Syntactic and semantic features of the sensory verbs group in english and their vietnamese equivalents

45 Table 4.3: Type of the sensory verbs in English and Vietnamese 50 Table 4.4: SEE meaning and their Vietnamese equivalents 52 Table 4.5: HEAR meaning and their Vietnamese equivalents 5

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitled “SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF THE SENSORY VERBS GROUP IN ENGLISH AND 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

Besides, my sincere thanks also go to all the lecturers in the Faculty of Post - graduate Studies, Hanoi Open University for their very useful and interesting lectures which have laid the foundation for my thesis

I am grateful to my boss, Mr Vu Dinh Ngo (Dr.), the rector of Viet Tri University of Industry, for the support he gave me during my studies, all my colleagues and friends who provided welcome distractions and emotional support while the work was being done

Last but not least, my warmest thanks are due to my husband and my loving daughter for the sacrifice they have devoted to the fulfillment of this academic work

ABSTRACT

This study is an attempt to uncover the syntactic and semantic features of the sensory verb group in English as well as the similarities and differences in using the sensory verb group in English and Vietnamese based on the theoretical framework of componential analysis Special attention is paid to different senses governed by contexts where these five verbs are used In order to help Vietnamese learners of English to have a deep understanding of other nuances of meanings conveyed by these English verbs, their Vietnamese equivalents are

examined The participants of the study are five English verbs see, hear, feel, smell, taste which are taken from different sources such as dictionaries, books,

novels in English and Vietnamese The data are collected by the activities of reading the materials, identifying and classifying They are quoted the certain phrases and sentences from the texts The data in this study are analyzed by explaining them in terms of their meanings and syntactic features The results of the study show that the five English verbs of the sensory verb group in English under discussion can occur in the same syntactic patterns, but may have different meanings depending on the situation in which they are used and they can occur

in different syntactic patterns that reflect various meanings in real-life communication They also reveal that the meaning of a verb is determined by its relations with other words, that is why if we want to identify exactly the meaning

of any word, we have to put it in a certain context A further pedagogical implication resulting from the findings included in this study could be equally beneficial for teachers and learners who would like to expand their knowledge concerning the most typical ways of perspectivising the linguistic scene by means of the sensory verb group in English

LIST OF TABLES

Page Table 4.1: The sentence patterns of the sensory verb group 38 Table 4.2: Sentence patterns of the sensory verb group in English and

Vietnamese

45

Table 4.3: Type of the sensory verbs in English and Vietnamese 50 Table 4.4: SEE meaning and their Vietnamese equivalents 52 Table 4.5: HEAR meaning and their Vietnamese equivalents 53 Table 4.6: FEEL meaning and their Vietnamese equivalents 54

Table 4.7: SMELL meaning and their Vietnamese equivalents 54

Table 4.8: TASTE meaning and their Vietnamese equivalents 55

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Co Object complement

Cs Subject complement E.g For example

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF TABLES iv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS v

Chapter 1 1

INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale for the study 1

1.2 Aims and objectives of the study 2

1.3 Research questions 2

1.4 Methods of the study 3

1.5 Scope of the study 3

1.6 Significance of the study 5

1.7 Design of the study 6

Chapter 2 7

LITERATURE REVIEW 7

2.1 Previous studies 7

2.2 Theory of syntax and semantics 9

2.2.1 Theory of syntax 9

2.2.2 Theory of semantics 11

2.2.3 Overview of English verb 14

2.2.3.1 Definition of the verb 14

2.2.3.2 Classification of the verb 15

2.3 Overview of the sensory verbs 17

2.3.1 Definition of the sensory verbs 17

2.3.2 Concepts of sensory verbs 19

2.4 Summary 21

Chapter 3 22

METHODOLOGY 22

3.1 Subjects 22

3.2 Instrumentation 22

3.3 Procedures 24

3.4 Statistical Analysis 25

3.5 Summary 25

Chapter 4 27

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 27

4.1 Syntactic and semantic features of the sensory verbs group in English 27

4.1.1 Syntactic features of the sensory verb group in English 27

4.1.1.1 In terms of their sentence patterns 27

4.1.1.2 In terms of their sentence elements 30

4.1.2 Semantic features of the sensory verb group in English 34

4.1.2.1 SEE verb in English 34

4.1.2.2 HEAR verb in English 35

4.1.2.3 FEEL verb in English 36

4.1.2.4 SMELL verb in English 36

4.1.2.5 TASTE verb in English 36

4.2 Comparison between the syntactic and semantic features of sensory verb group in English and their Vietnamese equivalents 37

