A study on the semantic features of english collocations containing the verb “make” with reference to their vietnamese equivalents

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY BUI THI KIM ANH A STUDY ON THE SEMANTIC FEATURES OF ENGLISH COLLOCATIONS CONTAINING THE VERB “MAKE” WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

BUI THI KIM ANH

A STUDY ON THE SEMANTIC FEATURES OF

ENGLISH COLLOCATIONS CONTAINING THE VERB

“MAKE” WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR

VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

(NGHIÊN CỨU NHỮNG ĐẶC ĐIỂM NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA

QUÁN NGỮ CHỨA ĐỘNG TỪ “MAKE” CÙNG NGHĨA

TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT)

M.A THESIS Field: English Language Code: 60220201

Hanoi, 2016

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

BUI THI KIM ANH

A STUDY ON THE SEMANTIC FEATURES OF

ENGLISH COLLOCATIONS CONTAINING THE VERB

“MAKE” WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR

VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

(NGHIÊN CỨU NHỮNG ĐẶC ĐIỂM NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA

QUÁN NGỮ CHỨA ĐỘNG TỪ “MAKE” CÙNG NGHĨA

TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT)

M.A THESIS Field: English Language Code: 60220201 Supervisor: Nguyen Thi Van Dong

Hanoi, 2016

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project

report entitled A study on the semantic features of English collocations

containing the verb “make” with reference to their Vietnamese

degree of Master in English Language Except where the reference is indicated, no other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis

Hanoi, 2016

Bui Thi Kim Anh

Approved by SUPERVISOR

(Signature and full name)

Date:………

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

For the accomplishment of this thesis, first of all, I am greatly indebted to my supervisor, Dr Nguyen Thi Van Dong, who has kindly and patiently guided me throughout the process of the study Her insights, advice, support, and encouragement have made the process of the study not only precious but also a meaningful one

Besides, I would like to thank all my respectable lecturers for teaching me all the courses that I have taken at Hanoi Open University

I would also like to thank all my colleagues who made great contribution to my research Without their assistance and participation, this study would not have been successful

Finally, I am deeply grateful to my beloved parents, husband and

my children for their love and support which have enabled me to overcome all the challenges during my study

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to investigate the semantic features

of English collocations verb “make” with reference to their Vietnamese

equivalents, especially in the novel “Adventure of Tom Sawyer” by

Mark Twain

The study is aimed at three points: (1) finding the semantic features of the ‘make’ collocations in English and those of the verb ‘làm’ collocations in Vietnamese, (2) finding the similarities and differences between the ‘make’ collocations in English and those of the verb ‘làm’ collocations in Vietnamese and (3) providing some recommendations for the teaching and learning as well as translation of ‘make’ collocations and ‘làm’ collocations into the target language

This study was designed as a descriptive research with the method

of contrastive and componential analysis According to the data analysis, the results of the study show that the verb ‘make’ and the verb ‘làm’ in collocations coincide in their general meanings However, the verb ‘làm’

in Vietnamese collocations seems to have much more meanings than that

in English collocations

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 2.1 Collocations vs idioms free word combinations

