SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF ENGLISH IDIOMS CONTAINING VERBS “GO” AND “COME” WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY M.A THESIS SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF ENGLISH IDIOMS CONTAINING VERBS “GO” AND “COME” WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR VIETNAM

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A THESIS

SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES

OF ENGLISH IDIOMS CONTAINING VERBS

“GO” AND “COME” WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

(ĐẶC ĐIỂM CÚ PHÁP VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA THÀNH NGỮ TIẾNG ANH CÓ ĐỘNG TỪ “GO” VÀ “COME” ĐỐI CHIẾU

VỚI TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG TIẾNG VIỆT)

NGUYỄN THỊ SEN

Field: English Language Code: 60220201

Hanoi, 2017

NISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A Thesis

SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES

OF ENGLISH IDIOMS CONTAINING VERBS

“GO” AND “COME” WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

(ĐẶC ĐIỂM CÚ PHÁP VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA THÀNH NGỮ TIẾNG ANH CÓ ĐỘNG TỪ “GO” VÀ “COME” ĐỐI CHIẾU

VỚI TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG TIẾNG VIỆT)

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitled SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF ENGLISH IDIOMS CONTAINING VERBS “GO” AND “COME” WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the 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, 2017

Nguyen Thi Sen

Approved by SUPERVISOR

Pham Thi Tuyet Huong Date:………

My special word of thanks goes to all the lecturers at the Faculty of Post Graduate Studies - Ha Noi Open University for their interesting lectures and useful advice I would also like to thank my colleagues and friends for idea sharing and encouragement It would never have been possible for me to have this thesis accomplished without all of these valuable supports

Last but not least, my thanks are also sent to my family for the sacrifice they have devoted to the fulfillment of this academic work

To everyone, thank you so much

ABSTRACT

Idioms are widely used in English and Vietnamese both in daily conversations and literary works The differences between English and Vietnamese culture resulted in many differences in their languages One of the most effective ways to transfer culture

is the use of the idioms which, however, cause many troubles for English learners because of their idiomatic meanings In order to help learners to have a better understanding of idioms, particularly idioms containing verbs “go” and “come”, this study attempted to point out the syntactic and semantic features of English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come”, then find out similarities and differences between English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” and their Vietnamese equivalents Descriptive and contrastive methods are followed to achieve the set objectives 225 examples of the idioms in English and Vietnamese have been analyzed cautiously by applying qualitative and quantitative methods to find out common errors made by learners in the usage of English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” In the study, English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” is compared with the idioms containing verbs “đi” and “đến” in Vietnamese in terms of their syntactic and semantic features In addition, the findings of the study also offer some implications which could be beneficial for teaching and learning English idioms more effectively

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1: Syntactic features of English idioms containing the verb “go” 29 Table 2: Syntactic features of English idioms containing the verb “come” 33 Table 3: Semantic features of English idioms containing the verb “go” 36 Table 4: Semantic features of English idioms containing the verb “come” 40 Table 5: Percentages of functions of English idioms containing “go” “come”

and Vietnamese ones containing “đi” “đến”

Figure: Learners’ errors in using English idioms containing verbs “go” and

“come”

54

1.7 Design of the study 4

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Previous studies 6 2.2 Overview of theory of syntax and semantics 8 2.2.1 Theory of syntax 8 2.2.2 Theory of semantics 9 2.3 Overview of English verbs 10

2.4 An overview of English idioms 12 2.4.1 Definition of idioms 12 2.4.2 Features of idioms 13 2.4.2.1 Syntactic features of idioms 14

2.4.2.2 Semantic features of idioms 17 2.4.3 Classification of idioms 18 2.4.4 Idioms and other similar language units 19 2.4.4.1 Idioms and metaphor 19 2.4.4.2 Idioms and phrases 19 2.4.4.3 Idioms and proverbs 20 2.4.4.4 The relationship between idioms and culture 21 2.5 English idioms containing the verbs “go” and “come” 22 2.5.1 The verbs “go” and “come” in English and Vietnamese 22 2.5.1.1 The verbs “go” and “come” in English 22 2.5.1.2 The verbs “go” and “come” in Vietnamese 23 2.5.2 English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” 25 2.6 Theory of errors 25

Chapter 3: SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF ENGLISH IDIOMS CONTAINING VERBS “GO” AND “COME” WITH REFERENCE

TO THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

3.1 Syntactic features of English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” 28 3.1.1 Syntactic features of English idioms containing verb “go” 28 3.1.2 Syntactic features of English idioms containing verb “come” 33 3.2 Semantic features of English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” 36 3.2.1 Semantic features of English idioms containing verb “go” 36 3.2.2 Semantic features of English idioms containing verb “come” 40 3.3 Comparison between English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” and their Vietnamese equivalents 42 3.3.1 In terms of syntactic features of English idioms containing verbs “go” and

3.3.2 In terms of semantic features of English idioms containing verbs “go” and

Chapter 4: COMMON ERRORS MADE BY LEARNERS WHEN USING ENGLISH IDIOMS CONTAINING “GO” AND “COME” AND THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

4.1 Survey questionnaires 48

4.1.2 Questionnaires 48

4.2 Common errors made by learners when using English idioms containing “go” and

“come” and their Vietnamese equivalents

4.2.1 Common errors made by learners of English 50 4.2.2 Causes of committing errors 54 4.3 Suggestions for teaching and learning English idioms containing “go” and “come” and their Vietnamese equivalents 55 4.3.1 Suggestions for teaching English idioms containing “go” and “come” and their Vietnamese equivalents 55 4.3.2 Suggestions for learning English idioms containing “go” and “come” and their Vietnamese equivalents 58

Chapter 5: CONCLUSION

5.1 Concluding remarks 60 5.2 Limitation of the study 61 5.3 Suggestions for further study 61

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale

In daily communication, sometimes learners come across some expressions that they cannot understand although they can comprehend the meaning of every single word in the expressions The main reason why learners fail to understand what these sentences are all about lies in the low level of linguistic competence of English idioms Idiom is often defined as “a group of words which have a different meaning when used together from the one it would have if the meaning of each word was taken individually” In fact, idioms are frequently heard and read in everyday speech and in literature thanks to their succinctness, vividness and especially quintessence in every language Idioms in this way bear the cultural features of a country in which they are used In order to understand as well as translate idioms from a language into another one, knowledge of not only linguistic aspects but also of cultural reality has to be involved

