Get phrasal verbs in term of syntactic and semantic features with reference to vietnamese equivalents

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY NGUYEN THI LE THUY ‘GET’ PHRASAL VERBS IN TERM OF SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES WITH REFERENCE TO VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS NH

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

NGUYEN THI LE THUY

‘GET’ PHRASAL VERBS IN TERM OF SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC

FEATURES WITH REFERENCE TO VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

(NHỮNG ĐẶC ĐIỂM CÚ PHÁP VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA CỤM THÀNH NGỮ

M.A THESIS

Hanoi, 2013

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

NGUYEN THI LE THUY

‘GET’ PHRASAL VERBS IN TERM OF SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC

FEATURES WITH REFERENCES TO VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

(NHỮNG ĐẶC ĐIỂM VỀ CÚ PHÁP VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA CỤM THÀNH NGỮ ‘GET’ VÀ NHỮNG TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT)

M.A THESIS

Field: English Language Code: 60220201 Supervisor: Ly Lan, Ph.D

Hanoi, 2013

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DECLARATION

I hereby declare that no part of the enclosed Master Thesis has been copied or reproduced by me from any other’s work without acknowledgement and that the thesis is originally written by me under strict guidance of my supervisor Any help that I have received in my research work and the preparation of the thesis itself has been acknowledged In addition, I certify that all information sources and literature used are indicated in the thesis’s references

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For the completion of this work, I have been fortunate to receive invaluable contributions from many people I would like to express my deeply thanks to my supervisor, Ly Lan Ph.D, who step by step guides me during my writing thesis Without her assistance, excellent suggestions, expert advice and detailed critical comments, the work could not have been completed I own her a debt of gratitude that cannot be measured

In addition, I am greatly indebted to all my lectures at the Faculty of Graduate Studies at Hanoi Open University for their useful lectures, supports, encouragement and for inspiring me the love for English foreign language teaching and doing scientific research

Besides, the study could not have been prepared without the support and provision of useful materials from all my colleagues and friends Therefore, their kindness will never be forgotten

I would also give my deepest gratitude to my family for their constant support and encouragement during the time I was attending the course and while the work was in progress

Finally, although great efforts have been made to complete the thesis I am aware that this study is far from perfect Hence, constructive comments are welcome for more perfection of the thesis

* An asterisk signifies that what follows it is incorrect

^ Caret indicates omissions

[ ] Reference Number

[ : ] Reference Number and page are separated by ‘:’

For example: [ 15: 27] the reference number is 15 and the page in the reference is 27

( : ) Illustration examples reference resources (reference

number : page number)

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LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 2.1: Information of the participants

Table 2.2: The learners’ acquisition levels on the syntactic features

Table 2.3: The learners’ acquisition levels on the semantic features

Table 3.1: Syntactic mistakes committed by the participants

Table 3.2: Semantic mistakes committed by the participants

Figure 2.1: The total of non-passed and passed participants

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

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1.1.1 The Ancestors of Phrasal verbs in Old English 6

1.1.3 Phrasal Verbs in Early Modern English 8

1.1.4 Phrasal Verbs in Present-day English 9

1.2.1 Overview of English Phrasal Verbs 10 1.2.2 Definition of English Phrasal Verbs 11 1.2.3 Classifications of English Phrasal Verbs 13

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3.1 Syntactic features of 'Get' phrasal verbs 35

3.1.2.1 ‘Get’ phrasal verbs can be separated by their object 39

3.1.2.2 ‘Get’ phrasal verbs cannot be separated by their object 40

3.2 Semantics features of 'Get' phrasal verbs 42

3.2.1 Non-idiomatic and literal meanings of ‘get’ phrasal verbs 42

3.2.2 Idiomatic meanings of ‘get’ phrasal verbs 43

3.2.3 Metaphoric meaning of ‘get’ phrasal verbs 47

3.3 'Get' phrasal verbs and their Vietnamese equivalent 48 3.4 Some discussion on results of survey conducted at UNETI 51