4.2.1 In terms of syntactic features 37

4.2.1.1 In terms of their sentence patterns 37

4.2.1.2 In terms of their sentence elements 38

4.2.2 In terms of semantic features 41

4.2.2.1 SEE meaning and their Vietnamese equivalents 43

4.2.2.2 HEAR meaning and their Vietnamese equivalents 44

4.2.2.3 FEEL meaning and their Vietnamese equivalents 45

4.2.2.4 SMELL meaning and their Vietnamese equivalents 46

4.2.2.5 TASTE meaning and their Vietnamese equivalents 47

4.3 Some implications for teaching and learning the sensory verb group “see, hear,

feel, smell, taste” 48

4.3.1 Some implications for teaching the sensory verb group 48

4.3.2 Some implications for learning the sensory verb group 50

4.4 Summary 52

Chapter 5 CONCLUSION 53

5.1 Summary of Findings 53

5.2 Concluding remarks 54

5.3 Limitations of the current research 55

5.4 Recommendations for further study 56

REFERENCES 57

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale for the study

We all know that English is widely spoken all around the world draws the attention of many linguists Therefore, becoming a fluent speaker of English is also one of the essential demands of most English learners However, in communication, we have difficulties in expressing our ideas, especially in transferring meanings of words from a language to another one, in our case from English to Vietnamese It is known that the ability to express freely in communication is of great importance for future career, especially in modern societies where contacting with foreigners often occurs In addition, there still exist many difficulties in learning and teaching English in Vietnam Many Vietnamese learners can write and read English quite well but they do not use it correctly and fluently in real-life communication

The verb is perhaps the most important part of the sentence A verb states what is happening in the sentence Among verbs of English, we find that the

sensory verbs see, hear, feel, smell, taste are quite frequently used These verbs

can occur in different syntactic patterns that reflect various meanings in communication They can occur in the same syntactic patterns, but may have different meanings depending on the situation in which they are used

Many studies describe about the semantic features of the sensory verb group but they have not been exploited in terms of their syntactic features yet Moreover, the contrastive comparison between two languages English and Vietnamese has not been implemented yet In the process of teaching English verbs in general, and teaching the sensory verb group in particular, it is recognized that this verb group makes students confused much especially their syntactic and semantic features of the sensory verb group and their Vietnamese equivalents

As a result, that is why the subject “Syntactic and semantic features of the sensory verb group in English and their Vietnamese equivalents” is

chosen to study We hope to contribute a small part in studying and teaching the sensory verb group in English In this study, the sensory verb group in English is described in a variety of contexts and situations We hope that with the thesis,

we can contribute a small part to help students of English as well as Vietnamese people who learn English and who are interested in speech act verbs

1.2 Aims and objectives of the study

The main aim of research is to help Vietnamese learners have a better understanding of the sensory verb group in terms of syntactic and semantic features, from which they will be able to use them correctly and appropriately in their spoken and written discourse

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

- To describe the syntactic and semantic features of the sensory verb group

3 What are possible implications for teaching and learning the sensory verb group?

1.4 Methods of the study

The methods are used in this study include descriptive and contrastive analysis ones The descriptive method is exploited to give complete and evident descriptions of the syntactic and semantic features of the sensory verb group in English

Besides, the contrastive analysis method is useful to identify similarities and differences with their Vietnamese equivalents In particular, the data were collected from different sources such as dictionaries, news, books

The application of this work will, hopefully, contribute greatly to find out appropriate methods for teaching English sensory verb group in Vietnamese and make changes how Vietnamese learners of English not only in their study at university as a compulsory subject but also in their daily use of English as a foreign language As mentioned previously, regarding English lexical terms, students often learn English words‟ definitions separately with their actual uses

In fact, teachers and students often make their own examples without collecting and analyzing examples of collocations indicating how native speakers combine some words with each other while others are not used frequently They also have difficulty in using the words in the conversation, in contexts Therefore, this study suggests them about types of verb and discovers the rules to make use of them The effects will be vital to students and should be encouraged to be applied at university as well as for learners of English

