Thisresearchisconductedtoachievethetargetsoffindingoutsyntacticandsemanticfeaturesof “GO” idioms with reference to the Vietnamese equivalents as well as suggesting somepossible implicati
Trang 1EuropeanJournalof EnglishLanguage,LinguisticsandLiterature Vol 7 No.1,2020
ISSN2059-2027
AN INVESTIGATION INTO SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTICFEATURESOF ENGLISH “GO” IDIOMS WITH REFERENCE TO
THEVIETNAMESEEQUIVALENTS
NguyenThiThuyLinh,MA.
PhenikaaUniversity
VIETNAM
linh.nguyenthithuy@phenikaa-uni.edu.vn
PhanMinhHuyen,MA.
UniversityofEconomicsandBusinessAdministration
VIETNAM
phanminhhuyen@tueba.edu.vn
ABSTRACT
Among the most popular English words being used currently worldwide, the verb “GO” hasbeen, without a doubt, of great concern by linguists so far Therefore, an initial investigationintosyntacticandsemanticfeaturesof“GO”idiomswithreferencetotheVietnamesee quivalents would provide valuable experience to further studies of linguistics in general andhelp Vietnamese students as learners of foreign language in translation Numerous exampleshave been analyzed cautiously by applying qualitative approach and some other ones so as toachievetheobjectives ofthe research
Keywords:Idiomswith‘go’,syntax,semantics,Vietnameseequivalents.
INTRODUCTION
It is undeniable that language is an indispensable part in the life of humanity Language is aneffective and irreplaceable tool of expressing mind, thought, saying, etc English is a very richlanguage and when people want to be proficient in English, all the linguistic phenomena havetobe covered
Infact,wearedailydealingwithdifferentkindsoffigurativelanguage,likeidiomaticexpressions,
metonymies and metaphors Some of them are conventional while some of themmaybecreatedaswespeak(Caillies&Declercq,2011:207).Accordingly,thecomprehensionof the former, usually idiomatic expressions, depends on retrieval of a figurative meaningstored in memory, whereas the comprehension of the latter, usually metaphors, depends on anonline sense creation process (Caillies & Declercq, 2011: 219) Those who learn Englishdesires to master English as the native speakers However, we usually face the difficulties thatprevent us from gaining natural conversations One of the reasons for these problems lies inthe way we perceive and use idioms The structural and semantic problems posed by idiomspuzzleus becausemost idiomsdo not mean what theyappear tomean
Itcanbesaidthatstudyingidiomsisnotnew,butithasneverbeenold.Throughthehistoryofthe development of English there has been a list of around 1,000 most commonly used wordsof all parts of speech (that can be used on a daily
comprehend.AndGOisoneofthemostcommonverbsinEnglish,whichisabletocapturespecialattentiono fall-time linguists
Thisresearchisconductedtoachievethetargetsoffindingoutsyntacticandsemanticfeaturesof “GO” idioms with reference to the Vietnamese equivalents as well as suggesting somepossible implications for Vietnamese students who study English as a foreign language Toachievetheabove-mentioned aims,the following objectivescan beputforwards:
Trang 2(1) Pointingoutsyntacticfeaturesof“GO”idiomswithreferencetotheVietnameseequivalents (2) Figuringoutsemanticfeaturesof“GO“idiomswithreferencetotheVietnameseequivalents (3) SuggestingpossibleimplicationsforVietnamesestudentsinlearning,teachingandtranslating“ GO”idioms
LITERATUREREVIEW
Regarding idioms, Seidl and McMordie (1978) are the linguists chosen to shed the light of thetheoryduringtheanalysisofthetheme.Ontheotherwords,thesyntacticandsemanticfeaturesof “GO” idioms are going investigated and discussed based on the Seidl and McMordie’stheory
Seidl and McMordie (1978) claim that native speakers use idioms in daily speeches and theydo not realize that these idioms are grammatically incorrect There is a difference among theperception of idioms by native speakers and second language learners Second languagelearners realize that idioms are grammatically incorrect and that is why it is quite difficult
forthemtolearnthembutthehardstudyofthemcanhelpverymuch.SeidlandMcMordie(1978)also add that application of idioms can sometimes cause a big problem for the users TheEnglishlearnersusuallydonotknowinwhichsituationtheyshoulduseidiomsbecauseidiomscanbeused bothinformalandinformalsituations.Thewordsoughttobechosenaccordingtothe situation in which a certain person
is When speaking to a friend, it is preferred to useinformal orslangexpressions Inaformalsituation, words must bechosen much morecarefully Formal expressions can be found in the written form of language rather than in thespokenone.Informalexpressionsarethususedinday-to-dayspeeches,e.g.amongfriends
The connection between the origin and the current use can be another problem while
usingidioms "It has often been necessary, in dealing with an idiom of which the current
meaning isclear and that is generally used correctly, to state that the connection between the origin andthemeaning in unknown."