Table 4.1 Semantic features of Make in English and Vietnamese

TABLE OF CONTENTS Certificate of originality

Acknowledgments

Abstract

List of abbreviations

List of tables and figures

TABLE OF CONTENTS Certificate of originality

Acknowledgments

Abstract

List of abbreviations

List of tables and figures

Chapter1 INTRODUCTION 11

1.1 Rationale for the study 11

1.2 Aims of the study 13

1.3 Objectives of the study……… 5

1.4 Scope of the study 14

1.5 Significance of the study 14

1.6 Structure of the study 15

Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 17

2.1 Review of the Previous Studies 17

2.2 Review of theoretical background 19

2.2.1 Semantic features 19

2.2.2 A Brief Description of Verbs 20

2.2.3 Component of Meaning 22

2.2.3.1 Grammatical meaning 22

2.2.3.2 Lexical meaning 22

2.2.4 Transference of Meaning 22

2.2.4.1 Metaphor 22

2.2.4.2 Metonymy 22

2.2.5 English Collocations 23

2.2.5.1 Definition of Collocations 23

2.2.5.2 Types of collocations 25

2.2.5.3 Characteristics of Collocations 29

Chapter 3 METHODOLOGY 35

3.1 Research-governing orientations 35

3.1.2 Descriptive research design definition 35

3.2 Research method 36

3.2.1 Contrastive analysis method 36

3.2.2 Componential analysis method 36

3.3 Test description 37

3.4 Method of the analysis 38

3.5 Summary 38

Chapter 4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 39

4.1 Data results and analysis 39

4.2 Semantic Features of the Verb “Make” in English Collocations 44

4.2 Semantic Features of the Verb ‘Làm’ in Vietnamese Collocations 50 4.3 Similarities 56

4.4 Differences 57

Chapter 5 CONCLUSION 65

5.1 Summary of major findings 65

5.2 Pedagogical implications of the study 65

5.2.1 For EFL Learning in general 65

5.2.2 Implications for learning vocabulary 66

5.2.2 For Translation from English to Vietnamese and Vice Versa 68

5.3.Limitation of the study 69

5.4.Suggestion for further study 70

REFERENCES 72

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents the background of the study, reasons for choosing the topic, statements of the problem, objectives of the study, significance of the study, and outline of the study

1.1 Rationale for the study

Nowadays, English has become one of the most important international languages in the world The number of people who communicate and use it as the first language has been increasing day by

day British linguist Wilkins (1972:111) once stated “While without

grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed” This argument has been supported by many researchers in the field of second language acquisition (SLA) who have emphasized the significance of vocabulary and agreed that vocabulary is equally, if not more, important than language structure in language acquisition

Although collocation has become the subject of a linguistic study only recently, it arouses a growing interest in numerous linguists and is defined in various ways Accordingly, there is no exhaustive and uniform definition or categorization of collocation Therefore, it tends to

be one of the most problematic and important area of vocabulary,

especially for second language learners Hill (1999:5) goes so far as to

suggest: “We are familiar with the concept of communicative competence, but perhaps we should add the concept of collocation competence to our thinking” He also claims that non-native speakers have problems “not because of faulty grammar but a lack of

collocations” Along with Hill, McCarthy (1990:12) claims that

“collocation deserves to be a central aspect of vocabulary study.” These

acquisition of a language The author would like to investigate the possibility of combining words into fixed expressions

According to Palmer (1965:1), “learning a language is, to a very

large degree, how to operate the verbal forms, the pattern and the structure of the verb in that language” There is a question which need to

be answered is that how verbs collocate with other classes of word A verb can collocate with a noun, a preposition, an adjective or even another verb Verb phrases are then created Investigating the combinations of verbs must be necessary for improving the students’ knowledge and lessening their difficulties

However, the knowledge of collocations is vast so this study only focuses on the semantic features of English collocations containing the verb ‘make’ with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents We choose the study the semantic features of the ‘make’ collocations because the verb ‘make’ is one of the most commonly used verbs in English and when it collocates with other words, Vietnamese learners often feel confused, especially about meaning of the verb ‘make’ collocations Besides, a great number of teachers have unsuitable way of teaching collocation due to the limited awareness of its importance, leading to the limitation in using collocation of the students Without the knowledge of collocations, students are not bound to approach the native-like level of proficiency in language In fact, students have not paid appropriate attention to learning collocations The collocations with ‘make’ is very popular in English, however, students still have difficulty in using them

To solve this problem, learners should be fully aware of the importance

of collocations, raising the awareness of teaching and using collocations

For these reasons, I decided to choose this as the theme for my

MA thesis The study is so entitled “A study on the semantic features of

English collocations containing the verb “make” with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents”

1.2 Aims of the study

This study aims at investigating the semantic features of English collocations verb “make” with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents This study is carried out to serve major purposes:

The study is aimed at:

+ Finding the semantic features of the ‘make’ collocations in English and those of the verb ‘làm’ collocations in Vietnamese

+ Finding the similarities and differences between the ‘make’ collocations in English and those of the verb ‘làm’ collocations in Vietnamese

+ Providing some recommendations for the teaching and learning as well as translation of ‘make’ collocations and ‘làm’ collocations into the target language

To fully achieve these aims, the study should answer the following questions:

+ What are the semantic features of each verb in collocations and how are they similar and different in terms of these features?

+ What are the implications of the study for EFL teaching/ learning and translation?

