The common two word verbs denoting material and mental processes in english and their vietnamese equivalents

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES BÙI THỊ DIỆU QUYÊN THE COMMON TWO-WORD VERBS DENOTING MATERIAL AND M

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-

GRADUATE STUDIES

BÙI THỊ DIỆU QUYÊN

THE COMMON TWO-WORD VERBS DENOTING MATERIAL AND MENTAL PROCESSES IN ENGLISH AND THEIR VIETNAMESE

EQUIVALENTS (CÁC ĐỘNG TỪ HAI THÀNH TỐ PHỔ BIẾN QUI CHIẾU TIẾN TRÌNH VẬT CHẤT VÀ TINH THẦN TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ NGHĨA

TIẾNG VIỆT TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG)

M.A Minor Programme Thesis

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15

HA NOI – 2010

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-

GRADUATE STUDIES

BÙI THỊ DIỆU QUYÊN

THE COMMON TWO-WORD VERBS DENOTING MATERIAL AND MENTAL PROCESSES IN ENGLISH AND THEIR VIETNAMESE

EQUIVALENTS (CÁC ĐỘNG TỪ HAI THÀNH TỐ PHỔ BIẾN QUI CHIẾU TIẾN TRÌNH VẬT CHẤT VÀ TINH THẦN TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ NGHĨA

TIẾNG VIỆT TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG) M.A Minor Programme Thesis

Field: English Lingguistics Code: 60 22 15 Supervisor: Nguyễn Thị Bích Ngọc, M.A.

HA NOI – 2010

TABLES OF CONTENTS

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

2 Aims of the study

3 Scope of the study

4 Method of the study

5 Design of the study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1.1 Two word verbs

1.1.1 Definition of PVs and PreVs

1.1.2 Syntactic and semantic characteristics of PVs and PreVs

2.1.2.2 Syntactic and semantic characteristics of PreVs

1.2 Process types

1.2.1 Overview of process types

1.2.2 Material processes

1.2.3 Mental processes

1.2.4 Material vs mental processes

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

2.1 Data collection instrument

2.2 Corpus choice

2.3 Data Analyses

2.4 The selection and extraction of two-word verbs

CHAPTER 3: ENGLISH TWO-WORD VERBS DENOTING MATERIAL AND MENTAL PROCESSES AND VIETNAMSESE EQUIVALENTS

3 1 COME

3 2 GIVE

3 3 GO

3 4 MAKE

3 5 HEAR

3 6 SEE

3 7 THINK

PART C: CONCLUSION

1 Conclusions

2 Suggestions for teaching and learning two-word verbs

3 Suggests for further studies

REFERENCES

APPENDIX 1

APPENDIX 2

APPENDIX 3

APPENDIX 4

APPENDIX 5

APPENDIX 6

APPENDIX 7

Obligatory separable phrasal verbs

Inseparable phrasal verbs

Transitive

Intransitive

Noun phrase

Verb

Longman Spoken and Written English

Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays

British National Corpus

List of tables

Table 1: PVs and PreVs dissimilarities

Table 2: Number of two-word verbs and meanings in three sources of dictionaryTable 3: Table 3: Frequent two-word verbs in studies of Gardner & Davies (2007), Liu(2003), Waibel (2002), and Biber (1999)

PART A: INTRODUCTION

"There is another kind of composition more frequent

in our language than perhaps in any other, from which arises to foreigners the greatest difficulty."

Samuel Johnson

Preface, Dictionary of the English Language, 1755

1 Rationale of the study

The two-word verbs, including phrasal verbs (PVs) and prepositional verbs (PreVs),are an interesting linguistic phenomenon in the English language Many English teachershave realized the importance of this multiword knowledge in helping their learners useEnglish more fluently and naturally Paradoxically, these structures are never easy for non-native learners to acquire, mostly because the semantic, grammatical and stylisticpeculiarities that they possess

The meanings of a two-word verb are not always likely guessed from its individuals.Many non-native speakers of English must, therefore, memorize them to be able tounderstand and use them in the right context However, thousands of two-word verbs andmany more times of their meanings make the massive learning unfruitful Consequently,pages are spent to find out which PVs to teach and in what sequences For example, DilinLiu (2003) suggests 302 items to be most frequently used idioms, with 104 of them are PVs.Gardner and Davies (2007) propose a smaller number - 100 frequent PVs, which the authorsclaim to be a manageable number to deal with The problem is two-word verbs are verypolysemous, and corresponding with 100 frequent PVs proposed by Gardner and Davies,(2007), it is not 100 but up to 559 potential meanings (5.6 meanings per PV on average)learners have to deal with From this view, the number 100 is getting lessmanageable

What ifIf we focus on senses that are used more often than the others? So, the load

of learning English two-word verbs would be reduced This is also what this current study isaiming at Biber et al (1999) suggest that we classify multiword verbs according to their

core meaning called semantic domains: activity verbs, communication verbs, mental verbs,causative verbs, verbs of simple occurrence, verbs of existence or relationship, andaspectual verbs Halliday (1985,; 2004) approaches the matter with different term but thesame nature Instead of ‗semantic domains; Halliday has term ‗processes‘ (See section1.2.1 for types of processes); and what Biber (1999) names ‗activity verb‘ is labeled

‗material process‘ This study uses Halliday‘s terms for their clarity and systematic nature;and attends to material and mental processes since they are considered most common byboth Halliday (1985,; 2004) and Biber (1999)

2 Aims of the study

The primary aims of this paper are:

1.to study English word verbs, specifically distinguish two kinds of word verbs: PVs and PreVs;

two-2.to study English processes, focusing on material and mental processes;3.to investigate some common English two-word verbs denoting material and mental processes and find their Vietnamese equivalents;

4.to suggest some recommendations for teaching and learning two-word verbs

3 Scope of the study

As far as structural aspects of two-word verbs are concerned, the current studyincludes both PV (transitive and intransitive) and PreVs ‗Phrasal-prepositional verbs‘would be beyond the scope of this paper

