A Study on Structural and Semantic patterns of Wh-questions in English Nguyễn Văn Cương Trường Đại học KHXH&NV Luận văn ThS Chuyên ngành: English Linguistics; Mã số: 60 22 15 Người hướng dẫn: Assoc Prof Dr Vo Dai Quang Năm bảo vệ: 2011 Abstract: The thesis entitled “A Study on structural and semantic patterns of Whquestions in English” is to analyze and illustrate the types of wh-questions and their semantic features This one is also to investigate the students' categories of mistakes when using wh-questions, find out the causes, suggest some possible solutions to these matters, and propose several pedagogical implications for the teachers at the research site This study is divided into three major sections The first one sets out the rationale of the study as well as the aims, the methodology and the design of the study The second section contains three chapters Chapter offers the most relevant factors involving a whquestion such as notions of wh-questions, wh-rhetorical questions, operators, wh-words and their semantic features relating information structure, presupposition and theme and rheme Chapter is to describe the types of wh-questions based on structures and discourse and the types of presuppositions in wh-questions Chapter is the study about the mistakes that the students in Kinh Mon high school often make in using a whquestion The data were collected among 100 eleven grade students in Kinh Mon high school by means of questionnaires The findings highlighted students’ categories of mistakes including wrong use of wh-words, wrong use of operators, non-inversion failure and some other subtypes Through the findings, the author also assumes some causes of the mistakes and suggests some possible solutions in order to help students avoid committing these types of mistakes Keywords: Tiếng Anh; Cấu trúc; Ngữ nghĩa; Ngữ pháp; Câu hỏi có từ hỏi iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Retention i Acknowledgements ii Abstract iii Table of contents iv List of tables vii Part 1: Introduction 1 Rationale Aims of the study Objectives of the study .2 Scope of the study .2 Methods of the study Design of the study Part 2: Development Chapter : Literature review 1.1 English questions 1.1.1 Definition of question .4 1.1.2 Definition of Wh-questions in English .5 1.1.2.1 Wh-information question 1.1.2.2 Wh-rhetorical questions 1.2 English operators 1.3 Question words 1.3.1 Wh-word functions 1.3.1.1 Wh-words as interrogative pronouns .7 1.3.1.2 Wh-words as determiners 10 1.3.1.3 Wh-words as adverbs .10 1.4 Given - New Information Structure .12 1.4.1 Given information 12 1.4.2 New information .12 1.4.3 Information structure 12 1.5 Theme -Rheme Structure 13 v 1.5 Theme- Rheme Structure in wh-questions 14 1.6 Presupposition 15 Chapter : The structural and semantic patterns of English wh-questions 16 2.1 STRUCTURAL PATTERNS OF ENGLISH WH-QUESTIONS 16 2.1.1 Wh-words as subjects of the wh-questions 16 2.1.2 Non-subject wh-questions .18 2.1.3 Verb-oriented questions 19 2.1.4 Wh-questions with prepositions 20 2.1.5 Emphatic wh-questions .21 2.1.6 Negative structures in Wh- questions 21 2.1.7 Response questions .21 2.1.7.1 Short response questions .21 2.1.7.2 Wh-echo questions 22 2.1.8 Multiple wh-element Questions 23 2.1.9 Wh-rhetorical questions .24 2.1.10 Formulaic wh-questions .26 2.2 SEMANTIC PATTERNS OF ENGLISH WH-QUESTIONS 28 Chapter 3: Errors made by eleventh grade students in using wh-questions 31 3.1 Introduction 31 3.2.Setting .31 3.2.1 Setting of the study 31 3.2.2 Participants 31 3.3 Research instrument - Questionnaire 32 3.2.1 Objectives of the survey questionaire .32 3.2.2 The Survey questionnaire 32 3.4 Procedures 33 3.5 Findings 33 3.5.1 Wrong use of wh-word 35 3.5.2 Wrong use of operator 37 vi 3.5.3 Non-inversion failure 39 3.5.4 Other types 40 3.6 The causes of Vietnamese students’ mistakes 41 3.7 Solutions to the problems 42 3.8 Summary of findings 43 PART 3: CONCLUSION 44 Conclusions 44 Implications of the study for teaching English wh-questions 45 Limitations of the study 45 Suggestions for further research 46 REFERENCES .47 APPENDIX I ABSTRACT The thesis entitled “A Study on structural and semantic patterns of Whquestions in English” is to analyze and illustrate the types of wh-questions and their semantic features This one is also to investigate the students' categories of mistakes when using whquestions, find out the causes, suggest some possible solutions to these matters, and propose several pedagogical implications for the teachers at the research site This study is divided into three major sections The first one sets out the rationale of the study as well as the aims, the methodology and the design of the study The second section contains three chapters Chapter offers the most relevant factors involving a wh-question such as notions of wh-questions, whrhetorical questions, operators, wh-words and their semantic features relating information structure, presupposition and theme