english verbs say tell speak talk and their vietnamese equivalents = động từ say tell talk trong tiếng anh và những tương đương trong tiếng việt

Aims and Objectives of the Study The study aims at identifying differences of English verbs Say, Tell, Speak, Talk in terms of syntactic and semantic features to provide Vietnamese lea

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS

Adv Adverbial Modifier

SPASS Passive Subject

PPs Prepositional phrases

= Equal to / the same as

* An asterisk signifies that what follows it is incorrect

2.4.2.1 Meanings conveyed by Say 23

2.4.2.2 Meanings conveyed by Tell 24

2.4.2.4 Meanings conveyed by Talk 26

2.4.3 The English verbs Say, Tell, Speak and Talk

and their Vietnamese Equivalents 28

2.4.3.3 Speak and its Vietnamese equivalents 32

3.2 Pedagogical Implications 40

3.3 Limitations and Suggestions for further Research 40

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Among verbs of English, we find that the verbs Say, Tell, Speak, Talk belong to

the most frequently used vocabulary These verbs can occur in different syntactic patterns that reflect various meanings in real-life communication They can occur in the same syntactic patterns, but may have different meanings depending on the situation in which they are used

As a teacher of English at an English teaching centre, I found that my learners have faced many problems when they use this group of verbs They often feel confused

to choose the right verb and make errors in using them Therefore, I have carried out a study to find out how to use these verbs accurately and correctly from the analysis of their syntactic and semantic features with their references to their equivalents in Vietnamese

Also, with respect to interpretation and translation work, it is believed that the decoding of a language form is equally important A precise interpretation or translation must be based on a specific context of communication For instance, the meanings

conveyed by “Say” in the structure “Sb/sth say + Direct Object” may have various interpretations in Vietnamese such as nói, hỏi, thông ba ́ o, đọc ect, Translators, therefore,

have to define the context of situation in which the utterance occurs in order to choose the right interpretations; otherwise, the translation will be meaningless

All the aforementioned reasons have encouraged us to carry out a study entitled

“English verbs Say, Tell, Speak, Talk and their equivalents in Vietnamese” We do

this study with the hope that it will be a useful reference, to the extent possible, for teaching and learning English and Vietnamese as foreign languages

2 Aims and Objectives of the Study

The study aims at identifying differences of English verbs Say, Tell, Speak,

Talk in terms of syntactic and semantic features to provide Vietnamese leaners of

English with a practical insight into the uses of these English verbs In particular, the study attempts to uncover the Vietnamese equivalents of these English verbs in terms of their marginal uses As a result, we would like to help students with correct language practicing and performance through contrastive analysis with Vietnamese

The paper is intended to aim at the following objectives:

+ To uncover the differences of Say, Tell, Speak and Talk in terms of syntactic and

4 Scope of the study

The study focuses on uncovering the differences among the four English verbs under study in terms of syntactic and semantic features as well as their references in Vietnamese The core meanings of these verbs like “make a statement” or “express in words” which also occur in the corpora are beyond the scope of the present research and therefore they were excluded from the data

Material containing examples with phrasal verbs and idioms was not included in the paper for two reasons Firstly, relevant examples did not modify the meaning of verbs studied in any new way; thus, secondly, much needless labour would be put into deleting the irrelevant examples All the relevant examples were counted and carefully studied

5 Significance of the study

Theoretical significance: This study contributes to verifying significance related

to semantic theory in componential analysis by working on a certain synonymic group of verbs It proves that lexical semantics is an important area in linguistics Verbs, as the core of lexicon, provide the key to exploring the interaction between syntax and semantics as well as understand the nature of lexicon

Practical significance: Findings of this study will provide information that can

help learners and translators gain an insight into how the speech act verbs with Say, Tell, Speak, Talk can be employed in discourse in English by Vietnamese learners and translators

6 Method of the study

The methods used in this study include quantitative and qualitative The quantitative method is exploited to search for differences of the four English verbs under

study in terms of syntactic and semantic features Qualitative method is useful to uncover the Vietnamese equivalents of these four English verbs with different senses In particular, the data were collected from different sources such as dictionaries, novels, news, books

The verbs are analyzed in detail beginning with Say followed by Tell, Speak, and

Talk Each of these verbs is described in a separate section, and the analysis was

conducted with a view to discovering such aspects of each verb as its syntax, semantics performed by each of these verbs The analysis is believed to contribute to a deeper

understanding of the English verbs Say, Tell, Speak and Talk The componential analysis

will be applied to analyze the data The comparison will be made mainly by means of translation, i.e pairs of English and Vietnamese sentences which are supposed to have the same meaning will be equate