Two-word verbs are rich in both number and meanings For example, in OxfordPhrasal verbs Dictionary, 6000 common British and American PVs are recorded; the verb

‗go‘ solely has 31 two-word verbs with 209 different meanings So, we are not ambitious to

cover all of them Although some verbs have no single correct classification or havemultiple meanings belonging to different semantic domains, Biber (1999) affirms thatactivity verbs and mental verbs are of most common Among the 12 most common lexicalverbs that all occur over 1000 times per million words in the LSWE Corpus (Biber et al.,

1999: 373), six are activity verbs (get, go, mzake, come, take, give), five are mental verbs

(know, think, see, want, mean) Also by means of corpus, Biber proposes lists of the most

common lexical verbs in each semantic domain, including all verbs that occur over 300times per million words in at least one register (cf Biber et al , 1999: 367-369) In domain

of activitymaterial verbs, we see the notable common of “make, go, give, come, put”, and

“take‖; while ―see, think, know, want, feel, like‖ are distinguished representatives of mental

verbs

Therefore, having claimed to be the study of the common two-word verbs denotingmaterial and mental processes in English though, in the frame of a small paper, we onlyfocus on four outstanding representatives of material verbs: COME, GIVE, GO, MAKE (allare in the top 10 most prolific PVs of British National Corpus), and three of mental ones:HEAR, SEE, THINK Moreover, only two-word verbs with idiomatic and semi-idiomaticmeanings used in material and mental processes are concentrated on

4 Method of the study

The study aims to find out, in the limitation of seven lexical verbs, ―how many‖and ‖how often‖ two-word verbs belong to material and mental processes are there are,comparing with the other four processes Thus, quantitative research methods, which givemuch focus on the collection and analysis of numerical data and statistics, appear to beappropriate

5 Design of the study

This study is designed in three parts: Introduction, Development, and Conclusion.The Introduction gives an overview of the study The Development consists of threechapters: Chapter 1 Theoretical Background, provides the fundamental concepts used inthe paper; Chapter 2 - Methodology, describes thoroughly the methodology acquired in thestudy; Chapter 3 presents lists of two-word combinationcombinations of 8seven commonverbs belonging to material and mental processes with their particles/ prepositions and theirVietnamese equivalents Finally, the Conclusion offers the review of the study with itsimplication and application concerning teaching and learning English two-word verbs ingeneral

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

This chapter represents the issues of two-word verbs and Processes of Material andMental in details Section 1.1 examines some aspects of PVs and PreVs such as theirdefinitions and their semantic and syntactic aspects Particles the vital component of PVs,are also defined and classified Section 1.2 looks into the matter of process types with thefocus is on Material and Mental processes, their definition and characteristics

1.1 Two word verbs

Quirk et al (1972) clarify that multi-word verbs consist of PVs, PreVs, and prepositional verbs Biber et al (1999: 403) add other multi-word verb constructions like V+ noun phrase (+ preposition); V + prepositional phrase or V + V to complete theclassification of four major kinds of multi-word combinations that comprise ―relativelyidiomatic units and function like single verbs‖

phrasal-In this study, we focus on multi-word verbs which comprise two elements Though Taka

(1960, cited Waibel 2007) and Meyer (1975, cited Waibel 2007) use term “two-word verb‖ to mean PV, and Celce-Murcia et al (1999) note that PVs are sometimes called two-word verbs,

both PVs and PreVs are taken into consideration when we refer to two-word verbs

1.1.1 Definition of PVs and PreVs

1 It is noted that the author mentions to prepositions, but particles There is possibility that the so-call PreVs by most of linguists is defined by Dixon as PVs, or he uses the name PVs to refer to both.

Biber et al., et al (1999: 403)) assert: ―PVs are multi-word units consisting of averb followed by an adverbial particle‖ which all have spatial or locative meanings and

―commonly used with extended meanings‖

Halliday (1985: 207; 2004: 351) seesees PVs as ―lexical verbs which consist ofmore than just the verb word itself‖, which can be verb + adverb, verb + preposition, andverb + adverb + preposition David (2002) seems to meet Halliday when this author insiststhe existence of two definitions of PVs, the broad sense and the narrow sense The broadsense includes both PreVs and PVs, spatial or figurative, transitive or intransitive while thenarrow sense excludes PreVs This study prefers looking at PV from its narrow sense

Before turning to PreVs, it is necessary to clarify that the term ‗phrasal verb‟ is not

favored by all linguistics Said as Waibel (2007: 15), ―the very name for this type of verb

is controversial‖ For example, Fraser (1947) calls it ―verb-particle combination‖, Zandvoort (1962) talks about it as ―verb-adverb combination‖, Live (1965)

―discontinuous verb‖, Lipka (1992) labels them ―verb-particle construction‖, Francis (1958) ―separable verb‖, etc However, Mc Arthur (1989: 38, cited Waibel, 2007: 15) notesthat ―the term ‗phrasal verb‘ appears (…) to be the winning term‖, and Rot (1988: 183,cited David, 2002: 112) remarks that the term PV is the most appropriate for verb-particlecombinations because ―it expresses the linguistic essence of this lexical-grammar

collocation, and it has its terminological parallels in the location ‗phrasal prepositions‟ ‖.