and rheme Chapter is to describe the types of wh-questions based on structures and discourse and the types of presuppositions in wh-questions Chapter is the study about the mistakes that the students in Kinh Mon high school often make in using a whquestion The data were collected among 100 eleven grade students in Kinh Mon high school by means of questionnaires The findings highlighted students’ categories of mistakes including wrong use of wh-words, wrong use of operators, non-inversion failure and some other subtypes Through the findings, the author also assumes some causes of the mistakes and suggests some possible solutions in order to help students avoid committing these types of mistakes 3 Part 1: Introduction Rationale It is undeniable that English has been an essential means of communication and more and more Vietnamese students are aware of the importance of English to their study and their future The ability to communicate clearly and efficiently in English contributes to the success of the learners at school and later in every phase of life However, the sad fact is that students’ English proficiency especially their ability to communicate in English orally does not really meet employers’ demand At Kinh Mon High School, English is a compulsory subject in the curriculum and it is considered as a major subject for the high school examination It is taught with the purpose that students have some basic knowledge of English in order to communicate and to use it as a key to science and technology However, there still exist many difficulties facing the students They often keep quiet during speaking lessons; they mind speaking English There are many students who have good knowledge of grammar, can reading and writing exercises wonderfully but they cannot express themselves in English and find it hard to make questions to discuss during the speaking lessons They often make mistakes in using the correct question words and in giving the right form of a wh-question Besides making the discussion during a speaking lesson successful, questions also play an important role in our daily life We are not able to keep communicating going on well without asking questions We ask in order to exchange information, ideas, feeling and knowledge On the other hand, we sometimes ask questions not for the above purposes but for confirmation, refusal irony or reply avoidance It is undeniable that questions can not be missed in communication English wh-questions have long been the subject of the study of many researchers and linguists Each of them investigates some aspects of this type of questions Their study on English wh-questions have provided a great help for Vietnamese learners of English There are some MA thesis that pay attention to English Wh-questions Hoa N.T.X (1996) studies English questions in terms of S-P inversion Meanwhile, Ms Nguyet D.T.M (1996) pays her attention to the aspect of English questions concerning teachers' questions and politeness strategies And Tuyet L.T.A contrasts English wh-questions and their equivalents in Vietnamese in terms of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features Especially there is also a Ph.D dissertation investigating English Wh-questions Quang V.D (2000) looks at contrative analysis of questions in English and Vietnamese in terms of semantic and pragmatic features in his Ph.D project 4 Generally, such researchers mentioned above studied English wh-questions from different angles and mostly either focus on syntactic and semantic features of English Wh-questions or provide a theoretically general picture of wh-questions between the two languages, English and Vietnamese However, besides such certain contributions, there still exist some gaps that need dealing with There are a lot of aspects concerning English wh-questions, however, in this paper the author would like to devote all my interest in the structural and semantic patterns of Whquestions in English Then he would like to investigate the kinds of mistakes in using whquestions the students in Kinh Mon High School often make Basing on the findings, the author can make some suggestions in order to help the students to overcome these difficulties and make questions fluently Aims of the study The aims of the study are to: - help raise the students' awareness of structural and semantic features of English wh-questions - deepen the author's knowledge for the improvement of teaching English wh-questions to Vietnamese learners of English Objectives of the study The objectives of the study are to : - examine the structural and semantic patterns of English Wh-questions - identify some common errors and mistakes made by Vietnamese students and present some suggested solutions The objectives of the study can be realized through the research questions: What are the structural and semantic patterns of English wh-questions? What categories of mistakes the students in Kinh Mon High school often make in using English wh-questions? What should be done to improve the students' skill in using English wh-questions? It is hoped that the findings from this study will be of some benefits to teachers and students at Kinh Mon high school Scope of the study The study on structural and semantic patterns of Wh-questions in English focuses on English wh-questions from the perspectives of structural and semantic features There are two types of wh-questions will be focused: wh-information questions and wh-rhetorical questions The author also conducted a questionnaire to find out the mistakes made by Vietnamese students, and from these mistakes, some possible solutions to the problems identified Methods of the study A combination of different methods of analysis will be used in this study Firstly, the author applies the descriptive method to find out the structural and semantic patterns of the English whquestions The study is conducted by carefully collecting materials from various sources to have full-blown information of English wh-questions Secondly, the author designs a questionaire in order to find out what categories of mistakes the studetnts often make when using wh-questions The students' errors and mistakes will be analized All comments, remarks, recommendations and conclusion are based on the data analysis The sheets of questionaire will be collected randomly so that this research will help to gain reliable data and a close investigation into the problems that the students are encountering Design of the study This study is divided into three main parts: - Part is the Introduction of the study It includes the rationale for choosing the topic, the aims, the objectives, the scope, the methods and design of the study - Part contains three chapters, in which Chapter provides readers some theoretical background on English questions in general, wh-words and their functions and the operators and their functions in English question in brief Moreover, some basic terms ( such as given and new information, theme and rheme, and presuppositions ) are also discussed Chapter is also the main part of the study, provides the detailed analysis of English wh-questions in term of structural and semantic patterns of wh-questions in English Chapter presents a small research of the author to find out some common mistakes made by Vietnamese students in using English wh-questions and to suggest some possible solutions - Part is the conclusion of the study It also gives some implication for teaching and learning wh-questions and some suggestions for further studies 6 Part 2: Development Chapter : Literature review This chapter deals with the relevant matters in wh-questions to help language leaners understand how to use English wh-questions effectively The relevant matters are: - The operators and their functions - Question words and how they are used - Given and new information - Theme and rheme in wh-questions - Presuppositions 1.1 English questions 1.1.1 Definition of questions 1.1.2 Definition of Wh-questions in English 1.1.2.1 Wh-information questions 1.1.2.2 Wh-rhetorical questions 1.2 English operators 1.3 Question words 1.3.1 Wh-word functions 1.3.1.1 Wh-words as interrogative pronouns 1.3.1.2 Wh-words as determiners 1.3.1.3 Wh-word as adverbs 1.4 Given-New Information Structure 1.4.1 Given information 1.4.2 New information 1.4.3 Information structure 1.5.1 Theme-Rheme Structure 1.5.2 Theme and Rheme in wh-questions 1.6 Presupposition 7 Chapter The structural and semantic patterns of English wh-questions In the last chapter, the author has deeply discussed some relevant matters relating to English whquestions, in this chapter, the author would like to examine the structural pattern of the whquestions in general and then he will thoroughly illustrate the use of wh-questions in daily discourse and finally he will discuss some types of semantic features of the wh-questions presuppositions 2.1 STRUCTURAL PATTERNS OF ENGLISH WH-QUESTIONS 2.1.1 Wh-words as subjects of the wh-questions 2.1.2 Non-subject wh-questions 2.1.3 Verb-oriented questions 2.1.4 Wh-questions with prepositions 2.1.5 Emphatic wh-questions 2.1.6 Negative structures in Wh- questions 2.1.7 Response questions 2.1.7.1 Short response questions 2.1.7.2 Wh-echo questions 2.1.8 Multiple wh-element Questions 2.1.9 Wh-rhetorical questions 2.1.10 Formulaic wh-questions 2.2 SEMANTIC PATTERNS OF ENGLISH WH-QUESTIONS In the previous section, the author has discussed some types of wh-questions in terms of structure and discourse functions In the following part, the author would like to investigate the most prominent feature of wh-questions- the presuppositions Because of the focus of the study, I only discuss its semantic patterns in terms of persuppositions These six types of presupposition can be brought together under the heading of potential presupposition which represents the whole In the discussion below, the author would like to discover how these six types of presuppositions