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 AN

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

1 Rationale of the study 9

2 Aims of the study 10

3 Scope of the study 10

4 Method of the study 11

5 Design of the study 11

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 12

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 12

1.1 Two word verbs 12

1.1.1 Definition of PVs and PreVs 12

1.1.2 Syntactic and semantic characteristics of PVs and PreVs 16

2.1.2.2 Syntactic and semantic characteristics of PreVs 18

1.2 Process types 20

1.2.1 Overview of process types 20

1.2.2 Material processes 22

1.2.3 Mental processes 24

1.2.4 Material vs mental processes 25

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 26

2.1 Data collection instrument 26

2.2 Corpus choice 26

2.3 Data Analyses 27

2.4 The selection and extraction of two-word verbs 29

CHAPTER 3: ENGLISH TWO-WORD VERBS DENOTING MATERIAL AND MENTAL PROCESSES AND VIETNAMSESE EQUIVALENTS 31

3 1 COME 32

3 2 GIVE 35

3 3 GO 36

3 4 MAKE 38

3 5 HEAR 39

3 6 SEE 39

3 7 THINK 40

PART C: CONCLUSION 41

1 Conclusions 41

2 Suggestions for teaching and learning two-word verbs 42

3 Suggests for further studies 42

REFERENCES 43 APPENDIX 1 I APPENDIX 2 II APPENDIX 3 III APPENDIX 4 IV APPENDIX 5 V APPENDIX 6 VI APPENDIX 7 VII

Abbreviations

B.E British English

A.E American English

PV Phrasal verb

PreV Prepositional verb

S Obligatory separable phrasal verbs

inS Inseparable phrasal verbs

Trans Transitive

Intrans Intransitive

NP Noun phrase

V Verb

LSWE Longman Spoken and Written English

LOCNESS Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays

BNC British National Corpus

List of tables

Table 1: PVs and PreVs dissimilarities 11 Table 2: Number of two-word verbs and meanings in three sources of dictionary 17 Table 3: Table 3: Frequent two-word verbs in studies of Gardner & Davies (2007), Liu

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 teachers have realized the importance of this multiword knowledge in helping their learners use English more fluently and naturally Paradoxically, these structures are never easy for non-native learners to acquire, mostly because the semantic, grammatical and

stylistic peculiarities 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 to understand and use them in the right context However, thousands of two-word verbs and many 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, Dilin Liu (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 authors claim to be a manageable number to deal with The problem is two-word verbs are very polysemous, 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 less manageable

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

is aiming 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, and aspectual verbs Halliday (1985,; 2004) approaches the matter with different term but the same nature Instead of ‗semantic domains; Halliday has term ‗processes‘ (See section 1.2.1 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 by both 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 study includes 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 Oxford Phrasal 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 have multiple meanings belonging to different semantic domains, Biber (1999) affirms that activity verbs and mental verbs are of most common Among the 12 most common lexical verbs 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 300 times per million words in at least one register (cf Biber et al , 1999: 367-369) In domain

of activity material 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 denoting material and mental processes in English though, in the frame of a small paper, we only focus on four outstanding representatives of material verbs: COME, GIVE, GO, MAKE (all are 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-idiomatic meanings 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 give much focus on the collection and analysis of numerical data and statistics, appear to be appropriate

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 three chapters: Chapter 1- - Theoretical Background, provides the fundamental concepts used in the paper; Chapter 2- Methodology, describes thoroughly the methodology acquired in the study; Chapter 3 presents lists of two-word combinationcombinations of 8seven common verbs belonging to material and mental processes with their particles/ prepositions and their Vietnamese equivalents Finally, the Conclusion offers the review of the study with its implication and application concerning teaching and learning English two-word verbs in general

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

This chapter represents the issues of two-word verbs and Processes of Material and Mental in details Section 1.1 examines some aspects of PVs and PreVs such as their definitions 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 the focus 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 the classification of four major kinds of multi-word combinations that comprise ―relatively idiomatic 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 a verb 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 of more than just the verb word itself‖, which can be verb + adverb, verb + preposition, and verb + adverb + preposition David (2002) seems to meet Halliday when this author insists the existence of two definitions of PVs, the broad sense and the narrow sense The broad sense includes both PreVs and PVs, spatial or figurative, transitive or intransitive while the narrow 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) notes that ―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-particle combinations 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 fit into the main parts of speech like noun, verb, or adverb, etc (Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics, 1985) The exact status of the particle is still being debated; scholars are 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 consider adverbs 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 in its adverbial nature and some differences between particles and prepositions will be noted in section 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 can function as such (Quirk & Greenbaum, 1973) Particles form cohesive units with verbs and normally cannot be separated from the verb by another adverb Moreover, they play an

important role in complementation by completing the meaning of the head-phrase, and creating a dominant conceptual meaning for PVs

Particles have pragmatic meaning and obviously have impact on the meaning of the verb 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)

die off, put over), ingressive meaning (doze off, go away, set out), or continuative/iterative meaning (drive on, hammer away) (See aspectual PVs, section 1.1.2.1)

1.1.1.3.3 Particles vs prepositions

Particles look like prepositions and actually have some common features with prepositions Both of them are invariable in form, i.e they do not change their form in accordance with words they accompany Particles can sometimes be considered a special type of prepositions3, but they are still distinctive terms Certain syntactic features separate them from each other A great deal of differences is about their position, the sentence constituents they are linked to4, and their function5, etc Moreover, particles usually affect the meanings of their proceeding verbs while prepositions usually do not and even independent of them (See section 1.1.2.3.1)

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 adverbs particle need not Celce-Murcia (1999: 429) proposes syntactic tests (adopted from O‘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 )

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 are divided 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 PVs because 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 here are 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 direct object is a pronoun6

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

or Anne put her coat on and 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)

From semantical semantic 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: 0.49"

Formatted: Indent: Left: 0.78", Space After:

1 line, Line spacing: Exactly 19 pt

prepositional meaning and the result is a PV whose meaning is fully

compositional (e.g sit down)

 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

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: 0.68", Hanging:

0.29", Bulleted + Level: 1 + Aligned at: 0.25" + Tab after: 0.5" + Indent at: 0.5", Tab stops: Not at 0.5"

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"

 V + NP + preposition + NP

E.g He blames all faults on me

Linguists, such as Quirk & Greenbaum (1973), Biber et al (1999), tend to agree that there are two ways to approach PreVs: the first one is that PreVs can be treated as a single lexical verb followed by a prepositional phrase functioning as an adverbial Arguments supporting this view are based on the fact that we can insert another adverbial between the verb and the preposition In the second approach, both the verb and the preposition are seen 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 preposition functions 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

Table 1: PVs and PreVs dissimilarities

on the preposition Adverb insertion/

intervention

Adverb cannot enter between particle combinations It must be placed before the verb or at the end

verb-PreVs allow insertion of adverb into verb-preposition combination

Preposition must precede the noun phrase

Particle cannot be placed before a

Particle cannot precede a relative pronoun or the interrogative word at the beginning of a Wh-question

Preposition can

Pronoun-object

Preposition must precede pronoun

1.2 Process types

1.2.1 Overview of process types

As Martin et al (1997: 102) says, ―Process type is the resource for sorting out human 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 as Bloor, 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 processes include 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 and identification

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

version of verbal and mental processes, they represent the acting out of processes of consciousness (like laughing), and physiological states (like sleeping) They have similarities to both material and mental processes Like mental processes, one of their participants must be human consciousness (in mental we call it ‗Senser‘ while in behavioural, it is known as ‗Behaver‘) They resemble material processes in: (i) they prefer present-in-present tense, and (ii) they cannot occur with a reported clause in a projecting clause 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 a participant which involves a process of being But what separates them is that existential

processes 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 are not necessary verbal (showing, indicating) They symbolize relationships constructed in human 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 the three 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, fig 5.2) In that figure, process types are represented as a semiotic space with different regions representing different types The regions have core areas and these represent prototypical members 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- functional grammar As mentioned above, material and mental processes are among basic processes and account the largest proportion in 6 processes They are also subject investigated in this paper and will be looked closely in the next sections

1.2.2 Material processes

Material processes cover doings and happenings Prototypically, these are concrete changes in the material world that can be perceived But such concrete material processes have 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 by the 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 a provision of service

E.g (1) She gave a teapot to his aunt

Actor Goal Beneficiary (recipient)

(2) She made a cup of tea for me

Actor Goal Beneficiary (client)

(3) They crossed the hall Actor Range

Material processes are distinguished into transitive and intransitive processes (Halliday, 1985; 2004) Usually, if there is only one participant in a clause, the process is said 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)

E.g (1) The lion caught the tourist

Actor Process: active Goal

(2) The tourist was caught by the lion

Goal Process: passive Actor

About the subtypes of doings and happening, Halliday (2004) clarifies transformative 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

personified to be 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 consciousness such 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, and emotion 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 material processes from mental processes, including: the participants, the tense of process or verb serving 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 no limitation 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-word verbs and process types, in respect of how they are defined, their characteristics and how to separate them from one another The next chapter represents the details of how the research is implemented

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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)

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

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

(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-sounding English The third source even claims to have original extra features that help to make it an ideal 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 based and 2 B.E based) put forth by different authors They are sources that were accessible at the time of conducting this research

corpus- Liu (2003) analyzed three spoken A.E corpora to establish the author‘ lists of the most 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 tokens per 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 spoken and 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

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

of Phrasal verbs

MacMillan Phrasal verbs Plus

Oxford Phrasal verbs Dictionary

Note: 32 —152: 32 combinations and 152 meanings In which,

(24/8) (126/26) 24 PVs (with 126 meanings) and 8 PreVs (with 26 meanings)

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)

Give up

give away give in

Give in

give out give back

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

two-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 concerned verbs in dictionaries on hand Though, comparing with the numbers in table 2,

we understand that these authors really got achievement in reducing the workload from learners‘ mind

Last, Vietnamese equivalents are taken from English- Vietnamese dictionaries about PVs 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 Longman dictionary of contemporary English (2006: 974) even emphasizes ―If a verb still keeps its ordinary meaning, even though it is followed by several different prepositions, it is not a phrasal verb‖ However, McArthur(cited Stephens, 2008) assesses this is the ―holistic or semantic view‖, which focuses mainly on the meaning of the verb combination In his treatment 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 and what is idiomatic or figurative is in many cases unfeasible (…) in part due to the polysemous meanings PVs which often fade into one another‖ Admitting both literal and figurative 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 those which 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 will display the results of the study specifically

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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 from the 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 a two-word verb should be quantified as a whole or according to its different semantic meanings Instead of counting all instances of ‗come along‘, for example, this PV could be broken down into its different semantic constituents and quantified as ‗happen, appear‘, and ‗improve‘, etc Several researchers say the quantification by semantic criteria is not feasible and that there are too many cases in which the meaning of a two-word verb deviates from one of the various dictionary meanings and where a clear-cut semantic differentiation is not possible They quantify PVs as independent of inherent semantic differences, so that they can set up the list of frequently used two-word verbs In the present study, two-word verbs are quantified according to their semantic criteria

The semantic analysis of some common English two- word verbs will be reported in this 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

et al., 1999), and listed in categories of 20 lexical verbs combines with eight adverbial particles to account for more than one half of the 518, 923 PV occurrences identified in the megacorpus (Gardner & David, 2007) The first four are lexical verbs belonging to material processes 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 seven separate tables, and put into separate columns named material processes and mental processes which run parallel18 This makes it easier to see and compare material processes and 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, come

up

 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 and idiomatic as soon as they form a relationship with other lexemes, and PVs are an excellent case 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)

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

„See‟, and „Think‟ can be found in Appendixes