And the term familiar with both teachers and students is also used in this study

1.1.1.3 Particles

1.1.1.3.1 Definition and classification

The term ‗particle‘ refers to a word that has a grammatical function but does not fitinto the main parts of speech like noun, verb, or adverb, etc (Longman Dictionary ofApplied Linguistics, 1985) The exact status of the particle is still being debated; scholarsare being divided on whether it is an adverb, preposition, postpositional prefix, special part

of speech, etc Encyclopedia Wikipedia (2010) provides seven types of word serving as

particle: ‗Articles‘ (the), ‗Infinitival‘ (to), ‗Preposition‘ (in, on), ‗Adverbial particles‘ (off, down), ‗Interjections‗(oh, wow), ‗Sentence connectors‘ (so, well), Tags (…, did they?) and

‗Conjunctions‘ (and, or, nor) However, dictionaries like Longman Dictionary of

Contemporary English (2006) or MacMillan Phrasal Verbs Plus (2005) just consideradverbs and prepositions to be particle; and some scholars (e.g Celce-Murcia, 1999,; Quirk

et al , 1985) even narrow term particles to adverbs2 In this study, particles are also seen inits adverbial nature and some differences between particles and prepositions will be noted insection 1.1.1.3.3

1.1.1.3.2 Characteristics of particles

Particles are typically found in PVs where most of them are place adjucts or canfunction as such (Quirk & Greenbaum, 1973) Particles form cohesive units with verbs andnormally cannot be separated from the verb by another adverb Moreover, they play animportant role in complementation by completing the meaning of the head-phrase, andcreating a dominant conceptual meaning for PVs

Particles have pragmatic meaning and obviously have impact on the meaning of theverb they follows even if the meanings of the verb are not necessary destroyed or lost.Briton (1988: 4, cited David, 2002: 127) claims that the addition of a particle to a verb

produces the following three meanings: perfective meaning (drink up, calm down, wait out,

2 While Celce-Murcia (1999) explains the author‘s selection is to show the close association of particle with the verb, and to distinguish it from preposition as well as other adverbs, other scholars who consider solely adverbs to be particles argue, ―particles are commonly treated either as adverbs or else assigned to a special class‖ because of their distinct behaviour, especially their variable position and the lack of an object

of their own (Langacker , 1987: 243, cited David , 2002: 125).

To separate adverbial particles from prepositions, objects might be helpful As Swan(1980: 95, cited David, 2002: 115) points out, prepositions must have objects while adverbsparticle need not Celce-Murcia (1999: 429) proposes syntactic tests (adopted fromO‘Dowd, 1994: 19) to set apart particles and prepositions Accordingly,

Only prepositions allow:

Adverb insertion (e.g We turned quickly off the road, but not we turned quickly off the light)

Phrase fronting (e.g Up the hill John ran, not Up the bill John ran)

Wh-fronting (e.g About what does he write?, not Up what does he write?)

Only particles in separable PVs allow:

Passivization (e.g The light was turned off, not The road was turned out)

Verb substitution (e.g The light was extinguished (= turned off))

NP insertion (e.g We turned the light off, not We turned the road off )

3Many words can be used both as adverbs and prepositions except back and away (they are only

adverb), while other words like from and during can only be treated as prepositions (David, 2002: 115- 116).

4 A preposition denotes a semantic relationship between two entities as to place, time, instrument or cause etc (Quirk et al , 1972) while a particle is part of the verb.

Adverbial particles function as adverbs and modify the preceding verb.

1.1.2 Syntactic and semantic characteristics of PVs and PreVs

2.1.2.1 Syntactic and semantic characteristics of PVs

Regarding syntactical aspects of PVs, PVs‘ subcategories and PVs‘ separation need

to be dealt with In MacMillan Phrasal Verb Plus by Rundell and Fox (2005), PVs aredivided into three types: transitive, intransitive, and those which is both transitive and

intransitive But it seems to be simpler to set PVs into intransitive and transitive like the

way Quirk and Greenbaum (1973), Biber et al (1999), or Celce-Murcia et al (1999) do;noting that some combinations can have ―dual function‖ (Celce-Murcia et al., 1999: 427),i.e., they can be either transitive or intransitive, with or without a difference of meaning(Quirk & Greenbaum, 1973) Most of the challenge is assumed to fall into transitive PVsbecause of its peculiar syntactic characteristic, its separability As Celce-Murcia (1999) puts

it, in spite of being part of the PV, particle does not have to be adjacent with it Listed hereare three subcategories of separation:

The largest, most productive category is optional separable PV, where

particle can stand either before of after direct object except when the directobject is a pronoun6

E.g put on = wear: Anne put on her coat and went out.

went out.

The smaller category is inseparable phrasal verb In this kind, the particle

is forced to follow right after the verb7

E.g I came on (= encounter) this beautiful vase in the attic.

Sometimes, the separation is obligatory and we will name this obligatory separable PV In this kind, the particles are always separated8

E.g put through = test: We put the machines through a series of tests.

6 If the direct object is not a pronoun or if it is a long and complicate noun phrase, it would prefer the position after the particle or as ( Celce- Murcia , 1999: 435) put it, ―the conventional position for new, discourse salient information‖ The insertion of complex noun phrase between verb and the particle is believed to interrupt the cognitive unity of the verb and particle and make it difficult to understand.

7 Celce- Murcia (1999) said this phenomenon is because what we are calling a particle is

actually a preposition and thus would naturally go before its object

8 The obligatory separation is presumed to avoid the ambiguity with the inseparable phrasal

verbs, which have the same form but different meaning ( Celce- Murcia et al., 1999).

17

From semanticalsemantic view, we see three important aspects: the

polysemy, productivity, and idiomaticity

Like single-word verbs, PVs are polysemous in that one form of PVs can

have various meaning, and simultaneously, one meaning can also be expressed

by more than

one form Additionally, English continually generates new PVs9 as well as

new meanings of existed PVs Celce-Murcia (1999: 431) describes PV as ―a

highly productive lexical category in English‖ (431),‖, while Bolinger (1974:

xi, cited Celce-Murcia, 1999) comments the phenomenon as ―an outpouring

of lexical creativeness that surpasses anything else in our language‖

Explaining the popularity of PVs in English, Bolinger (1971: xii, cited

Stephens, 2008) said,

"They are words The everyday inventor is not required to reach for

elements such as roots and affixes that have no reality for him It

takes only a rough familiarity with other uses of head and off to make

them available for head off, virtually self-suggesting when the occasion

for them comes up, which is not true of learned formations like

intercept" (xii)."