Chapter 4: Possible implications for mastering 'get' phrasal verbs 55

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1

INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

There are thousands of languages amended and used in the world, each of them has differences and uniqueness; among which English can be seen as one of the International languages to serve people’s daily-life communication In fact, English has been recommended to be a compulsory subject in training curriculum of every school and university in Vietnam

Plenty of Vietnamese children may get accustomed to spoken English as soon as they begin learning how to write and read in their mother tongue This means that people have recognized the importance and necessity of English as well as the advantages that English may bring about However, learning English

is always a big challenge for Vietnamese native-speaker learners One of the challenging things of acquiring English is phrasal verbs, which seem to be too hard for them to master, hence inevitable errors in using the phrasal verbs in communication: both spoken and written English

In theory, phrasal verbs are generally considered to be idiomatic combinations of a verb and an adverbial particle The exact status of the latter is still being debated, scholars being divided on whether it is an adverb, prepositional adverb, postpositional prefix, special part of speech, etc Phrasal verbs are quite frequently found in the English language They carries with widely varying meanings which are not always clear and often have little to do with the verb attached itself to the adverbial particle

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Generally, the main function of phrasal verbs is conceptual categorization

of reality in the speaker's mind They denote not only actions or states as

"ordinary" verbs do, but also specify their spatial, temporal or other characteristics The ability to describe actions or states more precisely, vividly and emotionally is determined by the adverbial particle components of phrasal verbs By combining with these elements, verbs of broader meaning are subjected to a regular and systematic multiplication of their semantic functions While the English verb has no consistent structural representation of aspect, adverbial particles either impart an additional meaning to the base verb (e.g the

durative verb sit merges with the particle down into the terminative phrasal verb sit down) or introduce a lexical modification to its fundamental semantics It

is due their special characteristics, learners always have to face untold

difficulties to master phrasal verbs Among English phrasal verbs, ‘get’ is one of

the commonest words and is used in varied ways

Since phrasal verbs are difficult to be understood from the context (unlike simple words), they are likely to be used incorrectly The reasons lie behind the Vietnamese native-speaker learners’ inefficient usage is nothing, but the unawareness of the meaning of phrasal verbs in the English source language and their insufficient practice needed for using this special kind of verbs

It is common knowledge that an adequate translation requires good sense

of nuances in the semantics of both the source-language and target-language

texts In my process of English teaching, ‘get’ phrasal verbs have made me pay a

great interest to, because they possess a number of syntactic and semantic features as well as other stylistic peculiarities

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In order to find a better way to acquire the ‘get’ phrasal verbs, especially

in doing translation from English into Vietnamese and vice versa, the topic

relating to ‘get’ phrasal verbs with reference to Vietnamese equivalent has been

chosen for my graduation paper

2 Aims and objectives of the study

The thesis is aimed at analyzing the syntactic and semantic features of

that they could be able to use them exactly and successful in their real world communication in English

There are two main objectives of this study The first objective is pointing

out some syntactic and semantics features of ‘get’ phrasal verbs with reference to

Vietnamese equivalent; and the second one is proposing some implications for

mastering ‘get’ phrasal verbs in an effective way

3 Research question

In conducting the study, following question should be answered: (i) What

are the syntactic and semantic features of ‘get’ phrasal verbs? (ii) What are the

difficulties faced by learners at University of Economic - Technical Industries in

understanding the above features of ‘get’ phrasal verb? (iii) What are the implications for mastering ‘get’ phrasal verbs?