1.5 Scope of the study

According to Gisborne (2011), verb of perception classified three types:

In this study, the major point is to focus on the five basic sensory verbs “see, hear, feel, smell, taste” in terms of the syntactic and semantic features in the

stories to show evidence detail Experiencer verbs group are not only outstanding but also typical characteristics for these group While this group can

be expressed in the form of progressive, verb groups often do not appear as a continuous (except for some special cases to emphasize) It is expressed in the accomplishment process

Eg:

Jane had been a week in town without either seeing or hearing from Caroline

(Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice)

He saw the carriage waiting in the open street

(Charles Dicken, A Tales of Cities)

I heard Joseph read on a while afterwards

(Emily Bronte, Wuthering Height)

English is considered as source language, meanwhile Vietnamese is target language So, the syntactic and semantic features of the sensory verb group in English are compared with their Vietnamese equivalents The applications of this study will, hopefully, contribute greatly to find out appropriate methods to teaching English verbs in Vietnam and make changes how Vietnamese learners

of English not only in their study at school as a compulsory subject but also in their daily use of English as a foreign language As mentioned previously, regarding English lexical terms, students often learn English words‟ definitions separately with their actual uses In fact, teachers and students often make their own examples without collecting and analyzing examples of collocations indicating how native speakers combine some words with each other while others are not used frequently They also have difficulty in using the words in the conversation, in contexts Therefore, this study suggests them the definitions of the verbs, 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

1.6 Significance of the study

Theoretically, it is true that lexical aspect has been given little attention

so far and teachers instead only pay attention to grammar or other aspects Thus, students are often not provided with full understandings towards English collocations of some certain words and only learn their definitions A frequent difficulty is that students might find some common expressions complicated because they have no idea while a combination of the word with another one is not approved In order to overcome such a trouble, the research is carried out in order to offer needed knowledge as to syntactic and semantic features of the

English verbs see, hear, feel, smell, taste By providing an innovative approach

to learning English lexical terms, the author expects to change how students learn English words as well as how teachers change their traditional methods of teaching vocabulary If words are separated from their specific contexts and are exposed to students only through their meanings in dictionaries, it is not easy for these 2nd language users to obtain the real meanings of the words in different cases

Practically, The author hopes that this study „s findings and conclusion would make great contributions to raise the importance of studying English

verbs see, hear, feel, smell, taste with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents

First of all, when students study about collocations, they might learn them by heart easily, however, the main problem will lie in applications of these words in appropriate contexts Therefore, learning about the syntactic and semantic features of these verbs is the beginning of the whole process The main step is to understand comprehensively how they are applied in diverse situations and students can only do this by analyzing examples made by native speakers, not their own This research offers them a method to do this Secondly, regarding translation, students will have problems with understand the meanings if they

learn the words‟ definitions separately with its locations and meanings This study‟s implications are to deal with these issues in hope that will help students overcome their troubles Findings of this study will provide information that can help learners and translators gain an insight into how the speech act verbs with

see, hear, feel, smell, taste can be employed in discourse in English by

Vietnamese learners and translators

1.7 Design of the study

This thesis consists of five main parts:

Chapter 1: Introduction – gives a brief overview of the study as well as its aims

and objectives, scope, significance and organization of the study

Chapter 2: Literature Review - presents all the previous studies related to the

study area and a review of theoretical background employed for conducting the thesis

Chapter 3: Methodology – describes in detail all research-governing

orientations and research methods

Chapter 4: Findings and Discussion - makes comparison on the syntactic and

semantic features of the sensory verb group in English and Vietnamese

Chapter 5: Conclusion - summaries the whole content of the study, indicates the

limitation, thus gives some recommendations and suggestions for a further study References come at the end of the study

Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter provides an overview of the theoretical background as well as relevant knowledge and summaries of previous research‟s findings and conclusion associated with the theme of the research In other words, the review

is to explain several related terms and definitions as to semantics, syntax,

collocation, lexical unit and approach, verb and structures with the verbs: see, hear, feel, smell, taste These later would further highlight the features conducted

of the study as well as suggest an array of possible implications for teaching and

learning the English verbs see, hear, feel, smell, taste

2.1 Previous studies

There have been a lot of dictionaries such as: Từ điển Anh – Anh – Việt” (2008); Từ điển Việt - Anh” (2000); published by Publishing House of Cultural and Informatics, Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary (2003); Dictionary of Contemporary English (2003) in which mentioned about verbs:

see, hear, smell, taste, feel; Besides, Gibson, J.J (1966) in “The Senses Considered as Perceptual systems”; Evans, N.; Rogers, A (1971) “Three kinds

of physical perception verbs”; Rogers, A (1972) “Another look at flip perception verbs”; Alm-Arvius, C (1993) “The English Verb See: A Study in Multiple Meaning”; Iraide Ibarretxe-Antunano (1999) “Polysemy and Metaphor in Perception verbs”; Nicholas, I and Davis, W (2000) “ In the mind‟s ear: the semantic extensions of perception verbs in Australian”… Sweetser (1990)

investigates the multiple meanings in the semantic field of English verbs of human senses She shows that lexical polysemy cannot be understood independently of human cognitive structure The fact that everyday cognition is metaphorically shaped, at least partially, helps us to understand the way in which the senses of polysemous words are related

Some studies of Vietnamese researchers that the author has found so far tend to make comparisons between ways of using some popular structures with

the verbs they chose They also listed grammatical structures and provided a wide range of examples and Vietnamese translated versions in order to help other linguists to obtain the examples‟ meanings more broadly Thanks to this, when these authors presented their conclusion, their findings can be viewed on a more comprehensive scale

Nguyen Kim Than (1977) “Động từ Tiếng Việt”, Nguyen Thi Quy (1995) “Vị từ hành động và các tham tố của nó” Nguyen Thi Tuyet and collaboration (1996) “Cách dùng động từ tiếng Anh” pointing out clearly 3

groups which contributed to the governance of these verbs in the related contexts: Verbs of speaking, verbs of reporting, verbs of senses According to this studies, verbs of sense are classified 3 items below:

Sense Intentional

activity

Unintentional activity

Current sensation

In order to help other researcher reach a profound understanding of her conclusions, the author examined cautiously and presented the Vietnamese translational equivalents for each quotation used Regarding componential analysis, the author described this method‟s function as breaking down into pieces their meanings of terms and then making several comparisons between the semantic components so as to discriminate the above-mentioned meanings

In terms of the proper methods used to carry out associated studies, three authors of the study Automatic Classification of English Verbs Using Rich Syntactic Features (2008) proved the informative characteristic of syntactic features in verb classification The study used both qualitative and quantitative

methods with the purpose of obtaining speech and data analyses to draw conclusion with regards to the instructive significance of syntactic features in automatic verb classification What‟s more, while classifying 13 semantic syntactic subsets of English verb types, White (2002) figured out the ways children who are hard for heading or deaf define vocabulary and semantic syntactic features of verbs in their process of learning English

Up to now, there has been some researches about English verbs see, hear, smell, taste, feel … However, there has been no research about “English verbs see, hear, smell, taste, feel and their equivalents in Vietnamese” Thus,

“Study on the syntactic and semantic features of the sensory verb group with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents” is chosen my topic

2.2 Theory of syntax and semantics

2.2.1 Theory of syntax

In linguistics, syntax is the set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structure of sentences in a given language, usually including word order The term syntax is also used to refer to the study of such principles and processes Regarding how syntax is defined, it is clear that syntax is the study of structure

of language In other words, its main targets are said to be the set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structure of sentences in a given language For this reason, the goal of many syntacticians is to discover the syntactic rules common to all languages They are to dictate how words from different parts of speech are put together to convey a complete thought