Yet it seems impossible to know exactly which verb will joint with

which particle to form a new PV There usually needs a semantic coordination

between verbs and particles In other words, verbs limit their choice of

adverbial particle by their semantic content Nevertheless, it does not mean

PVs cannot be systematized Supported by the idea that the semantic of PVs is

not as ―arbitrary‖ as it is often held to be (Smclair, Moon et al , 1939, cited

David, 2002), Celce-Murcia (1999) claims the existence of some systemeticity

in how meaning is represented in PVs; and to understand that systematicity,

we familiarize ourselves with three semantic categories of PVs: literal,

aspectual, and idiomatic (See Quirk et al , 1972, Celce-Murcia et al , 1999)

Literal PVs: comprise a verb and a directional preposition,

function syntactically like verb-particle constructions, except

that particle keeps its

9 Mc Arthur and Atkins (1974: 6, cited David , 2002: 128) claim 6 types of verbs that can be

phrasalized, including: a/ verbs of movement (go, come); b/ verbs of invitation and ordering

(invite, let); c/ the so-called ‗empty verb‘, verbs of indefinite meaning (get, make); d/ verbs

formed with or without the suffix –en, from simple monosyllabic adjectives (brighten); e/

verbs formed unchanged from simple, usually monosyllabic nouns with such paraphrase

patterns as chalk up = mark up with chalk; f/ a random scattering of two-syllable verbs of

Latin origin, with which some kind of direction or emphasis is required (measure (up), level

(off)).

Formatted: Indent: First line:

0.49", Space Before: 6 pt, After: 6 pt

Formatted: Indent: First line:

ng and

Aspectual PVs10: certain particles can add consistent

aspectual meaning to the verb without changing the origin

meaning of that verb Thus, the meaning of the whole is neither

literal nor idiomatic AsFor Celce-Murcia (1999: 432- 433),

four main types of aspectual PVs are distinguished:

- Inceptive PVs (signal a beginning state): take off, set out, start up

- Continuative: (show that the action continues)

Activity verbs + on/ along (come along, keep on), away (sleep away), around (mess around), through ( think through)

- Iterative PVs (activity verbs + over show repetition ):

think over

- Completive PVs (show complete action with up, out, off and down): wear out, mix up, cut off, check over, etc

Idiomatic PVs: are those that we cannot infer their meaning from

their

components11 For instance, in the sentence I hope you will get

over your operation quickly, the literal meaning of ‗get over‟,

in sense of ‗to climb over st to get to the other side‟ no longer

applies to explain the subject‘s enduring an operation.

Formatted: Indent: Left: 0.68",

2.1.2.2 Syntactic and semantic characteristics of PreVs

Syntactically, PreVs always has its preposition followed by a nominal

object (Biber et al 1999) They, however, do not coincide with inseparable

transitive PVs because the object still follows the preposition when it is a

pronoun Moreover, the verb can have its own object which usually precedes

the preposition Two structural patterns for PreVs are:



V + preposition + NP

E.g I‘ve never ever thought about [it]

10 Some authors suggest grouping PVs based on the particle instead of the verb element

as we usually do We think it is applicable for aspectual PVs only Moreover, aspectual

particles do not go with every verb Certain aspectual particles co-occur with certain verbs.

That is why we have fade out but do not accept fade up.

11 The meaning of this kind is believed to have relation with underlying logic of the

language and cultural traditions Langacker (1991, cited David , 2002) defend that the vast

majority PVs rely at least in part on the literal or aspectual meaning of the particle and thus

they can help to figure out figurative meaning.

Formatted: Indent: Left: 1.5",

Bulleted + Level: 3 + Aligned at: 1.25" + Tab after: 1.5" + Indent at: 1.5", Tab stops: 1.75", List tab + Not at 1.5"

Formatted: Indent: Left: 1.75"

as a single unit followed by a noun phrase which acts as the object of V+ preposition.Supporters of this idea count on the fact that the combination verb plus prepositionfunctions as a single semantic unit that has idiomatic meaning and, therefore, is replaceable

by a simple transitive verb

Semantically, PreVs are also polysemous, idiomatic and productive

1.1.2.3 Comparison of PVs and PreVs

12 The rationale for many of these tests is the fact that a preposition makes a natural unit with the NP object that follows it, whereas a particle makes a natural unit with the verb that precedes it ( Celce- Murcia et al., 1999: 430)

Table 1: PVs and PreVs dissimilarities

1.2.1 Overview of process types

As Martin et al (1997: 102) says, ―Process type is the resource for sorting outhuman experiences of all kinds into a small number of types These differ both with respect

to the Process itself and the number and kind of participants involved.‖

In the view of Halliday (1985; 2004) and systemic-functional linguists such asBloor, T & Bloor, M (1995), Martin et al (1997), there are 6 types of process in English:

Material, Mental, Relational, Behavioural, Existential, and Verbal.

13 This test, however, is restricted with pronoun, gerund and unhelpful with intransitive PVs as there is no complementary noun phrase to facilitate movement.

Material processes denote doings and happenings They represent our ‗outer

experiences‘: those we pick up from the life when we do or observe other people do things,

or see things happen

Mental processes involve conscious processing They express our ‗inner

experience‘, or our consciousness of the world around us Members of metal processesinclude perception, cognition and affection

Relational processes are processes of being which denote our logical link between

the new to the old experiences They have two different modes: attribution andidentification

Behavioural processes construe (mental and verbal) behaviour Like the active

version of verbal and mental processes, they represent the acting out of processes ofconsciousness (like laughing), and physiological states (like sleeping) They havesimilarities to both material and mental processes Like mental processes, one of theirparticipants must be human consciousness (in mental we call it ‗Senser‘ while inbehavioural, it is known as ‗Behaver‘) They resemble material processes in: (i) they preferpresent-in-present tense, and (ii) they cannot occur with a reported clause in a projectingclause complex