In translation, learners often encounter English idioms, especially idioms containing the verbs “go” and “come” which make it difficult to translate from English into Vietnamese Due to the specific features of each language, idioms in this language

do not always have an exact translation in the other In addition, there are many ways

to explain the meaning of an idiom It depends on where, when, why and who uses it

It means that when the cultural knowledge of speakers and listeners is different, the idioms will have a variety of meanings Moreover, in the huge idiomatic treasure, the way people use idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” to satisfy their own need in daily communication is paid much attention Absolutely, the common verbs “go” and “come” are often confusing Some reasons why this happens are

that “go” and “come” have the same basic meaning, but are used in different structures and for different directions Therefore, foreign learners meet many difficulties in

learning idioms in general and idioms containing “go” and “come” in particular

The Oxford Dictionary of English Idioms (1994) states in its introduction that the

“accurate and appropriate use of English expressions which are in the broadest idiomatic sense is one distinguishing mark of a native command of the language and a

reliable measure of the proficiency of foreign learners" These strong properties of idioms have posed a serious challenge for several four studies among linguists for the last decades such as Collins, V H.(1960), Cruse, D A (1987) or Mc Carthy, M and O'Dell, F (2010) There have been so far studies on idioms containing such terms as colors, animals, plants and so on However, none of them researched into the idioms related to verbs “go” and “come” in English and their Vietnamese equivalents

From the mentioned – above reasons, the difficulties that Vietnamese learners may meet are not only in syntactic form but in semantic form as well Moreover, English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” occur frequently Thus, a study on

“syntactic and semantic features of English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents” is chosen to help learners use English idioms effectively

1.2 Aims and objectives of the study

1.2.1 Aims of the study

The study aims at investigating syntactic and semantic features of English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents in order to provide learners with a better understanding of English idioms

1.2.2 Objectives of the study

With a view to achieving the mentioned-above aims, some specific objectives have been put forward as follows:

1 To point out syntactic and semantic features of English idioms containing verbs

“go” and “come” and their Vietnamese equivalents

2 To find out the similarities and differences of English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” and their Vietnamese equivalents in terms of syntactic and semantic features

3 To suggest some implications to help Vietnamese students to use appropriate English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come”

1.3 Research questions

The study is conducted to find out the answers of the following questions:

1 What are the syntactic and semantic features of English idioms containing verbs

“go” and “come” with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents?

2 What are similarities and differences between English idioms containing “go” and

“come” and their Vietnamese equivalents?

3 What are common errors and possible solutions in teaching and learning English idioms containing “go” and “come”?

1.4 Methods of the study

In order to complete this study, some different research methods will be applied Firstly, descriptive method is applied to describe in details syntactic and semantic features of English idioms through examples of English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come”

Secondly, contrastive method is used to identify the similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese idioms in terms of syntactic and semantic features of English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come”

Thirdly, qualitative method is used to identify the relationship between the syntactic and semantic features of English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents from different sources of selective material with a view to design a survey questionnaire to find out the common errors made by the third-year students at Hai Phong university when using idioms in general, and translating English idioms containing “go” and “come” into Vietnamese

Finally, quantitative method is used to collect and analyze the results taken from the survey questionnaires, defining the common errors made by participants in order to give some possible solutions for translating English idioms containing “go” and

“come” into Vietnamese in an effective way

1.5 Scope of the study

This study is restricted to English idioms containing the verb “go” and the verb

“come” and their equivalent idioms containing the verb “đi” and the verb “đến” in Vietnamese as a specifically characteristic trait of English language A study shows that there are a total of 225 idioms in Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions (2006), American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2011),

Từ điển Thành ngữ Anh – Việt thông dụng (1995) and Tuyển tập Thành ngữ Tục ngữ

Ca dao Việt – Anh thông dụng (2007) Out of which as many as 100 English idioms contain the verb “go”; 85 ones contain the verbs “come” and 40 Vietnamese idioms contain the verbs “đi” and “đến” The research focuses mainly on syntactic and

semantic features of English idioms containing the verb “go” and the verb “come” with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents to find out the similarities and differences in comparison with their Vietnamese equivalents

1.6 Significance of the study

Theoretically, it is hoped that the study will give English learners a full description of syntactic and semantic features of English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come”; from this, the study will figure out some basic similarities and differences

of idioms with these verbs between English and Vietnamese languages Thus, other researchers and linguistics could take it as a reliable reference to make further studies

in this field

Practically, the results of this study can be applied to assist English learners know how to use English idioms properly in daily communication and especially avoid confusing interferences in translating English idioms containing verbs “go” and

“come” into Vietnamese This study can also help learners realize that features of English idioms containing verb “go” and “come” with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents is a useful reference resource for learning and teaching English

1.7 Design of the study

This thesis consists of five chapters: Introduction, Literature Review, English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents, Common errors made by learners when using English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents and Conclusion

Chapter 1 – “Introduction” – presents a brief account of relevant information for carrying out the study such as rationale for choosing the topic, aims and objectives, scope, significance and structure of the thesis

Chapter 2 – “Literature Review” – presents overview of previous researches related to the thesis topic and covers a series of idioms – related concepts such as: definition of verbs, definition of verb phrase; definition of idioms, features of idioms, classification of idioms, the relationship between idioms and culture, English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” and theory of errors

Chapter 3 – “English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents” – describes and analyses syntactic and semantic features

of English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents to find out similarities and differences between two languages Chapter 4 – “Common errors made by learners when using English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents” – presents the major findings results from the survey, points out common errors made by learners and proposes possible solutions for teaching and learning English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” effectively

Chapter 5 – “Conclusion” – summaries the major findings above, presents limitation of the study and provides some recommendations for further research on this important subject

References and Appendixes come at the end of the thesis

Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Previous studies

Idioms are a broad and interesting phenomenon of every language Idioms also convey a large amount of nationally and culturally specific information Thus, many linguists especially lexicologists all over the world have paid much attention to them

in various fields such as syntax, semantics and translation, etc There is no doubt that a considerable number of books and dictionaries on idioms have brought learners with great benefits

One of the famous works done by Makkai (1972) was “Idiom structure in English” In this book, the concept of idiomatic areas is launched and the membership

of each is illustrated with a small number of typical examples Each type of idiom in the first idiomatic area (lexemic system) and the second idiomatic area (semantic system) is described in terms of its internal structure and assigned a label This discussion of the idiomatic areas and their membership is integrated with a general definition of the idiom in both lexicology and semiology By describing these two idiomatic areas, Makkai suggests a framework by which all types of English idioms have been mentioned

