A study on syntactic and semantic features of english motion verbs in comparison with the vietnamese equivalents

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY PHAN THỊ THANH BÌNH A STUDY ON SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF ENGLISH MOTION VERBS IN COMPARISON WITH THE VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS (NGHIÊN CỨU ĐẶC ĐIỂM CÚ PHÁP VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA ĐỘNG TỪ CHUYỂN ĐỘNG TIẾNG ANH SO SÁNH VỚI TƢƠNG ĐƢƠNG TIẾNG VIỆT) M.A THESIS Field: English Language Code: 60220201 Hanoi, 2015 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNVERSITY PHAN THI THANH BÌNH A STUDY ON SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF ENGLISH MOTION VERBS IN COMPARISON WITH THE VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS (NGHIÊN CỨU ĐẶC ĐIỂM CÚ PHÁP VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA ĐỘNG TỪ CHUYỂN ĐỘNG TIẾNG ANH SO SÁNH VỚI TƢƠNG ĐƢƠNG TIẾNG VIỆT) M.A THESIS Field: English Language Code: 60220201 Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr HOÀNG TUYẾT MINH Hanoi, 2015 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitled : „STUDY ON SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF MOTION VERBS IN ENGLISH IN COMPARISON WITH 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 Student Phan Thi Thanh Binh SUPERVISOR Assoc Prof Dr Hoang Tuyet Minh Hanoi: 2015 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like primarily to thank Assoc prof Dr Hoang Tuyet Minh for helping me complete this study This paper would not have been possible without her constant support and encouragement Her patience and helpful criticism help me confidently express my ideas into this paper I regard myself extremely fortunate in having her as my dissertation supervisor I would also like to express my sincere thanks to all all of the teachers of the Faculty of Postgraduate studies – Hanoi Open University for their valuable lectures , which have help me a great deal in gaining a lot of theoretical as well as practical acknowledgements I would also like to send my thanks to all my classmates of NNA3 for these -good ideas and helpful assistance Last but not least, I would like to express my profound gratitude to my family members who have constantly supported, inspired and encouraged me to complete the graduation paper Hanoi, November, 2015 Phan Thi Thanh Binh ii ABSTRACT This study is an attempt to uncover the syntactic and semantic features of the MOTION verb group in English, especially ARRIVE motion verbs as well as the similarities and differences in using the ARRIVE motion verbs 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 twelve 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 twelve English verbs beginning with ARRIVE is central, followed by go,come, return, enter, cross, travel, pass, escape, reach, approach and visit 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 twelve English verbs of the ARRIVE motion 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 perspectivizing the linguistic scene by means of the ARRIVE motion verbs group in English iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS A : Adjunct C : Complex- transitive verb C : Complement D : Double- transitive verb I : Intransitive verb L : Linking verb MV : Motion verb NP : Noun- phrase O : Object Od : Direct- object S : Subject T : Transitive verb TG : Traditional Grammar V : Verb iv LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 4.1: Sentence patterns of the ARRIVE motion verbs group in English Table 4.2: Sentence patterns of the ARRIVE motion verbs group in English and Vietnamese Table 4.3: Sentence elements of the ARRIVE motion verbs group in English and Vietnamese Table 4: Sentence elements of the verb type in English and Vietnamese Table 5: Subtypes of the ARRIVE motion verbs in English and Vietnamese Table 4.6: Types of the ARRIVE motion verbs in English and Vietnamese (group 1) Table 4.7: Types of the ARRIVE motion verbs in English and Vietnamese (group 2) Table 8: Types of the ARRIVE motion verbs in English and Vietnamese (group 3) v TABLE OF CONTENTS Certificate of originality i Acknowledgements ii Abstract iii List of abbreviations iv List of tables and figures v Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale of the study 1.2 Aims of the study 1.3 Objectives of the study 1.4 Scope of the study 1.5 Significance of the study 1.6 Design of the study Chapter : LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Review of the motion verbs group in English and Vietnamese 2.2 Review of theoretical framework 2.2.1 Theoretical framework 2.2.1.1 Theory of syntax 2.2.1.2 Theory of semantics 2.2.2 Theoretical background 11 2.2.2.1 Definition of a verb 11 2.2.2.2 Definition of motion verb 12 2.2.2.3 Classification of motion verbs in English 14 2.2.2.3.1 Path verbs .14 2.2.2.3.2 Manner of Motion Verbs 14 2.2.2.4 Syntactic features of motion verbs in English 15 2.2.2.5 Semantic features of motion verbs in English 17 2.3 Summary 17 Chapter 3: METHODOLORY 3.1 Research-governing orientations 19 vi 3.1.1 Research questions 19 3.1.2 Research setting 19 3.1.3 Research approach 19 3.1.4 Principles for intended data collection and data analysis 20 3.2 Research methods 20 3.2.1 Major methods vs supporting methods 20 3.2.2 Data collection techniques 21 3.2.3 Data analysis techniques 22 3.3 Summary 22 Chapter : FINDING AND DISCUSSION 4.1 Syntactic and semantic features of the ARRIVE verb group in English 23 4.1.1 Syntactic features of the ARRIVE verb group in English 23 4.1.1.1 In terms of their sentence