Existential processes are concerned with existence - things recognized to be, to

exist, or to happen They appear like the relational processes in that they construe aparticipant which involves a process of being But what separates them is that existentialprocesses have only one participant

Verbal processes, which stand between mental and relational processes, cover saying

of different modes (asking, commanding, offering, stating) and semiotic processes that arenot necessary verbal (showing, indicating) They symbolize relationships constructed inhuman consciousness and enacted in the form of language like saying and meaning ‗Sayer‘can be human or human-like speaker or any other symbolic source

Among the six processes, material, mental and relational are primary; behavioural,existential, and verbal are said to be secondary processes which lie on the border of thethree major ones However, Halliday (2004: 171) said: ―there is no priority or domination

of one kind of process over another‖ For this reason, he used a circle but not a line to

demonstrate the relation among types of process in English (see Halliday, 2004: 172, fig5.2) In that figure, process types are represented as a semiotic space with different regionsrepresenting different types The regions have core areas and these represent prototypicalmembers of the process types, but the regions are continuous, shading into one another That

is why Halliday (2004: 172) asserts: ―the process types are fuzzy categories‖, which base

on ‗the principle of systemic indeterminacy‘14

Now we have a general picture of six processes in English systemic- functionalgrammar As mentioned above, material and mental processes are among basic processesand account the largest proportion in 6 processes They are also subject investigated in thispaper and will be looked closely in the next sections

1.2.2 Material processes

Material processes cover doings and happenings Prototypically, these are concretechanges in the material world that can be perceived But such concrete material processeshave also come to serve as a model for construing our experience of change in abstract

phenomena For instance, the verb „fall‟ realizing material processes can construe motion

in space as in Lizzie fell down and hurt her knee or motion in an abstract, space of measurement as in London share process fell sharply yesterday.

Typical verbs realizing material processes are: happen, create, make, set up, give, get, etc (See Halliday, 2004: 187- 189, table 5(5))

Material processes have participants of ‗Actor‘, ‗Goal‘, ‗Range‘, and

‗Beneficiary‘, ―the functions assumed by the participants in any clause are determined bythe type of process that involved‖, noted Halliday (2004: 1997)

 ‗Actor‘ is the ‗Who‘ doing the action

 ‗Goal‘ is the ‗What‘ brought to existence by the doing (build the house) or impacted by the doing (fix the car).

 ‗Range‘ or ‗Scope‘ is a participant specifying the scope of happening and

is the only one being out of the influence of the performance of the process It

14 This principle has influence over six processes It says that ―the world of our experience is highly indeterminate‖ and the grammar describe it in the system of process types in the same way Thus, one and the same text may offer alternative models of what would appear to be the same domain of experience , construing, for example, the domain of emotion both as a process in a mental clause, and as a participant in a relational one.‖ (Halliday , 2004)

typically occurs in ‗transitive‘ processes where there is solely one participant (Actor).

 ‗Beneficiary‘ is the ‗Whom‘ getting benefit from the doing It has two

subtypes: the ‗Recipient‘- marked by preposition to and signs the transfer of

existing goods; and the ‗Client‘- marked by preposition for, indicates aprovision of service

(2) She made a cup of tea for me.

(3) They crossed the hall

ActorRange

Material processes are distinguished into transitive and intransitive processes(Halliday, 1985; 2004) Usually, if there is only one participant in a clause, the process issaid to represent happening and is named intransitive material clause If the process extends

to another participant, say, the ‗Goal‘, the process represents a doing and is known as

transitive material clause For example, ‗Oil is coming down in price‘ is intransitive material processes with intransitive PV ‗come down‘; ‗Mary put on her coat‘ is transitive clause with the phrasal verb ‗put on‟ serving as transitive process Furthermore, if there is

‗Goal‘, the represent may have 2 forms: operative (active) and receptive (passive)

About the subtypes of doings and happening, Halliday (2004) clarifiestransformative and creative In the former, the goal does exist before the process begins and

is transformed in the course of the unfolding This subtype is often indicated by the particle

of a PV (use up, turn down), or has separate element representing the outcome as in She painted the house red, where red serves as attribute specifying the resultant state of the goal Creative subtype, on the other hand, has the outcome brought into existence by the

doing

E.g (1) She painted a portrait of the artist (is ‗creative‘ since the outcome is

the creation of the portrait)

(2) She painted the house red (is ‗transformative‘ since the outcome

is the transformation of the colour of the house)

All types of processes change form though time and so do material processes.However, process types are varied in ways of unfolding Material processes prefer ‗present-

in-present‘ (or present continuous) (e.g is going) to simple present (e.g does).

1.2.3 Mental processes

Mental processes construe sensing and concerned with the world inside our mind.

‖Think, know, hear, look, see, feel, like” are typical verbs which can be served as mental

human or treated as conscious

‗Phenomenon‘ is the participant being sensed Unlike ‗Senser‘, ‗Phenomenon‘covers a wide range of units It can be things (any kind of entity created by consciousnesssuch as a conscious being, and object, a substance, an institution, or an abstraction), macro-

things (acts) like getting up early, and meta-things (facts) like the information that people can travel to outer space.

Mental processes differentiate mental processes of perception, cognition, andemotion with their distinctive features A perceptive verb is often accompanied by a modal

verb (e.g can feel, can see) Verbs like ‗remember‟, „remind‟ or ‗think‟ often indicate

cognitive mental processes and are able to begin another clause or a set of clause as the

content of them (I think that, I remember that…) Meanwhile, property owned by mental

clause construing emotions is that the verb serving as process are gradable in lexical and

grammar (detest- loathe- hate- dislike- like- love) In general, all subtypes follow the

principle of indetermination in that different types of sensing can shade into each other

Therefore, “I see” not only means ‗I perceive visually‟ but also is interpreted as ‗I understand‟.

