Syntactic and semantic features of guessing verb group in english and their vietnamese equivalents

THESIS SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF GUESSING VERB GROUP IN ENGLISH AND THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS NGHIÊN CỨU ĐẶC ĐIỂM CÚ PHÁP VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA NHÓM ĐỘNG TỪ GUESS TRONG TIẾNG

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A THESIS

SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF GUESSING VERB GROUP IN ENGLISH AND THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS

((NGHIÊN CỨU ĐẶC ĐIỂM CÚ PHÁP VÀ NGỮ

NGHĨA CỦA NHÓM ĐỘNG TỪ GUESS TRONG TIẾNG

ANH VÀ TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT)

TRIỆU THỊ KIỀU TRANG

Field: English Language Code: 8.22.02.01

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A THESIS

SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES

OF GUESSING VERB GROUP IN ENGLISH AND THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS (NGHIÊN CỨU ĐẶC ĐIỂM CÚ PHÁP VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA

CỦA NHÓM ĐỘNG TỪ GUESS TRONG TIẾNG ANH

VÀ TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT)

TRIỆU THỊ KIỀU TRANG

Field: English Language Code: 8.22.02.01

Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Lê Văn Thanh

HANOI - 2020

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitled

“Syntactic and semantic features of the Guessing verb group in English and their Vietnamese equivalents” submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree

of Master in English Language Except where the reference is indicated, no other person‟s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis

Hanoi, 2020

TRIEU THI KIEU TRANG

Approved by SUPERVISOR

Assoc Prof Dr Le Van Thanh Date: / / 2020

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc Prof Dr Le Van Thanh who has patiently and constantly supported me through the stages of the study, and whose stimulating ideas, expertise, and suggestions have inspired me greatly through my growth as an academic researcher

Secondly, my special gratitude goes to Assoc Prof Dr Hoang Tuyet Minh for support and encouragement

Thirdly, I sincerely thank all the lecturers of the Hanoi Open University, especially the lecturers in the Faculty of Post Graduate Studies who have been teaching and conveying to me the enthusiastic guidance and valuable teaching and tremendous assistance and skills in the learning process

Last but not least, I am greatly indebted to my family, my husband and my loving girl for the sacrifice they have devoted to the fulfillment of this academic work

ABSTRACT

The topic of Guessing verb group draws a lot of attention from different types of people This thesis is intended to deal with the Guessing verbs in terms of syntactic and semantic features in English and their Vietnamese equivalents Before going deeply into this kind of verb, the English verb is introduced with its definition and classification Then its syntactic and semantic features are also presented with definition, position and examples In the chapters following this, Guessing verb and its features are presented with clear examples and at the same time they are analyzed and compared with Vietnamese equivalents to find out the similarities and differences between the two languages in the concern area The study attempts to provide readers, particularly students of English, solution to their problem when using Guessing verbs and their features and their complementation Then the suggestion for further studies and the implications for learning English grammar better are also given

LIST OF TABLES

Table 4.1: The SV and SVO type of the seven verbs

Table 4.2: The characteristic of Subjects in GUESSING verb group in English Table 4.3: The characteristic of Verbs in GUESSING verb group

Table 4.4: The characteristic of Objects in GUESSING verb group

Table 4.5: Sentence patterns of the GUESSING verb group in English and Vietnamese equivalents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv

LIST OF TABLES v

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Aims and Objectives of the study 2

1.2.1 Aims 2

1.3 Scope of the study 3

1.4 Research questions 3

1.5 Methods of the study 3

1.6 Significances of the study 4

1.7 Structure of the study 4

Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 6

2.1 Previous studies 6

2.2 Theory of syntax and semantics 8

2.2.1 Theory of syntax 8

2.2.2 Theory of semantics 9

2.3 Overview of English Verbs 11

2.3.1 Definition of English verbs 11

2.3.2 Classification of English Verbs 13

2.4 Classification of Sentences 15

2.4.1 In terms of sentence pattern 15

2.4.2 In terms of sentence elements 16

2.5 Overview of GUESSING verbs 20

2.6 Summary 25

Chapter 3.METHODOLOGY 26

3.1 Research approach 26

3.2 Methods of the study 26

3.3 Data collection and analysis 28

3.4 Research corpus 29

3.5 Summary 29

CHAPTER 4.FEATURES OF GUESSING VERB GROUP IN ENGLISH AND THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS 30

4.1 Syntactic features of the GUESSING verb group in English 30

4.1.1 In terms of their sentence pattern 30

4.1.2 In terms of sentence elements 32

4.2 Semantic features of GUESSING verb group in English 43

4.3 Comparison between the syntactic and semantic features of GUESSING verb group in English and their Vietnamese equivalents 46

4.3.1 In terms of syntactic features 46

4.3.2 In terms of semantic features 50

4.4 Suggestions for learning and teaching GUESSING verb group in English 56

4.5 Summary 58

Chapter 5.CONCLUSION 59

5.1 Recapitulation 59

5.2 Concluding remarks 60

5.3 Limitations 60

5.4 Recommendations /Suggestions for further research 61

REFERENCES 62

APPENDIX 64

1

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale

We all know that English is widely used all around the world draws the attention of many linguists English has different characteristics from those of Vietnamese, for example the grammar, the vocabulary, the pronunciation, the meaning, etc Anyway, whenever talking about characteristics of any language, we should mention the components forming the sentence of that language Therefore, becoming a fluent use of English is also one of the essential demands of most English learners However, it is not easy to achieve this because English can sometimes cause them a lot of troubles with its grammar, structures, vocabularies, and pronunciation, etc in which English grammar has the great importance and the certain difficulty