1.3 Objectives of the study

To achieve the above-mentioned aims, the following objectives can be put forward:

(i) Pointing out syntactic features of English collocations of the verb MAKE and those of the verb ‘làm’ collocations in Vietnamese

(ii) Figuring out semantic features of English collocations of the verb MAKE and those of the verb ‘làm’ collocations in Vietnamese

(iii) Suggesting possible implications for teaching and learning English collocations of the verb MAKE

1.4 Scope of the study

The study focuses on analyzing semantic features of English collocations containing the verb ‘make” then Vietnamese equivalents of collocations of make will be later discussed through analyzing English- Vietnamese examples in different context It is better if English collocations with more verbs are analyzed and totalized, contributing considerably to English learning and teaching in Vietnam This study, therefore, suggests them to learn about English collocations with different types of parts of speech and discover the rules to make use of them The effects will be vital to students and should be encouraged to

be applied at school as well as for self-learners of English

1.5 Significance of the study

The study is carried out basically through the descriptive and methods The descriptive method is employed to give in depth and detailed description semantic features of collocations of lexical verb

“make” in English The work starts with a review of existing study results on collocations to provide a better understanding of the topic By providing an innovative approach to learning English lexical terms, the author expects to change how student learn English words as well as how teachers change their traditional methods of teaching vocabulary This study’s implications are to deal with these issues in hope that will help students overcome their troubles

With the aim of investigating the semantic features of English collocations verb “make” with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents, it could be a considerable contribution to different groups:

result for the readers so that they will have a deeper understanding of collocations “make” found in this novel as well as enrich their vocabulary and apply those collocations in their writing and speaking activities The verb ‘make’ and the verb ‘làm’ are highly frequently used for Vietnamese learners, therefore, knowing semantic features of these two verbs in collocations as well as their similarities and differences can facilitate the learners’ process of learning vocabulary

will get important information about collocation expressions Therefore, this research is expected to make a useful contribution in helping novelist to choose the collocation expressions which are easily comprehended by the readers of the novel

teaching collocations in general As a result, these implications can be applied as a general framework or model for teaching all collocations This is extremely significant for EFL learners in particular

the collocation “make” in our school context; hence, this study may be a springboard for those who want to do further research in the same area

1.6 Structure of the study

The study is divided into 5 chapters:

Chapter I: Introduction presents the rationale, aims, objectives, scope, significance and the structure of thesis

Chapter II: Literature Review features the review of related literature

and the theory of verbs will be discussed The verb “make” will be also identified in terms of grammatical characteristics in structures related to make Also, this chapter presents and describes concrete cases of collocations with the lexical verb make with their Vietnamese equivalents in corresponding contexts

Chapter III: Methodology presents the research governing orientations

and the research methods used in implementing and developing the study This chapter focuses on research questions, research setting, approaches to investigate the research problem, the principles, techniques to collect and analyze data, etc

Chapter IV: Findings and Discussion introduces the results of the

survey which semantic features of English collocations containing the verb ‘make’ with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents The research implications for learning English as a foreign language can be found as the last part of this chapter

Chapter V: Conclusion provides concluding remarks Summarizes

major findings of the study, points out the limitations and proposes some suggestions for further research

Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

The second chapter covers review of related literature It contains review of previous studies and review of the theoretical studies

2.1 Review of the Previous Studies

There are some previous studies related to the analysis of collocation expressions The descriptions of the previous research findings are as follows

As students of other languages, Vietnamese students also meet difficulties when acquiring English collocations In a conference at the University of Western Sydney, Trinh (1995) mentioned to collocation, in particular English collocation, particularly those for whom English is their second and weaker language The results showed that there were very few syntactic errors, and that the examiners probably have treated syntactic and grammatical errors as one area of error only

The author also realized that the errors being made were a result

of the candidates' lack of knowledge of English collocations, whether they are grammatical or lexical Moreover, in the frame of M.A thesis at Vietnam National University, Hanoi – University of Languages and International Studies, there are also studies of collocations Works by Chu Thị Phương Vân (2005), Lê Thanh Hà (2007) and Đào Thị Ngọc Nguyên (2007) are some of typical examples They are all interested in the collocation issue They investigated the collocations definition, classification and the students’ knowledge about collocations

Additionally, by collecting and analyzing abundant examples of MAKE in English collocations, as well as their Vietnamese equivalents, Minh (2010) had successfully compared the two verbs, one in English and one in the other language, regarding their semantic features In more

provided translations for these different meanings of MAKE; however, she chose only one meaning for the Vietnamese word, LÀM For the second part, pure explanations of meanings were given, whilst for the former one, every single meaning was accompanied by their corresponding Vietnamese translations Then, she stated her final conclusions, both about similarities and differences in the finding section, but in my opinion there are still some unclear points in her work and there is still a necessity to solve them more cautiously in this study

Chu Thị Phương Vân (2005) analyzed the collocations of one English textbook on Electronics and Telecommunications Pham Thi Nga (2012) carried out common errors related to the usage of “do” and