(Collins, 1958)
“GO”isalexical(ormain)verb.Itcanbeviewedasadynamicandanintransitiveverbsharingthetypical
syntacticfunctions of averb
Table1:Syntacticstructuresof“GO”combinations
(1)V(Go)+adverb Goright/go wrong
(3)Go+infinitive/gerund Goshopping
(4)Go +preposition Go in there
(5)Go +adjective Go fast/Go home
Table2:Thesemanticsensesencodedbytheverb“GO”
(1)Movement(move/travelfromonelocationtoanother) He’sgoneto school;I’mgoing in thecar
(2)Belong /fit(person orentity belongsin
aspecificlocation,fitsinaspecific location) Doesthatpiecegothere?Thebookgoesontheshelf.
(3)Disappearance(personorentityisnolongerpresent/
missing withoutimplication ofprior
movement)
Where’sthatbookgone?(when lookingforit)
(4)Futureintent(infinitival) I’m going todance;Shegoesto gethimfromschool (5)Encourage Go on,you can do it.
(6)Sound (sound,noiseorspeech) Itwentbang;Dogsgo woof.
(7)Happening What’sgoing on?Whatwenton here?
(8)Giveuppossession Letgo.
Trang 3(9)Specifiedmotion(atspecificlocation) Golikethiswithyourfoot;Thetape’sgoing roundand round (10)State/outcome It’sgonewrong;It’sgoing cold.
(11)Orderofoccurrence You gofirst.
(12)Aimfor He’sgoing fortheredone;Iwentfortheblack.
(13)Searching /readingetc Let’sgo throughthisbook;Iwentthrough thatpile.
(14)Increase/decrease(size,value) Thepricewentup;Thatballoon’sgoing down
(15)Resume Go back to the jigsaw; You’re going back to
thetoys.
(16)Catch illness You’llgodown withacold;Hewentdown withflu.
(17)Dislike Have you gone off chips?
Iwentoffjigsaws
There have been a number of writers making investigations into idioms with different pointsofviewandobjectives.InEnglish,somefamousoneswerecollectedandwrittenbyresearcherssuch
as“The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms”by Ammer, C In“NTC’s
AmericanIdiomsDictionary”,Spears,
R.andKirkpatrick,B.focusonthemeaning,usageandappropriatecontextsforeachidiomaticphrase.N
g u y ễ n Lực,LươngVănĐangaretwoauthorswho made a significant contribution in the field of Vietnamese idioms They
wrote“ThànhngữTiếngViệt”whichisacollectionofVietnameseidiomsarrangedinalphabeticalorderwithclear
explanationsandexamplesextractedfromVietnamesenovels,newspapersandmagazines
Moreover, Nguyễn Trần Trụ who wrote“Thành ngữ tục ngữ lược giải”explainsmeanings of
the most common idioms and proverbs in such simple, clear ways that learnerscanusethis book for consulting and referencepurposes
Inaddition,“TừđiểnthànhngữtụcngữViệtNam”byĐặngHồngChương,“1575Thànhngữ
-Tụcngữcầnbànthêm”byLêGiaandanumberofcontrastivestudiesonthevariousaspectsofidioms
havebeencarried outin DanangUniversity by Vietnameseresearchers
Somes t u d i e s o f V i e t n a m e s e r e s e a r c h e r s t h a t t h e a u t h o r h a s
f o u n d s o f a r t e n d t o m a k e comparisons between ways of using some popular structures with the verbs they chose Theyalso listed grammatical structures and provided a wide range of examples and Vietnamesetranslated versions in order to help other linguists to obtain the examples’ meanings morebroadly Thanks to this, when these authors presented their conclusions, their findings can beviewedon amorecomprehensive scale
Relatingtotheverb“GO”,HàThịHồng(2010)conducted“AContrastiveSudyoftheverbGoinEnglishan
dĐiinVietnamese:APerspectiveofEmbodimentinCognitiveLinguistics.”Thestudyprovidedacriticalanal
ysisoftheoreticalapproachesofcognitionofexplaininglanguagephenomena.Throughtheanalysisoftheverb
“GO”inEnglishandtheverbĐIinVietnamese,the researcher attempted to present another viewpoint of linguistic exploration, i.e to interprettheuseof languagefromthe understanding of our cognition
METHODOLOGY
This study was conducted by combining the two research approaches of both quantitative andqualitative In the first place, data was collected from a wide range of sources from printedpublicationsande-booksontheInternet(certifiedbyGoogleBooks).Afterthecollectingstagewas finished, examples then were qualitatively
ofsyntacticandsemanticfeatures.Atthesametime,theywerealsocomparedwiththeirVietnamese equivalents under a process of statistical analysis to fully answer to the two firstresearchq u e s t i o n i n d i v i d u a l l y F o r t h e t h i r d q u e s t i o n , p e d a g o g i c a l i m p l i c
a t i o n s w e r e
Trang 4withdrawn after the two questions about syntactic and semantic features were brought outentirely
This study is intended to investigate English “GO” idioms with reference to the Vietnameseequivalents,therefore,thedescriptiveandcomparativemethodshavebeenchosen.Firstofa ll,the descriptive method is used in order to give complete and evident descriptions of bothsyntacticandsemanticfeaturesofEnglishidiomsoftheverb“GO”.Secondly,thecomparativemethod is applied to identify similarities and differences with the Vietnamese equivalents.Someothermethodssuchasanalyticalandsyntheticmethodshavealsobeenusedassupporti ngmethods.Whileanalysesarevitaltoanalyzingcollecteddata,groupingresultsintodivisions is crucial to give a comprehensive view of what has been concluded Last but notleast, devoted commentaries and guidance from the author’s supervisor are very useful to theauthor Without these valuable and major contributions, the author could not have done thisresearchsuccessfully andeffectively
To collect data for the research, Google search engine has been placed in use and it has beenthemostpopularandeffectivetoolsofartodiscoverreliable
anddiversesourcesofmaterials.Thevitaltiptheauthorusedhereisputtingsomekeywordsbetweentwoquo tationmarksand,consequently, examples gathered so far have been the most precise ones from printed booksthat are also typed by Google Books’ hard-working employees to make Internet versions.Therefore, essential information about authors, years of publication and names of publishersare always presented clearly At the same time, some dictionaries have been searched to findstructures and idioms related to the verb “GO” as well as their Vietnamese equivalents Afterthat, the collected data will be classified thanks to the clustering and classification techniques,which helps greatly in defining and figuring out various syntactic and semantic features inmeaning categories or structures and idioms later Other techniques are also employed such asreading comprehension, note-taking or meaning analyzing to select precisely materials relatedto English idioms with the verb “GO” In sum, because of these data collection techniques,English idioms with the verb
“GO” have been collected successfully up to now together withanarray of authenticexamples from reliablesources
The stageofanalyzingdata istoqualitativelyandquantitativelydescribe syntacticandsemantic features of English idioms with the verb “GO” to provide a larger view of Englishidioms in general as well as English idioms with the verb “GO” in particular For such reason,the data profiling technique is used in this step to track the frequency, distribution andcharacteristics of the data collected Finally, illustrated examples of the above-mentionedfeaturesarecited to present thefeatures effectively
RESULTSANDDISCUSSIONS
Syntacticfeaturesof “GO”idioms
From what have been collected and analyzed, the most typical and outstanding features of thestructureof“GO”idiomscanebesynthesized inthetableas follows
Trang 5Chart 1: The second component of “GO” idioms with GO as a single verb
Simple noun phrase (NP) Complex NP
38.71%
Preposition + simple NP Preposition + complex NP Adjective Adverb
Preposition
Table3 Thestructureof“GO” iidiomswithGO asa singleverb Syntactic
feature(Go+compo nents)
SingleverbG
o
Table 4 Thestructure ofGO idiomswith GOas aphrasalverb
Syntactic featurePhrasalverbGO+compo
Phrasalverb Nounphrase
(NP) Preposition +NP Preposition+ pronoun
Trang 6Chart 2: Phrasal verb "GO" + components
Go off
9.52%
Go about Go out
Go through Go for
Go down Go up Go along Go on
Go against
The data shows that the structures “go + preposition + NP” (38.71%) and “Go off + NP”,
“Gothrough + NP” are mostly used to form “GO” idioms The rate of the two phrasal verbscombiningwith NP is 73%
The structure “phrasal verb + NP” accounts for the highest rate 15/46 (32.61%) Overall sumof both structures having single verb and phrasal verb with “GO” and idioms having
“GO” asasingleverbmakeup the higher rate (75.61 %)
The idiomatic meaning and the equivalents in Vietnamese of the “GO” idioms are going to beshownand discussed in thepart 4.2 ofthis research
Semanticfeaturesof “GO”idioms
As what can be seen, from the above presented list of the “GO” idioms, “GO” can combinewith a variety of words or phrases denoting different meanings.Although the verb
“to go” isdefined as “to move or to travel from one place to another place”(Oxford Advance Learners’Dictionary), its original meaning can be only kept as “movement”in some cases In most ofthe other cases, the meaning as“movement” can be changed completely new The meaning of“GO”idioms
mainly dependson thesecondcomponentofthe combinations
Among the number of 110 “GO” idioms collected, there are only eight idioms, accounting for7.3%,inwhichtheverb“GO”keepstheoriginmeaningas“movement”.Theyaregoingtobepresentedin the following table
Table5.Idiomswith“GO”denoting“movement”
Go likethewind Go/Run quickly Đi/chạy nhưma đuổi
Gohell forleather Goasfastaspossible Đinhanhnhưbay
Goon ajourney Trip,outing Dungoạn,chu du,điđây điđó
Goonbusiness Goon amission Đicông tác
Goforaspin Takeadrive, goforarideinacar Điô tô,chạy xemộtvòng
Goto bed withthechickens Gotobedat sundown-at
thesametimechickengotobed Đingủ từlúcgàlênchuồng Gowith theflow Followt h e g e n e r a l t e n d e n c y
a n d goalong with whateverhappens.
Đitheo số đông,chạy theođasố
Go fullbat Goveryquickly Đibachânbốn cẳng
The rest number of “GO” idioms contains the verb “GO” not meaning “move to
somewhere”like “gotothe supermarket”,“gotothepark”,“gotothezoo”,etc.The
differentmeaningsof
Trang 7thev e r b “ G O ” s e e m t o d e p e n d o n t h e h i d d e n m e a n i n g o f t h e s e c o n d c o m p
o n e n t i n t h e combinationasanidiom.Asmentionedinthepreviouschapters,idiomsarenor mallyfixedexpressions that they cannot be understood by separating each component, but as the whole.In order
tosummarizesome outstandingsemanticfeaturesof theGO idiomswhich have beencategogized based
on the function of indicating things of noun phrase, the author implement astasticasin thetable6
Table6.CommoncategoriesofnounphrasesinGO idioms
Distance
Animals
Objects
Parts
ofhouse
Body parts
Naturalworld
Trang 8Chart 3: Common categories of noun phrases in "GO" idioms
Fruit 5.41%
8.11%
5.41%
8.11% 19.92%
Work of art Weapon Distance Animals Material Objects Parts of house
Sport equipment Body parts
The data shows that the noun phrases indicating objects and natural world accounts for
thehighest rate, 18.92% for objects and 27.03% for natural world Parts of a house, parts of
bodyand animals have the same rate (8.11 %), ranked in the second higher position,
according totheabovetable
Vietnameseidiomsalsocontainthenounsbelongingtosuchcategories.Forexample,theword“dog” (chó)
appears in the idiom “fight like cats and dogs” (cãi nhau như chó với mèo).“Window”(cửa
sổ) also entersthe idiom“ném tiền quacửa sổ” totalk about
wastingsomething.Intermsofthenounsindicatingpartsofbody,Vietnameseidiomssay“anhemnhưthểtay
chân”totalkaboutthecloserelationshipbetweenbrothersandsisters(siblings)or“taito mặt lớn” to
describe someone in high position of society With regard to natural world,Vietnamese have
an idiom “gió (wind) thoảng mây (cloud) trôi” to refer something not long-lasting The image
of “sky” and “land”appear in the idiom like “trời xui đất khiến” to implythatsomething
happens accidently or coincidently
Languagecanreflecteveryaspectoflife,includingwaysoflivingandthinking.Throughthese“GO” idioms in the
study, it can be seen that humans generally tend to take anything in
lifefromtheworldtoimplywhattheymean.Therichnessoflanguageisreflectedclearlyinidioms.Through idioms, a
national or cultural identity can be felt distinctly It makes the differencebetweentwonations.For example,theidiom
“goforasong”can notbe“rẻnhưbàihát”,but“rẻnhưbèo”.