In English Grammar, The English Verb group has always been the element that causes much more obstacles to learners than any other ones in the sentence because it provides the power of the sentence Vietnamese learners have been facing

a lot of difficulties when they learn a foreign language One of the obstacles that they often have to cope is studying about the verb groups in English Especially, the misunderstanding of using the Guessing verb group causes many problems to English users They often feel confused to choose right verb and make errors in using them These verbs can occur in different syntactic patterns that reflect various meanings in communication They can occur in the same syntactic patterns, but may have different meanings depending on the situation in which they are used

There have been a lot of researchers conducting investigations into the

Guessing verb group both in English and Vietnamese In English, R M.W Dixon

(1991), Gilbert Ryle (2009), Concept of Mind, Beth Levin (1993), English Verb

class and alternations In Vietnamese, Hoang Tue (1962), Giáo trình Việt Ngữ,

Nguyễn Kim Thản (1977), Động từ trong tiếng Việt, Hoàng Phê (1998), Vietnamese

dictionary

2

These studies thoroughly describe about the semantic features of Guessing verb group but they have not been exploited in term of syntactic features yet Moreover, the equivalents between two languages English and Vietnamese has not been implemented yet

This research appeared as a result of difficulties that author faces in daily teaching related to the usages of these verbs Theoretically, the problem is that how

to make sentence having the 11 verbs guess, bet, presume, speculate, wonder,

forecast, prophesy, predict, suspect, suppose, conjecture and in which patterns are

used In addition, translators are confused when choosing these verbs to make sentences in English and translating into Vietnamese

From these above reasons, I have decided to choose the topic “Syntactic and

semantic features of English Guessing Verb group and their Vietnamese equivalents” for the thesis Therefore, this study aims at filling these gaps

Hopefully, examining the GUESSING verb group in English and its equivalents in

Vietnamese is supposed to help language teaching, studying and translating more effectively

1.2 Aims and Objectives of the study

1.2.1 Aims

This study is aimed at making a detail about syntactic and semantic features

of English GUESSING verb group in English and their Vietnamese equivalents It

is hoped that the results of the study can help to raise the awareness of Vietnamese learners of English in terms of this kind of verbs so that they can apply the right use

of these verbs in using these verbs effectively

1.2.2 Objectives

To achieve the aim, the following objectives have been kept in mind:

- To analyze syntactic and semantic features of the GUESSING verbs group in English

- To compare the syntactic and semantic features of these GUESSING verbs in English and their Vietnamese equivalents

3

- To give suggestions of learning and teaching English GUESSING verb group for Vietnamese learners of English

1.3 Scope of the study

This thesis mainly focuses on the syntactic and semantic features of 143 Guessing verbs group in English and Vietnamese equivalents Simultaneously, we analyze the similarities and differences of these verbs in English and Vietnamese

The research will concentrate on seven used verbs in the literary work Gone with

the wind namely guess, suppose, presume, predict, suspect, speculate, wonder and

their equivalents in Vietnamese

1.4 Research questions

The study tries to answer the following questions:

(i) What are the syntactic and semantic features of the GUESSING verb group

1.5 Methods of the study

The study is planned to describe and analyze some syntactic and semantic features of the GUESSING verb group in English as well as their Vietnamese equivalents To meet the demand of the objectives, this study is going to choose English as the source language and Vietnamese, the target one

The methods are used in this study include descriptive and contrastive analysis method

The descriptive method is to exploited to search for the syntactic and semantic features of the seven verbs of the GUESSING verb group

Besides, the contrastive analysis method is useful to uncover the Vietnamese equivalents of these seven English GUESSING verbs with different senses In

4

particular, the data were collected from different sources such as dictionaries, novels in English and Vietnamese version, books

The verbs are analyzed in detail beginning with GUESSING followed by

guess, speculate, presume, predict, suppose, suspect, wonder Each of these verbs

is described in a separate section, and the analysis was conducted with a view to discovering such aspects of each verb as its syntactics, semantics performed by each

of these verbs The analysis is believed to contribute to a deeper understanding of the seven English verbs The componential analysis will be applied to analyze the data

1.6 Significances of the study

Theoretically, the study will provide a full description of syntactic and semantic features of the English verbs, so other researchers and linguistics could take it as a reliable reference to make further studies in this field Moreover, the similarities and differences between these verbs in English and in Vietnamese equivalents are very helpful in contrasting two languages

Practically, the study will help the Vietnamese learners of English as a foreign language use the English GUESSING verbs effectively in daily communication The findings of the study are hopefully to be beneficial to those who want to learn English as a foreign language

1.7 Structure of the study

This study is organized into five chapters as follows:

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION: presents the rationale, the aims, the objectives, the scope of the research, the significances of research as well as the structural organization of the thesis

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW: discusses some previous studies on different kinds of verb in English and Vietnamese and the theoretical background about GUESSING verb group

Chapter 3: METHODOLODY: discusses issues of research approach, methods of the study, data collection and data analysis

5

Chapter 4: FINDING AND DICUSSION: discusses the syntactic and semantic features of GUESSING verb group in English and the syntactic and semantic features of Vietnamese equivalents, give some suggestions for learning GUESSING verb group

Chapter 5: CONCLUSION: makes conclusions on each of the research objectives, concluding remarks, limitations and suggestions for further research

References and Appendix come at the end of the study

6

Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter provides an overview of the theoretical background as well as relevant knowledge and summaries of previous research‟s findings and conclusion associated with the theme of the research In other words, the review is to explain several related terms and definitions as to semantics, syntax, collocation, lexical unit and approach, verb and structures with the GUESSING verb group These later would further highlight features conducted of the study as well as suggest an array

of possible implications for teaching the English GUESSING verb group in general and teaching them to Vietnamese students in particular