“make” collocations by English non – major students at Thai Nguyen university of economics and business administration However, a detailed investigation into the collocations of lexical verb “make” has not been taken There has neither been any works that gave the insights

to the comparison between English collocations and Vietnamese ones In the frame of an M.A thesis, the author would like to contribute a very minor investigation focusing on the collocation “Verb + noun” (lexical collocation) with the verb “make” in order to facilitate students when dealing with these combinations of words Also, the Vietnamese equivalents are given to compare and contrast

Once again, the author has to repeat that it is true that little work has been conducted towards MAKE and its collocations so far Plus, when it comes to studies about their Vietnamese equivalents, it is even harder to find such topic-related work It is also clear that MAKE studies have not been analyzed systematically, as has been pointed out in the previous paragraph The author, as a result, makes an attempt to investigate both syntactic and semantic features of English collocations with the verb MAKE and their Vietnamese equivalents with regards to

methods, implications and findings in comparison with other earlier studies as cited previously Therefore, the researcher decided to conduct

a research to find out how many collocations containing the verb “make” exactly found in the book, what types of collocation expressions, what the dominant types of collocation used, and what kind of problems existing in understanding collocation expression

2.2 Review of theoretical background

2.2.1 Semantic features

Semantics (from Ancient Greek: σηµαντικός sēmantikós,"significant") is the study of meaning - in language, programming languages, formal logics, and semiotics It focuses on the relationship between signifiers - like words, phrases, signs, and symbols - and what they stand for, their denotation

Semantics is a branch of linguistics dealing with the meaning of words, phrases and sentences, however, contrary to pragmatics it does not analyze the intended speaker meaning, or what words denote on a given occasion, but the objective, conventional meaning Additionally, it

is concerned with the conceptual meaning and not the associative meaning

Richards et al define semantic features (semantic components) as

“the smallest units of meaning in a world” which may be describe as “a combination of semantic features” However, Crystal points out that semantic features are minimal contrastive elements of a word’s meaning According to Kamil Wiśniewski, Aug.12th, 2007, semantic features are considered basic elements which enable the differentiation

of meaning of words This view is also shared by Cornelius Puschmann:

“Semantic feature analysis allows us to decompose words into bundles

of attributes” and “semantic features can be used to describe differences

between antonyms, superordinates and their hyponyms, and near synonyms”

E.g:

In short, the analysis of word meaning is often seen as a process of breaking down the sense of word into its minimal components, which are known as semantic features or sense components

2.2.2 A Brief Description of Verbs

The verb is king in English The shortest sentence contains a verb

We can make a one-word sentence with a verb, for example: "Stop!" We cannot make a one-word sentence with any other type of word

A verb is often defined as a word which shows action or state of being The verb is the heart of a sentence - every sentence must have a verb Recognizing the verb is often the most important step in understanding the meaning of a sentence In the sentence ‘The dog bit the man’, ‘bit’ is the verb and the word which shows the action of the sentence In the sentence ‘The man is sitting on a chair’, even though the action doesn't show much activity, ‘sitting’ is the verb of the sentence In the sentence ‘She is a smart girl’, there is no action but a

state of being expressed by the verb ‘is’ The word ‘be’ is different from other verbs in many ways but can still be thought of as a verb

A verb always has a subject E.g: in the sentence ‘John speaks English’ John is the subject and speaks is the verb In simple terms, therefore, we can say that verbs are words that tell us what a subject does or is; they describe:

- action (Ram plays football.)

- state (Anthony seems kind.)

According to Jack C Richards et al (1992:398), in English, a word

is a verb when it satisfied these following criteria:

- Occur as part of the predicate of a sentence;

- Carries markers of grammatical categories such as tense, aspect, person, number, and mood; and

- Refers to an action or state

Almost verbs in English change in form in accordance with tense, mood, person, etc for example: ‘Lower fares make it advantageous to travel in winter.’; ‘I first made his acquaintance in 2006’; ‘Please stop making that noise annoying’, etc

In Vietnamese, verbs are one of the two fundamental parts of speech like nouns Verbs in Vietnamese also play an important role in vocabulary as well as in forming sentences Contrary to verbs in English, verbs in Vietnamese do not have the concord with other parts of speech

In other words, they are not affected by number, person, gender, mood, voice, and tense And in Vietnamese, verbs can combine with other auxiliary components to indicate tense, aspect like ‘sắp’, ‘sẽ’, ‘đã’ , continuation like ‘còn’, ‘vẫn’, etc

There are many ways to classify verbs, however, in this thesis, the classification of verbs into transitive and intransitive verbs shall be

applied, which would be convenient to compare the two verbs “make” in English and “làm” in Vietnamese

2.2.3 Component of Meaning

2.2.3.1 Grammatical meaning

Lyons [18, p.52] points out that “Different forms of the same lexeme will generally, though not necessarily, differ in meaning: they will differ in respect of their grammatical meaning.”