The research on “English idioms and how to use them” conducted by Seidl, J and McMordie, W in 1978, presented idioms with various key words or key structures They gave some keywords with idiomatic uses in some parts of speech such as adjectives, adverbs, nouns and miscellaneous in other chapters They also presented idioms with key structures in each individual part with some examples to illustrate such as idioms with nouns and adjectives, idiomatic pairs, idioms with prepositions, phrasal verbs, verbal idioms, idioms from special subjects and idioms with key words from special categories and idioms with comparison

Another study on “Idioms for everyday uses” was carried out by Broukal, M in

1994 The research consisted of different related topics such as colors, food, animals, numbers, parts of the body, etc It was presented in form of reading comprehension practice to help learners collecting the meaning for convenient reference

In 2010, McCarthy, M and O'Dell, F carried out a research on “English idioms in uses”, which consisted of six sections with practice exercises In section one, key aspects of what idioms are and how to use them were dealt with In section two, the authors presented specific individual types of idioms In section three, the units were organized around the topic or functional area where they are most likely to be used The section four focused on some of the written contexts where idioms are frequently found The ways in which idioms are typically used in spoken language were focused

on in the next section The last section concentrated on one keyword which gave rise

to a particularly large number of English idioms

In Vietnamese, idioms have been also an interesting field for linguists They are:

“Idioms Dictionary English – Vetnamese” by Bùi Phụng (2000), “Thành ngữ tiếng Việt” by Nguyễn Lực and Lương Văn Đang (2001) and so on They wrote “Thành ngữ tiếng Việt” which is a collection of Vietnamese idioms arranged in alphabetical order with clear explanations and examples extracted from Vietnamese novels, newspapers and magazines

Moreover, in 2008, Nguyễn Trần Trụ who wrote “Thành ngữ tục ngữ lược giải” explains meaning of the most common idioms and proverbs in such clear ways that learners can use this book for consulting and reference purposes

After that, it should be noticed the works of Đỗ Hữu Châu, who wrote “Từ vựng – Ngữ nghĩa tiếng Việt” (1981) He analyzed Vietnamese idioms and showed their semantic and syntactic features

At Hanoi Open University, there are several research papers that have some relationship with various aspects of idioms “English idioms containing the word

“blood” or “bone” with reference to the Vietnamese equivalents” by Phạm Thu Hằng (2014), “A study on English idioms denoting food and drink with reference to the Vietnamese equivalents by Nguyễn Song Anh (2015), “A study of English idioms denoting “fear” with reference to the Vietnamese equivalents” by Nguyễn Thị Thanh Mai (2015) and so on

However, there have so far been no studies dealing with English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” in terms of syntactic and semantic features yet Especially, the equivalents between two languages, English and Vietnamese, have not been implemented As a result, this study is being carried out to identify the similarities and

differences of English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” in both two languages

in terms of syntactic and semantic features, then on that basis propose some implications for teaching and learning English idioms in general and English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” in particular

2.2 Overview of theory of syntax and semantics

2.2.1 Theory of syntax

Syntax is a set of principles in language It dictates how words from different parts

of speech are put together with the aim of conveying a complete thought Dixon, R.M.W (1991) states that syntax deals with the way in which words are combined together Syntax is considered to be the theory of the structure of sentence in a language This notion has its direct antecedents in the theory of immediate constituents, in which the function of syntax is to mediate between the observed forms

of a sentence and its meaning Verbs are different grammatical properties from language to language but there is always a major class verb, which includes word referring to motion, rest, notice, giving and speaking

According to Bloomfield (1993), “we could not understand the form of a language

if we merely reduced all the complex forms to their ultimate constituents” He pointed that in order to account for the meaning of a sentence, it is necessary to recognize how individual constituents such words and morphemes constitute more complex forms Syntax is now the study of the principles and rules that govern the ways in which words are combined to form phrases, clauses and sentences in a language Syntax, which is a subfield of grammar, focuses on the word order of a language and relationships between words In other words, morphology deals with word formation out of morphemes whereas syntax deals with phrase and sentence formation out of words

Syntax structures are analyzable into sequences of syntactic categories or syntactic classes, these being established on the basic of the syntactic relationships and linguistic items have with other items in a construction Every language has a limited number of syntactic relations Subject and object are probably universal of syntactic relations, which apply to every language However, just as the criteria for the major words class noun and verb differ from language to language, so do the ways in which syntactic relations are marked

2.2.2 Theory of semantics

Semantics is a branch of linguistics, which deals with meaning or the content of communication Hurford and Heasley (1983) state that “semantics is the study of meaning in language.” Language is a means of communication and used to communicate with others by making conversations, giving information and other things to make social relationship Human beings have been given the ability 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 describe “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 try to define semantics Furthermore, as quoted by Lyons (1977) at first refers to semantics as the study of the relations of signs

to the objects to which the signs are applicable And then he amends 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 (Lyons, 1977) says that descriptive semantics (i.e the investigation of the meaning of expressions in

“historically given natural language”), may be considered as part of pragmatics The reason why descriptive semantics is part of pragmatics seem to have been that he believed that difference in the use of particular expressions were not only inevitable in language – behavior, but must be taken account of in the description or context Smith,

as quoted by Lyons (1977) mentions “semantics studies how these signs are related to things And pragmatics studied how they are related to people” According to Leech (1983) in practice, the problem of distinguishing language and language use has centered on a boundary dispute between semantics and pragmatics Hurford and Heasley (1983) 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 Richards, J., Platt, J., Weber, H (1987) point 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.”

