominant position in the sentence (at the beginning of the sentence) as well as the relative stability of their combined structure;
- Unlike Vietnamese, Italian is an agglutinative language, where words functioning in sentences are governed by rules of morphological transformation. Therefore, equivalent idiomatic expressions of non-existent concepts in Italian do not have the same flexibility in their position within sentences as the idiomatic expressions of non-existent concepts in Vietnamese.
- Regarding the types of constituent elements of idiomatic expressions: while in Vietnamese, the constituent elements of idiomatic expressions are not real and are usually structures with sub-clause forms, verb and prepositional structures, and almost no units at the word level, in Italian there are quite a few elements at the word level (verbs, modal adverbs);
- Regarding the means of expressing non-existent non-existent information: while Vietnamese has idioms as lexical units used frequently in native speaker communication, Italian has not only lexical means but also grammatical means. This group of grammatical means can be classified according to the mood and tense of the verb, with the subjunctive mood (congiuntivo) and the future tense being particularly prominent.
11. Practical applications: Applications in teaching and learning Italian as a foreign language for Vietnamese learners and for Italian learners of Vietnamese; increasing the efficiency of translation and interpretation between Vietnamese and Italian by providing additional knowledge about the meaning of non-existent artificial intelligences and corresponding means of expression in Vietnamese and Italian; applications in building Vietnamese-Italian and Italian-Vietnamese dictionaries.
12. Further research directions: Expand the scope of the study of Vietnamese idioms to include other expressions of cognitive modality, comparing them with equivalent means in Italian; explore the different scales of these means regarding the speaker's level of commitment to the truthfulness (certainty - uncertainty) of the content conveyed in the proposition.
13. Published works related to the thesis:
- Nguyen Minh Nguyet (2022), Survey of equivalent means of expression of non-existent cognitive modal idioms in Vietnamese through Le Minh Khue's Italian translations, Proceedings of the Scientific Conference of Teachers of the Italian Language Department, May 2022, pp. 31-44.
INFORMATION ON MASTER'S THESIS
1. Full name: Nguyen Minh Nguyet
2. Sex: Female
3. Date of birth: 08/03/1989
4. Place of birth: Hanoi
5. Admission decision number: No 2705/2020/QD-XHNV Dated: December 24, 2020 by The Rector of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hanoi.
6. Changes in academic process: No
7. Official thesis title: Non-factive formulaic expressions in Vietnamese and the equivalents in Italian
8. Major: Linguistics Code: 8229020.01
9. Supervisors: Dr. Vo Thi Minh Ha, Dr. Doan Thi Thu Ha
10. Summary of the findings of the thesis: Through corpus survey, we obtained a list of 50 non-factive formulaic expressions in Vietnamese and 47 equivalent means of expressions in Italian. After describing, analyzing and comparing these units, we come to the following conclusions:
- Regarding the characteristics of syntactic behavior, the non-factive formulaic expressions in Vietnamese and the equivalent means of expression in Italian have similarities in terms of dominant appearance in the sentence (the beginning of a sentence) as well as in terms of relative stability of the composite structure;
- Unlike Vietnamese, Italian is a fusion language, the words that come into action in sentences are governed by the rules of morphological change, so the non-factive epistemic equivalent means of expression in Italian are not flexible in the position it appears in the sentence like those in Vietnamese;
- Types of components that make up the non-factive formulaic expressions: if in Vietnamese, the elements that make up non-factive formulaic expressions are usually structures with sub-phrases, verb phrases and prepositional phrases and almost no word-level units, in Italian there are quite a few word-level elements (modal verbs, modal adverbs);
- Non-factive means of expression: if in Vietnamese there are formulaic expressions that are lexical units used with high frequency in the communication of native speakers, then in Italian there are not only the lexical means but also grammatical ones. This group of grammatical means can be classified according to verb tenses and moods of which the subjunctive mood (congiuntivo) and the future tense are prominent.
11. Practical applicability, if any: Application in teaching and learning Italian as a foreign language for Vietnamese students and for Italians learning Vietnamese; increase the efficiency of the translation-interpretation of the two languages Vietnamese - Italian by equipping them with an understanding of the non inactive epistemic modality and corresponding means of expression in Vietnamese and Italian; application in building Vietnamese - Italian and Italian - Vietnamese dictionaries.
12. Further research directions, if any: Expand the scope of surveying of Vietnamese formulaic expressions on other epistemic methods, comparing them with equivalent means in Italian; explore the different scales of these means in terms of the speaker's degree of commitment to the truthfulness (certainty - uncertainty) of the content conveyed in the proposition.
13. Thesis-related publications:
- Nguyen Minh Nguyet (2022), Survey of means of expression equivalent to non-factive formulaic expressions in Vietnamese through Italian translation books of Le Minh Khue, Proceedings of the Scientific Conference of Italian Faculty, May 2022, p. 31 - 44.