patterns 26 a SV type 27 b SVO type 28 4.1.1.2 In terms of their sentence elements 39 4.1.2 Semantic features of the ARRIVE motion verbs group in English 35 4.1.2.1 Group 1: GO, COME, ARRIVE and RETURN 37 4.1.2.2 Group 2: ENTER, CROSS, TRAVEL, PASS and ESCAPE 39 4.1.2.3 Group 3: REACH, APPROACH and VISIT verb in English 41 4.2 Similarities and differences between English and their Vietnamese equivalents 42 4.2.1 Similarities between English and their Vietnamese equivalents 42 4.2.1.1 In terms of syntactic features 42 4.2.1.2 In terms of semantics features 46 4.2.2.1 Group in English and their Vietnamese equivalents 48 4.2.2.2 Group in English and their Vietnamese equivalents 50 4.2.2.3 Group in English and their Vietnamese equivalents 51 4.2.2 Differences between English and their Vietnamese equivalents 53 4.2.2.1 In terms of syntactic features 53 vii 4.2.2.2 In terms of semantics features 54 4.3 Some possible implications for teaching the ARRIVE verbs group in English and Vietnamese to Vietnamese learners of English 57 a Avoiding Language transfer mistakes 57 b Mistakes of using ARRIVE motion verbs group with prepositions 59 c Mistakes of using ARRIVE motion verbs group with sentence structures 60 4.4 Summary 63 Chapter : CONCLUSION 5.1.Recapitulation .64 5.2 Concluding remarks 65 5.3 Limitations and suggestions for further studies 66 5.3.1 Limitations 66 5.3.2 Suggestions for further studies .66 REFERENCES viii possible to evaluate the amount of systemic interference due to language transfer alone Come and go include in their meaning a Locus specification go there and come here such as: They go there to have a meeting You come here to talk to us We cannot say: *They go to there to have a meeting *You come to here to talk to us Arrive and return may also be used without a Locus NP or adverb, and here is then implied A Locus NP may also be omitted after these verbs when it could be inferred the previous discourse such as: He cycled all the way to town Oh, what time he arrive (in town)? We cannot say: *He cycled all the way to town Oh, what time he arrive to the town? Cross and pass can equally well retain or omit over or by such as: We crossed (over) the road We passed (by) the church We cannot say: *We crossed through the road *We passed through the church 58 Been to and gone to mean that someone or somebody go to a place or somewhere But been to means have been and have returned home, gone to means have gone and haven’t gone home such as: My husband has been to Ho Chi Minh City three times.(đi đ tr v ) My husband has gone to Ho Chi Minh City (đi chƣa tr v ) b Mistakes of using ARRIVE motion verb group with prepositions In the process of learning a foreign language learners or use the language habits of the mother tongue or language source imposed on foreign language or target language and vice versa This influence error caused errors (error not recognized) and error mistakes (errors identified and corrected) Learners use the rules of a particular case applies in the case of other rules in the target language Enter would generally omit the preposition such as: *She enters (into) the room But in case, we use the verb enter, we cannot say: *She enters to the room We have to say: We came into the kitchen But in case, we use the verb come, we cannot say: *We came to the kitchen Beside that go come include in their meanings a Locus specification to there and to here respectively In view of this, here can be omitted from come here and there from go there, although these adverbs often are retained such as: 59 They came here or went there by motorbike We can‟t say: * They came to here or went to there by motorbike Arrive and return may also be used without a Locus NP or adverb, and here is then implied A Locus NP may also be omitted after these verbs when it could be inferred from the previous discourse: They arrived home or returned home last night We can‟t say: *They arrived to home or returned back home last night A few ARRIVE verbs are basically transitive, as in: They won’t reach/ approach the lake tonight We can‟t say: *They won’t reach to/ approach to the lake tonight Because reach to/ approach to mean extent to(m rộng) such as: *The road reaches to the coast c Mistakes of using ARRIVE motion verbs group with sentence structures The group from the group ARRIVE through the explicit complement and requires only the main results of the complement it Each member of the group when combined carries different meanings definition compatible with combined modifiers such as: Why did you return home so early? S V A(optional) (Jonathan Crowther, 1995, 293) 60 But some students thought that home is O not A In some cases, multiple verbs can be combined with an adverb and so the selected conditions verbs or other verbs are very difficult to implement However we can use a verb combines with complement or specific instructions from them based on the preposition comes rather be based on context and pragmatic experience in other words the more they can not based on the expenses recognized by the user such as: We vsited a sick friend (yesterday) (Jonathan Crowther, 1995, 737) In above the sentence yesterday is not nessessary in the basic sentence structures Grammatical mistakes due to interference with grammatical transference between the mother tongue and the target language Learners often make the mistaks such as use the preposition by communication language sports, using the wrong preposition, prepositional mistakes due to manually add transference from Vietnamese, whittle prepositions, word order mistakes, misuse configuration