Crystal, D (1992) defines that “semantics is the study of meaning in language.” Structural semantics applied the principles of structural linguistics to the study of meaning through the notion of semantic relations (also called sense relation), such as synonymy and antonyms In generative grammar, the semantic component is a major area of the grammar’s organization, assigning a semantic representation to sentences, and analyzing lexical terms of semantic features

In brief, semantics is one of the most fundamental concepts in linguistics The theory of semantic field includes the study of how meaning is constructed, interpreted, clarified, covered, illustrated, simplified, negotiated, contradicted and paraphrased Theory of syntax and semantics is carried out first with main purpose to decide the theoretical framework of the study in the chapter three

2.3 Overview of English verbs

2.3.1 Verbs

Verbs are parts of speech expressing existence, action, or occurrence in most languages Moreover, verbs are considered to be the king of all parts of speech in English At the heart of every sentence is a verb, an action word that is generally indicates what someone or something is doing or perhaps simply indicates being According to Dixon, R.M.W (1991), a verb is defined as “the center of a clause”

A verb refers to some activity and there must be a number of participants who have

roles in that activity as: “Sinbad carried the old man”; or it may refer to a state, and there must be a participant to experience the state as: “My leg aches” A set of verbs is

grouped together as one semantic type partly because they involve the same set of participant roles For example, all giving verbs require a Donor, a Gift and a Recipient, all attention verbs take a Perceiver and an Impression (that is seen or heard)

Affect verbs are likely to involve an Agent, a Target and something which is manipulated by the Agent to come into contact with the target which I call manip A manip can always be stated, although it often does not have to be

Alexander, L.G (1983) states that a verb is a word or a phrase which expresses the existence of a state or doing an action

Oxford Advanced Learner’s Encyclopedic (1998) points out a verb is a word or phrase indicating an action, an event or state

Borahash (1975) defines that the verb is a part of speech denoting an action or a process

According to Richards, J.C & et al (1992), a word is a verb when it satisfies these following criteria: occurs as a part of the predicate of a sentence; carries markers of grammatical categories such as tense, aspect, person, number and mood; refers to an action or state

2.3.2 Verb phrase

There are many definitions of verb phrase in every aspect Halliday defines the verb phrase as a constituent that functions as “Finite plus Predicator” in the mood structure (clause as exchange); and as Process in the transitivity structure (clause as representation) Verb phrase refers to actions, events and states

A verb phrase is the expansion of a verb and consists of a sequence of words of the primary class of verb The verb phrase can be expressed both as an experiential and

as a logical structure Because there is very much less lexical material in the verb phrase, only one lexical item, in fact, the experiential structure is extremely simple and most of the semantic load is carry by the logical structure including the tense system Multi-word verbs lexical verbs followed by one or two particles which are considered to be part of the verb and which are often equivalent to one lexical item They can be grouped into four main classes: phrasal verbs, prepositional verbs, phrasal-prepositional verbs and prepositional verbs with two complements

According to traditional grammar perspective, the structure of verb phrase may be described in terms of auxiliaries and main verbs, the main verb normally being the sole verb in cases where the verb phrase consists of one verb only In other way, the structure may be represented in terms of finite and non-finite verb words On this basis, a finite verb phrase is a verb phrase in which the first or only word is a finite verb, the rest of the verb phrase (if any) consisting of non-finite verbs: on the other hand, a non-finite verb phrase contains non-finite verb forms only

According to Kies (2009), a verb phrase consists of a head verb, its functional parts: the auxiliary verbs and the main verbs (lexical verbs) Firstly, the auxiliary verb

is the grammatical morpheme carrying information about mood, tense, modality and

voice Secondly, the main verb is a lexical morpheme carrying its lexical information and usually an inflection In English, the main verb includes five types: Intransitive verb, Intensive verb, Monotransitive verb, Complex transitive verb and Distransitive verb

2.4 Overview of idioms

2.4.1 Definition of idioms

Language follows the rules but an idiom is one of the interesting things that are abnormalities of language, mavericks of the linguistic world There are a lot of definitions of idioms introduced in a variety of English and Vietnamese materials

In “English idioms in Use Advanced”, McCarthy, M and O’Dell, F are defined:

“Idioms are fixed combinations of words whose meaning is often difficult to guess from the meaning of each individual word” (2010)

Seidle and Mordie (1978) states that “an idiom is a number of words which, taken together, mean something different from the individual words of the idiom when they stand alone” Palmer (1990) shares the similar viewpoint on idioms He considers that

an idiom is an expression whose meaning cannot be inferred from the meanings of its parts It can be seen that there are two visible points in his statements First, an idiom

is a phrase; second, its meaning is not simply the meanings of constituents making up the phrase Collin (1995) has the same idea but a different way to define idioms He shows that “an idiom is a special kind of phrase It is a group of words which have a different meaning when used together from the one it would have if the meaning of each word were taken individually” Crowth, J (1995) regards an idiom as “a phrase whose meaning is difficult or sometimes impossible to guess by looking at the individual word it contains”

In other words, an idiom is a multi-word construction that makes a complete referential unit whose meaning is often impossible to deduce from its individual word

For example, the common phrase “go fly a kite” means simply “to leave” It has

nothing to do with either “fly” or “kite” Those who know only the meaning of these two words would be unable to presume the integrity meaning of the phrase Thus, idioms are non-literal expressions They are also fixed expressions whose meaning cannot be taken as a combination of the meanings of its component parts

In Vietnam, Hoang Phe in “Từ điển tiếng Việt” (1997) mentions the definition of idioms According to him, an idiom is “a set of expression whose meaning is generally inexplicable simply through the meaning of individual word it contains”

According to the book titled “Vấn đề cấu tạo từ trong tiếng Việt hiện đại” (2003),

Hồ Lê refers an idiom is a word combination which has stable structure and figurative meaning and is used to describe an image, a phenomenon, a characteristic, or a state

In “Ngữ nghĩa của thành ngữ, tục ngữ có thành tố chỉ động vật trong tiếng Anh” (1996), Phan Van Que regarded idioms as “a group of words combined together to express something whose meaning is different from its constituent.”

To sum up, there are different ways of defining an idiom, most of the linguists share the same point that an idiom is a fixed expression whose meaning cannot be worked out by looking at the individual meanings of the morphemes it comprises Besides, idioms may also convey a particular attitude of the person using them

2.4.2 Features of idioms

The basic characteristic of idiomatic expressions is that the words are used metaphorically Thus, the surface structure has a little role to play in understanding the meaning of the whole expression Vinogradov (1977) compares the meaning of idiomatic expressions with “the special chemical mixture” which is partially or completely new compared with the meaning of all the components Learners of English cannot usually realize the meanings by looking up the individual words in a dictionary when studying idioms; most of the idioms are metaphorical rather than

literal For instance, in order to understand the idiom “come down in the world”, we have to consider its meaning metaphorically as “to lose one’s social position or

financial standing” Consequently, the first notice of English idioms is their semantic

opacity or their figurative sense and non-literalness by another term Semantic opacity

means that idioms are often non-literal For this reason, the individual words which make up the idiom do not carry any meaning of their own There is usually very little,

if any, connection between the literal meanings of the individual words and the idiomatic meaning of the whole phrase (Fernando 1996) According to Makkai (1972), the meaning of an idiom is not predictable from its component parts, because they are used in a figurative, non-literal sense The meaning of an idiom is therefore hardly ever the sum of its individual parts However, some idioms whose literal meaning and

figurative one is almost identical so that readers or listeners can deduce the meaning