4 Scope of the study

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It is due to the framework of a Master thesis, this study focuses mainly on

specifically characteristic trait of the English language

5 Methods of the study

In order to deal with the subject effectively, a flexible combination of methods is employed First, the descriptive method is utilized to give a deep and

detailed description of the ‘get’ phrasal verbs and their Vietnamese equivalent

Then examples for illustrating the description will be taken from the grammar and reference books written by contemporary influential linguists in English as well as from translated publications available in Vietnam

Survey questionnaire in form of a written test is used as one of data

collection methods to evaluate participants’ ability in understanding ‘get’

phrasal verb in terms of syntactic and semantic feature Then, the statistic method is applied to present quantitative descriptions in a manageable form to simplify large amounts of data in a sensible way

In addition, comparison method is used to analyze the ‘get’ phrasal verbs

with reference to Vietnamese equivalent, hence pointing out the distinctive

features of ‘get’ phrasal verbs which cause difficulties for Vietnamese learners

and suggesting some implications for teaching these verbs to learners at University of Economics and Technical Industries

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6 Design of the study

A part from the Introduction and Conclusion, the thesis will be divided into 4 chapters:

- Chapter 1 presents the theoretical background issues relating to English phrasal verbs

- Chapter 2 gives the methodology which has been applied to conduct the

research of ‘get’ phrasal verbs with reference to Vietnamese equivalents

- Chapter 3 describes the findings of the syntactic and semantic features of

at University of Economics and Technical Industries (UNETI)

- Chapter 4 proposes some implications for mastering ‘get’ phrasal verbs,

especially for the target of learners at University of Economics and Technical Industries (UNETI)

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CHAPTER 1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 Literature review

Over the past years, phrasal verbs have been much studied, thus a chronological survey helps in covering all the research conducted so far on the matter

The chronological survey meant to highlight the studies that have been written since the 16th century to the 20th century, constitute a premise for the next section on a summary of the history of English phrasal verbs

1.1.1 The Ancestors of Phrasal Verbs in Old English

Millward, C.M [24] pointed out that the range and importance of verb particle-constructions in the spoken language of the early stages of development

is hard to be dealt with Still, Baugh Albert C [5], Traugott [38], and Elizabeth

C [38] have shown that the Old English ancestors of modern phrasal verbs were generally inseparable prefix verbs, although some separable forms did exist

Millward states that the inseparable prefix verb was a form in which the particle was attached to the beginning of the verb These Old English prefixed verbs are comparable to current phrasal forms For example, in present day English, there is the mono-transitive verb to burn and then the phrasal mono-

transitive to burn up Old English had baerman (to burn) and forbaerman (to

burn up) The prefix for remained affixed to the verb and could not move as modern particle can [24]

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Such Old English compound verbs were also highly idiomatic, in that the meaning of the compound form did not necessarily reflect the meaning of the root

Denison [10] provides beraedan as an example because it meant to

Akimoto [3] suggests that Old English prefixes often remained before the verb because the Old English had strong object-before-verb tendencies, whereas present day English is largely a VO (verb + object) language, which has made it possible for particles to travel to post verbal positions

Some Old English verbs did function as modern phrasal verbs do Referring to the post-verbal particles in this period was still often very directional, in close relationship with a prepositional meaning

Therefore, applications of the particle up in Old English conveyed a sense

of direction upward, as in to grow up (ward), rather than the completive sense, as

in to break up (completely), that would become more common in Middle English

and beyond

1.1.2 Phrasal Verbs in Middle English

This section will deal with those forms of phrasal verbs that occur in Middle English Thus, the formation of prefixes verbs in Old English was no longer productive in Middle English, and the loss of productivity was already evident in Old English, in which certain authors added a post-verbal particle to prefixed verbs, possibly because the prefix was losing meaning [10:47]

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The rapid borrowings of French verbs into Middle English likely showed the development of phrasal verbs because of competition in semantic fields of the Old English prefixed verbs [5:340] and [12: 386] For example, the French borrowing destroy could accommodate the meaning of the Old English

French forms also likely hindered phrasal verbs because of lexical register French was the language of status in England after Norman Conquest, and phrasal verbs were considered informal [37:123], [12:398]