2.1 Previous studies

There also have been many researchers that focuses on verb groups Many linguists have done researches into this linguistic field Guessing verbs have been discussed by many linguists and researchers

In English, in the book “A student‟s Grammar of the English Language (1990), Sidney G and Quirk R point out that Guessing verb belong to “factual verbs” Angela D and Philip L (1995) in the book “A University Course in English Grammar” points out the position and analyzed the syntactic features and these verbs are followed by means of subjunctive or should + infinitive and that- clause

In the book entitle “Fowler‟s Modern English Usage “(1998) Burchfield R

W focuses on the usage in syntactic patterns

R.M.W DIXON (1991) studied the broad sense and narrow sense of these verbs in new approach to English grammar on semantic principles

In Vietnam, Professor Tran Huu Manh (2008) analyzed the fundamentals of English traditional syntax, Hanoi National University publication Some studies of Vietnamese researchers have found and tend to make comparisons between ways of using verbs they chose Moreover, thanks to this, when these authors presented their conclusion, their findings can be viewed on a more comprehensive scale

7

Do Thi Toan (2016) investigated deeply into the lexical and semantic verbs: look, see and watch as she still saw greater opportunities to open more details about the analyses of structures and functions of verbs despite various studies came previously and compared with Vietnamese Toan pointed out how Vietnamese learners of English and examiners paid their attention to the differences between syntactic and grammatical errors while acquiring English GUESSING verb group, figuring out they almost consider these notions one type of error

The researcher Trần Văn Chương (2010) provides Vietnamese learners with

a comprehensive description and analysis of the semantic and syntactic features of saying verbs used in political documents in English and Vietnamese The writer also

studied and analyzed 11 verbs in English, including, speculate, suppose, bet, guess,

prophesy, predict, forecast, conjecture, wonder, predict, suspect and a number of

their Vietnamese equivalents Semantically, saying verbs are used to convey the speaker‟s message to the receiver in a verbal or non-verbal way And these verbs are classified into five different groups, such as asserting, committing, directing, declaring, and expressing

Nguyễn Xuân Thứ (2011) focused on 11 verbs group in syntactic and semantic features and it can be seen that we have taken English to be the target language and Vietnamese the source language

Besides, there are some dissertations of Vietnamese learners about verbs and some related issues to our study which can be listed as Trần Thị Diệu Anh, Lưu Thị

Mỹ Hạnh, Lê Lan Phương and Nguyễn Thị Tố Nga

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

In sum, some English linguists point out the syntactic characteristics of Guessing verbs in general and find out how to use these verbs in the sentence The

decided to research is conducted with title: Syntactic and Semantic features of

Guessing verb group in English and their Vietnamese Equivalents

2.2 Theory of syntax and semantics

2.2.1 Theory of syntax

Syntax is a set of principles in language It dictates how words from different parts of speech are put together with the aim of conveying a complete thought Dixon, R M W (1991) states that syntax deals with the way in which words are combined together Syntax is considered to be the theory of the structure of sentence in a language This notion has its direct antecedents in the theory of immediate constituents, in which the function of syntax is to meditate between the observed forms of a sentence and its meaning Verbs are different grammatical properties from language to language but there is always a major class verb, which includes words referring to motion, rest, notice, giving and speaking

According to Bloomfield (1993), “We could not understand the form of a language if we merely reduced all the complex forms to their ultimate constituents”

He pointed that in order to account for the meaning of a sentence, it is necessary to recognize how individual constituents such words and morphemes constitute more complex forms

Syntax is now the study of the principles and rules that govern the ways in which words are combined to form phrases, clauses and sentences in a language Syntax, which is a subfield of grammar, focuses on the word order of a language and relationships between words In other words, morphology deals with word formation out of morphemes whereas syntax deals with phrase and sentence formation out of words

9

Syntax structures are analyzable into sequences of syntactic categories or syntactic classes, these being established on the basic of the syntactic relationships and linguistic items have with other items in a construction Every language has a limited number of syntactic relations Subject and object are probably universal of syntactic relations, which apply to every language However, just as the criteria for the major words class noun and verb differ from language to language, so do the ways in which syntactic relations are marked

Syntax structures are analyzable into sequences of syntactic categories or syntactic classes, these being established on the basic of the syntactic relationships and linguistic items have with other items in a construction Every language has a limited number of syntactic relations Subject and object are probably universal of syntactic relations, which apply to every language However, just as the criteria for the major words class noun and verb differ from language to language, so do the ways in which syntactic relations are marked

Syntax provides selective advantage to humans who faced variable and complex demands and who made more flexible and complex statements to each other to cope with survival challenges Theory of syntax is a source of studying syntactic features in general and GUESSING verb group in particular

Theory of syntax is a source of studying syntactic features in general and GUESSING verb group in particular

2.2.2 Theory of semantics

Semantics is a branch of linguistics, which deals with meaning or the content

of communication According to Hurford and Heasley (1983), “semantics is the study of meaning in language” Language is a means of communication, and people use language to communicate with others by making conversations, giving information, and other things to make social relationship Human beings have been given the capacity to talk, to communicate with each other, to make meaningful utterances, so that they are understood by other human beings They communicate about the world in which they live, about themselves, about their thought and

10

feeling, about what has happened, about what might happen or what they would like

to happen, and a lot more

Hurford and Heasley (1983) state, “the giving of information is itself an act

of courtesy, performed to strengthen social relationships” This is also part of communication There are some linguists that try to define semantics Moreover, as quoted by Lyons (1977) at first defines semantics as the study of the relations of signs to the objects to which the signs are applicable And then he revises his definition, saying that, semantics is that portion of semiotic which deals with the signification of sign in all modes of signifying

Semantics is usually connected with pragmatics Carnap (Lyons, 1995) says that descriptive semantics (i.e the investigation of the meaning of expressions in