For instance, the idiom “easy come, easy go” seems to make no difficulty for readers

or listeners to guess its meanings that “easily achieved, easily lost”

A large number of idioms in English and probably all languages have both a literal and an idiomatic meaning Therefore, another feature of idioms which is mentioned rather often in theoretical literature is ambiguity Weinreich (1969) states that ambiguity is one of the most fundamental features of idioms: this ambiguity arises from the fact that the constituents of an idiom have literal equivalents in other contexts Additionally, in Makkai’s (1972) definition of an idiom this ambiguity is in extremely central place According to him, idioms are often subject to “a possible lack

of understanding despite familiarity with the meaning of the components”

2.4.2.1 Syntactic features

An idiom is a fixed group of words Each word is considered as a component of an idiom and an idiom can consist of at least two components In the book titled “In other words”, Baker, M (1992) describes idioms are frozen patterns of language which allow little or no variation in form and often carry meanings which cannot be deduced from their individual components Idioms are structurally and lexically restricted; hence, the components and grammatical structures of idioms cannot be changed, added, omitted or replaced They cannot be varied in the way literal expressions are normally varied both in speech and writing In both English and Vietnamese, the stability in idioms is very high

However, according to Fraser, B (1970), there are specified idioms between those which are able to undergo all the grammatical changes and those which are unable to undergo the smallest grammar changes at all Thus, there are some idioms which have two or more alternative forms without losing their idiomatic meaning These different forms sometimes reflect differences between British and American English For

examples, “go along for the ride” and “come along for the ride” have the same meanings “to join in an activity without playing an important part in it”; or also, “go

for broke” and “go for it” share the same meanings “to try your best” In many cases,

several verbs can be used in an idiom such as “Go/sell like hot cakes” (to be bought or

taken quickly because of being popular or cheap) In fact, idioms are only fixed in some of their parts but not all Idioms are expressions, not subjected to analysis, only

some syntactic changes may be carried out in them The idioms which can easily be subjected to syntactic changes are more flexible Tense changes within idioms can be possible made in most of idioms, so they indicate the animation of the actions in

different tenses on the person’s mind, for example: “come in useful” => “came in

useful” (to be useful) In addition, some idioms can be broken or changed more or less

in their structures, for example, “easy come, easy go/ light come, light go” In the same way, prepositions can vary, for example, “come up/out smelling like a rose” (to

succeed; to do better than anyone else in some situations)

Moreover, each idiom has a stable structure and meaning; an idiom can have a regular structure, an irregular or even a grammatical incorrect structure Firstly, idioms which have a regular structure have common forms but there is no combination between the meaning of each component and that of the whole unit, for example,

“come a long way” (to make a lot of progress and improvement) Secondly, the idioms

can be groups of words which have unconventional forms but their meaning can be

worked out through the meaning of individual words such as “make your enemy your

friend” In accordance with the rule of grammar, the structures of the verb “make” are

“make somebody do something” and “make somebody/something + Adjective”

However, in this case, the idiom does not need to obey grammatical rule to make

sense, it can still be understood that “make your enemy become your friend” Finally,

the idioms can be group of words which both are grammatically inaccurate and the meaning is not precisely expressed by gathering the meaning of each member-word

such as: “Go over big (with someone)” (to be very much appreciated by someone) The

structure of the above idioms is written as “V + preposition + Adjective” Although in English grammar normally prepositions are never followed by adjectives; in this case, the idiom is acceptable It can be considered as an exception in language

According to Bell, R.T (1974), some of structural features which are crucial in the recognition of idioms are:

• Alteration of grammatical rules: The idiom is not always grammatical but it is instituted, accepted and used by native speakers of the language with a fixed

structure and meaning E.g: She had several goes at the high jump before he

succeeded in clearing it (singular with a plural noun)

• Conventional Phrases: The idiomatic expressions are special expressions which are almost known and agreed by all the members of a particular community

E.g: At one go (at once)

• Alteration of word order: Idiomatic expressions in English usually do not

respect the English word order E.g: Go as red as beet (normal word order) or

Go beet red (probably)

• Figurativeness: The fundamental characteristic of idiomatic expressions is that the words are used metaphorically Therefore, the surface structure has a little role to play in understanding the meaning of the whole expression For

example, in the idiom “go to the dogs” (to become less successful or efficient

than before), the meanings of the words “to go” and “the dogs” are different

from the meaning of the whole expression

• Phrasal verbs: There is the most common type of idioms in English Many of them carry idiomatic meanings that cannot be inferred from the form, unless the

phrase is already known E.g: I will go along with you on that matter (to agree);

or The patient who’d been knocked out finally came around (to regain consciousness)

According to the authors of Oxford Dictionary of English Idioms such as Cowie, A.P, Martin, R and McCaig, I.R, there are enormous structural varieties of English idioms, which can be classified under two general headings: Phrase idioms and clause idioms Besides these two main types, there is also another types of idioms, that is sentence idioms

• Clause idioms: Verb + Complement (Go berserk, come true), Verb + Direct Object (Control one’s anger),Verb + Direct Object + Complement (Go beet

red), Verb + Indirect Object + Direct Object (Go home to mama), Verb + Direct

Object + Adjunct (Go home in a box)

• Phrase idioms: Noun phrase (The shape of things to come), Adjective phrase (Nearest and dearest), Prepositional phrase (With open arm) and Adverbial phrase (At one go)

• Sentence idioms: Sentence idioms may be simple or complex sentences such as

“Dreams go by contraries”, “Tomorrow never comes”, “He that goes a borrowing, goes a sorrowing.”, …

To sum up, in terms of structural features, idioms may take a variety of forms or structures such as clause, phrase and sentence In relation with structures, idioms can have a regular, irregular or even incorrect grammatical structure Briefly, we decide to use Bell’s theory because his theory is suitable to investigate the syntactic features of English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents

2.4.2.2 Semantic features

Idioms are composed of words which often contain images These hidden images can be either easy or difficult to imagine Thus, the surface structure has a little role to play in understanding the meaning of the whole expression It is the figurativeness of idioms that makes the expressions lively, impressive and deep in the meaning The meaning is the most important aspect when discussing semantic features of idioms The basic characteristic of idioms is figurative meaning which helps to distinguish

whether a fixed expression is an idiom or not, for example, “Read somebody like a

book” (to understand someone very well, you can know exactly what they are feeling

or thinking without having to ask) and its Vietnamese translation equivalent is “đi

guốc trong bụng”

In some cases, the meaning of an idiom can be guessed because the image created

is already quite obvious, for example “go like the wind” (nhanh như gió) However, in

other cases, it is nearly impossible to do so because the meaning of idioms must be explained by referring to historical and cultural knowledge

Kunin, A.V., (2006) states that the meaning of an idiom is either partly (motivated idioms) or completely different from the meaning of all components (non-motivated idioms) The meaning of idioms cannot be guessed from the meaning of their components In some cases of partial difference, their figurative meaning is not quite

different from the literal one, for example, “What comes, will come” (Việc gì đến sẽ đến), “Go in one ear and out the other” (nói vào tai này ra tai kia), “easy come, easy

go” (dễ đến thì dễ đi), etc… All these idioms are symbolized with metaphorical

expressions and understood metaphorically

According the authors such as Hopper, R., Knapp, M.L and Scott, L (1981) idioms can convey positive, neutral or negative meanings Some idioms have positive

meaning like “come into one’s own” (someone begins having success and satisfaction

in life) As for idioms conveying negative meaning, some typical examples of idioms

are “go down in flames” (to fail spectacularly) and “come apart at the seams” (to

completely lose emotional control) With regard to neutral meaning, some examples of

idioms are shown: going-on (happenings; events) and come after (to occur the

following something)

To sum up, idioms can be motivated, partially-motivated and non-motivated In addition, idioms can convey positive, negative or neutral meanings Idiomatic expressions have high reminiscence because in the conversation, utterances are usually used to express the speakers’ attitude or emotion Briefly, the theory of Hopper, R., Knapp, M.L and Scott, L is the most suitable in order to follow to carry out the thesis

2.4.3 Classification of idioms

Idioms are classified in different ways In dictionaries and reference books, they are classified either alphabetically in terms of their meaning, by themes (e.g animals, body parts, emotions, colors, etc.) or under a common word (e.g cat, hand, blue, cake, etc.) Cowie A.P (1983) categories idiomatic expressions basing on their degree of fixity and figurativeness He says that “there is no clear dividing-line between idioms and non-idioms: they form the end-points of continuum” According to Glucksberg, S (2001), his categorization is similar to Cowie’s in a way that the categories from a continuum going from petrified, opaque expressions to those that allows some variation and whose meaning can be arrived at through semantic analysis Tkachuk (2005) also provides the division with idiomatic classes in terms of grammatical

characteristics of the phrases, namely sentential (e.g: Misfortunes never come singly.) and non-sentential Non-sentential idioms can be verbal (e.g: Order something to go)

or verbless In verbless idioms, there can be nominal (e.g: Beauty in the eye of the

beholder.), adjective (e.g: Slow and sure.) or adverbial phrase (once in a blue moon)

Classification of idioms depends on the linguist’s point of view Idioms are chosen

to take it one step further and classify more specifically: structural and semantic classification of idioms According to Gramley and Patzhold (2004), idioms are

categorized on the base of the “image or picture they evoke” and divided into four distinct groups:

• Idioms with a focus on individual (go hand in hand)

• Idioms with a focus on the world (go down the drain)

• Idioms that refer to the interaction of individuals (lend someone a helping hand)

• Idioms which express the interaction between an individual and the world (go

in one ear and out the other)

However, it is impossible to cover all criteria for classification of idioms, only

Gramley and Patzhold’s one has been focused on Due to the framework of the thesis, the classification in terms of syntactic and semantic classification of idioms is the most suitable

2.4.4 Idioms and other similar language units

Idiomatic expressions share the common syntactic and semantic features with other phraseology units in the language, which make it difficult for learners to understand them apart The confusion often occurs between idioms and metaphors, phrases, proverbs and culture

2.4.4.1 Idioms and metaphors

According to King (2000), metaphors are defined as “describing something by using an analogy with something quite different”

The Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary refers to metaphors as “a word or phrase used to describe somebody or something else, in a way that is different from its normal use, in order to show that the two things have the same qualities and to make

the description more powerful” For example, “she has got a heart of gold” is metaphor that expresses the similarly between “a heart” and “gold” which means “a

person who is very sincere, generous and kind by nature”

Also, King (2000) mentions metaphors are beautiful thanks to their capability of explain a complex vague expression and to make it more comprehensible and clear Maalej (2005) shows that both idioms and metaphors are not able to be understood by their literal meanings

2.4.4.2 Idioms and phrases

The distinguishing between phrases and idioms is very complex problem A phrase consists of different words but its meaning is easily deduced in any context An idiom, as Jonathan Crowth (1995) defines, is “a phrase whose meaning is difficult or sometimes impossible to guess by looking at the individual word it contains” It means that the meaning of an idiom is entirely new and different from the individual ones Thus, there are two criteria for distinction idioms with phrases Firstly, the semantic differences of the two ones consist of the same components The second criteria is idioms in which some of components preserve their usual meanings and the others have the meanings that are peculiar

However, according to G.B Intrusion (1985), structure variability is one of essential features to distinguish idioms from free-word groups It is represented as the three following restrictions Firstly, there is the restriction in substitution The components of most idioms are fixed, any components cannot be substituted by another one without differentiating their meanings Meanwhile, in phrases, some components can be substituted without destroying the general meaning Secondly, there is the restriction in adding elements Idioms are always stable in their number of components Any elements from certain idioms cannot be added or taken out On the contrary, phrases can be added one or more elements without losing the general meaning And thirdly, idioms have the restriction in grammatical invariability Constituents of idioms are used in a fixed rule, their forms cannot be changed In contrast, in phrases, the similar change is accepted