appear in English wh-questions The existential presupposition is assumed to be either in possessive constructions or in any definite noun The second type of presupposition is called factive presupposition since some words are used in the sentences to denote facts such as know, realize, regret, glad, and aware 8 The third type of presupposition is called non-factive presuppsition, which is assumed not to be true Verbs like dream, imagine, and pretend are used with the presupposition that what follows is not true The structural presupposition can lead the hearers to believe that the information given in each sentence is necessarily true, rather than the presupposition of the person who asks the question Such structurally based presupposition may represent sublte ways of making information that the speaker's belief appears to be what the hearer should believe The last type is called a counter-factual presupposition, in which what is presupposed is both untrue and even opposite what is said or contrary to facts In this case, such conditional structures as the second and the third types are used 9 Chapter 3: Errors and mistakes likely to be made by eleventh grade students in using wh-questions 3.1 Introduction This chapter will analyze the situation with the description of the subjects, the materials used by informants and the instruments applied to collect data in order to find out the mistakes that the participants in this study made 3.2 Setting 3.2.1 Setting of the study 3.2.2 Participants of the study 3.3 Research Instrument - Questionaire 3.3.1 Objectives of the survey questionaire 3.3.2 The survey questionnaire 3.4 Procedures 3.5 Findings When the students' finished sheets are collected and analyzed, the experimenter finds that there are some very common mistakes which are divided into the following categories: * Wrong use of wh-word: The question in which the students not use the right question word Because the information needed to ask in each question has been identified earlier by underlining the word or phrase that the students need to ask Therefore, the question word must be precise in each situation For example, the students may utter such a question as " How does her boyfriend look like?" instead of " What does her boyfriend look like?" * Wrong use of operator: The question in which the students produce an incorrect operator, which may be in the form of tense, number, "be" instead of "do" or positive instead of negative This type of mistake also includes " omitted auxiliary" in questions which require an operator or "added operator" in sentences which not permit one For example, the students may ask " What does she give you?" but the correct one must be " What did she give you?" * Non-inversion failure: The question in which the subject and auxiliary appear in noninverted order For example, " What you don't mind?" instead of " What don't you mind doing?" 10 * Other mistake: Any mistake, including wrong pronouns ( Who called you while you were out? instead of " Who called me while I was out?), omitting " do" in questions that are used to ask about the verbs ( What don't you mind? instead of What don't you mind doing?" or omitting "are there" in question 12 ( How many students in your class? but not How many students are there in your class?) After collecting and analyzing 100 sheets of questionaire from the students, the author find that there are total 1149 mistakes, in which 507 wh-words are wrongly used, 441 operators are misused, 61 questions appear in non-inverted order and 98 other mistakes As can be seen from table 1, the most stricking category of mistakes belongs to the use of the question words This is because, the question words are not given earlier before asking the students to make the questions, therefore, many students get confused and not know exactly in which situations they should use which wh-word That is the reason why, wrong wh-words account for the largest percentage of mistakes (44%) The second most serious mistakes are those concerning the use of operator Although the tense and voice in each sentence are very clear, many mistakes are still made This one makes up of 38.4% of the total number of mistakes The next category of mistakes is the one that involves inversion In this kind, 61 operators ( 5.3%) are not inverted to the initial position of the subject The last type is the one including several subtypes such as omitting "do" in the question asking about the verb and omitting "are there" in the question asking about the quantity This last type accounts for 8.3% of the total mistakes 3.6 The causes of Vietnamese students’ mistakes From the analysis, students’ difficulties in making wh-questions are concluded to be caused by four factors The first one is misunderstanding of wh-words, which means that students only remember a part of the semantic features of the wh-words and they use them in every situation For example, the quesition word "what" can be used in many