7 Organization of the study

This minor thesis consists of three main parts:

PART I: Introduction: This part introduces the rationale, the aims, the scope, the method and the organization of the thesis

PART II: Development: There are two chapters in this part:

Chapter 1 discusses the theoretical background for the research by discussing theory of

semantics, meaning, meanings of meaning, synonyms, synonymic group, componential analysis

Chapter 2 presents and discusses findings from collected data, focusing on the

differences in the verbs studied in terms of syntactic and semantic features Besides, it focuses on describing and analyzing their equivalents in Vietnamese

PART III: Conclusion and implications: This part presents the major findings of the

study, the conclusion of the study, implications for English teaching and suggestions for further study

PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

The following issues are to be dealt with in this chapter: Theory of semantics, meaning, the meanings of “meaning”, synonyms, synonymic group, componential analysis

1.1 Semantics

Semantics is a branch of linguistics, which deals with meaning or the content of communication According to Hurford and Heasley (1983:1), semantics is the study of meaning in language Language is a means of communication, and people use language

to communicate with others by making conversations, giving information, and other things to make social relationship Jackson (1988:49) states that human beings have been given the capacity to talk, to communicate with each other, to make meaningful utterances, so that they are understood by other human beings They communicate about the world in which they live, about themselves, about their thought and feeling, about what has happened, about what might happen or what they would like to happen, and a lot more

Hurford and Heasley (1983:5) state that the giving of information is itself an act

of courtesy, performed to strengthen social relationships This is also part of communication There are some linguists that tried to define Semantics Morris as quoted

by Lyons (1977) at first defines semantics as the study of the relations of signs to the objects to which the signs are applicable And then he revised his definition, saying that, semantics is that portion of semiotic which deals with the signification of sign in all modes of signifying

Semantics is usually connected with pragmatics Carnap (cited in Lyons, 1977: 116) says that descriptive semantics (i.e the investigation of the meaning of expressions

in “historically given natural language”), may be regarded as part of pragmatics The reason why descriptive semantics is part of pragmatics seems to have been that he believed that difference in the use of particular expressions were not only inevitable in language-behaviour, but must be taken account of in the description or context Smith, as quoted by Lyons (1977:116) states that semantics studies how these signs are related to things And pragmatics studies how they are related to people According to Leech

(1983:5) in practice, the problem of distinguishing language and language use has

centred on a boundary dispute between semantics and pragmatics Hurford and Heasley (1983:14) further explain that the study of semantics is largely a matter of conceptually

and exploring the nature of meaning in a careful and thoughtful way, using a wide range

of examples, many of which we can draw from our knowledge

But Jack Richards, John Platt, Heidi Weber (1987:172) state that “the study of meaning is semantics Semantics is usually concerned with the analysis of the meaning

of words, phrases, or sentences and sometimes with the meaning of utterances in discourse or the meaning of a whole text.”

David Crystal (1992:347) defines that semantics is the study of meaning in language Structural semantics applies the principles of structural linguistics to the study

of meaning through the notion of semantic relations (also called sense relation), such as synonymy and antonym In generative grammar, the semantics component is a major area of the grammar‟s organization, assigning a semantic representation to sentences, and analyzing lexical terms of semantic features The theory of semantic fields views vocabulary as organized into areas, within which words (lexical items) interrelate and define each other

In order to make a thorough study of meaning, we have to understand other concepts such as meaning and meanings of meaning and so on

1.2 Meaning

Meaning plays a very important part in communication What a word means depends in part on its association with other words, the relational aspect Lexemes do not merely „ have‟ meanings: they contribute meanings to the utterances in which they occur, and what meanings they contribute depends on what other lexemes they are associated with in these utterances For example, the word "watch" could have different meanings

in the following sentences:

a) Watch your mouth (watch here means an advice of being careful with

something

b) When I came, they were watching the football march between Liverpool and

Manchester United.(watch here means to look at sb/sth for a time, paying attention to what happens: look at closely)

c) When I arrived the cat was sitting on the wall, watching for birds (watch here

means to wait for sb/sth to appear or happen)

d) My watch has stopped (watch here means a small clock)