2.2.3.2 Lexical meaning

Baker [2, p.12] states that “The lexical meaning of a word or lexical unit may be thought as the specific value it has in a particular linguistic system and the ‘personality’ it acquires through usage within that system.” And “it is just the lexical meaning it is the most outstanding individual property of the word.” And the lexical meaning

of the word can be classified in to denotational meaning and connotative meaning

Denotative meaning or Denotation

As defined in the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics [12], denotation is a part of the meaning of a word

or phrase that relates it to phenomena in the real world or in a fictional

or possible world

Connotative meaning or Connotation

In [13,p.57] Amvela and Jackson point out that “con notations

constitute additional properties of lexemes, e.g: poetic, slang, baby

2.2.4 Transference of Meaning

2.2.4.1 Metaphor

“Metaphor is the transference of meaning (name) from one object

to another, based on similarity between two objects.” [Nguyen Hoa]

2.2.4.2 Metonymy

Harris thinks that metonymy is another form of metaphor in which the thing chosen for the metaphorical image is closely associated with the subject with which it is to be compared

2.2.5 English Collocations

2.2.5.1 Definition of Collocations

All languages have a large numbers of collocations, and linguists

have defined collocation in different ways

There are various definitions of collocation It will be noted that forming a precise definition is difficult because different linguists have different and conflicting definitions as what Bahns (1993:57) says:

“Regrettably, collocation is a term which is used and understood in many different ways” Most of the researchers who define collocation agree that it is a lexical unit consisting of a cluster of two or three words Firth is widely regarded as the father of this term and we can see that most of the definitions are paraphrases of Firth’s (1957:183) definition that collocations are “words in habitual company” This is a quite general definition Collocation, then, refers to expressions in which individual words habitually go together In the case of verb, for instance, the verb make goes with some words and the verb do with other words:

E.g: We made an agreement (NOT did an agreement)

The definition of collocation would be made clearer by his followers - Sinclair (1966) and Halliday (1966) For Halliday, collocations are examples of word combinations; he maintains that collocation cuts across grammar boundaries Sinclair (1966) introduces the following terminology: an item whose collocations are studies is called a “node
; the number of relevant lexical items on each side of a

node is defined as a “span
and those items which are found within the span are called “collocates

The term collocation was first introduced by Firth (1957), a British linguist He was the first person to look lexis at its syntagmatic, left-to-right unfolding of language According to Firth (1957), the collocation is defined as a combination of words associated with each other, for example to take a photo, to do homework, to play football The term “collocation” has it origin in the Latin verb collocate which means to set in order/to arrange

The concept of collocations was first identified by Palmer (1981)

as a string of words that must or should be learned or is best or most conveniently learned as an integral whole or independent entity rather than by the process of piecing together their component parts Most of the researchers who define collocation agree that it is a lexical unit consisting of a cluster of two or three words from different parts of speech (e.g Baker, 1992; Benson and Ilson, 1997) Most of the definitions are paraphrases of Firth (1957: 183) definition that collocations are “words in habitual company”

Most of the definitions have at their core some sense of the occurrence’ of words For instance, Colin Mclntosh et al (2009) gives a general definition of collocation that collocation is the way words combine in a language to produce natural-sounding speech and writing

‘co-In short, collocations are not easily defined From a teacher’s point of view, it is necessary to have a more transparent and practical definition for the students

Although there are different ways to define what collocation is, these definitions share a common view that a collocation is a word or

phrase used frequently in a combination but it is not easy for learners to guess

Adverb + Adjective: e.g completely satisfied (NOT downright

satisfied)

Adjective + Noun: e.g excruciating pain (NOT excruciating joy) Noun + Verb: e.g lions roar (NOT lions shout)

Verb + Noun: e.g commit suicide (NOT undertake suicide)

In contrast to grammatical collocations, lexical collocations do not contain grammatical elements They can be classified into three types

Open collocations: are characterized by a combination of two words or more occurring together with no specific relation between them This means that the word can cluster with a large range of other words For example, the verb “catch” collocates with bus, train, cold, and fire

Restricted collocations: are considered to be the most commonly used one That is, the word can collocate with limited and fixed words

“combinations of two or more words used in one of their regular, idiomatic meanings” Restricted collocations differ from free combination collocations in that they co-occur with a small number of words Evelyn, et al (1986, p.253) provide “to commit a murder” as an example where the verb collocates with a few nouns such as “murder, crime”

Bound collocations: are, as Cowie (1981, p.228) decribes them as

“a bridge category between collocations and idioms” The significant feature of this group is that one of the elements of the collocations is, as Emery states (1987, p.9), “unique selective” of the other One example is

“to shrug one’s shoulders”

Collocations are found in various types of syntactic configurations (Emery, 1987, p 8-9),

Subject/-Verb, e.g the water freezes

Verb/-Object, e.g break a code

Adjective/-Noun, e.g best wishes

Grammatical collocations

A grammatical collocation is a type of construction where, for example, a verb or an adjective must be followed by a particular preposition, or a noun must be followed by a particular form of the verb,

as in:

Verb + Preposition: e.g depend on (NOT depend of) Adjective + Preposition: e.g afraid of (NOT afraid at)

Noun + Particular form of verb: e.g strength to lift it (not

strength lifting it)

By Michael Mc Carthy and Felicity O
Dell (2005: 9-12), collocations are classified as following;

Adjectives and nouns

Some adjectives are typically used with particular nouns

“Jean always wears red or yellow or some other bright colour.”

“We had a brief chat about the exams but didn't have time to discuss them properly.”

Nouns and verbs

Some nouns and verbs often go together The following examples are all to do with economics and business

“The economy boomed in the 1990s.” [the economy was very strong]

“The company has grown and now employs 50 more people than last year.” “The company has expanded and now has branches in most major cities.” “The two companies merged in 2003 and now form one very large corporation.”

“The company launched the product in 2002 [introduced the product]” “The price increase poses a problem for us [is a problem]”

“The Internet has created opportunities for our business, [brought new opportunities]”

Mc Carthy, M & Felicity O
Dell, F (2005:12)

Noun + noun

There are a lot of collocations with the pattern a of

“As Sam read the lies about him, he felt a surge of anger, [literary: a sudden angry feeling]”

“Every parent feels a sense of pride when their child does well or wins something.”

“I felt a pang of nostalgia when I saw the old photos of the village

Mc Carthy, M & Felicity O
Dell, F (2005:12)

Some verbs collocate with particular prepositional expressions

“As Jack went on stage to receive his gold medal for the judo competition you could see his parents swelling with pride, [looking extremely proud]”

“I was filled with horror when I read the newspaper report of the explosion.”

“When she spilt juice on her new skirt the little girl burst into

(Mc Carthy, M & Felicity O
Dell, F (2005:12))

Verbs and adverbs

Some verbs have particular adverbs which regularly collocate with them

“She pulled steadily on the rope and helped him to safety, [pulled firmly and evenly]”

“He placed the beautiful vase gently on the window ledge.”

“I love you and want to marry you,' Derek whispered softly to Marsha

“She smiled proudly as she looked at the photos of her new

Mc Carthy, M & Felicity O
Dell, F (2005:12)

Adverbs and adjectives

Adjectives often have particular adverbs which regularly collocate with them

“They are happily married.”

“I am fully aware that there are serious problems [I know well]”

“Harry was blissfully unaware that he was in danger [Harry had

no idea at all, often used about something unpleasant]”

Mc Carthy, M & O
Dell, F (2005:12)

2.2.5.3 Characteristics of Collocations

In discussion of the nature of collocation, linguists have been trying to generalize what characteristics collocations have in common Generally, collocations have two major features as follow

Collocations can be described in a number of ways The ways of thinking about them can be in terms of “degree of fixedness” or “degree

of predictability”

Degree of fixedness

Degree of fixedness is the degree to which you can vary the basic pattern and still have a collocation We can only define the fixedness or unfixedness of collocations in terms of a continuum Some are more fixed than others but we can't make a neat dividing line between "fixed" and "unfixed"

A very fixed collocation is one in which the pattern has very few expected variations So, for example, the phrase "kick the bucket" is an idiom, a relatively fixed collocation meaning "to die" While we could substitute nouns and verbs in this sentence and get other meaningful sentences (e.g "kick the door", "lift the bucket"), the word combinations

in these other sentences are no longer cohesive patterns in the way that

"kick the bucket" is Like "kick the bucket", most collocations which are very fixed form a particular expected meaning rather than a structure

A less fixed collocation is often a more structural - common pattern that helps structure a sentence but don't carry as much specific meaning

by itself E.g this is a commonly used structural pattern into which you can insert a variety of words and still have commonly used patterns:

Let's move on to the next point

Let's go back to the last chapter

Let's move away from this paragraph

Let's go on to the main point

Another example is “take a photo”, where no word other than take collocates with photo to give the same meaning Some collocations are more open, where several different words may be used to give a similar meaning, for example, “keep to/stick to the rules.”