situations, not just to ask for nonpersonal nouns, but they are used to ask about the person and adjectives as well The second one is the misuse of operators Many of them can not remember when to use " be" and when to use "do" In other words, they think only "be" is the only operator in situations when "do" is absent They also find it hard to use the correct tense of the sentence The third factor is that the students have difficulties in memorising the structures of the wh-questions though they are quite simple The last but not the least important factor is that students may find it hard to remember some fixed idiomatic expressions, such as “What like?”, " What for?" " Why didn't " If the students not have much time to practise these, they may not remember and therefore, they may misuse them 11 3.7 Solutions to the problems Wh-questions have been taught in junior high school; however, teachers not take much notice of them They only emphasize the grammatical rules As for the different meanings of wh-words, they don’t put much emphasis, not to mention the subtle differences of the wh-words which share the same meaning, for example " which" and " what" with definite reference and indefinite reference respectively There are three drawbacks in teaching wh-questions in present classroom practice The first one is the ignorance of wh-words and wh-questions Since the grammatical rules of this type of questions are very easy, teachers not often put much emphasis on them They only ask students to memorize the grammatical rules They not emphasize the importance of using whquestions correctly in discussing and exchanging information The ignorance of wh-questions in teaching causes students to underestimate the importance of asking questions Besides, they not know the precise roles of each wh-word They only know that who is used to ask about people and what is for non-person Although the grammatical characteristics of wh-quesitions are very easy, their roles and the situations in which they are used are actually complicated Teachers should not ignore them The second main problem is that teachers during their lessons are so used to asking questions themselves that they automatically regard their students' main role as to answer what has been asked rather than to make questions As a result, students may have a lot of time practising listening to and answering the questions, but have so little practice asking them Therefore, students have a lot of difficulties giving a question to find out some certain information or respond to the addressers while the communication process is taking place This cause can be called " students' lack of practice" In order to solve the problem above, teachers should try to encourage students to participate actively in the lessons by making full use of the situations in each lesson for the students to discuss, to exchange their opinions freely as well as try hard to finish all related exercises assigned by the teachers The open and friendly interactions between teachers and students and among students themselves can motivate the students When the students feel confident in sharing their opinion by making and answering questions, their communicative competence will also improve By that way, their skill to make questions will be better Although the structures of the wh-questions are quite easy, many students still make mistakes in forming them This raises the need that teachers should help them to distinguish among the types of wh-questions The normal wh-questions come in two basic varieties, depending on where the 12 questions get the information The first type is that the information gap is in the predicate and the other one is in the subject With a predicate information gap, the word order becomes objectverb-subject (OVS) In a subject information gap question, however, the word order remains as in a normal statement Moreover, in a wh-question, wh-word stands at the beginning of the sentence, the subject and operator must be inverted; and, if no operator is present, must be added to carry tense For example: " What did you eat for lunch today?' Another matter is that when the wh-word acts as a determiner ( Whose book is that?) or an adjective ( What colour is your car?); the noun modified by the word word ( book and colour, respectively) must be fronted along with the wh-word Therefore, it is necessary to help students to master the structural patterns of wh-questions Through the careful description, the English wh-words, their functions, the operator system, how these two items are used to form a question and what presupposition is it in each question are made out Students can clearly distinguish these things and apply them in the right situations In addition, through the study findings, the students' difficulties in making a wh-question are anticipated and therefore, can be prevented in advance In other words, most problems mentioned above can be solved 3.8 Summary of findings From