“historically given natural language”), may be regarded as part of pragmatics The reason why descriptive semantics is part of pragmatics seem to have been that he believed that difference in the use of particular expressions were not only inevitable

in language - behavior, but must be taken account of in the description or context Smith, as quoted by Lyons (1995) states that “semantics studies how these signs are related to things And pragmatics studied how they are related to people”

According to Leech (1983) in practice, the problem of distinguishing language and

language use has centered on a boundary dispute between semantics and

pragmatics Hurford and Heasley (1983:14) further explain that the study of semantics is largely a matter of conceptually and exploring the nature of meaning in

a careful and thoughtful way, using a wide range of examples, many of which we can draw from our knowledge But Jack Richards, John Platt, Heidi Weber (1987:172) state that “the study of meaning is semantics Semantics is usually concerned with the analysis

of the meaning of words, phrases, or sentences and sometimes with the meaning of utterances in discourse or the meaning of a whole text.”

But Jack Richards, John Platt, Heidi Weber (1987:172) state that “the study

of meaning is semantics Semantics is usually concerned with the analysis of the

Theory of semantic is a base that studies semantic features of GUESSING verb group in chapter 3

2.3 Overview of English Verbs

2.3.1 Definition of English verbs

The verb is king in English The shortest sentence contains a verb We can

make a one-word sentence with a verb, for example: "Stop!" We cannot make a

one-word sentence with any other type of word A verb is often defined as a word which shows action or state of being The verb is the heart of a sentence - every sentence must have a verb Recognizing the verb is often the most important step in

understanding the meaning of a sentence In the sentence “The dog bit the man”,

“bit” is the verb and the word which shows the action of the sentence In the

sentence “The man is sitting on a chair”, even though the action doesn't show much activity, “sitting” is the verb of the sentence In the sentence “She is a smart girl”, there is no action but a state of being expressed by the verb “is” The word “be” is

different from other verbs in many ways but can still be thought of as a verb

A verb always has a subject For example, in the sentence “John speaks

English” John is the subject and speaks is the verb In simple terms, therefore, we

can say that verbs are words that tell us what a subject does or is; they describe:

- action (Ram plays football.)

12

- state (Anthony seems kind.)

According to Jack C Richards et al (1992:398), in English, a word is a verb when it satisfied these following criteria:

- Occur as part of the predicate of a sentence;

- Carries markers of grammatical categories such as tense, aspect, person, number, and mood;

- Refers to an action or state

Almost verbs in English change in form in accordance with tense, mood,

person, etc for example: “Lower fares make it advantageous to travel in winter.”; “I

first made his acquaintance in 2006”; “Please stop making that noise annoying”, etc

Another definition, Sylvia Chalker (1990) shared the view that: “Verbs are defined partly by position/function and partly by inflection” [8; 75]

According to R M W Dixon (1991) also defines that “a verb is a center of clause” A verb refers to some activities and there must be a number of participants who have roles in that activity as:

Simbad carried the old man: My leg aches

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

Or:

Women‟s Institutes supplied the soldiers with socks

(R M W Dixon 1991) Quirk et al (1971) also share the view, “A verb is considered as dynamic or stative verb according to its occurrence with progressive aspect

(He was typing a letter) or not

(He was knowing the answer)

According to Borahash (1975), the verb is a part of speech denoting an action or a process

In reference to the definition of Merrian-webster, verb is a word that characteristically is the grammatical center of a predicate and expresses an act, occurrence, or mode of being, that in various languages is inflected for agreement with the subject, for tense, for voice, for mood, or for aspect, and that typically has rather full descriptive meaning and characterizing quality but is sometimes nearly devoid of these especially when used as an auxiliary or linking verb In most languages, verbs are parts of speech expressing existence, action, or \Verbs are used

to indicate the actions, processes, conditions, or states of beings of people or things

This part is a source to analyze in the chapter four

2.3.2 Classification of English Verbs

There are many different classifications of an English verb depending on different criteria According to R Quirk et al (1985), verbs are divided into two

types They are intensives verbs and extensive verbs

Extensive verbs: Extensive verbs are most other verbs; they do not have subject

compliment Extensive verbs are used to say what the subject is doing It covers a wider area; it takes the information away from the subject Words or phrases, which are followed by an extensive verb work as the verb‟s object They apply the verb, not the subject as in:

He stayed very quiet

(Quirk, Randolph, 1985:55) Extensive verbs include three small types: monotransive, complex transitive and

ditransitive

Ditransitive verbs: Ditransitive verbs are verbs which take a subject and two objects

or have the structures „SVOO‟‟ According to certain linguistic consideration, these objectives may be called direct, indirect objectives, or primary and secondary objectives as in the following examples:

He gave Mary ten dollars (SVOO)

John offered Mary some help (SVOO)

(Quirk, R et al., 1985:1209)

In contrast, monotransitive verbs take only one object and appear in the structure SVO as in the following examples:

I have caught a big fish (SVO)

(Quirk, R et al., 1985:1170) Verbs requires both a direct object and another object complement is complex transitive verbs Complex transitive verbs appear in the structure “SVOC‟‟ or „SVOA‟‟ In a complex- transitive construction, the object complement identifies a quality or attributes pertaining to the direct object Let‟s consider the following examples:

I found her to be an entertaining partner (SVOC)

(Leech, G & Svartvik, J 1984:297)

She put the coat over his arm (SVOA)

Intensive verbs are also called copular verbs, and they are usually followed by a

noun, or noun phrase, and adjective or prepositional phrase Intensive verbs are used

to describe the subject It means that the focus is on one thing- the subject only Intensive verbs appear in the structure SVC or SVA words or phrases, which are followed by an intensive verb work as the subject compliment and they apply to the subject, not the verb Let‟s consider the following examples:

Her rug is too small for her living room (SVC)

(E Warriner, J & Graham, L.S 1980:108)

The price depends on when you travel (SVA)

(Wood, E J 1994:308) Intensive verbs often denote intensive relationship, often between subject and complement Its sentence types are SVC and SVA

Intensive verb does not take any object It presents the relationship between the subject and the subject complementation The verb in sentences with subject complement is a “copular” (or linking verb), which of itself has little meaning but functions as a link between the complement subject There are two subgroups:

(1) Current intensive: be, appear, look, feel, remain, keep

(E Warriner, J & Graham, L.S.1980: 108)

(2) Resulting intensive: become, come, get, go, grow, turn

(E Warriner, J & Graham, L.S.1980: 108)

2.4 Classification of Sentences

2.4.1 In terms of sentence pattern

Sentence classification is carried out in order to get the foundation of studying the sentence types in the GUESSING verb group in English and Vietnamese in chapter III By eliminating optional adverbials from the clause structures, we have seven clause types in the classification of the essential core of each clause structure

Table 2.1: Sentence patterns (Quirk, Randolph, 1985)

S(ubject) V(erb) O(bject) (C)omplement A(dverbial)

Type

SVC

The country

Each clause type is associated with a set of verbs The seven falls naturally into three main types There are:

1 A two-element pattern: SV

They are talking

(Quirk, Randolph, 1985: 721)

2 Three three-element patterns: SV + {O, C, A}

I have caught a big fish (SVO)

Your dinner seems ready (SVC)

My office is in the next building (SVA)

(Quirk, R et al., 1985:1170)

3 Three four-element patterns: SVO + {O, C, A}

I found her to be an entertaining partner (SVOC)

(Leech, G & Svartvik, J 1984:297)

John offered Mary some help (SVOO)

(Quirk, R et al., 1985:1209)

She put the coat over his arm (SVOA)

(East Wood, J 1994:12) This set of patterns is the most general classification that can be usefully applied to the classification of sentence patterns of the GUESSING verb group in English

2.4.2 In terms of sentence elements

2.4.2.1 Syntactic features of sentence elements

Although many sentences are complicated word structures, all sentences, even the most complicated, are built from a few basic elements: Subjects (S), Verbs (V), Objects (O), and Complements (C)

Subject is the most important element of the clause elements other than the

verb according to Quirk, Randolph (1985) It is the element that is most often present It is also the element for which we can find the greatest number of characteristic features The subject is normally a noun phrase or a nominal clause, a pronoun, That-clause, To infinitive or V-ing A subject is obligatory in finite clauses except in imperative clauses, where it is normally absent but implied

Verb is also taken an extremely important role in sentences It is convenient

to make a further classification of the verbs in these patterns:

Transitive verbs

Monotransitive verbs occurs in type SVO Ditransitive verbs occur in type SVOO Complex transitive verbs occur in types SVOC and SVOA

Objects is an indispensable element in a sentence with a transitive verb

While the typical object is a pronoun, noun, or noun phrase, objects can also appear

as other syntactic categories:

- Noun (phrase): The girl ate fruit

- Pronoun: I believe him

- That-clause: We remembered that we had to bring something

- Bare clause: We remembered we had to bring something

- For-clause: We were waiting for him to explain

- Interrogative clause: They asked what had happened

- Free relative clause: I heard what you heard

- Gerund (phrase or clause): He stopped asking questions

- To-infinitive: Sam attempted to leave

- Cataphoric it: I believe it that she said that

In fact, there are two types of object: direct object (Od) and indirect object (Oi) An object such as parties in [2a] (My mother enjoys parties) clearly has a different role

in the clause from an object such as the visitor in [5a] (Mary gave the visitor a glass

of milk), and this has been traditionally recognized by applying the term direct object to the former, and indirect object to the latter We give priority here to the distributional fact that whenever there are two objects (in type SVOO), the former is normally the indirect object, and the latter is direct object But although it is more central with regard to position, in other respects the indirect object is more peripheral than the direct object: it is more likely to be optional, and may generally

be paraphrased by a prepositional phrase functioning as adverbial

Complement is a word, phrase, or clause that is necessary to complete the

meaning of a given expression It is used in sentence patterns SVC and SVOC

There are also two types of complements: subject complement (Cs) and object complement (Co) We can distinguish between the types of complement found in

the SVC pattern; i.e.: totally independent in:

The country became totally independent [3a]

And the type of complement found in the SVOC pattern; i.e.: rather expensive in:

Most people consider these books rather expensive [6a]

The distinction is effectively made by noting that in [3a] the country is understood

to have become a totally independent country, while in [6a] the books are understood to be considered rather expensive books In other words, in SVC clauses the complement applies some attribute or definition to the subject, whereas understood to be considered rather expensive books In other words, in SVC clauses the complement applies some attribute or definition to the subject, whereas in SVOC clauses it applies an attribute or definition to the object This distinction is

usually denoted by the terms subject complement and object complement

respectively In these cases, the complement is an adjective phrase, but elsewhere, where the complement is a noun phrase, the same kind of distinction holds:

Type SVC: The country became a separate nation

Type SVOC: Most people considered Picasso a genius

Adverbial is an adverb, adverb phrase, adverbial clause, noun phrase, or

prepositional phrase

The doorman showed the guests into the drawing room => prepositional clause We‟ll stay there => adverb

We‟ll stay next door => noun phrase

We‟ll stay where it is convenient => adverbial clause

An adverbial is generally optional, for example, it can be added to or removed from a sentence without affecting its acceptability

2.4.2.2 Semantic features of sentence elements

a) Subject

Quirk, Randolph (1985) shows that the most typical semantic role of a subject in a clause that has a direct object is that of the agentive participant: that is, the animate being instigating or causing the happening denoted by the verb:

Margaret is mowing the grass

(Quirk, Randolph, 1985: 741) The subject sometimes has the role of external causer; that is, it expresses the unwitting (generally inanimate) cause of an event:

The electric shock killed him

The pencil was lying on the table

(Quirk, Randolph, 1985: 743) Besides, the subject may have a recipient role with verbs such as have, own, possess, benefit (from); the role of positioner with intransitive stance verbs such as sit, stand, lie, live, stay, remain, and with transitive verbs related to stance verbs such as carry, hold, keep, wear; the locative, temporal and inventive role

b) Object

Direct object has several roles in sentences The most typical role of the direct

object is that of the affected participant: a participant (animate or inanimate) which does not cause the happening denoted by the verb, but is directly involved in some other way:

Many MPs criticized the Prime Minister

(Quirk, Randolph, 1985: 741)

The direct object may have a locative role with such verbs as walk, swim, pass,

jump, turn, leave, reach, surround, cross, climb Besides, the direct object has a resultant, cognate, and instrumental object

Besides, the most typical role of the indirect object is that of the recipient participant: i.e., of the animate being that is passively implicated by the happening

c) Complement is used in sentence patterns SVC and SVOC There are also two

types of complements: subject complement (Cs) and object complement (Co) We can distinguish between the types of complement found in the SVC pattern; i.e.: totally independent in:

The country became totally independent [3a]

And the type of complement found in the SVOC pattern; i.e.: rather expensive in:

Most people consider these books rather expensive [6a]

These are the basis of analyzing the semantic features of the GUESSING verb group in English and in Vietnamese in chapter four

2.5 Overview of GUESSING verbs

GUESSING verb group are found in English as R.M.W DIXON studied

about the semantic features of verbs such as guess, bet, wonder, speculate, predict,

forecast suspect, suppose, prophesy, presume and conjecture in A new approach to

English grammar on semantic principles (1991) In other words, A new approach to English grammar on semantic principles is one of the studies to discuss the definition and semantic features of GUESSING verb group The book shows seven subtypes

In Vietnam, the verb group was found by some authors such as Diep Quang Ban, (1992), Nguyen Kim Thản (1997), these authors studied about the classification of verbs in Vietnamese including GUESSING verbs in Vietnamese Hoàng Phê (1998), Vietnamese dictionary analyzed and improved the meaning and the structures of GUESSING verbs Moreover, some authors of Journal of Science

of Hue University such as: Le Minh Giang and Ngu Thien Hung (2011), These authors studies about the distinction between active verbs non active verbs in English and Vietnamese translational Nguyen Thi Thu Ha (2012) The author has only mentioned the meanings of GUESSING verb group in Vietnamese The author did not discuss or contrast the equivalents of the GUESSING verb group in English There have been a lot of researchers conducting investigations into verb groups in both English and Vietnamese For verbs in English, R.M.W DIXON (1991) studies about the semantic features of English verb groups such as: the BEGINNING group, SUGGESTION group, DECIDING group, THINKING group etc This book has two purposes: one purpose is practical: it is meant to be of service to the general public, both to native speakers of English and to people learning or teaching English

as a second language The other purpose is scholarly: it is meant to be a study of an important section of the English vocabulary, a study of a kind which has never been undertaken before The present dictionary can be regarded as a justification of the semantic theory on which it is based This does not mean, however, that the practical lexicographic purpose is subordinated to a theoretical linguistic goal On

the contrary, the semantic theory is viewed here as a lexicographic enterprise, which

will be also useful as a reference book

guess and I think can be portrayed by including the latter in the explication of the

former But I guess is more tentative than I think

2.5.2 PREDICT verb

To predict something means to say what will happen But of course, that much could be said about forecasting and prophesying In the case of predicting, the speaker is fairly confident that he knows what is going to happen As for the basic

of the confidence on which predictions are based, its essence seems to have been

captured correctly in Merriam-Webster‟s (1972) suggestion that “Predict

commonly implies inference from facts or from accepted laws of nature”, in so far

as Predict seems to be always based on think

2.5.3 PRESUME verb

Saying I presume… is similar to the saying I think And in fact, I presume implies I think It is nonetheless more tentative and more cautious than I think After all, I think could be used to express a well-considered opinion, to which the speaker

is deeply committed By contrast, I presume always conveys a lack of certainty Moreover, I presume has something to do with knowledge, or lack of it, whereas I

presume can introduce purely subjective ideas Thus, one might say tentatively “I

think I believe him – I‟m not sure”, but it would be strange to say “I presume I

believe him” I presume implies “I don‟t know”, and in this it is similar to I suppose Unlike I suppose, however, it conveys also something like “I would like to come to

know”, which implies that the lack of knowledge is due to lack of information (possibly, information from outside) rather than, for example, to indecision For this reason, it is easier to say “I suppose I will do it – I‟m not sure” is acceptable It should

be added, however that while I presume is more cautious and more tentative than I

think, it is nonetheless than I guess The speaker feels that he has good reasons to think

that what he thinks is true

2.5.4 SPECULATE verb

Hayakawa (1969:626) suggests that “speculate…means to theorize or conjecture on the basis of little or no evidence” Speculate often goes on with the stage of saying something ever being reached In speculating the speaker/ thinker is

merely thinking about the subject-matter with a view to coming up with different

possibilities Speculate is necessarily inconclusive

2.5.5 SUPPOSE verb

Saying I suppose is similar to the saying I think The speaker is expressing

this thought without claiming for it any objective validity The component “I don‟t

know if it is true” fits also quite well with the uses of suppose, as in question

“Suppose she never comes back?” The explication of Suppose differs from those of

the related verbs such as: presume or guess in containing the components “I don‟t

say: X is true” What seems to necessitate the introduce of this component is the use

of Suppose in sentence “I was supposed to do X” In this sentence, the speaker is

distancing himself from what is said, and pointing to somebody else as responsible for it

2.5.6 SUSPECT verb

Suspect is used in two different, though closely related, senses Each of these

senses is easily recognized because each has its own syntactic frame Suspect of

corresponds semantically to the noun suspicion, and it implies something bad about the person spoken of It seems to be restricted to persons, and it implies that the speaker is thinking of a particular person or persons It also implies that person spoken of is trying to hide the “bad thing” in questions, or in any case doesn‟t want

people to know it Suspect that implies neither “badness” nor secretiveness, it not

restricted to persons, and does not imply any concentration of thought on one particular subjects

2.5.7 WONDER verb

Wonder is akin to Speculate, both can be carried on entirely in one‟s head

both assume that the person engaged in the mental activity would want to know something, doesn‟t know it, and wants to think about it In both cases, the thinking

is accompanied by the realization that one cannot cause oneself to know it by

thinking about it In a sense, Wonder is akin to ask, and could be paraphrased as asking oneself However, Wonder always implies a reflective attitude

This is the basis for further analysis from the syntax characteristics of GUESSING verb groups

2.5.8 BET verb

Bet is similar to Guess in so far as the speaker chooses to say something that

he simply doesn‟t know Of the two activities, however Bet is even less rational than Guess because the speaker says something that he not only doesn‟t know but cannot possibly know For this reason, Bet typically concerns future events, whereas Guess often concern the present or the past Unlike Guess, Bet implies a

collective activity, and invitation to the addressee to join it in

2.5.9 PROPHESY verb

Prophesy, like Predict, involves saying what will happen in the future

There is, however, something mysterious and almost mystical about it The prophet feels that he knows things about the future that other people don‟t know, and can‟t know, because they are “hidden” from them For some reason, that the prophet himself doesn‟t understand, he can “see” in his mind what other people can‟t see In

this respect, Prophesy is analogous to fortune-telling the fortune-teller, too, can

“see” things that are hidden from other people, and has knowledge that other people don‟t have, and which has come to him a way different from the ordinary ways people acquire knowledge But in the case of a fortune-teller this knowledge concerns, usually, an individual addressee, and has no general importance By contrast, a prophet has a message of a very general significance He can “see” in his mind things about the future because he has been somehow chosen by God to

convey publicly a message which is important to everyone Prophesy seems to be

fairly complex in content, and is normally done by means of many sentences rather than one

2.5.10 CONJECTURE verb

According to Hayakawa (1969), “Conjecture relates closely to Guess,

stressing the incomplete or inadequate evidence serving as a basic of judgement A shrew conjecture may include elements of intuition, extrapolations based on experience, a good sense of probability, and plain luck When used without

qualifications, Conjecture often indicates mere guesswork, unsubstantiated by any evidence and hence without much credibility” It is certainly true that Conjecture

implies that the speaker has thought about the matter at hand This is incompatible

with “mere guesswork” In fact, Guess doesn‟t even include the component “I think (that X is Y) From this point of view, Conjecture is closer to Suppose than it is to

Guess Suppose is also link to Conjecture by the component “I don‟t know”

Furthermore, Conjecture implies that the speaker would want to know “I

conjecture” is perhaps similar to “I wonder” Finally, while both Conjecture and

Guess imply an absence of evidence, in the case of Conjecture this is qualified as

an absence of conclusive evidence

2.5.11 FORECAST verb

According to Hayakawa (1969) “like Predict, Forecast can range in use

from the general or vague to the specific, but in this case its most specific use – for predicting weather – has crowded out other uses of the word” This description, however, doesn‟t say how the two verbs differ from one another, and implies that

the frequent use of Forecast in connection with weather is somehow accidental

Forecast must have some other properties which Predict doesn‟t have, and which

make it unsuitable in sentences concerning individual human actions Anybody can try to predict to predict tomorrow‟s weather, but only meteorologist can forecast them

2.6 Summary

In this chapter, the Literature Review includes previous studies, review of theoretical background In the previous studies, the studies of authors in oversea and

in Vietnam are given In the theory of syntax and semantics are analyzed thoroughly

in order to use for background of analyzing the syntactic and semantic features of the GUESSING verb group in English Moreover, the definition of the verb and classification of verb are pointed out in details Finally, theoretical background is given briefly reviewing what has been found and discussed the related studies by describing their approaches and key findings

Chapter 3 METHODOLOGY

For this chapter, the methodology applied in the study will be discussed in more details The instruments and the procedure of data collection and analysis which are all aimed at achieving the major aims of the study will be introduced

3.1 Research approach

The thesis is conducted by combining the three research approaches of quantitative, qualitative and contrastive which are carried out following orientations

Firstly, the thesis is started with data collection by using the literary work Gone with the wind in English and its Vietnamese version After finishing the collection of data, they are qualitatively and quantitatively described, analyzed and illustrated in terms of the structural and semantic features The data collected then compared with Vietnamese equivalents under a process of contrastive analysis to find the answers to the research questions

Finally, certain conclusions and implications for using the Guessing verb group in English in an effective way are withdrawn

3.2 Methods of the study

The study is planned to describe and analyze some syntactic and semantic features of GUESSING verb group in English as well as their Vietnamese equivalents To meet the demand of the objectives, this study is going to choose English as the source language and Vietnamese, the target one The methods are used in this study include descriptive and contrastive analysis ones

a/ Descriptive method

Descriptive research is defined as a research method that describes the characteristics of the population or phenomenon that is being studied This methodology focuses more on the “what” of the research subject rather than the

“why” of the research subject In other words, descriptive research primarily focuses on describing the nature of a demographic segment, without focusing on

“why” a certain phenomenon occurs In other words, it “describes” the subject of the research, without covering “why” it happens

The descriptive method is exploited to search for the syntactic and semantic features

of the seven verbs of the GUESSING verb group

b/ Contrastive analysis method:

This study follows the instructions of applied contrastive analysis As a result, it concentrates on how inversion in English is rendered in Vietnamese This implies that the study is characterized by its directionality: it is unidirectional in the sense that the contrastive analysis of English and Vietnamese is descriptively biased toward the former E.g.: much more attention is paid to English rather than to Vietnamese since it is the former which must be learnt

The criteria for comparison or the “tertium comparationis” employed in this paper are the translationally equivalent sentences Many contrastivists [56; 175] claim that it has been standard practice in grammar CA to compare the formal features of translationally paired sentences James [56; 67] states that “It is a procedural convenience to work with translationally equivalent sentences” But notices that “For two sentences from different languages to be translationally equivalent they must convey the same ideational and interpersonal and textual meanings.” [56; 178]

The ideal meaning which is concerned with deep structure is the meaning that single isolated sentences convey [56; 178] According to Kizeszowski [56; 175], “equivalent constructions have identical deep structures even if on the surface they are markedly different” A conclusion to draw from all this is that translational equivalents have at least the same ideational meaning

The interpersonal meaning of a sentence determines what kind of speech act

it performs for its user: to praise, condemn, refuse, agree, and so on [56; 178]

The textual meaning of a sentence determines what information it contributes to the message: how it helps maintain cohesion and coherence [56; 178]

James [56; 178] concludes that “for contrastive analysis we must equate first language and foreign language forms which, no matter how far they diverge

superficially are semantically and pragmatically equivalent” and that “translation equivalent of this rather rigorously defined sort is the best available tertium comparationis for contrastive analysis.”

The translationally equivalent sentences chosen to server as tertium comparationis for the contrastive analysis in this study are the ones which meet the above-mentioned conditions The pairs of sentences are juxtaposed in order to show the striking contrast between the two languages Then the similarities and differences are formulated by means of transfer rules which specify how English inversion gets parceled out correspondingly in Vietnamese

James [56; 47] points out that transfer rules are inherently directional: the rules describing the conversion of English into Vietnamese are different from those affecting the conversion in the opposite direction

The examples used in this study are taken from the English literary work

„Gone with the wind” in which the examples involved have been examined,

described and classified The second source is the equivalent literary works in Vietnamese in which the examples involved have been quoted

Besides, the contrastive analysis method is useful to uncover the Vietnamese equivalents of these seven English verbs with different senses

3.3 Data collection and analysis

In order to accomplish the thesis, the study uses the data which are 143

quotes taken from the novel Gone with the wind in English and in Vietnamese

version The examples having seven English verbs are quoted, analyzed and used as the chief source for the qualitative evidence

When analyzing data, the syntactic features of the seven English GUESSING verbs and their Vietnamese equivalents are presented through clear and understandable examples firstly

The semantic features of the seven English verbs and their Vietnamese equivalents are presented in turn

After that the frequency or percentage in using of the seven English GUESSING verb group

Some solutions for teaching and learning the GUESSING verb group are suggested

3.4 Research corpus

The source of the thesis is about 143 English sentences containing the GUESING verb group and their Vietnamese equivalents selected and quoted in the

literary Gone with the wind and the Vietnamese version So, this study is carried

out through the corpus from the literary work to help them to identify more clearly about the comparison as well as in semantics/ syntax between GUESSING verb groups in English and their Vietnamese equivalents

3.5 Summary

This chapter determines methodology of the study The methods are used in this study including quantitative, qualitative and contrastive analysis method The

data are collected from the literary work Gone with the wind in English and in

Vietnamese version Based on this plentiful source of materials, the research will be executed as below After that, the data is going to contrasted, analyzed in structure

of syntactic and semantics introduction

CHAPTER 4 FEATURES OF GUESSING VERB GROUP IN “GONE WITH THE WIND”

AND THEIR VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION EQUIVALENTS

As mentioned in Chapter 2, there are eleven verbs in GUESSING verb group However, after studying the corpus, it is found that there are seven verbs

appearing in the literary work Gone with the wind Therefore, this chapter deals

with the syntactic and semantic features of seven English GUESSING verb group

They are: Guess, Predict, Presume, Speculate, Suppose, Suspect and Wonder 143

examples have been taken from the English literary work Gone with the wind

which is then followed by the presentation of the frequency of the occurrence of these verb in corpus described The author will conduct a combined analysis of the GUESSING verbs in English and Vietnamese equivalents Also, to clarify the findings, a detailed discussion and examples from the data collection will be presented

4.1 Syntactic features of the GUESSING verb group in English

4.1.1 In terms of their sentence pattern

After studying the corpus, it is found that the GUESSING verb group is divided into two sentence patterns according to their syntactic features They are:

SV and SVO type The table below shows the SV and SVO type of the seven verbs

SV type: In this pattern, the verbs are intransitive verb The verbs do not

have an object For examples:

SVO type: In this pattern, the verbs are intransitive verb The verbs always

occur with direct objects The direct object maybe a noun, noun phrase, pronoun or

that-clause, finite clause/ non-finite clause The conjunction that can sometimes be

omitted The direct object is a finite or non-finite clause beginning with either (i) a

“wh-element” which can be a pronoun (who, whom, which, what), a determiner + noun (what time, which tutors, etc.) or an adverb (why, when, where, how); or (ii) one of the conjunctions if (finite clause only) or whether Let‟s look at following