Nonetheless, phrasal verbs regained strong productivity by the 15th century Middle English underwent a shift in syntax from many instances of SOV to SVO

as it lost many synthetic inflections from Old English, becoming a much more analytic, or word-order based language The new VO word order, as Akimoto claims, likely enabled adverbial particles [12:386]

In other words, Old English forbrecan became to break up By late Middle

English, phrasal verbs could be divided into three categories such as Old English style inseparable particle + verb, phrasal verbs including verbs + separable particle and nominal compounds derived from the first two [12:386]

1.1.3 Phrasal Verbs in Early Modern English

The incidence of phrasal verbs exploded in Early Modern English Shakespeare himself applied the form widely through the plays Hiltuten explains that the phrasal verbs were used extensively in Early Modern English dramatic texts because of their variable shades of meaning and productive capacity “to be expanded to form new idioms” [17]

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Akimoto also notes that “phrasal verbs occur more frequently in letters

This confirms that phrasal verbs occupied a lower social position in Early Modern English than, perhaps, single Latinate verbs that could fill their semantic fields, which gives rise, incidentally, to a syntactic test for phrasal verbs

Phrasal verbs in Early Modern English could be formed with a noun +

particle, such as ‘to louse up’ [24:319] It was also in this period that pronominal objects were firmly established before particles (for example: She put it on But not * She put on it) as a standard practice, while nominal objects retained movement before and after the particle (for example: She put the dress on or She

1.1.4 Phrasal Verbs in present-day English

In present-day English, phrasal verbs are identifiable by particle movement (when transitive), stressed particles, incapacity for adverb intervention in the verb phrase, by translation and passivization A phrasal verb

in present-day English is a verb that takes a complementary particle which is an adverb resembling a preposition, necessary to complete sentence (for example:

Therefore, the earliest study that has been written about phrasal verbs dates from the 16th century, when William Bullokar wrote The Brief Grammar

studies have been done one was A Treatise of the English Particles written by Walker Leeds in 1665 [21], and the other was The English Grammar written by

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Michael Mattaire in 1721 [23] Further on, Henry Sweet entitled his study on

phrasal verbs A New English Grammar in 1892 [36]

1.2 Theoretical background

1.2.1 An Overview of English Phrasal Verbs

According to Stephens “a phrasal verb is made up of a verb and one or two or three particles which together function as a single verb The particle may

be an adverb, a preposition, or a word that can act as either an adverb or a preposition [35]

Mortimer [26] states that "The English language has hundreds of two-part

verbs such as bring up, carry on and put up These are easy enough to understand

when the meaning of the whole two-part verb is equal to the meaning of the sum

of its two parts" However, he concedes: "But in many cases, knowing the meaning of the parts does not help us to know the meaning of the whole" Thus,

to add the meaning of bring to the meaning of up will not help us to understand

the meaning of bring up in the expression He brought up a point Nor will it help

us to understand bring up in the expression She brought up a family

Whether used literally or figuratively, phrasal verbs are acquired early by native speakers, but usually late by foreign learners because their grammar is difficult and their meaning cannot in many cases be deduced from the meanings

of the separate words There can be no doubt that phrasal verbs have received a considerable amount of attention in recent years

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1.2.2 Definition of English phrasal verbs

A phrasal verb is a type of verb in English that operates more like a phrase than a word

The expression phrasal verb refers, in English Grammar, to a combination

of a verb and a prepositional or adverbial particle, in which the combination often takes on a meaning which is apparently not the simple sum of its parts, for

example turn up means ‘appear’

Longman Dictionary of phrasal verbs defines phrasal verb as “idiomatic combination of a verb and adverb, or a verb and preposition (or verb with both adverb and preposition)” [44]

A grammarian such as Eduard, Vlad (1998) [11:93] describes phrasal verb

as “combination of a lexical verb and adverbial particle” Verbs as ‘give up’, ‘fall

equivalent to one lexical item

Heaton considers that “phrasal verbs are compound verbs that results from combining a verb with an adverb or a preposition, the resulting compound verb being idiomatic” [16:103]