When the clause refers to present time, the tense of the verb realizing mental process

is the simple present rather than the ‗present-in-present‘ (E.g I see the stars, not I am seeing the stars)

1.2.4 Material vs mental processes

Halliday et al (2004: 201- 207) suggests three criteria to distinguish materialprocesses from mental processes, including: the participants, the tense of process or verbserving as process, and the substitute of verb

 Participants: the two typical participants of material are ‗Actor‘ and ‗Goal‘whereas the two distinctive participant roles for mental are ‗Senser‘ and

‗Phenomenon‘ Moreover, if ‗Senser‘ is highly constrained, there is nolimitation for what can act as ‗Phenomenon‘ of mental processes Meanwhile,

all participants in material processes must be a ‗thing‘ (person, object, substance, abstraction)

 Tense: material processes are present-in-present unmarked while mental processes tend to use simple present tense15

 Substitution: material processes can be substitute by verb do, whereas

mental processes do not allow this

This chapter has already supplied the key concepts acquired in the study: two-wordverbs and process types, in respect of how they are defined, their characteristics and how toseparate them from one another The next chapter represents the details of how the research

is implemented

15 Both tenses are still used with these two processes, but in those cases, they will carry special interpretation The simple tense with a material process is general or habitual; while the present-in-present tense with a mental process is rather highly condition kind of inceptive aspect (See Halliday , 1985; 2004).

This chapter covers issues regarding to data collection instrument, corpus chosen, data analyses, as well as two-word verbs‘ selection and extraction

2.1 Data collection instrument

The study used three sources of dictionaries on PVs to collect data of English word verbs: (1) Chambers of Dictionary of Phrasal Verb

two-(2) Oxford Phrasal Verbs Dictionary for Learners of English(3) MacMillan Phrasal Verbs Plus

These dictionaries contain thousands of (B.E and A.E) PVs with clear explanations,corpus-based examples, make them easy to use and to be stimulus for natural-soundingEnglish The third source even claims to have original extra features that help to make it anideal reference to help learners lose their fear of PVs and start using them with confidence.The study also employed WordNet 3.0 (Miller, 2003) to recognize distinctive senses

of the same word forms Type ‗make out, for instance, WordNet results 10 different senses (to recognize, issue, comprehend, manage, complete, try to establish, etc), from which we

choose the appropriate ones

2.2 Corpus choice

The following are lists of frequent PVs (2 A.E corpus-based and 2 B.E corpus-based)put forth by different authors They are sources that were accessible at the time ofconducting this research

 Liu (2003) analyzed three spoken A.E corpora to establish the author‘ lists of themost frequently used idioms Only idioms and semi-literal or non-literal PVs are chosen.Selected items must have at least 2 occurrences in all three corpora combined (i.e., 2 tokensper million words)

-Professional (Corpus of Spoken Professional American English (Barlow, 2000)) consists of speeches at professional meetings and white house press conferences

- Miscase (Michigan corpus of Academic Spoken English (Simpson, Briggs Ovens, & Swales, 2002)) comprises academic speech events (lectures, colloquia)

-Media (Spoken American media English (Liu, 2002)) involves speakers with diverse social and educational background

 Waibel uses LOCNESS, which consists of essays by American university students from Marquette University, Indiana University at Indianapolis

 Gardner & Davies analyses BNC, which contains about 4000 samples (both spokenand written) from the widest possible range of linguistic productions

 Biber analyses LSWE Corpus and includes all PVs and PreVs that occur over 40 times/ millions word in at least 1 register

2.3 Data Analyses

First, all two-word verbs and their potential meanings were counted The grammarpattern in Oxford Phrasal verbs Dictionary is used to decide whether a two-word verb is PV

or PreV With sources of dictionaries, together with the help of Wordnet 3.0, the raw number

of two-word combinations with seven selected verbs is set out as followed:

Table 2: Number of two-word verbs and meanings in three sources of dictionary

The three sources differ somewhat in the numbers of two-word verbs and their meanings as we can see in table 3 Some figures are approximate Total is not the sum of

PVs and PreVs If a two-word verb can be both PV and PreV (come off, go off, etc), it is

counted one form For example, 31 two-word verbs with Come are recorded, but it is not the

sum of 22 PVs and 17 PreVs Furthermore, if there is more than one form for a meaning due

to the difference between A.E and B.E, e.g come around/ come about or come round, it is

also counted one form

Second, the long lists of frequently used idioms and PVs are filtered to PVs and

PreVs concerned in the following table

Table 3: Frequent two-word verbs in studies of Gardner & Davies (2007), Liu (2003),

Waibel (2002), and Biber (1999)

Dilin Liu

From the table, the first thing to see is that two-word verbs realizing mental

processes are not as common as material ones There is even no two-word verb with ‗See‟

in the list of these authors (the other two are recorded with small proportion) Second, there

is coincidence in the lists of two-word verbs despite the differences in criteria of selecting

them For instance, up to 4-5 out of 6 lists have come up, come about, come on, give up, go

on, make up, go through, go off, etc) The biggest difference may lie in the number of

word verbs that the authors consider frequent Waibel suggests number 14 for common

two-word verbs with ‗Go‟, while Liu gives 9 and Biber says 4 Thence, we decide not to count

on any single list of frequent PVs, but search all of two-word verbs relating to concernedverbs in dictionaries on hand Though, comparing with the numbers in table 2, weunderstand that these authors really got achievement in reducing the workload fromlearners‘ mind

Last, Vietnamese equivalents are taken from English- Vietnamese dictionaries aboutPVs and idioms Meanings of PVs or PreVs that are not available in these dictionaries will

be translated All examples are also from different sources of dictionaries

2.4 The selection and extraction of two-word verbs

Many linguists regarded only idiomatic verb-particle combinations as ‗proper‘PVs16 Dixon (1991) excluded literal meaning from his definition about PVs Longmandictionary of contemporary English (2006: 974) even emphasizes ―If a verb still keeps itsordinary meaning, even though it is followed by several different prepositions, it is not aphrasal verb‖ However, McArthur (cited Stephens, 2008) assesses this is the ―holistic orsemantic view‖, which focuses mainly on the meaning of the verb combination In histreatment of PVs, he states that PVs cover both the literal and figurative/idiomatic uses.Waibel (2007: 63) also argues that ―a clear-cut differentiation between what is literal andwhat is idiomatic or figurative is in many cases unfeasible (…) in part due to thepolysemous meanings PVs which often fade into one another‖ Admitting both literal andfigurative meaning as the property of PVs and PreVs though, this study attends to idiomatic/semi-idiomatic meaning of PVs and PreVs; because it is proved to cause biggest