error sentence structure, mistakes in sample sentences omitted from… In conclusion, the above are some common mistakes that people often make when learning to use the English verb relations I hope this small article will help English learners recognize typical mistake types to partially overcome them in the learning process makes the process more effective learning The ARRIVE motion verb group in English and Vietnamese has quite various meanings because it consists of twelve main verbs It is the reason why learners meet some difficulties in studying its semantics Remembering a set of various syntactic and semantic features of the ARRIVE motion verbs group in English is not always an easy task for many students To eliminate this limitation, teachers should categorize the ARRIVE verb group in sub-groups according to topics with each group such as „in each 61 lesson gives them two basic sentence structures‟ so that the students can take advantage of connecting similar lexical units in the process of memorizing and they can remember them more easily From the contrastive analysis of the ARRIVE motion verbs group in the two languages in chapter IV, it can be seen that some verbs of the ARRIVE motion verbs group share the similarities of structures or semantics For example, this verb group has the same syntactic feature SV or SVO and some semantic features in both languages Therefore, discovering and using suitable equivalences in the inventory is the best way to have a perfect teaching and learning this verb group in both English and Vietnamese This is to say that a teacher must have a profound knowledge of the target language and the source language so that the teaching of the ARRIVE motion verb group can be exactly and effectively Another interesting thing getting our attention is that there always exist the various meanings in most verbs of the ARRIVE motion verb group Thus, a clear explanation of the meaning transfer should be given to make students understand deeply about the verbs such as go and come in a lesson or cross and pass in another lesson This profound understanding will get the learners to be involved in learning actively and enthusiastically Also, the English teachers should not ignore cultural gaps between source language and the target language because interlingual errors are originated from the deficiency of cultural knowledge The best way to solve it is to supply our students with background knowledge of history, culture, traditions, customs, related to speech act verbs in general and the ARRIVE motion verbs group in particular Acquiring a word, we have to learn how the meaning of that word varies in different patterns In addition, what may be sufficient in one circumstance will be probably not sufficient in others Language teachers then should provide 62 his learners with relevant information concerning contexts of situation in which a particular word is used 4.4 Summary In this section, we have discussed about the syntactic and semantics features of the ARRIVE motion verb group in English The syntactics of the ARRIVE verb group in English are analyzed in detail in terms of two sentence patterns (SV, SVO) and four sentence elements (S, V, O) The semantics of the ARRIVE motion verbs group in English are described as different senses of twelve verbs Then the comparison is given to collate with their Vietnamese equivalents As comparison, the result of the study proves that there are some similarities and differences between the ARRIVE verb group in English and in Vietnamese Meanings conveyed by twelve English verbs go, come, arrive, return, enter, cross, travel, pass, escape, reach, approach and visit are not restricted in most dictionaries Also, the study points out that the speaker‟s choice of a language form to interpret an event is rather important depending on his cognition of the situation he is talking about A ARRIVE motion verbs in different contexts can be perceived differently; as a result, these motion verbs, which are used to interpret this act, has several meanings This chapter provides an interesting insight into English ARRIVE verbs of motion and a precise comparison to Vietnamese equivalents In this chapter, the syntactic and semantic features of motion verbs are also explored and some similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese verbs of motion have been drawn out as the basis for further comparison 63 Chapter CONCLUSION In the final part of the thesis, the results of the study will be reviewed, then some conclusions from the detailed analysis of the previous chapter and some limitations and suggestions for future researches will be given 5.1 Recapitulation The results of the study are more numerous, and they seem to be more significant, with the most salient and general finding consisting in the fact that, despite a number of parallels between the verbs investigated, each of the verb perspectives the linguistic scene in different ways Consequently, it was interesting to investigate both the similarities and differences between the twelve verbs go, come, arrive, return, enter, travel, cross, pass, escape, reach, approach and visit Of course, an exhaustive summary of all the results would be too extensive in this section, which is why what follows is a synthesis of selected and most important findings Firstly, in terms of syntactic features, the ARRIVE motion verbs group is analyzed into two parts: according to the sentence patterns and sentence elements This verb group belongs to only two sentence patterns among seven ones These are SV, SVO in English, SV and