Tom McArthur in the Oxford Companion to the English Language (1992)

notes that these verbs are also referred to by many other names such verb phrase, discontinuous verbs, compound verb, verb-adverb combination, and verb-particle construction Crystal in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language calls this linguistic phenomenon a “Multi-word verb” that is best

followed by a preposition” They go on to say that “most of the particles look

like prepositions but act as adverbs, and usually change the meaning of the verb

they are connected” The same definition is given by Kollin [20:12] when she

states that “phrasal verbs are common structures in English They consist of a verb combined with a preposition like word, known as particle” She goes on to say that “phrasal verbs include both two-and three-word strings” Examples of

such phrasal verbs are ‘give up’, ‘look after’, ‘hand in’ which include two strings while ‘put up with’, ‘give in to’ and ‘put up for’ include three strings

Phrasal verbs are considered by Graver [14:261] as “semi-compounds” whereas Palmer [28:180] regards them as “single units in the grammar” He gives reasons for naming them like that by saying that “there are several

collocational restrictions We can give up but not give down We can look after someone but not look before him” He adds that phrasal verbs are “obviously semantic units” because ‘give in’ equals ‘yield’, ‘look after’ may be replaced by the literary ‘tend’, ‘put up’ has the meaning of ‘invent’, and ‘put up with’ means

‘tolerate’

What has been stated by Palmer [28] concerning the treatment of phrasal verbs as single units is quite true and has a solid basis simply because we have to place certain prepositions or adverbs after certain verbs in order to convey meanings or concepts

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All these definitions lead to another aspect proposed for discussion, which

is the classification of phrasal verbs in English language

1.2.3 Classifications of English phrasal verbs

Before discussing the classification of English phrasal verbs, it would be necessary to mention the classification of the English verbs with a view to pointing out the position of phrasal verbs in English Grammar and what status they have

According to Levitchi, the verb is considered to be the heart of a sentence

It “is a part of speech denoting actions: to work, to go, to sing; process in the form of actions: to stand, to lie; the appearance of a characteristic: to bud, the modification of a characteristic: to harden; an attitude: to be glad” [22:83]

English verbs can be classified in terms of composition, derivation, basic form and content In accordance with composition, verbs are simple, compound, complex and verb phrases The term ‘compound verb’ is often used in place of

‘complex’, a type of complex phrase But this usage is not accepted in linguistics, because ‘compound’ and ‘complex’ are not synonymous

Complex verbs are a variety of verbal compounds made up of a principal

verb and an adverbial particle (up, in, out) which usually modifies and sometimes only determines the meaning of the former For example ‘to bring

chapter, since Renaissance Period, complex verbs have gone a long way developing steadily and giving rise to ever newer forms as a rule, on the basic of

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Old English one-syllable verbs Many of these complex forms have developed an astonishing polysemy

A complex verb of the type ‘to give up’, ‘to take in’, ‘to take off’, ‘to bring

out’ , though a variety of compound verbs proper (‘to broadcast’, ‘to

verb may be separated from its adverbial particle by a direct object Complex

verbs such as ‘to break loose’, ‘to leave alone’ behave like ‘to give up’, but they

differ from them in that loose, home, alone are not adverbial particles but adverbs and adjectives, bearers of a far greater semantic weight than adverbial particles, although as indissolubly linked with the verb proper [22:67]

An aspect related to compound verbs is that compounds, as hold off are not to be confused with combinations as ‘to come in’ or ‘to go out’ or ‘to look

up’ , in which in, out, up are adverbs forming answers to such questions as:

about the rain or What did the rain do?)

The exemplifications support the fact that complex verb is a special category of compounds [22:69]

So far, all these classifications and comments have shown that phrasal verbs are considered and called ‘complex verbs’ in Leon Levitchi’s point of

(i) Verb + adverb

The old lady was taken in (‘deceived’) by the salesman

(ii) Verb + preposition

She sat about (‘started’) making a new dress

(iii) Verb + adverb + preposition

I cannot put up with (‘bear’) him because he is always

complaining.

On the other hand, the Oxford English Grammar distinguishes seven types

of phrasal verbs in English according to transitivity [42:145]

(i) Intransitive phrasal verbs (give in)

(ii) Transitive phrasal verbs (find out)

(iii) Mono-transitive prepositional verbs (look after)

(iv) Doubly transitive prepositional verbs (put up with)

(v) Copular prepositional verbs (serve as)

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(vi) Mono-transitive phrasal prepositional verbs (look up = ‘respect’) (vii) Doubly transitive phrasal prepositional verbs (put something down to

In short, phrasal verbs can be classified into 4 kinds: phrasal verbs (intransitive and transitive), prepositional phrasal verbs, verbs with prepositional adverbs, verbs with particles and preposition, and the ‘get’ phrasal verbs can serve as all kinds

So far, this classification is the most comprehensive because other grammarians, like Quirk, R., [30], Veres, Grigore [39] and Eduard, V [11] divide phrasal verbs into transitive and intransitive ones

1.2.3.1 Intransitive phrasal verbs

According to Heaton [16], intransitive phrasal verbs (Vintr) cannot be followed by an object They have the structure as follows:

Intransitive phrasal verb = Verb + Particle (V intr + Part.)

Examples:

The children were sitting down

Drink up quickly!

The plane has now taken off

The prisoner finally broke down

Most of the particles are place adjuncts or can function as such Heaton

claims that normally, the particle cannot be separated from its verbs (Drink

direction can be modified by intensifiers (Go right on)

A subtype of intransitive phrasal verbs has a prepositional adverb as its particle, behaving as a preposition with some generalized ellipsis of its complements Examples:

In some instances, the particles from the first element in a complex preposition

Come along (with us/me)

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Some intransitive patterns can become transitive by the addition of a direct object Examples:

Note however that the patterns are not always related in meaning, as with

When the intransitive phrasal verb is in isolation, the stress is always on the particle Within a sentence the stress is also on the particle when the phrasal verb stands alone at the end of a sentence (or clause) as in the following:

The lorry slowed `down and came to a halt

Do Tom and the new man get `on?

What time did the flight eventually take `off?

In other cases, especially when an adverb follows the phrasal verb, the usual rules for sentence stress apply:

The lorry slowed down i`mmediately.

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Tom and the new man get on`well?

1.2.3.2 Transitive phrasal verbs

Transitive phrasal verbs (Vtr), in Heaton’s opinion, are those that always take a direct object The position of the direct object varies They have the structures as follows:

Transitive Phrasal verb = Verb + Direct object + Particle (V tr + Od + Part.) Transitive Phrasal verb = Verb + Particle + Direct object(Vtr+ Part + Od)

A phrasal verb can be transitive when it takes a direct object Examples:

We will set up a new unit

Find out whether they are coming

Drink up your milk quickly

They turned on the light

He can’t live down his past

They are bringing over the whole family

The position of direct object depends on whether it is a noun/noun phrase

or a pronoun (me, him, it, us, etc.)

When the direct object is a noun or noun phrase, it can stand either before the particle or after the particle Examples:

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He took off Obama.

When the direct object is a pronoun (me, you, him, her, it, us, them), it

must stand before the particle Examples:

She brought two children up

Or She brought up two children (i.e She raised/reared them.)

But not *She brought up them

Transitive phrasal verbs can be seen in their acceptance of passivization Examples:

The stale cake was thrown away

The building was pulled down

Transitive phrasal verbs can be used with the pronominal form with

“who” or “whom” for people and with “what” for things Examples:

What did you pick up?

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When the Transitive phrasal verb is in isolation, the stress is always on the particle The stress is also on the particle when the direct object is a pronoun

Examples:

Sentence stress applies in other cases, for examples:

She has packed her `job in and has gone to `Italy.

He can take `Obama off `beautifully.

From these examples, it is easy to recognize that some phrasal verbs (pull

difference in meaning There are always exceptions from the rules; Veres Grigore [39] stated that “one and the same phrasal verb may be both transitive and intransitive” Examples:

If you leave the lights on, you will soon run down the battery.

(Transitive)

According to Heaton [16:110], phrasal verbs offer convenient means of making intransitive use of transitive verbs by the addition of a particle “A verb

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may be transitive by itself and yet produces a particle an intransitive phrasal

verb” In fact, ‘give’ is normally transitive but ‘give up’ is intransitive in the

following sentences:

Unsuccessful attempt to scale the north face of the mountain,

the climbers gave up and went down

In this chapter, the related literature has been reviewed and theoretical framework relating general overview of phrasal verbs has been presented Phrasal verb has had a long history of development and attracted a great attention

of researchers and linguists domestic and overseas

There have seen a number of definitions of phrasal verb, but the easiest way to understand what a phrasal verb is that it is made up of a verb and adverbial particle(s) One obvious fact about phrasal verbs is that their meaning

is usually idiomatic in that it is not straightforwardly computed from the meaning of the verb and the meaning of the adverbial particle combined There

is no difficulty in distinguishing between intransitive phrasal verbs and

prepositional verbs since all prepositional verbs have prepositional objects

Despite different ways of classification, phrasal verbs are mainly categorized by basing on their syntactic and semantic features These features

will be analyzed more thoroughly in the third chapter with the cases of ‘get’

phrasal verbs with reference to their Vietnamese equivalent

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CHAPTER 2 METHODOLOGY

This chapter describes the research methodology used for the whole study

It comprises of five smaller parts: (1) research design; (2) research participants; (3) research procedure; (4) data collection instruments and (5) data analysis method

2.1 Research design

This research design builds on the studies done into features of English phrasal verbs in the 20th century, such as “Phrasal and prepositional verbs” by Hughes, M N [18]; “The Phrasal Verb in English” by Bolinger Dwight [6];

“The Syntax of English Phrasal Verbs” by Fink Sroka, Kazimiers [12];

“Understanding Phrasal Verbs” by Murphy, M.J.[27]; “Making Sense of Phrasal Verbs” by Shovel, M [33]; “Verbal Phrases and Phrasal Verbs in Early Modem English” by Benjamins Hiltuten, Risto [17]

The research design is shown by descriptive methods to give a deep and

detailed description of syntactic and semantic features of ‘get’ phrasal verbs

These features are illustrated by a number of extracts taken from two famous

novels ‘Gone With The Wind’ written by Margaret Mitchell [45] and ‘Vanity

from some dictionaries such as Longman Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs by Rosemary Courtney [44], Oxford English Dictionary [43] and reference books

written by contemporary influential linguists in English as Quirk, R et al.[29] and Heaton, J.B [16]

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Survey questionnaire in form of a written test is used as one of data collection methods to evaluate participants’ ability in understanding English and Vietnamese idioms on friendship in terms of syntactic and semantic feature of

descriptions in a manageable form to simplify large amounts of data in a sensible way

In addition, comparative method is used to analyze the ‘get’ phrasal verbs

with reference to Vietnamese equivalent, hence pointing out the distinctive

features of ‘get’ phrasal verbs which cause difficulties for Vietnamese learners

and suggesting some implications for teaching these verbs to learners at University of Economics and Technical Industries

2.2 Research participants

The 100 participants of this study were selected from second-year learners (including males and females) at English department of The University of Economic and Technical Industries (UNETI) This university has been founded since 1956 in Hanoi, with view to training economic experts and technicians English is one of the compulsory subjects, though quite a few UNETI learners consider it as an optional one It also lies in the fact that a certain numbers of the learners are facing a big challenge in mastering English as they did not have any opportunities to study English at high school

Therefore, those who were chosen for the investigation must be the ones who have acquired certain English knowledge, i.e they have been learning

tasks dealing with English ‘get’ phrasal verbs

Table 2.1: Information of the research participants Gender of participant Number of participants

To implement the survey, all participants were required to complete a task

dealing with ‘get’ phrasal verbs which were essential to find out what difficulties they are facing so as to suggest possible implications for teaching ‘get’ phrasal

verbs in an effective way

2.3 Research procedures

In order to achieve the aims and objectives of the study, the process of doing this research has come through three major stages Writing the thesis proposal was the very first stage in the process which lasted nearly two months from early January to late February, 2013 After the proposal with draft outline having been approved, a survey questionnaire and material selection from

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different sources relating to main topic of the thesis was implemented In order

to gather only useful materials, this second stage was a long process to classify all the needed data and took more than three months The last stage started from late July to early September for analyzing and discussed the results from data collection This was also the time when the thesis was completed both in form and content

2.4 Data collection instruments

For achieving the aims and objectives of the study with high reliability, two data collection instruments have been employed: selective material and survey questionnaire

2.4.1 Selective material

In order to give the detail description of English verbs in general and phrasal verbs in particular, hundreds of examples have been taken from the grammar and reference books written by contemporary influential linguists in

English as well as from translated publications available in Vietnam, such as A

match with the illustration for classification of English verbs, especially phrasal verbs

By collecting all sentences including ‘get’ phrasal verbs from two famous

novels “Gone With The Wind” written by Margaret Mitchell [45] and “Vanity Fair” by William Makepeace Thackeray (1846) [46], a large number of

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examples have been found to be good examples for the specific syntactic and

semantic features of ‘get’ phrasal verbs These features, then, have been

analyzed thoroughly and an investigation has been conducted at UNETI to

check its learners’ competence of understanding ‘get’ phrasal verbs with a view

to offering some possible implications for teaching this typical phrasal verbs

2.4.2 The survey questionnaire

The purpose of the survey questionnaire is to assess learner’s proficiency

of ‘get’ phrasal verbs in terms of syntax and semantics It is due to the fact that understanding the syntactic and semantic features of ‘get’ phrasal verbs is not

easy for Vietnamese learners at all, this survey questionnaire is designed in form

of grammaticality judgment test with simplified items falling into 6 tasks (See Appendix 1)

The first three tasks focus on checking the research participants’ ability in

understanding syntactic features of ‘get’ phrasal verbs and the rest examining their ability in understanding semantic features of ‘get’ phrasal verbs All the

tasks which are drawn from the learners’ English curricular courses are aimed at collecting satisfied answers from the target participants The test is required to be completed within 60 minutes under the teacher’s supervision

To ensure the form and content validity of the test, it has been distributed

to three university professors (Tran Thi Thu Hien, Ph.D and Tu Thi Minh Thuy,

MA are from English Department University of Language and International Studies, Vietnam National University in Hanoi; Tran Thi Thu Hien, MA is from Vietnam Commercial University) to take their comments and

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recommendations Accordingly, the test is modified with some of the items changed for a finalized version of 30-item one The scores of the test ranges from zero to 30, the correct answer is given one score and the incorrect or omitted is given zero score Item from 1 to 15 (Task number 1,2 and 3) relates to

syntactic features of ‘get’ phrasal verbs, while item from 16 to 30 (Task number 4,5 and 6) are related to semantic features of ‘get’ phrasal verbs Following are

the samples of each task

Task 1 is a multiple-choice exercise Each item is given 4 choices but only one

is the right answer This task is used for checking if the learners can choose the right particle for the certain verb

Example: (item number 1 in the Appendix 1)

1 Where are you going? …… right back here!

The correct answer here is B The verbs ‘do’ and ‘return’ do not go with particle

situation

Task 2 focuses on word ordering Each item of the task is a complete sentence

with jumbled words The learners are required to put all those words in the correct order This task is to check if the learners can make syntactically correct

sentences related to ‘get’ phrasal verbs