Syntax is the study of how combine to the form sentences and the rules which govern the formation of sentences However, syntactic structure is understood as the arrangement of words and morphemes into larger units (phrases, clauses, and sentences) Meaning is associated with the way in which

words are combines to make phrases, clauses and sentences Compare The dog bit the postman and The postman bit the dog, which involve the same word

meanings but quite different sentence meanings because of their different

syntactic arrangements As Dixon (1991) claims, there is a principled interaction between the meaning of a word and its grammatical properties Once a learner knows the meaning and grammatical behavior of most of the words in a language, then from the meaning of a new word he can infer its likely grammatical possibilities, or from observing the grammatical use of a new word,

he may be able to infer a good deal about what it means Every verb, in its capacity as the core of a clause, is defined semantically in terms of the semantic roles of the participants in the state or event codes by the clause Within the clause, these participants occupy the grammatical roles of, most commonly, subject, direct object, indirect object, adverb or predicate These grammatical roles are marked in English by a combination of morphology and word-order But they also have other, more subtle, grammatical-behavioral properties, such

as various constraints on their distribution in grammatical environment

Syntax is a set of rules in language It dictates how words from different parts of speech are put together in order to convey a complete thought According to R.M.W Dixon (1991), syntax deals with the way in which are combined together Verbs have different grammatical properties from language

to language but there is always a major class verb, which includes word referring

to motion, rest, attention, giving and speaking Syntax is understood to be the theory of the structure of sentences in a language This view 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 Bloomfield (1993) states “we could not understand the form of a language

if we merely reduced all the complex forms to their ultimate constituents” He argued 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 the 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 Theory of syntax is a source of studying syntactic features in general and sensory verbs group in particular

Semantic features play a very important part in differentiating the match between word and meaning We need a very large number of features to do this work But linguists believe that a much smaller number of features would be needed in writing grammar description But Jack Richards, John Platt and Heidi Weber [52,p.254] say semantic features are “the smallest units of meaning in a word The meaning of a word may be described as a combination of semantic features” According to David Crystal [23,p.346], semantic feature is “a minimal contrastive element of a word‟s meaning, in some approaches called a semantic component.” e.g Boy = + young + male + human

Semantics is a branch of linguistics, which deals with meaning or the content of communication According to Hurford and Heasley (1983:1),

“semantics is the study of meaning in language” Language is a means of communication, and people use language to communicate with others by making conversations, giving information, and other things to make social relationship Human beings have been given the capacity to talk, to communicate with each other, to make meaningful utterances, so that they are understood by other human beings They communicate about the world in which they live, about themselves, about their thought and feeling, about what has happened, about what might happen or what they would like to happen, and a lot more

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

an act of courtesy, performed to strengthen social relationships” This is also part

of communication There are some linguists that try to define semantics Morries

as quoted by Lyons (1977) at first defines semantics as the study of the relations

of signs to the objects to which the signs are applicable And then he revises 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, 1977:116) says that descriptive semantics (i.e the investigation of the meaning

of expressions in “historically given natural language”), may be regarded as part

of pragmatics The reason why descriptive semantics is part of pragmatics 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 (1977:116) states that

“semantics studies how these signs are related to things And pragmatics studied how they are related to people” According to Leech (1983:5) in practice, the

problem of distinguishing language and language use has centered on a

boundary dispute between semantics and pragmatics Hurford and Heasley

(1983:14) further explain that the study of semantics is largely a matter of conceptually and exploring the nature of meaning in a careful and thoughtful way, using a wide range of examples, many of which we can draw from our knowledge

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

of the meaning of words, phrases, or sentences and sometimes with the meaning

of utterances in discourse or the meaning of a whole text.”

David Crystal (1992:347) defines that “semantics is the study of meaning

in language” Structural semantics 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 antonymy 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 The theory of semantic fields views vocabulary as organized into areas, within which words (lexical items) interrelate and define each other

It is widely known that language is obviously used to express meanings that can be understood among speakers However, meanings exist in humans‟ minds and what people express is, therefore, already in their minds through spoken and written forms of languages Consequently, there should be a sub-field studies how speakers convey meaningful messages or receive and understand these meanings The sub-field is Semantics which is the study of meanings in language In other words, linguists are to find an answer for the question of how language is organized to be meaningful Since humans cannot see meanings, it is the most abstract level of linguistic analysis

These semantics features of sensory verbs are the basis of analyzing the semantics features of attention verb group in English and Vietnamese in chapter 4

2.2.3 Overview of English verb

2.2.3.1 Definition of the verb

In most languages, verbs are part of speech expressing existence, action, or occurrence Moreover, verb is 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 merely indicates being R.M.W.Dixon (1991) defines that “a verb is 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

require the same set of participant roles All giving verbs require a Donor, a Gift

and a Recipient, as in:

John gave a bouquet to Mary, Jane lent the Saab to Bill

The women‟s Institutes supplied the soldiers with socks

- Occurs as part of the predicate of a sentence

- Caries markers of grammatical categories such as tense, aspect, person,

number, and mood

- Refers to an action or state

Generally, in English the verb tense shows the time of the action or state; the aspect of a verb defines the temporal flow in the described event or state Verbs can be affected by person and number to show agreement with the subject Some English verb like forms have properties of speech Thompson (1965), states that verbs are not affected by number, person, gender, mood, voice, and tense

2.2.3.2 Classification of the verb

According to R Quirk et al (1985), verbs are classified into two types: intensive verbs and extensive verbs

a Intensive verbs

Intensive verbs are also called copular verbs, and they are usually followed by a noun, or a noun phrase, and adjective or prepositional phrase Intensive verbs are used to describe the subject It means that the focus is on one thing – the subject only Intensive verbs appear in the structure “S V C” or “S V A” Words or phrases, which are followed by an intensive verb work as the subject compliment and they apply to the subject, not the verb Let‟s consider the following examples:

Your dinner seems ready (SVC)

My office is in the next building (SVA)

He stayed very quiet

(Quirk, Randolph, 1985: 55)

Extensive verbs include three small types: mono-transitive, complex transitive and ditransitive

Ditransitive verbs are verbs which take a subject and two objects or have the structure “SVOO” According to certain linguistic considerations, these objectives may be called direct, indirect objectives, or primary and secondary objectives as in the following examples:

I must send my parents an anniversary card (SVOO)

Most students have found her reasonably helpful (SVOC)

You can put the dish on the table (SVOA)

(Quirk, Randolph, 1985: 721)

The verb is perhaps the most important part of the sentence A verb states what

is happening in the sentence Finite verbs locate the condition or action of the verb in a specific time frame: past, present or future and have a specific tense and a subject with which they grammatically agree A complete sentence must

contain a finite verb Verbs create the relationship between the subject and the object of the verb

In a command, there is still this relationship with the subject and object

understood “Go!” (Subject –you– understood, verb “go!” object away–

understood.)

The form of the verb must agree with the number of its subject, which will be a noun or noun group, for example 'They were not home' (as opposed to 'They was not home') Confusion can arise when deciding whether the subject is singular or

plural, for example 'This group of students is very clever', or when there are two subjects, for example 'Ice cream and strawberries are delicious' (not 'is

delicious')

2.3 Overview of the sensory verbs

2.3.1 Definition of the sensory verbs

In English, a sensory verb is a verb (such as see, watch, look, hear, listen,

feel, and taste) that conveys the experience of one of the physical senses

The sensory verbs include verbs referring to the five senses employed in the process of human sensory cognition

The verb of perception from a subclass of the verbs of sensory cognition

(henceforth: SVC) that include verbs referring to the five senses employed in the process of human sensory cognition (i.e sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste) That subclass consists of the following lexical items: see, watch, look, hear, smell, feel, and taste) In Kopytko (1986 a) I referred to the discussed subclass of VSC as resultative SVC The reason for that was my attempt to account for the difference in meaning between the sentences

Some researchers suggest that verb of perception is the word used to refer

to the action using the senses to the cognitive, such as see, hear The others

consider verbs of perception are related to the senses and can split the perception verbs into three sets below:

Set 1 (action) Set 2 (non-action) Set 3 (non-action)

As the table, set 1 are the verbs indicating the perceiver concentrated action on the cognitive object and they can use the progressive form to describe this act of perception Set 2 are the verbs showing the general perception and they can‟t use progressive form Set 3 are the verbs describing appearance and they can‟t use progressive form

In Vietnamese, we have many difficulties in finding research on verb of Vietnamese perception This is a small filed, belonging to the lower level of the verb from which the Vietnamese language school ahead of laying the foundation Moreover, perhaps due to specific semantics and syntax without causing trouble for learners, they have not been neglected

However, in " Động từ Tiếng Việt " by Nguyen Kim Than (1977) some studies have found interesting directions, he mentioned two criteria divided Vietnamese verb:

- the domination of the formal word

- the domination of the verb

According to the second criterion, he gave a list of verbs divided groups The author finds the group "The verb of the body parts", he gave a list of active verbs

of humans and animals Then he put them in the neutral verb and claimed clearly that the verbs of perception belong to “động từ cảm nghĩ – nói năng” because

"những động từ này biểu thị sự hoạt động của trí não, của các cơ quan cảm giác

“Nhìn thấy đối với nhìn, nghe thấy đối với nghe, xét cấu trúc cũng giống như học thuộc đối với học hay ăn no đối với ăn Những quá trình này đều đưa đến một trạng thái mới của chủ thể”

Recently, there are some language researchers learn about these verbs However,

at the present, there is no independent study of the verbs of perception in Vietnamese except research by Nguyen Tat Thang (2008) "bàn riêng về vai trò của thị giác trong ngôn ngữ theo góc nhìn tri nhận luận"

2.3.2 Concepts of sensory verbs

Syntax is the study of how combine to the form sentences and the rules which govern the formation of sentences However, syntactic structure is understood as the arrangement of words and morphemes into large units (phases, clauses, and sentences)

Every verb, in its capacity as the core of a clause, is defined semantically in terms of the semantic roles of the participants in the state or event codes by the clause Within the clause, these participants occupy the grammatical roles of, most commonly, subject, direct object, indirect object, adverb or predicate These grammatical roles are marked in English by a combination of morphology and word order But they also have other, more subtle, grammatical-behavioral properties, such as various constraints on their distribution in grammatical environment

According to the grammatical classification of verbs, verbs fall into three broad subclasses-those that require only one role (intransitive verbs), those which require two roles (copular) and those require two or more roles (transitive verbs) There is a considerable difference between intransitive subjects and transitive subject

It is clear that verbs are one of the most central syntactic category in language They have deep relations with the other categories: nouns because they select arguments which are often nominal or adverbs because adverbs modify verbs, prepositions, which, in turn assign thematic roles to NPs Verbs associated with adverbs permit the computation of aspect

These syntactic features of perception verbs are the basis of analyzing

the syntactic features of the English verbs: see, hear, feel, smell, taste in English

and Vietnamese in chapter 4

According to R.M.W.Dixon (1991), he defined “a verb is 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 legs aches

Perception verbs are subcategorized into three classes: the “agentive LISTEN-class” (as in I listened to the tenor), the “experiencer HEAR-class” (as

in I heard him struggle), and the “percept SOUND-class” (as in The high C sounded flat) In addition to a description of perception verbs, other areas in lexical semantics such as argument linking, polysemy, and evidentiality are also

of interest to him since those areas raise semantic issues associated with perception verbs

These semantics features of perception verbs are the basis of analyzing the semantic features of the English verbs: see, hear, feel, smell, taste

in English and Vietnamese in chapter 4

2.4 Summary

In this chapter, the Literature Review includes previous studies, review of theoretical background In the previous study, the studies of authors in oversea and in Vietnam are given Then, overview of the sensory verbs group is given to briefly review what has been found and discussed the related studies by describing their approaches and key findings, but then identify weaknesses in the approach and limitations in the findings Besides, the theory of syntax and semantic are analyzed thoroughly in order to use for background of analyzing the syntactic and semantic features of the sensory verb group in English The definition of the verb and classification of verb are pointed out in details

Chapter 3 METHODOLOGY

This chapter presents the research questions and method of the study to tackle the proposed issues In other words, the section provides a description of the subjects of the study and the procedure to carry out the research with details

of the action plan

3.1 Subjects

The research is conducted with references from diverse reliable sources such as dictionaries, encyclopedia, reference books at library and on some

websites in which the English verbs see, hear, feel, smell, taste and their

Vietnamese equivalents are used Through years teaching English grammar and vocabulary for learners of English at Viet Tri University of Industry, the

author has found out that the English verbs see, hear, feel, smell, taste have a

little meaning to students at the university as they only learn words‟ definitions and create their own examples by coined formulas, ignoring how these words can be used in specific contexts This leads to a drawback that students somehow learn English words word by word and can not use them effectively and properly

in English daily conversations This research aims at pointing out syntactic and

semantic features of the English verbs see, hear, feel, smell, taste with reference

to their Vietnamese equivalents in order to help students at university identify more clearly about the differences in syntactic as well as in semantics between these verbs in English and their Vietnamese equivalents

3.2 Instrumentation

The data are collected from different sources such as dictionaries, namely, Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary (2003), Oxford Advanced Encyclopedia (2002); Semantic Dictionary, A New Approach to English Grammar on Semantic Principles; English-Vietnamese Dictionary (2008); Vietnamese-English Dictionary (2000); Word Classification of Modern Vietnamese (1998); some grammar books such as English Grammar in Use by

Murphy, R; A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language by Quirk, R; Moreover, these sources are found to provide the most fertile examples for the lexical items under study

This study aims at investigating syntactic and semantic features of the

English verbs see, hear, feel, smell, taste with reference to their Vietnamese

equivalents For such reason, the author has presented theoretical background related to both fields of linguistics as well as notions Then details of the English

verbs see, hear, feel, smell, taste with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents

are also presented clearly

Regarding material selecting, various dictionaries are a great use to list a

great number of the English verbs see, hear, feel, smell, taste with reference to

their Vietnamese equivalents and then reliable examples are collected from Oxford Advanced learner‟s dictionary, Oxford Advanced Encyclopedia, Vietnamese dictionary, English semantic dictionary, Vietnamese grammar books and Internet resources…etc To achieve these aims and the stated objectives, the process of data collection and analysis have been carried out through two major steps The first stage is gathering needed examples from diverse sources while the second one, following closely, is analyzing the selected data so as to withdraw some findings and conclusion

With regards to reliability, the data for this research was only collected from trustworthy sources Quotations and information used in the study is precise as they were presented in the original materials with clear references of the author, the name of publishers, the time and place of publication as well as the page number where the data is cited

The bilingual dictionaries, encyclopedia, the books are used for this study because they are well known and are confirmed by reliable publishing houses

After identifying different senses of the verbs see, hear, feel, smell, taste in

English together their Vietnamese equivalents, these senses are brought into consideration The following part represents the data analysis techniques used

3.3 Procedures

This study is conducted by combining the two research approaches of both qualitative and quantitative In the first place, data was collected from a wide range of sources from printed publications and e-books on the Internet (certified by Google Books) After the collecting stage was finished, examples then were qualitatively described, analyzed and illustrated in terms of syntactic and semantic features At the same time, they were also compared with their Vietnamese equivalents under a process of statistical analysis to fully answer to the first research question individually For the third question, pedagogical implications were withdrawn after the two questions about syntactic and semantic features were brought out entirely

The study is intended to investigate the English verbs see, hear, feel, smell, taste with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents, therefore, the

descriptive, comparative and contrastive methods have been chosen First of all, the descriptive method is used in order to give complete and evident

descriptions of both syntactic and semantic features of the English verbs see, hear, feel, smell, taste Secondly, the comparative and contrastive methods are

applied to identify similarities and differences with their Vietnamese equivalents Some other methods such as analytical and synthetic methods have also been used as supporting methods Why analyses are vital to analyzing collected data, grouping results into divisions is crucial to give a comprehensive view of what has been concluded Last but not least, devoted commentaries and guidance from the author‟s supervisor are very useful to the author Without these valuable and major contributions, the author could not have done this research

In this study, these following data analysis techniques are used to do the best for the result of the thesis, such as placing information into arrays; Creating matrices of categories; Looking at the data in many different ways to avoid premature; Dividing the data by type across all cases investigated; Treating the

evidence fairly to produce analytic conclusions answering the original "how" and

"why" research questions; Using representative audience groups to review and

comment on the draft document

3.5 Summary

In conclusion, this chapter describes all the research-governing orientation and methods applied for implementing this research In each part of this chapter, the data analyzed clearly On the other hand, in this chapter, the research is discussed two main points In the first point, it discusses the equivalents of the syntactic and semantic features of the sensory verb groups in English and Vietnamese In the second point, the study discusses the implications in order to help learners to overcome their difficulties in dealing with the sensory verbs and

how can they avoid making mistakes in using them Besides, in this chapter with the research approach and the research methods, the main methods of this study are quantitative, qualitative and comparative The data collected by using a various sources of printed publications as books, articles, journal, bilingual dictionaries and thesis After that, the data is going to contrasted, analyzed in structure of syntactic and semantics