SVC in Vietnamese According to the sentence elements, in the ARRIVE motion verbs group in English, subject is the element that is most often present The subject in this group is normally a noun phrase or a nominal clause, a pronoun Verbs belonging to the ARRIVE motion verbs are two main verb classes: intransitive verbs as go, come, arrive, return, enter and travel and transitive verbs as cross, pass, escape, reach , approach and visit In fact, in this structure, there is only type of object: direct object (Od) Secondly, in terms of semantic features, the ARRIVE motion verbs refer to a definite Locus and refer to motion with respect to a Locus Almost all of 64 these verbs are transitive and they are path verbs such as go, come, arrive, return, enter and travel A few ARRIVE verbs are basically transitive as Cross, pass, escape, approach, visit and reach Thirdly, in Vietnamese, it is momentously interesting to figure out that authors, depending on each case, apply appropriate Vietnamese equivalents to the ARRIVE motion verb group In this study, we can see clearly different Vietnamese equivalents of the ARRIVE motion verb group in English those are ra, vào, lên, xuống, đến, tới, sang, qua, lại, về, These findings can lead to the conclusion that different meanings created by one lexeme are caused by different contexts in which senses of the exist This proves the fact that providing students with meanings of each verb must be clearly given in concrete contexts with proper Vietnamese references The obvious conclusion to be drawn is one whereby the questions and goals of this study seem to have been answered in the course of the linguistic investigations The interface of the syntax and semantics of the ARRIVE motion verbs group in English has been investigated and interpreted This seems to have had a bearing which were also investigated and accounted for 5.2 Concluding remarks Theoretically, in the study on syntactic and semantic features has come certain contributions to the study has provided a comprehensive and overal knowledge about the syntactic and semantic features of the ARRIVE motion verbs group in English Moreover, the similarities and differences between this verb group in English and in Vietnamese is very helpful in two languages Practically, the study helps teachers and students to get some useful suggestions in teaching and learning this verb group because the ARRIVE motion verb group consists of many verbs and occationally make people confused when its syntactic and semantic features are under consideration 65 5.3 Limitations and suggestions for further studies 5.3.1 Limitations Although the study has offered the syntactic and semantic features of the ARRIVE motion verbs group in English and their Vietnamese equivalents, it has some limitations The results in this study are just relatively reasonable because of the limited number of instances with the twelve verbs taken for analysis To assure that in the future research, more instances will be analyzed to have a standard result So far, in the study, different syntactic patterns and derived meanings conveyed by the ARRIVE motion verbs group have been scrutinized from semantic perspective through the componential analysis The study might be served as a foundation for studies on other motion verbs Moreover, the study has not been analyzed from cultural and pragmatics perspectives English in this study is considered as source language and it has been presented relatively adequately but in terms of Vietnamese equivalents, Vietnamese is considered as target language and it has not been completely studied yet Though great efforts have been made in this thesis to work out the best results, mistakes and limitations are un-avoidable Therefore any your comments or corrections for our better work would be highly appreciated 5.3.2 Suggestions for further studies For further study, which may be very interesting and useful, some suggestions are: The ARRIVE motion verbs group in English and their Vietnamese equivalents from cultural and pragmatic perspectives 66 The further should shed more light on the semantic categories of a wider range of motion verbs, if not say all motion verbs in English and Vietnamese, and go on with the examination of more literary works or narratives from which analyze in more details the lexicalization patterns of motion verbs in the two languages Moreover, it is suggested that the researchers in the future extend these lexicalization patterns to other verb types such as verbs of vision, verbs denoting signs or gestures, or other domains such as aspect and state of change Or else, he/she may come up with an experimental research, to investigate the use of lexicalization patterns of motion verbs among different groups of people in different communities 67 REFERENCES In English: Adams, V (1973) An Introduction to Modern English Word- Formation London: Longman Aderson, S.R.(1971).On the role of deep structure in semantic interpretation New York: Academic Press Alexander, L G (1988) Longman English Grammar London: Longman Biber, D et al (2000) Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English London: Longman Carter, R, McCarthy, M (2006) Cambridge Grammar of English: a Comprehensive Guide Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Cattell, N.O (1969) The role of give and some 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syntactic features of motion verbs are the basis of analyzing the syntactic features of the ARRIVE subtype in English and in Vietnamese in chapter IV 2.2.2.5 Semantic features of motion verbs in English