the analysis above, we can come to the following conclusion about the categories of mistakes that the students in Kinh Mon high school often make The study has come up with four main findings Firstly, seemingly, the students not have much time practising using wh-words as well as making questions Therefore, many students are still confused how to use the correct wh-word in each situation This is the reason why the majority of the students make the mistakes called " wrong use of wh-words" The second common mistake is the misuse of operator They often use " be" instead of "do" when making questions about the situations where "do" does not appear or they use the wrong tense Additionally, they may not invert the operators to the front of the subjects in non-subject whquestions Moreover, they may omit "do" in verb-oriented questions especially when "do" is the object of another verb One more prominant mistake is the omission of "are there" in the question asking about the quantity On the whole, the study has proved to be beneficial as it helps the author learn about the msitakes that the students make Through the findings, he has assumed some causes of the mistakes and he has suggested some ways to help the students overcome their mistakes and improve their English competence 13 PART 3: CONCLUSION Conclusions As far as the theoretical background is concerned, the study has briefly presented concepts of wh-questions both wh- information questions and wh-rhetorical questions, operators and whwords and their functions as well as the wh-word semantic features, and some other related factors such as information structure, theme- rheme structure, and the most semantic feature of a wh-question- presuppositions This theory has been a solid framework for the analysis of the whquestions Structurally, the English wh-questions are divided into several subtypes based on their characteristics Basing on the functions of the wh-words, we have wh-questions for subjects, whquestions for non-subjects and wh-questions for the main verb Wh-questions are also devided basing on their discourse functions such as reply questions, formulaic questions and rhetorical questions Semantically, the author describes six types of presupposition of the wh-questions based on Yule (1983) : the existential, the factive, the non-factive, the lexical, the structural and the counterfactual By analysing the sheets of questionaire collected from one hundred students in Kinh Mon high school some interesting findings have been made It is discovered that there are four most striking types of mistakes that the students often make They are wrong use of wh-word, wrong use of operator, non-inversion failure and the omissions of "do" in questions about main verbs and the omission of "are there" From the result of the survey, the author can assume the causes of the mistakes and suggest some ways to help the students to overcome the difficulties in making whquestions Implications of the study for teaching English wh-questions Most students find it hard to make a correct wh-question and therefore, they not participate actively in the discussion activities during a speaking lesson and can not communicate freely and confidently The findings are very important for English teachers If English teachers can make out the problems, they can figure out some solutions to help their students Therefore, the purposes of this study are to find out: (1) what types of wh-questions are the most difficult to the students, (2) whether students use the operator system correctly, (3) what other difficulties students have in making a wh-question, (4) why they use these wh-words and operators wrongly To find out students’ difficulties, the first step is to understand the usages and meanings of English wh-words and wh-question formation and semantic features After understanding all 14 these matters, teachers should realize the difficulties in students’ learning and using whquestions The main difficulty lies not only in their forms but in the meaning aspect as well In addition, students are also confused with the subtle differences among the functions of wh-words in each situation One of the suggestions is that wh-words should be presented according to the functions The other is about ways which help students to realize the functions and the use of English operators in certain setting by regarding to the context of utterance First, the tenses of the sentences and their auxiliaries should be clearly defined Then show the students how and when to use these auxiliaries in questions Besides, teachers also remind the students that when asking about the verbs of the sentence, "do" must be used to replace that verb Teachers should create some real world situations to make them acquainted with the different usages of wh-words and wh-questions The last thing to be taken into consideration is that students should be encouraged to freely participate in the discussion activities By that way, students' abilities to ask questions will be improved Limitations of the study This paper is to describe the structural and semantic features of English wh-questions, and to identify the errors and mistakes likely to be made by students The author has subjectively drawn out some findings about the structures and semantics that are used in English whquestions However, with limited amount of time spent on the research and limited number of participants, the results of the categories of errors and mistakes are confined to the eleventh graders in Kinh Mon High School only The author has put a lot of efforts on this study and also got much help from teachers, friends and family Even though, it is desired that this study may be of some help to those who are interested in the topic, it will be a great source of happiness for the writer if readers contribute for the thesis improvement Your reading, judgment, suggestions will be highly appreciated with gratefulness However, for such a large topic as this, it requires much more efforts, time and knowledge to cover, therefore, the study can not avoid imperfection and limitation Suggestions for further research On the basis of this study, the following further research may be feasible - wh-questions viewed from the perspective of pragmatics 47 REFERENCES Alexander, L.G (1992) Longman English Grammar Longman Brown, G., and George Yule (1983) Discourse Analysis Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Carter, R., Mc Carthy, M (2006) Cambridge Grammar of English Cambridge: CUP Dixon R M V (1992) A New Approach to English grammar, on Semantic Principles Oxford, Clarendon Press Frawley, W (1992) Linguistic Semantics Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers Givón, Talmy (1984,1990), Syntax: A Functional-Typological Introduction, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Halliday, M A K., and Ruqaiya Hasan (1976) Cohesion in English London: Longman Hoa, N.T.X (1996) English Questions in terms of Subject-Operator inversion MA Thesis Hanoi University of Foreign Studies Hoa, Nguyen (2004) Understanding English Semantics VNU Publishing House Hanoi 10 Huddleston, Rodney D (1984) Introduction to the Grammar of English, Cambridge University Press 11 Hudson, G (2000) Essential Introductory Linguistics Michigan: Blackwell Publishers Inc 12 Kuno, S (1972) Functional Sentence Perspective Linguistic Inquiry 3, 269-320 13 Leech, G (1978) Semantics Penguin Books 14 Levison, S.C (1997) Pragmatics Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 15 Lynch, T.(1991) Questioning Roles in the classroom ILT Journal 45 (3): 201-210 16 Lyon, J (1977) Semantics London: Cambridge University Press 17 Nguyet, D.T.M ( 1996) A Cross-Cultural Study of Question Functions and The English Department at Hanoi University of Foreign Studies in Vietnam MA Thesis Hanoi University of Foreign Studies 18.Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S (1987) A University Grammar of English London: Longman 48 19 Quirk, R, Greenbaum, S, Leech, G and Svartvik, J (1985) A Comprehensive grammar of the English language Longman Group Limited 20 Quirk, R, Greenbaum, S, Leech, G and Svartvik, J (1972) A Grammar of Contemporary English Longman Group Limited 21 Seuren, Peiter (1985) Discourse Semantics Blackwell, Oxford 22 Swan, M (1991) Practical English Usage Oxford: Oxford University Press 23 Tuyet, L.T.A (2001), Graduation Paper: English Wh- Questions and their equivalents in Vietnamese, VNU-CFL, Hanoi 24 Vo Dai Quang (2005), Cấu trúc Ngữ nghiã câu hỏi danh Tiếng Anh Tiếng Việt Cơng trình nghiên cứu cấp Đai học Quốc gia Hà Nội 25.Yule, G (1998) Explaining English Grammar Oxford University Press Internet sources http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/rthompso/interactionquestions.html http://www2.gsu.edu/eslhpb/grammar/lecture_10/quest_answers.html http://www.ling.upenn.edu/ellen/givennew.pdf http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAPresupposition http://www.sjsu.edu/writingcenter/docs/handouts/Old_before_New.pdf http://www.uniroma2.it/didattica/ling_ing1_linfo/deposito/Presupposition_and_Entailment http://www.unisi.it/gofolwww/joomla/iscrizione/materiali/16258/StickyBusiness.doc http://www.uobabylon.edu.iq/ /articles/Entailment%20&%20Presupposition.pdf http://www vietnamese-grammar.group.shef.ac.uk/grammar_en.php?ID=16 ... presuppositions ) are also discussed Chapter is also the main part of the study, provides the detailed analysis of English wh-questions in term of structural and semantic patterns of wh-questions in English. .. I ABSTRACT The thesis entitled ? ?A Study on structural and semantic patterns of Whquestions in English? ?? is to analyze and illustrate the types of wh-questions and their semantic features This one... recommendations and conclusion are based on the data analysis The sheets of questionaire will be collected randomly so that this research will help to gain reliable data and a close investigation into the