However,therearesomesimilaritiesinthewayofchoosingtheobjectsorphenomenatomakehiddencompari
son.Thisfeaturecanbeseenclearlyintheidioms“gothroughwaterandfire”and“goonthestreets”.Both
VietnameseandEnglishthinkthat“waterandfire”isdangerousand challenging; therefore, they use them to imply something
ifsomeonewantstoreachsuccess,theyoftenhavetoovercomethem.I n ordertoavoidinsultingandhurtingth
egirlsorwomenwhoworksasaprostitute,boththeVietnameseandtheEnglishchooseto usemetaphorical
expressions
Trang 9Expressingfe
elings
&emotio
n
16.25
Getting unhappy/miserable 1 1.25 Makingeffortanddevotiontobesuccessful 7 8.75 8.75
Table 7 helps to draw out some remarks as follows First, most of the “GO” idioms expressfeelings and states of emotion (16.25%), in which the idioms expressing anger account for11.25%, the highest of all kinds of feelings mentioned in this study Second, the idiomsdenoting damage and failure make up 11.25 % and rank the second Regarding the idiomsexpressing anger, for instance, Vietnamese also have a variety of idioms from the
lower levelto higher one of emotional level For example, “đá thúng đụng nia”, “giận cá
chém thớt”,“giận tím mặt”, “nóng mặt nóng gáy”, “tức sôi máu”, “đằng đằng sát khí”,
“nổi cơn tambành”,“nổi trận lôi đình”, etc.
Trang 10If in English, the factor of colors is mainly used to tell about the facial expression and imply
astateofemotionlike“gored”(gettingembarrassed),“gowhite”(gettingscared),inVietnamese,
colors are also commonly used to describe such facial expression and
feelings,suchas“sợxanhmét”,“nhìnmặttáixanhtáimét”,“mặtđỏnhưgấc”,“thẹnđỏcảmặt”,andso on However, the factor of fruit which is used to describe anger like“go bananas”, “gonuts”seemingly cannot be found in
Vietnameseidioms
CONCLUSIONS
Conclusion
The study is to conduct an investigation into the syntactic and semantic features of
“GO”idiomswithreferencetotheirVietnameseequivalents.Inordertoachievethistargetefficiently , a number of theoretical backgrounds are presented to support the study There arealso implications for learning, teaching and translating “GO” idioms By answering all threequestions, the author hopes that the findings will be a practical and useful material for thelearners of English and Vietnamese as a foreign language understand and use these idiomsproperlyandeffectively in reality
Thestudy hasrevealed thefollowing results:
Semantically,themeaningsofallthecollected“GO”idiomsinEnglishwithreferencetotheirVietnamese equivalents could be expressed in the form of a noun phrase, an adjective phrase,an adverb phrase However, such “GO” idioms, when translating into Vietnamese to get theirequivalents, do not frequently need the appearance of the word “GO” (“ĐI”).Based on thefunctional grammar viewpoint, the researcher has investigated each semantic field based onsuperficial grammatical structures
In the light of this approach, “GO” idioms are analyzed informs of phrasal structures in relation to their semantic features The phrasal structures couldbecategorizedintonounphrases,verbphrases,prepositionalphrasesandadverbialphrases Thedifferencesinsemanticandsyntacticfeaturesofthese“GO”idiomsinEnglishcouldcausesome problems to the Vietnamese learners learning English as a foreign language Therefore,on the basis of the result of the study, we would like to put forward some implications for thepossiblebetter languageteaching, learning and translating
Implications
Implication forteaching “GO”idioms
Firstly, the idioms introduced to students should be suitable for the learners For learners at alower level, the idioms should be listed in semantic fields, topics or key words Of course, theexplanationintermsofstructureandmeaningisindispensableinordertoavoidmisunderstanding the figurative meaning At advanced level, analyzing semantic mechanismsof the idioms should be done so that learners can discover the figurative meaning of an idiomby themselves
Secondly, teaching the history of how an idiom came into common usage is also helpful
tolearners and may provide clues to its present usage For example, the idiom “Go
Dutch”originated from the bad reputation of the Dutch is that they are very mean That is
why “GoDutch” means share the bill equally, and the Vietnamese equivalent should be “tiền
ai ngườinấytrả”.
Thirdly,tounderstandthemeaningofidioms,learnersnotonlyhavethebasicknowledgeofalanguage but also master the cultural characteristics of idioms Therefore, in order to teachidioms effectively, it is necessary to teach their
example,thedifferenceincultureaffectsthetranslationoftheidiom“golikeahotcake”.InVietnamese,wecann otsay“bánchạy/bánđắtnhưchiếcbánhnóng”.Instead, wesay “bánchạy(đắt)như