16 Combinations where each element retains its distinctive meaning are seen as ‗free combinations‟ (Quirk

et al 1985 ,; Biber et al , 1999)

challenge to ESL/EFL learners17 (see Liao & Fukuya, 2004; David, 2002) In addition,meanings appearing in all sources or in one source are both taken into account, but thosewhich do not belong to material and mental processes was removed

So, this chapter has described method of doing this research, in terms of tools used

to collect data, way to analyze data, and criteria of selecting data The next chapter willdisplay the results of the study specifically

17 The commonly accepted reason is that the figurative uses are deeply rooted in cultural traditions which are also tightly linked with what is believed about the physical world itself In most cases, this ‗rather opaque meaning‘ cause problems for learners (David, 2002: 131) There are also studies proving that second language learners struggle more with figurative PVs than literal PVs (Liao & Fukuya, 2004).

CHAPTER 3: ENGLISH TWO-WORD VERBS DENOTING MATERIAL AND MENTAL PROCESSES AND VIETNAMSESE EQUIVALENTS

This is the analytical, data-based part of the present study, the quantitative analyses

of linguistic data The aim of this chapter is to present and discuss quantitative results fromthe data Before analyzing the data quantitatively, the pertinent problem relating to two-word verbs quantification requires classification

The fact that most of two-word verbs are polysemous raises the question whether atwo-word verb should be quantified as a whole or according to its different semanticmeanings Instead of counting all instances of ‗come along‘, for example, this PV could bebroken down into its different semantic constituents and quantified as ‗happen, appear‘, and

‗improve‘, etc Several researchers say the quantification by semantic criteria is not feasibleand that there are too many cases in which the meaning of a two-word verb deviates fromone of the various dictionary meanings and where a clear-cut semantic differentiation is notpossible They quantify PVs as independent of inherent semantic differences, so that theycan set up the list of frequently used two-word verbs In the present study, two-word verbsare quantified according to their semantic criteria

The semantic analysis of some common English two- word verbs will be reported inthis chapter As stated in previous sections, the study concentrates on PVs and PreVs of

„Come, Give, Go, Make‟ and „Hear, See, Think‟ They are among the 12 most common

lexical verbs that all occur over 1000 times per million words in the LSWE Corpus (Biber etal., 1999), and listed in categories of 20 lexical verbs combines with eight adverbialparticles to account for more than one half of the 518, 923 PV occurrences identified in themegacorpus (Gardner & David, 2007) The first four are lexical verbs belonging to materialprocesses The remains are lexical verbs realizing mental processes However, two-word

verbs of a lexical verb, e.g ‗Come‟, can still denoting both processes, e.g ‗Come around‘:

‗đến chơi‟ (material process), and ‗đổi ý‟ (mental process) Therefore, it would be so

complicated to arrange two-word verbs of all chosen verbs and their meanings in one

process at a time Instead, two-word verbs of seven selected verbs are displayed in sevenseparate tables, and put into separate columns named material processes and mentalprocesses which run parallel18 This makes it easier to see and compare material processesand mental processes at the same time

3 1 COME

The single-word verb ‗Come‟ can go with 32 particles/ prepositions and create 32

PVs and PreVs with hundreds meanings Among them, 26 (15 PVs and 11 PreVs) have

meanings that denote material and/ or mental processes Three two-word verbs ‗come across‟, „come by‟, „come off‘ can be either PV or PreV with differences in sense.

 PVs come about, come across, come along, come around/ round,

come away, come by, come down, come forward, come in,

come off, come on, come out, come over, come through, comeup

 PreVs come after, come across, come at, come before, come by, come

for, come into, come off, come to, come under, come upon

It emerges from the Appendix 1 that, of the 26 two-word verbs with ‗Come‘, 100%denote material processes In other words, all combinations of ‗Come‘ with 26 particles/prepositions bear meanings that belong to material processes There are 10 cases in which

one two-word verb can realize both material and mental processes: 7 PVs (come down, come forward, come out, come over, come through, come up) and 3 PreVs (come at, come

to, come upon) Not any case construes only mental processes.

Verbs with very general meanings can become very specialized, collocational andidiomatic as soon as they form a relationship with other lexemes, and PVs are an excellentcase in point (Altenberg & Granger 2001: 174, cited Waibel 2007) When a single word

verb such as „Come‟ enters into a relation with another lexeme such as the particle

‗down‟, it produces a set of meaning as the following examples:

1 Oil is coming down in price (rớt giá)

18 The entire list of some common two-word verbs deriving from „Come‟, „Give‟, „Go‟,

„Make‟, „Hear‟, „See‟, and „Think‟ can be found in Appendixes.

2 It‘s coming down in torrents outside (đổ mưa)

3 The pilot was forced to come down in a field (hạ cánh)

4 The ceiling looked ready to come down any minute (rơi xuống)

5 When the curtain came down, we all rushed for the exit (hạ xuống)

6 That was the year I came down (ra trường)

7 The party was so good I haven‘t really come down yet (hạ nhiệt)

8 I knew my parents would come down on my sister‘s side (đứng về phía)

9 I wasn‘t prepared to pay 1500$ but they eventually

came down to 1350$ (chấp

nhận giá thấp hơn)

The PV „come down‟ construes a motion in space, from a high position to a lower position

with a little difference in the shade of meaning for different participants like the naturephenomenon, a person, an airplane or a curtain as in the above examples But when itconstrues a changing in the human‘s mind, from highly exciting states to a normal or lower

states as in example 7, 8, 9, it is realizing mental processes Or the PV „come around/ round‟ can denote both material and mental processes in that it can express movement in time as in ‗Before we knew it, Christmas had come around again‘, or movement in space as

in ‗Why don‘t you come around to our house for drinks?‘; at the same time, „come around‟ construes a recover in human‘s consciousness or a change in the human‘s mind as

in ‗Larry fainted, but he soon came around in the fresh air‘, ‗Bob refused the job at first, but he soon came round when he heard how much money they were offering him‘.