According to Lesley Jeffries (1983:3) meaning is a kind of invisible unclothed being waiting for the clothes of language to allow it to be seen, which is why it is necessary to

take off the clothes of language to understand the real meaning of words, phases and sentences

E.g "tell on sb" means "to tell a person in authority about sth bad that sb has done"

Through this example, a conclusion ca be drawn as the meaning of the word is not all the time decided by itself but by the relation with others, which is why John Lyons (1996:4) states that the noun „meaning‟ and the verb „mean‟ from which it is derived are used, like many other English words, in a wide range of contexts and in several distinguishable senses

According to David Crystal2 (1992:102), meaning is studied by making detailed analysis of the way words and sentences are used in a specific context It is an approach shared by several philosophers and psychologists

And David Crystal1 (1992: 247) also states that meaning is a basic notion used in language study in two main ways First, determining the signification of a message is the chief end of linguistic enquiry Above all, language is concerned with the communication of meaning Second, meaning is used as a way of analyzing the structure

of language, through such notions a contractiveness and distinctiveness

As far as the term “sense” is concerned, Jacked Richards, Jonh Platt & Heidi Weber (1987:330) state: “Sense is the place which a word or phrase (a lexeme), holds in the system of relationships with other words in the vocabulary of a language”

The Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary (2003:1164) defines sense as the meaning that a word or phrase has For example, the word “love” is used in different senses by different people He was a true friend, in every sense of the word (in every possible way)

The terms „meaning‟ and „sense‟ are used in semantics to describe different phenomena (Cruse 2004, Saeed 2003) „Meaning‟ is a very broad term and can be applied to different levels of language (e.g the meaning of morphemes, meaning of utterance etc.) If one speaks about the „meaning of a word‟ one can refer to the whole range of meanings of the word, i.e all the possible meanings a word can take in different contexts „Sense‟ is a narrower term According to Cruse (2004:27), it is the “mental representation of the type of thing a word can be used to refer to” Roughly it is what the

word meaning consists of, the part of a word meaning (e.g „a covering for a human foot‟

and „a plate for a horse‟s hoof‟ are the senses of the word shoe)

In this study the term „meaning‟ will mean units of content carried by a word For

example, he following definitions will be considered to be meanings of the verb to talk (Dictionary.com):

1 to communicate or exchange ideas, information, etc., by speaking

2 to consult or confer

3 to spread a rumour or tell a confidence; gossip

1.3 The Meanings of “meaning”

Meaning refers to what a language expresses about the world we live in or any possible or imaginary world The theories of meaning and its types can be found in the literature of Leech (1974), Lyon (1977), (1975), Palmer (1981), and Crystal (1995) There are two types of meanings: Grammatical meaning and lexical meaning

Grammatical meaning refers to “the meaningful relationship between the constituent parts of the grammatical construction” (Nida, 1964:57) This can be interpreted as the meaningful relationship between words, phrases and sentences The total meaning of a phrase or sentence is not determined by a simple combination of the meanings of isolated words; part of the total meaning is derived from the particular structure of the phrase or

sentence For example, in the phrases such as old man, grey house, beautiful fur and tall

tree, it is the first component in each case which qualifies the second Moreover, such

structures in traditional grammar as “subject + predicate” and “verb + object” designate,

in fact, a kind of grammatical meaning This can explain why the combination of words

in a language is meaningful and cannot be changed freely For example, when we

analyze the combinative relationship of words in the sentence “The old men stared at us”,

we do not relate the to old, old to men, men to stared, etc., and do not reverse the position of men stared as stared men

According to Lyons (1995:52), a lexeme may have different word-form which will generally differ in respect of their grammatical meaning For example, the forms of

„student‟ and „students‟ in respect of their grammatical meaning „Student‟ is singular form (of a noun of a particular class), and „students‟ is plural form (of a noun of a particular class); the difference between singular forms and plural form is semantically relevant: it affects sentence meaning The meaning of a sentence is determined partly by the meaning of the words of which it consists and partly by its grammatical meaning

Baker (1992:12) stated that lexical meaning of a word may be viewed as the specific value it has in a particular linguistic system It is the most outstanding individual property of words, and in contrast with grammatical meaning, it can stand on its own Different types of lexical meaning as recognised by Leed (1974) are:

(1) Conceptual meaning: Logical, cognitive, or denotative content

(2) Associative meaning:

Connotative meaning: What is communicated in terms of what language refers to

Social meaning: What is communicated of the social circumstances of language use Affetive meaning: What is communicated of the feelings and attitudes of the speaker/writer