On the other hand, there are some less fixed collocations which are not as clearly structural Words that are commonly used with other words are examples of less fixed collocations which are not as structural

in nature So for example, we use "bus" and "car" with only certain sets

Degree of predictability

According to J R Firth, collocation can be classified as strong or weak due to the degree of predictability in their association If we look deeper into collocations, we find that not only do the words "go together" but there is a degree of predictability in their association

Generally, in any collocation, one word will "call up" another word in the mind of a native speaker In other words, if one word appears, we can predict the other word, with varying degrees of success This predictability is not perfectly understandable, but it is always much higher than with non-collocates The predictability may be strong: for example "auspicious" collocates with very few words, as in: auspicious occasion, auspicious moment, and auspicious event Or the predictability

may be weak: e.g: "circuit" collocates with a lot of words, as in: racing

Collocations are Arbitrary

According to Kathleen R McKeown and Dragomir R Radev, the notion of arbitrariness captures the fact that substituting a synonym for one of the words in a collocational word pair may result in an infelicitous lexical combination Thus, e.g a phrase such as make an effort is acceptable, but make an exertion is not; similarly, a running commentary, commit treason, warm greetings are all true collocations, but a running discussion, commit treachery, and hot greetings are not acceptable lexical combinations In short, there is no absolute rule that can be learned for collocations

Collocations are Language-Specific

As Larson (1984:141) points out, every language interprets the physical words in its own way and has its own convention which governs the collocability of words In other words, combinations of words will differ from language to language

Therefore, what is perfectly acceptable collocation in one language may be unacceptable in another Take the case of make in English and làm in Vietnamese as a typical example Although these two words are equivalent to each other, they cannot go with the same range

of nouns While such collocations as làm trai, làm duyên làm dáng, làm

lẽ are acceptable in Vietnamese, the verb make in English actually cannot co-occur with these corresponding nouns Instead, the equivalents phrases must be be a man, posture, be a concubine in which different verbs are employed

The Distinction among Free Word Combinations, Idiomatic Expressions and Collocations

Collocations are not easily defined In the linguistic and lexicographic literature, they are often discussed in contrast with free

word combinations at one extreme and idiomatic expressions at the other, collocations occurring somewhere in the middle of this spectrum

Free Word Combinations

In the point of view of Kathleen R McKeown and Dragomir R Radev, a free word combination can be described using general rules; that is, in terms of semantic constraints on the words which appear in a certain syntactic relation with a given headword Thus, examples of free word combinations include put+[object] or run+[object] (i.e ‘manage’) where the words that can occur as object are virtually open-ended In the case of put, the semantic constraint on the object is relatively open-ended (any physical object can be mentioned) and thus the range of words that can occur is relatively unrestricted

To sum up, idiom is a special kind of collocation in which the semantics of the whole cannot be deduced from the meanings of the individual constituents and without knowing the idiom it is often almost

combination fails to be classified as free and is termed a collocation when the number of words which can occur in a syntactic relation with a given headword decreases to the point where it is not possible to describe the set using semantic regularities

More examples of the distinction between free word combinations and collocations are shown in Table:

Table 2.1: Collocations vs idioms and free word combinations

The distinction between free compounds, idioms and collocations

In terms of form, McCarthy (1990:14) claims that collocation items can be separated by several words while words of a compound are always syntactically bound to one another

Looking at idioms, Bolinger (1975:53) argues that some idioms are virtually unchangeable; others follow a limited amount of manipulation

Between idioms and free combinations are loosely fixed combinations (or collocations) of the type to commit murder The main characteristics of collocations are that their meanings reflect the meaning

of their constituent parts (in contrast to idioms) and that they are used frequently, spring to mind readily, and are psychologically salient (in

(Cruse, 1986:41) between free combinations/collocations and collocations/idioms

Chapter 3 METHODOLOGY

This chapter describes in details about the method of investigation It consists of five parts namely object of the study, data of the study, method of collecting data, classification of data, and method

of collocations of lexical verb “make” in English The work starts with a review of existing study results on collocations to provide a better understanding of the topic Then different meanings of collocations of lexical verb “make” are described, and then examples are provided to illustrate the description