2.4.4.3 Idioms and proverbs

Dictionary of Proverbs (2007) gives a definition of proverbs “A proverb is a saying, usually short, that expresses a general truth about life Proverbs give advice, make an observation or present a teaching in a succinct and memorable way” Mieder (1993) describes “a proverb is a short, generally known sentence of the folk which contains wisdom, truth, morals and traditional views in a metaphorical, fixed and

memorizable form and which is handed down from generation to generation” “An

apple a day keeps the doctors away” (Fruit is an important part of a healthy diet) is an

example of proverbs

It is clear to find that idioms and proverbs have many in common Firstly, components of idioms and proverbs are stable and not able to be replaced Besides, the

meaning of most idioms and proverbs is understood metaphorically rather than literally Their meaning cannot be discovered by looking up the individual words in a dictionary Secondly, in some cases idioms are part of proverbs, for example the

proverb “forbidden fruit is sweet” is formed from the idiom “forbidden fruit” (things

that you must have or do are always the most desirable)

However, in terms of structures, idioms are phrases which are parts of sentences, proverbs are complete sentences or phrases which can express the whole idea by themselves In terms of functions, proverbs express the whole idea of judgment, general truth about life, advice or moral lessons In contrast, idioms do not express

judgments, give advice or state general truth about life For example, the idiom “go

bananas” merely describes the anger and does not point out any moral lesson or

experience of life

To sum up, idioms and proverbs share quite a lot of similarities which make learners confused However, they are quite different from structure and function

2.4.4.4 The relationship between idioms and culture

Culture has a great influence on the origin or development of language This is the reason why content of language is closely connected to culture Apart from words and expressions, idioms are considered as special language units which reflect cultural characteristics of different countries Idioms, like language in general, are strongly influenced by culture As a part of language, idioms transfer cultural values and daily life features of the people who speak that language As a result, culture is known much about through studying idioms and in turn better understanding of idioms is gotten by learning the cultural background behind them There are great differences between English and Vietnamese idioms as the result of national experience, cultural inheritance and formation of thinking English idioms connect with ocean as the result

of the oceanic culture with the traditions of Britain, which belongs to commercial and marine economy while Vietnamese idioms with agricultural economy

Language, thoughts or culture are three separate things but none can survive without the others Idioms belong to language and also reflect much of the thoughts and culture in the most reliable ways

In summary, there is a close relationship between culture and idioms Idioms are the transfer of the cultural values and beliefs

In conclusion, it is very easy to realize idioms from phrases, proverbs and others All are useful to understand idioms more deeply and effectively It is a key to study various aspects of idioms However, this thesis will mention about all cases containing the verbs “go” and “come” that have more or less idiomatic meanings

2.5 English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come”

2.5.1 The verbs “go” and “come” in English and Vietnamese

2.5.1.1 The verbs “go” and “come” in English

“Go” and “come” are ones of motion verbs that posse the biggest of quantity of meanings and highest used frequency in English The meanings of these verbs include

a specification of the direction of motion “Go” is any action that is away from the speaker, whereas “come” is the opposite, it is an action that is towards the speaker For examples:

- We will go by bus

- He came into the room and shut the door

“Go” and “come” belong to the sub-group of intransitive verbs with a locative indirect object Their subjects are agents and the indirect objects are locative “Go” and “come” code, first, events of motion, whereby the subjects move toward or away from the locative objects That is, “go” and “come” combine with adverbials as adverbs, prepositional phrase, to-infinitive, … For examples:

- The next morning, the friends came again to the Wizard’s room

We went to the zoo yesterday

- When Sara came into the school room, she looked happy and well

He went on singing with a beautiful voice

- If you’ve come to steal, go ahead There are a few things you can take

I mustn’t go to see William

Sometimes, the motion verbs “go” and “come” can be used in the structure with

no complement For examples:

- Slowly, daylight came

- All hope is gone

Among the many non-literal uses of the English “go”, the verb can be used as a

future auxiliary as in “I’m going to be in my office all day long”, where it is seen that

the event does not involve any sort of physical motion, but that going to signals a future event

“Go” and “come” which tend to acquire figurative meanings and grammatical functions in addition to their literal uses, are widely viewed as simple verbs of motion, whereby motion is defined as “change through time in the location of some entity” (Langacker, 1987), and which are related to a source-path-goal image schema For examples:

- Mary went out at 8o’clock (A point “move from” home at a point of time.)

- Mary came into the kitchen (A point “move to” a point.)

Fillmore (1977) considers “go” and “come” as deictic verbs, where “come” is typically viewed as motion towards the location of the speaker or the addressee (i.e the deictic centre), at either the time of encoding or the time of reference, while “go” is associated with motion not towards the speaker’s location at the time of encoding

“Go”, on the other hand, seems to signal departure from the normal state towards the

non-normal state, as in “He went crazy” The suggestion that a “come” event has a

terminal point (goal) that is associated with the deictic centre entails that the event is naturally telic In other words, most “come” events are complete events “Go”, on the other hand, does not typically imply arrival at a goal, which makes it naturally atelic

(e.g He went away on a long weekend), unless the destination of the motion event is otherwise specified in the event construction, as in a modifying locative phrase (e.g

He went to the beach for the long weekend)

In short, “go” and “come” tend to be treated as lexical universals, belonging to a notionally coherent class of motion verbs and both encoding deictic information

2.5.1.2 The verbs “go” and “come” in Vietnamese

In Vietnamese, the verb “go” and “come” means “đi” and “đến” that does not only indicate a physical activity only but also imply an action, a progress, an impression and feeling, a change, … in real life communication The verbs “go” and “come” in English have a variety of meaning and its usages in contexts and there have the same

in Vietnamese counterpart However, they sometimes do not share the equivalent in meanings To some extent, it is not too difficult to find such circumstances in which people use the verbs “đi” and “đến” For example:

- Tôi đi ăn cơm (I went to eat rice.)

- Tôi đến tìm em (I came to look for you.)

“Đi” and “đến” are both intransitive verbs and transitive verbs These two verbs are transitive verbs, however, is not very popular in Vietnamese grammar and meaning For example:

- “Người ta rượu sớm trà trưa

Em nay đi nắng về mưa đã nhiều”

“Con mèo mà trèo cây cau

Hỏi cha chú chuột đi đâu vắng nhà.”

(Tục ngữ cao dao dân ca Việt Nam (2005), Nxb Văn học)

- “Nửa vòng trái đất rẽ tầng mây

Anh đến Cuba một sang ngày.”

(“Từ Cu-ba” – 1964, Tố Hữu)

“Hẹn hò mãi cuối cùng em cũng đến

Chỉ tiếc mùa thu vừa mới đi rồi.”