Reflected meaning: What is communicated through association with another sense of the same expression

Collocative meaning: what is communicated through association with words which tend

to occur in the environment of another word

(3) Thematic meaning: what is communicated by the way in which the message

is organized in terms of order and emphasis

Do Huu Chau (1999:111-130) uses the terms “ý nghĩa biểu vâ ̣t ” (denotational meaning ) and “ý nghĩa biểu niê ̣m ” (connotational meaning) to generalize the meaning of words in Vietnamese According to him, entities and phenomenon in the objective world are reflected in the mind as the concepts and reflected in the language as the denotational meanings which lead to the relevant connotational meanings Therefore, to some extent,

in terms of lexical meaning, verbs in English and in Vietnamese are similar However, they differ in respect of grammatical meaning English verbs carry two kinds of meanings; meanwhile, Vietnamese verbs themselves do not carry grammatical meaning such as tense, aspect, ect

1.3 Synonyms

Since there are four lexical items which are studied in the present paper, it is important to see in what relations they are to each other The term „synonymy‟ should be defined in this connection It is clear that a definition of synonyms simply as words having the same or closely related meanings is too vague Crystal (2003:450) specifies the definition in the following way:

“Synonymy can be said to occur if items are close enough in their meaning to allow a choice to be made between them in some contexts, without there being any

difference for the meaning of the sentence as a whole” This explanation however is still very vague For the present work a more detailed definition is needed

According to Jack C.Richards et al (1992:368), synonym as a word which has the same or nearly the same meaning as another word It should be noted that two words which are synonymous must belong to the same part of speech Nguyen Hoa (2004: 72) shares the same idea with Jack C.Richards et al, he states in “An introduction of English semantics “that synonyms are actually words of the same parts of speech which have similar meaning, but not identical meaning They may share a similar denotational or connotational meaning They can differ from each another in terms of denotation and

connotation For example, father and dad differed in terms of connotation when

misfortune and accident differed in their denotation

Nguyen Hoa (2004:76) in his studies divided synonyms into six groups:

(i) Semantic synonyms which differed in terms of their denotation (for example, look

and glance We all know that “look” is the most neutral member of the group and simply

means “turn one‟s eyes in a particular direction in order to see”; on the other hand, apart from these semes, “glance” suggests a “quick and stolen look.”);

(ii) Stylistic synonyms which differed in terms of their connotation (father and dad),

(iii)Semantic – stylistic synonyms differing in both denotational and connotational

meaning i.e in shades of meaning connotation (sack-dismiss-fire);

(iv) Phraseological synonyms which were distinctive because of their collocations (do

and make);

(v) Territorial synonyms were those employed in different regions Consider “sidewalk”

and “pavement” We know that the former is common in the States, whereas the latter is used on the other side of the Atlantic;

(vi) Euphemism which literal means “speak well” In using euphemisms, a less

unpleasant or offensive effect is achieved Consider “redundant” and “be out of a job/unemployed”, thus, it may sound more “politically correct” The synonyms of the group of verbs in this paper could be considered semantic-stylistic synonyms

Lyon (1995:60) divides synonyms into three kinds: absolute synonyms, near synonyms and partial synonyms However, some linguists such as Jack C.Richards et al (1992:368), Palmer (1981:88) argue that no two words have exactly the same meaning (denotational and connotational meanings) Absolute synonyms, according to Lyon (1995:61), must satisfy three conditions:

 All their meanings are identical;

 They are synonyms in all contexts;

 They are semantically equivalent in all aspects of their meaning

Another point of view on synonymy is discussed by Saeed (2003:65) who points out three basic parameters influencing the speaker‟s choice of a word from a row of synonyms:

- styles of language (colloquial, formal, literary, etc.) (e.g police officer vs cop)

- positive or negative attitudes of the speaker (corpulent vs obese)

- collocational restrictions (e.g one can say a cop car or a police car but not a

guards car) For example, words such as healthy and well, sick and ill, quickly and

speedily, quickly and rapidly may be viewed as examples of synonymy, simply because

they share most of the characteristics with one another

Some lexicographers claim that in English, no synonyms have exactly the same meaning (in all contexts or social levels of language) because etymology, orthography, phonic qualities, ambiguous meanings, usage make them unique Different words that

are similar in meaning usually differ for a reason: feline is more formal than cat; long and extended are only synonyms in one usage and not in others (for example, a long arm

is not the same as an extended arm) However, absolute synonyms can be found in

Vietnamese as in „sân bay‟ and „phi trường‟

Synonyms may also differ in emotional coloring which may be present in one

element of the group and absent in all or some of the others Lonely as compared with

alone is emotional as is easily seen from the following examples: a very lonely boy lost between them and aware at ten that his mother had no interest in him, and that his father was a stranger/ Shall be alone as my secretary doesn‟t come today Both words denote

being apart from others, but lonely besides the general meaning implies longing for company, feeling sad because of the lack of sympathy and companionship Alone does

not necessarily suggest any sadness at being by oneself

Synonyms can therefore be defined in terms of linguistics as two or more words

of the same language, belonging to the same part of speech and possessing one or more identical or nearly identical denotational meanings, interchangeable, at least in some contexts, without any considerable alteration in denotational meaning, but differing in morphemic composition, phonemic shape, shades of meaning, connotations, affective value, style, valence and idiomatic use Additional characteristics of style, emotional

coloring and valence peculiar to one of the elements in a synonymic group may be absent

in one or all of the others

1.5 Synonymic group

According to Nguyen Hoa (2004:76), a synonymic group is a group of all

synonyms (for example, chief, principal, main, important) In synonymic group, we can

see “synonymic dominant”, mostly general, neutral word, usually belong to the basic stock of words

An illustration will be supplied by a group of synonymous nouns: hope,

expectation, and anticipation They are considered to be synonymous because they all

three mean „having something in mind which is likely to happen‟ They are, however, much less interchangeable than the previous group because of more strongly pronounced

difference in shades of meaning Expectation may be either of good or of evil

Anticipation, as a rule, is a pleasurable expectation of something good Hope is not only

a belief but a desire that some event would happen The stylistic difference is also quite

marked The Romance words anticipation and expectation are formal literary words used

only by educated speakers, whereas the native monosyllabic hope is stylistically neutral Moreover, they differ in idiomatic usage Only hope is possible in such set expressions as: to hope against, hope, to lose hope, to pin one‟s hopes on sth Neither expectation nor

anticipation could be substituted into the following example: You do not know what hope

is until you have lost it

Taking into consideration the corresponding series of synonymous verbs and

verbal set expressions: to hope, for anticipate, to expect, to look forward to, we shall see that separate words may be compared to whole set expressions To look forward also

worthy of note because it forms a definitely colloquial counterpart to the rest It can easily be shown, on the evidence of examples, that each synonymic group comprises a dominant element This synonymic dominant is the most general term of its kind potentially containing the specific features rendered by all the other members‟ of the group, as, for instance, hope in the above

1.6 Componential analysis

In teaching and learning vocabulary, sometimes teachers and students face with

an obstacle to get the exact meaning across The more advanced the learners are, the more diverse and subtle the language becomes One way of looking at meaning is called

“Componential Analysis“ This aims to sort out the subtle differences between similar

words It is a chart that has the words that you are focusing on one axis and on the other the different collocates or components that go to make up the meanings

According to Ronald Carter (1994: p.16,17), componential analysis can be considered as “a technique for describing relations of meaning by breaking down each word into irreducible features: those components which are absolutely minimal for its references The componential model of analysis is central to the conceptual area of semantics; it claims are to the fuller analysis of that universal in that finite set of components or semantic features in lexical items, which are ordering of meaning Componential or semantic feature analysis thus presupposes a stable, universal word of concepts in which lexical items semanticize the structure of reality”

Componential analysis refers to “the analysis of sense (meaning) of words into component parts commonly referred to as semantic features or semantic properties or just semes” (Nguyen Hoa, 2004:123) The basic view of this approach is that the lexical meaning of the word or lexeme can be decomposed into components or constituent parts called semes So it is also called the semantic decomposition of the word or lexeme One

of the commonest examples used by linguists is the set of features which are said to compose the lexemes woman, bachelor, spinster, and wife as follows:

Woman: <+female> <+adult> <+human>

Bachelor: <+ male> <+adult> <+human> <+unmarried> Spinster: < + female> <+adult> <+human> <+unmarried>

Wife: < +female> <+adult> <+human> <+married>

Usually, componential analysis is applied to a group of related words, which may differ from one another only by one or two components This approach was developed in anthropological linguistics for the study of kinship or other terms in various languages

Componential analysis, also called feature analysis or contrast analysis, refers to the

description of the meaning of words through structured sets of semantic features, which are given as “present”, “absent” or “indifferent with reference to feature” The method thus departs from the principle of compositionality Componential analysis is a method typical of structural semantics which analyzes the structure of a word's meaning Thus, it reveals the culturally important features by which speakers of the language distinguish different words in the domain (Ottenheimer, 2006, p 20) This is a highly valuable approach to learning another language and understanding a specific semantic domain of

an Ethnography

CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY

In this chapter, the research questions will be restated in 2.1, the data collection will be described in 2.2 and the analytical framework of the study will be outlined in 2.3, data analysis and discussions will be presented in 2.4 Particularly, in section 2.4 which constitutes the central focus of the current study, syntactic and semantic features of the

verbs Say, Tell, Speak and Talk and their Vietnamese equivalents will be thoroughly

explored

2.1 Research Questions

It is worth restating the two research questions that guideline the study:

 How different are four English verbs Say, Tell, Speak and Talk in terms of syntactic and semantic features?

 What are Vietnamese equivalents of these English verbs Say, Tell, Speak

and Talk where appropriate?

2.2 Data collection

The data are collected from different sources such as dictionaries, namely, Từ điển Anh -Anh-Viê ̣t” (2008); Từ điển Viê ̣t - Anh” (2000); published by Publishing House

of Cultural and Informatics, Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary (2003); Dictionary

of Contemporary English (2003); some novels, namely, Fanity Fair by Thackeray, W M., God Bless You, Mr Rosewater or Pearls Before Swine by Vonnegut, J.K and some grammar books such as English Grammar in Use by Murphy, R, A comprehensive

grammar of the English language by Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J

(1985), the textbook for students Headway Moreover, the data is also compiled from the

New York Times online The reason for choosing those materials as the sources of the data is that according to R.J Rees (1973: p.1-2): literature is divided into two sense, broad sense and narrow sense The former means anything that is written such as tables, catalogues, text, books, brochures, etc while the latter means a writing that expresses and communicate thought, feelings, ideas, and attitudes, towards life in the serious fuller and deeper sense of the words Moreover, these sources are found to provide the most fertile examples for the lexical items under study

The bilingual dictionaries, the Vietnamese version of the novel Fanity Fair

translated by Tran Kiem are used for this study because they are well known and are confirmed by reliable publishing houses such as Literature Publishing House, Publishing House of Cultural and Informatics

After identifying different senses of the four verbs in English together their Vietnamese equivalents, these senses are brought into consideration The following part represents the analytical framework used to analyze the data

2.3 Analytical Framework

The theoretical framework applied for this study is componential analysis According to theory about componential analysis, this method analyses the meaning of related words, which provide that the relationships between terms are based upon certain shared and contrastive features In other words, the approach of componential analysis functions as breaking down the meanings of terms into their respective constituents of meaning, then comparing these semantic components in order to clarify the meanings of terms

By using componential analysis, it is possible for us to describe the words of a language with respect to components of meaning contrastively For this reason, componential analysis has become an important methodological concept for semantically differentiating the words in the field of meaning and for studying synonyms

This method aims to bring into focus the features which distinguish This principle involved here may allow us to aim for a more precise definition of meaning However, the idea that a word can be subjected to this type of clinical, accurate analysis

is rather misleading This approach is only concerned with conceptual meaning, not associative mean

The following table shows the different senses of the four groups under study These senses are considered as the main features and used as the basis for the analysis of the semantic aspects of the four verbs in the following section

Table 1: Componential analysis table of the four verbs studied

sth: something

sb: somebody

As can be seen from table 1 the main features of the four verbs will be outlined below:

Say (v) means to (1) pronounce words or sounds, (2) repeat words, phrases, (3) express

an opinion/ give an answer, (4) Suggest/Give an example or a possibility; (5) give thoughts, feelings (6) Giving written information

For example:

(1) Be quiet, I have something to say (pronounce words)

(2) Try to say that line with more conviction (Repeat words)

(3) Do you know what she said to him? (express an opinion)

(4) Say you lose your job: what would you do then? (Give an example)

(5) What did they say about the house? (give thoughts)

Tell (v) means (1) to give information to sb by speaking or writing, (2) to express

something in words, (3) to let somebody know a secret, (4) to order or advise somebody

to do something, (5) to recognize difference

For example:

(1) He told the news to everybody he saw (Give information)

(2) I can‟t tell you how happy I am (Express something in words)

(3) Promise you won‟t tell (Let somebody know secret)

(4) He was told to sit down and wait (order somebody to do something)

(5) I can't tell the difference between margarine and butter (recognize difference)

Speak (v) has the following meanings: (1) to have a conversation with somebody, (2) to

use your voice to say something, (3) to be able to use a particular language, (4) to make a speech to an audience, (5) to mention or describe sth/sb

For example: (1) I‟ve spoken to the manager about it (have a conversation with sb)

(2) Please speak more slowly (use voice) (3) Do you speak English? (Be able to use a particular language (4)Professor Wilson was invited to speak about the results of his research (make a speech to an audience) (5) I‟m not speaking about the West Indian heiress, Miss Osborn, but about a poor girl whom George once loved (mention or describe sth/sb)

Talk (v) means (1) to say things; to speak in order to express feelings, ideas, etc (2) to

discuss sth, usually sth serious or important, (3) to say words in a language, (4) Gossip

For example: (1) We talked on the phone for over an hour (say things)

(2) Talk to your doctor if you‟re still worried (discuss sth) (3) Are they talking Swedish or Danish? (Say words in a language) (4) Don‟t phone me at work- people will talk (Gossip)

All verbs have some common denotative meanings, for example, all verbs have the meaning of “expressing a thought or an opinion” or “make a statement” They are the

markers that show the similarity in terms of meaning which is the basis for arranging

these verbs in the same synonymic group However, these are also features that show one

or more specific meanings of a word which bring about its distinction in terms of meaning compared with others in the same synonymic group Those features are

distinguishes, which take an important role in the work of differentiating synonyms

Consider the following examples which are extracted from Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Online Dictionary(2003) as illustration for the idea:

(1) He says he doesn‟t believe you

(2) He told everybody he saw the news

(3) Please speak more slowly

(4) The baby is just starting to talk

It can be seen that all the verbs do the same work of producing a sound to communicate In sentence (1), the speaker used words to tell you that he does not believe

you and the information is basically “informed” in a neutral way In sentence (2), the

speaker wants to give information to somebody by speaking In sentence (3) the listener would like the Speaker to use his/her voice more slowly In sentence (4) the baby is

starting using words to give information Therefore, the meaning “produce a sound to

give information” or “convey ideas/thoughts/feelings” can be considered makers, which

bring about the similarity in terms of meaning in several cases of the verbs studied This means that sometimes we can replace a word in this group with another, it may change

the “attitude” or “nuance” which can be generalize as emotional colouring of the

sentence but the information is still conveyed

Besides conveying some common aspects of meaning, the synonyms under study are in most cases distinguished and differently used This study addresses itself to the distinguishers In the following sections, the detail of the analysis of each lexeme will be represented to make clear the differences in terms of the syntactic features, semantic features and the equivalents of specific senses of the verbs under discussion

2.4 Data Analysis and Discussions

The verbs are analysed in detail beginning with Say followed by Tell, Speak and

Talk Each of these verbs is described in a separate section, and the analysis will be

conducted with a view to discovering such aspects of each verb as its syntax, semantics performed by each of these verbs

In this section, section 2.4.1 discusses the differences of syntactic features of English

verbs Say, Tell, Speak and Talk Section 2.4.2 provides different meanings derived from

each of the four verbs in turn; and the section 2.4.3 describes the Vietnamese equivalents

of these English verbs

2.4.1 Syntactic features of English verbs Say, Tell, Speak and Talk

According to Quirk et al (1972, 1985), the four English verbs say and tell, speak

and talk are capable of taking three arguments: the addresser, the addressee and the

matter which addressed The addresser is realized as an NP which, functions as the subject of the verb; the addressee is realized as a prepositional phrase (to NP) which functions as the indirect object of the verb; and the matter addressed is realized as a PP

(about NP) or as that-complement The following table can account for their Syntactic

and Semantic Regularities:

Table 2: Syntactic and Semantic Regularities of English verbs Studied

Syntactic function / Semantic Role SAY TELL SPEAK TALK

SUBJECT

SPEAKER

ACTIVE PASSIVE

+ +

+ +

+ (+)

+ + INDIRECT

++

(+)

- ++

- + DIRECT

OBJECT

MESSAGE

DIRECT SPEECH

PRONOMINAL

so that- Od Cl

+ + (+) (+)

(+) + + + ++

+ + + +

- + + +

-

-

-

- +

- (+)

of about

on

on

in for against

at after from

-

- (+) + (+) (+) + (+)

-

- + (+)

-

- (+) ++

(+) (+) +

?

-

-

- (+)

+

- ++

+ (+) (+) + (+) +

- (+)

-

+ (+) + ++

(+) (+) + (+) + (+)

-

- MANNER

ADVERBIAL

Symbols: ++ : frequent; (+) : possible but rare - not exist

+ : typical; ? : improbable

As we can see the table 2, the verbs Say, Tell, Speak and Talk have been analyzed

here in terms of their syntactic features, which are actualized by the nuclear syntactic constituents, i.e the Subject (S), the Direct Object (Od), the Indirect Object (Ø-Oi) and the non–nuclear constituents of the sentence, i.e the Prepositional Object (Op), and Adverbials (Adv) The four verbs studied from the point of view of the Speaker, characterized as Source / Transmitter / Sender or Reporter, whose predominant role is that of active Subject All of them allow the Hearer / Listener / Receiver / Receptor as an

Addressee, expressed by a to- Indirect Object (Oi) or, with speak and talk, as an Interactor profiled by a with- Prepositional Object (Op) Tell, the most prone to selecting

the Oi, is the only one that takes the object alternation, selecting both a zero Indirect

Object (Ø-Oi) and a to-Indirect Object (to-Oi) There are differences in focus which boil down to transitivity - Say and Tell are Message-oriented (transitive) acts whereas Speak and Talk are mainly Linguistic Action-oriented (intransitive) activities Say and Tell

profile the Od as Message Say can take any type of Od: Direct Speech / Quote (“Q”) or a

NP Object, when it is Message-oriented, and a that-/wh- clause if it is message-content oriented Only exceptionally will say select a to-Oi, which is the rule with tell In the informative paradigm, Tell most often frames the Message–Content by a that- / wh– / to-

clause and only accidentally will it be followed by Direct Speech A rough normative correlation between the act denoted by the projecting linguistic action verb and the

complement structure of the embedded clause indicates that- clauses to be associated with assertions, with a transfer of information or of knowledge and to- non-finite clauses,

with directives

Because they are Speaker -and Action–oriented, Speak and Talk very rarely select condensed message forms Talk makes the transition from linguistic action verbs

to manner of speaking verbs It is also the most Topic-oriented of them, often taking an

Od as its Message–Topic Speak seldom does so Speak refers to the faculty of speech and to speech production complemented by a pronounceable entity or code

From the table above, it must be noticed that the four verbs studied, to some extent, have the same syntactic structures However, they are used different constructions in some cases To provide readers a critical view, the following analysis will be presented

SAY:

Basically, the verb Say is a transitive verb which always takes a direct object The direct object of Say may assume a number of forms, ranging from direct speech to pronominal items Say may also be used intransitively, i.e without any nuclear

constituents functioning as its direct object Here are some examples of the direct object

of Say:

(i) a direct speech

(1)"People don‟t always need words, young man,‟ the children‟s mother said

(ii) a that-clause (noun clause)

(2) In the letter she said that the party was wonderful,

(iii) a wh-noun clause (especially in negative and questions):

(3)Mrs Johnson didn‟t say when she would return

The verb is never followed directly by an indirect object pronoun This is perhaps

the most common difficulty students have with say If there is an indirect object, it must

be a “to” indirect object: He said “Good morning” to me * He said me “Good morning.”

Much more common than say, however, in this kind of utterance - when you want to mention the person or persons you are addressing the words to - is the verb Tell

(iv) Noun phrases as the object of Say

There is another set of NPs which may also be assigned to this category These are NPs involving the noun ('word' or 'words') and an adjective specifier, e.g 'say bitter words' = 'lament'; 'say untruthful words' = 'lie'; and 'say beautiful words' = „praise' They are normally followed by a TOPIC PP headed by on

Numerically, the major pattern with say is Verb + that-/ wh- Direct Object Clause

(OdCl)

TELL:

This verb almost always occurs with an indirect object:

(4) I know it‟s a bad time to tell you

(5) Please tell me the story of your life

The verb does, however, occur without an indirect object and with a limited number of

direct objects in expressions such as tell a lie, tell a story, tell the truth, tell secrets:

(6) We can write poetry, tell jokes, make promises, explain, persuade, tell the truth, or tell lies

(7) "Why, will the black footman tell tales?" cried Miss Rebecca