Asking students to do exercises is always the best and the most effective way of securing the desired information Therefore, three survey tests were applied as an instrument for collecting the data for this analysis The tests were administered to 70 students who are in grade 11

at different classes of the school and have learned English for six years Their level of general English is assessed as being from pre-intermediate

to upper intermediate level At this stage, they have acquired quite good enough vocabulary and basic grammar structures And they are more aware of how to use English native-likely Therefore, their level can meet the demand of the research

3.1.2 Descriptive research design definition

According to Ethridge (2004), descriptive research may be

what is, while analytical research attempts to establish why it is that way

or how it came to be

Descriptive research is “aimed at casting light on current issues or problems through a process of data collection that enables them to describe the situation more completely than was possible without employing this method” Fox and Bayat (2004)

Descriptive studies are closely associated with observational studies, but they are not limited with observation data collection method, and case studies, as well as, surveys can also be specified as popular data collection methods used with descriptive studies

3.2 Research method

In this study, various methods are used to achieve the objectives such as contrastive analysis, componential analysis, surveys, etc Each step of the study requires another relevant method However, as the title

of the thesis suggests, the method which works best in this study is contrastive analysis Only by using this method, in which English is considered to be the target language and Vietnamese - the source language – a means to contrast can semantic features of the two verbs in collocations as well as their similarities and differences be brought to light

3.2.1 Contrastive analysis method

English is considered to be the target language and Vietnamese- the source language – a means to contrast This method involves two steps: describing the semantic features of the verb ‘make’ collocations in English and those of the verb ‘làm’ collocations in Vietnamese and then juxtaposing them to point out their similarities and differences

3.2.2 Componential analysis method

Componential analysis is one of the most effective methods in identifying the meaning because it involves the analysis of the sense of a

lexeme into its component parts (semantic features or semantic properties)

In this study, the researcher wanted to find out how many collocations containing the verb “make” in the novel, what types of lexical collocations used and what kind of problems existing in understanding collocation expression

3.3 Test description

First production test

The test consists of 16 collocational items divided into two tasks with different requirements

answer from the choices supplied This exercise covers six collocational items, belonging to the collocations of ‘do’ and ‘make’ This exercise is aimed at measuring accuracy in the students’ knowledge of collocation because we know that ‘do’ and ‘make’ are phraseological synonym so students may get confused when they use ‘do’ and ‘make’

English This exercise was given in order to find out to what extent the influences of the mother tongue is the problem for the students

Second production test

After the students finished task 1, we told students the answers to the tasks and explained to them the differences between ‘do’ and ‘make’

as well as those between collocations with ‘làm’ and collocations with

‘make’ To check whether the students’ knowledge of collocations with

‘make’ is improved or not, we conducted the second production test

The test consists of 13 collocational items divided into two tasks with different requirements

Task 1 is a gap-filling exercise This exercise is used to test the

students’ ability to tell the differences between ‘make’ and ‘do’ collocations

to test the students’ ability to reconstruct the appropriate combination of words

3.4 Method of the analysis

Cross tabulation and chart demonstration are the main methods to

do the analysis To be more exact, statistics are arranged in table forms, statistical figures are expressed as percentages The figures are analyzed and put into small points of ideas

3.5 Summary

In brief, descriptive and qualitative methods are used in the study with research methods of contrastive analysis and componential analysis Describing, analyzing and contrasting grammatical and semantic features of collocations containing the verb “make” in English and in Vietnamese require collecting corpora of literature work and Web corpus to be analyzed and studied

Since the whole research work relied on the corpora, it was important that these works should be carefully read and that examples should be cautiously selected to ensure a satisfying reliability of the results It is required that the study should be verified if there are inaccuracies The patterns from the data collection are used from oxford dictionaries and grammar books for confirming the reliability and validity of the study

Chapter 4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

In this chapter, the data are analyzed and discussed to find out the semantic features of collocations containing the verb “make” in the novel

4.1 Data results and analysis

The tests are conducted at College of Economic and Technical Industry and are completed by 70 students The results will be reported and comments will be given after each presentation

First production test

Task 1

correct answer

Table 2: The result of gap filling (1) task

As we can see from table 2, the percentages are dissimilar for all the items The highest scores for correct answers indicate that those collocations which are commonly used will be easy for the students There are three items of collocation which exhibit low percentage of right answers, ranging from 23% to 37%: do harm (23%), do damage (34%), do work (37%) These items are a problem for students because they are not commonly used, and ‘harm’, and ‘damage’ may be new