An exhaustive table listing the two-word verbs of single-word verb ‗Come‟ can be

found in Appendix 1 It is obvious from Appendix 1 that for the two-word verbs deriving

from „Come‟, the number of material senses really dominates those of mental processes Some cases of two-word verbs listed in 4 or 5 out of 7 corpus studied such as „come about‟, „come across‟, „come along‟, „come on‟, „come off‟ do not even denote mental

processes The number of meanings denoting mental processes can only be fewer than or atbest equal to, but never more than those denoting material processes Look at the 10 two-word verbs that can denote both processes:

 ‗come around/ round‟ has two material senses, equal to two mental senses.

1 Before we knew it, Christmas had

come around again (lại đến) (Actor)

2 Why don‘t you come around to our house for drinks? (đến chơi)

3.Larry fainted, but he soon came around in the fresh

air (hồi tỉnh, hồi phục) (Senser)

4 Bob refused the job at first, but he soon came round when he heard how

much money they were offering him (Senser) (đổi ý )

 „come at‟ can mean ‗to attack‘ (tấn công) as in ―The dog suddenly came

at me‘ where ―the dog‖ is seen as „Actor‟ and ―me‖ is ‗Goal‟; and ‗to think‘ (tiếp cận, xem xét vấn đề) as in ‗We‘ll try coming at the problem from different angle‘, in which ―we‖ acts as ‗Senser‟ and ―the problem‖ is ‗Phenomennon‟.

The rate is 1-1 between material process and mental process

 ‗come down‟ has 6 material senses, there times more than mental senses This rate is the same to ‗come over‟ and ‗come to‟ (3 material senses vs 1

mental sense)

 ‗come forward‟ also has the rate 1-1 when the meaning ‗take action‘ (xung phong) in ‗John came forward as a candidate for the position‘ belong to

material process while ‗willing to help, offer information‘ (tình nguyện cung

cấp thông tin) as in ‗Police have asked witnesses to come forward‟ construes

mental process

 ‗come out‘ reveals a larger variance between material senses and mental senses.

Nine senses construe material processes while only one meaning construes

mental process

1 Her tooth came out when she bit into the apple (bị

lòng ra) (Goal)

2 The first of the spring flowers had

already come out (nở) (Goal)

3 The sun come out and bathed the whole garden in its summer light

(hiện ra) (Goal)

4 Emily‘s book came out last month (ra mắt bạn đọc)

(Goal)

5 The party leader came out for an acceptable candidate (ủng hộ)

 ‗come up‘: of the 7 meanings as can be seen in the following examples,

only the last one which expresses the feeling that one could feel from hisstomach construes mental process All other six construes material processes.2.1 A woman came up and started complaining about the noise (tiến đến)

 ‗come upon‟ has the rate 2-1 between material process and mental process.

1 We turned a corner and came upon an old church (bắt gặp)

In addition, let alone the connection in meanings of a two-word verb realizing both

processes (e.g „come at‟: tiến đến tấn công (Material) → tiếp cận, xem xét vấn đề (Mental); „come upon‟: tình cờ gặp, bắt gặp (Material) → (cảm xúc, ý tưởng) chợt nảy ra, chợt xuất hiện (Mental), meanings in one process are somehow related to each other (e.g.

‗come off‟: ngã ra- bung ra- ra khỏi sân or „come out‟: long ra- ra nụ trổ hoa- (ảnh) được rửa ra- (sách) được phát hành, etc).

3 2 GIVE

‗Give‟ has total 10 combinations with particle/ preposition, 6 of them can realize material and/ or mental processes, they are: give in, give off, give out, give up (PV) and give away, give of (PreV) The results from the analysis of Appendix 2 show that all six two- word verbs denote material processes Only the PV ‗give up‟ realizes both processes but

the ratio is rather unequal, 6 material senses and 1 mental sense, as can be seen in thefollowing example:

1 Children rarely give up their seats to older people on buses now (nhường)

In example 1, the children act as the ‗Actor‟, ‗seats‘ as the ‗Goal‟ and the ‗older people‘

as the ‗Beneficiary‟, typical participants of material processes The same can be analyzed

from example 2 – 6, with or without participant ‗Beneficiary‟ Meanwhile, in example 7,

„give up‟ construes the battle in the mind of a person Moreover, two participants ‗Senser‟

(‗you‘) and ‗Phenomenon‟ (‗smoking‘) reveal that the PV ‗give up‟ is denoting mental

processes.

The meanings construing material processes of „Give‟ are likely to be close to each

other For example, there is only little difference in the nuance of PV ‗give in‟ in the two

pairs of example:

(1a) Completely surrounded by our soldiers, the enemy finally gave in (đầu hàng)

(1b) We mustn‘t give in to terrorist demands (nhượng bộ)

(2a) She gave in her homework a week late (nộp bài)

(2b) He‘s waiting until the end of the week to give in his notice (xin thôi việc)

Or the PV ‗give out‟ in the following examples:

2 Details of the accidents were given out on the nine o‘clock new (đưa tin)

3 That lamp doesn‘t give out a lot of light (phát ra, toả ra)

3 3 GO

Appendix 3 documents the two-word verbs originating from the single-word verb

‗Go‟ that realize material and/ or mental processes ‗Go‘ can combine with 17 particles to

create 17 PVs: