1 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

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
6

3. 3. GO 36
3. 4. MAKE 38
3. 5. HEAR 39
7 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



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
(2003), Waibel (2002), and Biber (1999) 18 9 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

2. Aims of the study
The primary aims of this paper are:
1. to study English two-word verbs, specifically distinguish two kinds of two-
word verbs: PVs and PreVs;
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
11 (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.

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 phrasal-
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‖.
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
1.1.1.1 PVs
There is a disputation as to how PVs are defined. Following here are some ways of
defining PVs:
Dixon, R.M.W (1991: 274)) says: ―Phrasal verb is a combination of verb plus
preposition that has a meaning not inferable from the individual meanings of verb and
preposition(s)‖
1
.

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.

13


14 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 adverbs
2
. 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,

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 ) 3
Many words can be used both as adverbs and prepositions except back and away (they are only adverb),
while other words like from and during can only be treated as prepositions (David, 2002: 115- 116).
4
A preposition denotes a semantic relationship between two entities as to place, time, instrument or cause etc
(Quirk et al , 1972) while a particle is part of the verb.
5
Adverbial particles function as adverbs and modify the preceding verb.
16 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;

Celce-Murcia (1999) said this phenomenon is because what we are calling a particle is actually a
preposition and thus would naturally go before its object
8
The obligatory separation is presumed to avoid the ambiguity with the inseparable phrasal verbs, which
have the same form but different meaning (Celce-Murcia et al., 1999).
17 From 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 PVs
9
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 ,

(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
components
11
. 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

word verb (e.g. PreV „looked after‟ in She looked after her son can be replaced by single
word ‗tended‘).
1.1.2.3.2 Dissimilarities
According to Quirk et al. (1972), the differences between PVs and PreVs are
regarding to stress, adverb insertion and particle/ preposition position. Lamont (2005)
agrees they are syntactic tests
12
to clear away our confusion about PVs or PreVs, and
emphasize knowledge of such tests is ―indispensable‖ for anyone studying phrasal verbs.
These are generalized in the following table:
12
The rationale for many of these tests is the fact that a preposition makes a natural unit with the NP object
that follows it, whereas a particle makes a natural unit with the verb that precedes it (Celce-Murcia et al.,
1999: 430)
20 Table 1: PVs and PreVs dissimilarities
Syntactic tests
PVs
PreVs
Spoken stress
Stress is on the particles
The stress is on the verb, not
on the preposition
Adverb insertion/
intervention

replacement
Particle must go after pronoun
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.
21 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

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)
23


the goal. Creative subtype, on the other hand, has the outcome brought into existence by
the doing.
24 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
processes.
Mental processes involve participants of ‗Senser‘ and ‗Phenomenon‘. Senser is the
one that senses, feels, thinks, wants or perceives which is always human or human-like. It
is said to be born with consciousness, hence, it is often substituted by pronoun he/ she
rather than it. Besides, creatures like pets or domestic animals and entities can be
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

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

Verbs
Chambers Dictionary
of Phrasal verbs
MacMillan Phrasal
verbs Plus
Oxford Phrasal verbs
Dictionary
Come
32 — 99
32 —152
(24/8) (126/26)
32 — 146
(19/18) (122/24)
Give
9 — 25
10 — 27
(8/2) (25/2)
10 — 31
(7/4) (28/4)
Go
31—112
28 — 162
(23/5) (141/21)
31 — 209
(22/17) (146/63)
Make
9 — 25
13 — 26
(9/4) (20/6)
8 — 21

come round, it is also counted one form.
Second, the long lists of frequently used idioms and PVs are filtered to PVs and
PreVs concerned in the following table.
Table 3: Frequent two-word verbs in studies of Gardner & Davies (2007), Liu (2003),
Waibel (2002), and Biber (1999)
Dilin Liu
Waibel
Gardner &
Davies
Biber
Professional
Media
Miscase
LOCNESS
BNC
PVs
PreVs
Come about
come across
come by
come on
come up

Give up


Give up Go on
go through
go ahead
go over
go for
go off
go with
go along
go with Make up
make out

Come across
come by
come up
come on
come off


go down
go by
go off
go along
go ahead
go forward
go around
go ahead
go up
go in
Make up
make out
Think out Come about
come back
come along
come round
come on
come in
come down
come off
come out
come up
come over
come through
Give in
give out
give back
Go ahead
go off
Make up