(“Hẹn hò mãi cuối cùng em cũng đến” – 1992, Hoàng Nhuận Cầm)

“Đi” and “đến” are monosyllabic words like any other Vietnamese words They have only one form in any mood, voices and tenses They have no derivates This means there is no changes in appearance of them in any statement or sentence For example:

- “… ngót mấy chục năm ông đi bộ đội, ở nhà mẹ con vẫn sống đấy thôi, …”

- Mọi người đã đến đông đủ chưa cháu?

Nothing changes to “đi” and “đến” in any tenses with any number or person, while

“đi” and “đến” have to change in accordance with different tenses, number and person

To indicate tenses in Vietnamese, the words “đã”, “sẽ”, “đang”, “vừa mới”, “sắp” and

“rồi” are often used

It can be seen that “go” and “đi” differ in some ways The sentence “Em đi chợ

đi” is rather popular in Vietnamese It can be understood as “Please choose dishes from the menu” besides the meaning “Go to the market!” Also, some differences

between “come” and “đến” can be drawn out For example, the utterance “Anh yêu em

đến chừng nào?” can be understood as “How much do you love me?” In the cases,

these sentences couldn’t be translated word by word into English This phenomenon

seems interesting in both English and Vietnamese counterpart Another example will

illustrate the differences: The play went well (Vở kịch thành công tốt đẹp.)

To sum up, “đi” and “đến” in Vietnamese have no changes in tenses, aspect and voice To indicate tense, the words “đã, sẽ, đang, sắp, rồi, vừa mới, …” are used to combine with “đi” and “về” These verbs usually have no derivations, however, there

is one exception as follows

2.5.2 English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come”

The verbs “go” and “come” are typical verbs sharing the syntactic functions of verbs such as: part of the predicate of a sentence and different grammatical functions These two verbs consist of one morpheme as a root According to Quirk at al (1987), like many other verbs, they have five forms:

- The base “go” – “come”

- The “-s” form: goes – comes

- The past form: went – came

- The past participle: gone – come

- The – ing form: going – coming

According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary and Lacviet MTD EVA Dictionary “go” and “come” refer to movement, position, activity, state and sound Thus by idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” here is meant idioms that may be different senses of “go” and “come” and their words synonym range

2002-Idioms make perfect examples of figurative language, in that the overall meaning

of an idiom cannot be predicted from the composition of the literal meanings of the

constituent parts For examples, we cannot predict that these idioms “go belly up” or

“come short of something” mean “to fail”

Idioms in both English and Vietnamese are structurally and lexically combined phrases whose meanings are completely different from their component parts

closely-2.6 Theory of errors

Errors, always, a fundamental concern in language learning, has been a central issue in language teaching as well Inevitably, all learners make errors and commit errors In other words, errors have been the flawed sides of learners' speech or writing According to James (1998), a language error is initially defined as "an unsuccessful bit

of language" Nevertheless, errors may be considered forms that deviate from the acceptable linguistic norm or standard Usually, a linguistic norm is what a language community considers correct and acceptable Thus, generally speaking, an error can be defined as any form that deviates from the norm

English learners in general face difficulties when dealing with English vocabulary items, and especially when these items are idiomatic expressions These difficulties are detected in understanding the meanings of idioms, as well as producing and using them in speech or writing Furthermore, many researchers conducted studies that focused on these difficulties trying to indicate their causes This study usually aimed to find out the types of errors learners made as well Because learners produce forms nonstandard from the intended target language forms James (1998) classifies errors into the following categories: omission, overinclusion, misselection, misordering, and blends Additionally, there are different scholars who classified lexical errors differently For example, Shudooh (1988) classified the types of errors committed by translation students into: wrong choice of word, collocation, or derivation, literal translation, omission, miscomprehension of the original, and so on As for the reasons behind these errors, it is clear to find that different researchers had different opinions and classifications based on their investigations For example, it is believed that the errors were caused by the strategies learners use to learn English vocabulary Richards (1980) provided a general categorization of the errors learner make He categorized learners' errors into interlanguage errors caused by interference from the learner's native language, and intralingual and developmental errors caused by elements within the structure of the English language He further divided intralingual and developmental errors into: overgeneralization, ignorance of rule restrictions, incomplete application of rules, and false concepts hypothesized As far as English idioms are concerned the main cause of their difficulty seems to be their non-literal and culturally-specific meanings, which makes them difficult for learners to understand and use So they generally avoid using them Furthermore, native speakers

of English also tend to avoid using them when communicating with non-native speakers, which reduces exposure to these forms

Therefore, it seems that James's classification (1998) is inclusive of some of the errors mentioned above, such as omission, substitution, insertion or addition, and wrong choice of word or derivation

2.7 Summary

In brief, this chapter consists of three sections The first section has reviewed a description of previous studies related to research area, which have been done overseas and in Vietnamese The second section is the review of theoretical background concerning all aspects of idioms that is employed for conducting the whole thesis The last section is theoretical framework which relates to semantic unity has been used as a foundation for analyzing syntactic and semantic features of English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents; errors made by learner and causes of committing errors in the following chapters

Chapter 3 SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF ENGLISH IDIOMS CONTAINING VERBS “GO” AND “COME” WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR

VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

Basing on the overview of some theories mentioned in the previous chapter, this chapter is carried out to point out the syntactic and semantic features of English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” and how they work It will focus on two parts: syntactic and semantic features of English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents

Many idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” in English as well as in Vietnamese have been found in our materials, but due to the scope of the research, more than two hundred English and Vietnamese idioms are thought to be widely used and selected for the study For English idioms, a number of reference books are consulted but the main ones are English Idioms in Use (2002), Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions (2006), and American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2011) For Vietnamese ones, a large number of idioms are selected from these books: Từ điển Thành ngữ Anh – Việt thông dụng (1995) and Tuyển tập Thành ngữ Tục ngữ Ca dao Việt – Anh thông dụng (2007)

3.1 Syntactic features of English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come”

It is clear to see that idioms in English are lexically fixed Most of the English idioms containing verbs “go” and “come” that are found vary in form and structure from verbs and noun phrases In a sentence, their main functions are a predicator

3.1.1 Syntactic features of English idioms containing the verb “go”

In our collected materials, there are one hundred English idioms containing the verb “go” which are classified into verb phrases, noun phrases and adverbial phrases, and sentence idioms The most common structure of English idioms is verb phrase presented in the table below: