6
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS

E.g.
For example
i.e.
That is
NP
Noun phrase
O
Object
Od
Direct object
Oi
Indirect object
O
d
Cl
Direct Object Clause
Prep.
Preposition
p.
Page
Q
Quote
V
Verb
Op
Prepositional Object
Adv
Adverbial Modifier
7
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Declaration p. i
Acknowledgements ii
Abstract iii
List of abbreviations iv
Table of contents vii
PART I: INTRODUCTION 1
1. Rationale 1
2. Aims and Objectives of the study 1
3. Research Questions 2
4. Scope of the study 2
5. Significance of the study 2
6. Method of the study 2

7. Organization of the study 3
PART II: DEVELOPMENT 4
Chapter 1: Theoretical Background 4
1.1. Semantics 4
1.2. Meaning 5
1.3.  7
1.4. Synonyms 8
1.5. Synonymic group 11
1.6. Componential analysis 11
Chapter 2: The Study 13

9
PART I: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
Among verbs of English, we find that the verbs Say, Tell, Speak, Talk belong to
the most frequently used vocabulary. These verbs can occur in different syntactic
patterns that reflect various meanings in real-life communication. They can occur in the
same syntactic patterns, but may have different meanings depending on the situation in
which they are used.
As a teacher of English at an English teaching centre, I found that my learners
have faced many problems when they use this group of verbs. They often feel confused
to choose the right verb and make errors in using them. Therefore, I have carried out a
study to find out how to use these verbs accurately and correctly from the analysis of
their syntactic and semantic features with their references to their equivalents in
Vietnamese.
Also, with respect to interpretation and translation work, it is believed that the
decoding of a language form is equally important. A precise interpretation or translation
must be based on a specific context of communication. For instance, the meanings
      Sb/sth say + Direct Object   

4. Scope of the study
The study focuses on uncovering the differences among the four English verbs
under study in terms of syntactic and semantic features as well as their references in
Vietnamese. The core meanings of these verbs   
which also occur in the corpora are beyond the scope of the present research and
therefore they were excluded from the data.
Material containing examples with phrasal verbs and idioms was not included in the
paper for two reasons. Firstly, relevant examples did not modify the meaning of verbs
studied in any new way; thus, secondly, much needless labour would be put into deleting
the irrelevant examples. All the relevant examples were counted and carefully studied.
5. Significance of the study
Theoretical significance: This study contributes to verifying significance related
to semantic theory in componential analysis by working on a certain synonymic group of
verbs. It proves that lexical semantics is an important area in linguistics. Verbs, as the
core of lexicon, provide the key to exploring the interaction between syntax and
semantics as well as understand the nature of lexicon.
Practical significance: Findings of this study will provide information that can
help learners and translators gain an insight into how the speech act verbs with Say, Tell,
Speak, Talk can be employed in discourse in English by Vietnamese learners and
translators.
6. Method of the study
The methods used in this study include quantitative and qualitative. The
quantitative method is exploited to search for differences of the four English verbs under
11
study in terms of syntactic and semantic features. Qualitative method is useful to uncover
the Vietnamese equivalents of these four English verbs with different senses. In
particular, the data were collected from different sources such as dictionaries, novels,
news, books.
The verbs are analyzed in detail beginning with Say followed by Tell, Speak, and
Talk. Each of these verbs is described in a separate section, and the analysis was

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
The following issues are to be dealt with in this chapter: Theory of semantics, meaning,
the meanings of meaning, synonyms, synonymic group, componential analysis.
1.1. Semantics
Semantics is a branch of linguistics, which deals with meaning or the content of
communication. According to Hurford and Heasley (1983:1), 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. Jackson (1988:49) states that 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 feeling, about
what has happened, about what might happen or what they would like to happen, and a
lot more.
Hurford and Heasley (1983:5) state that 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 tried to define Semantics. Morris 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 revised 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 (cited in Lyons, 1977:
116) says that descriptive semantics (i.e. the investigation of the meaning of expressions
        as part of pragmatics. The
reason why descriptive semantics is part of pragmatics seems to have been that he
believed that difference in the use of particular expressions were not only inevitable in
language-behaviour, but must be taken account of in the description or context. Smith, as
quoted by Lyons (1977:116) states that semantics studies how these signs are related to
things. And pragmatics studies how they are related to people. According to Leech
(1983:5) in practice, the problem of distinguishing language and language use has

attention to what happens: look at closely).
c) When I arrived the cat was sitting on the wall, watching for birds (watch here
means to wait for sb/sth to appear or happen).
d) My watch has stopped (watch here means a small clock)
According to Lesley Jeffries (1983:3) meaning is a kind of invisible unclothed being
waiting for the clothes of language to allow it to be seen, which is why it is necessary to
14
take off the clothes of language to understand the real meaning of words, phases and
sentences.
E.g. "tell on sb" means "to tell a person in authority about sth bad that sb has done".
Through this example, a conclusion ca be drawn as the meaning of the word is
not all the time decided by itself but by the relation with others, which is why John
Lyons (1996:4) states that the noun         
derived are used, like many other English words, in a wide range of contexts and in
several distinguishable senses.
According to David Crystal
2
(1992:102), meaning is studied by making detailed
analysis of the way words and sentences are used in a specific context. It is an approach
shared by several philosophers and psychologists.
And David Crystal
1
(1992: 247) also states that meaning is a basic notion used in
language study in two main ways. First, determining the signification of a message is the
chief end of linguistic enquiry. Above all, language is concerned with the
communication of meaning. Second, meaning is used as a way of analyzing the structure
of language, through such notions a contractiveness and distinctiveness.
           Heidi
Sense is the place which a word or phrase (a lexeme), holds in
the system of rel

sentence. For example, in the phrases such as old man, grey house, beautiful fur and tall
tree, it is the first component in each case which qualifies the second. Moreover, such

in fact, a kind of grammatical meaning. This can explain why the combination of words
in a language is meaningful and cannot be changed freely. For example, when we
,
we do not relate the to old, old to men, men to stared, etc., and do not reverse the
position of men stared as stared men.
According to Lyons (1995:52), a lexeme may have different word-form which
will generally differ in respect of their grammatical meaning. For example, the forms of
 an  in respect of their grammatical meaning.  is singular
form (of a noun of a p    is plural form (of a noun of a
particular class); the difference between singular forms and plural form is semantically
relevant: it affects sentence meaning. The meaning of a sentence is determined partly by
the meaning of the words of which it consists and partly by its grammatical meaning.
16
Baker (1992:12) stated that lexical meaning of a word may be viewed as the
specific value it has in a particular linguistic system. It is the most outstanding individual
property of words, and in contrast with grammatical meaning, it can stand on its own.
Different types of lexical meaning as recognised by Leed (1974) are:
(1) Conceptual meaning: Logical, cognitive, or denotative content.
(2) Associative meaning:
Connotative meaning: What is communicated in terms of what language refers to
Social meaning: What is communicated of the social circumstances of language use
Affetive meaning: What is communicated of the feelings and attitudes of the
speaker/writer
Reflected meaning: What is communicated through association with another sense of the
same expression.
Collocative meaning: what is communicated through association with words which tend
to occur in the environment of another word.

defined in this connection. It is clear that a definition of synonyms simply as words
having the same or closely related meanings is too vague. Crystal (2003:450) specifies
the definition in the following way:
 
allow a choice to be made between them in some contexts, without there being any
17
difference for the 
very vague. For the present work a more detailed definition is needed.
According to Jack C.Richards et al (1992:368), synonym as a word which has
the same or nearly the same meaning as another word. It should be noted that two words
which are synonymous must belong to the same part of speech. Nguyen Hoa (2004: 72)
shares the same idea with Jack Croduction of English
 that synonyms are actually words of the same parts of speech which have
similar meaning, but not identical meaning. They may share a similar denotational or
connotational meaning. They can differ from each another in terms of denotation and
connotation. For example, father and dad differed in terms of connotation when
misfortune and accident differed in their denotation.
Nguyen Hoa (2004:76) in his studies divided synonyms into six groups:
(i) Semantic synonyms which differed in terms of their denotation (for example, look
and glance. 
r hand, apart
);
(ii) Stylistic synonyms which differed in terms of their connotation (father and dad),
(iii)Semantic – stylistic synonyms differing in both denotational and connotational
meaning i.e in shades of meaning connotation (sack-dismiss-fire);
(iv) Phraseological synonyms which were distinctive because of their collocations (do
and make);
(v) Territorial synonyms were those employed in different regions. 

used on the other side of the Atlantic;

.
Synonyms may also differ in emotional coloring which may be present in one
element of the group and absent in all or some of the others. Lonely as compared with
alone is emotional as is easily seen from the following examples: a very lonely boy lost
between them and aware at ten that his mother had no interest in him, and that his father
was a stranger/ Shall be alday. Both words denote
being apart from others, but lonely besides the general meaning implies longing for
company, feeling sad because of the lack of sympathy and companionship. Alone does
not necessarily suggest any sadness at being by oneself.
Synonyms can therefore be defined in terms of linguistics as two or more words
of the same language, belonging to the same part of speech and possessing one or more
identical or nearly identical denotational meanings, interchangeable, at least in some
contexts, without any considerable alteration in denotational meaning, but differing in
morphemic composition, phonemic shape, shades of meaning, connotations, affective
value, style, valence and idiomatic use. Additional characteristics of style, emotional
19
coloring and valence peculiar to one of the elements in a synonymic group may be absent
in one or all of the others.
1.5. Synonymic group
According to Nguyen Hoa (2004:76), a synonymic group is a group of all
synonyms (for example, chief, principal, main, important). In synonymic group, we can
  , mostly general, neutral word, usually belong to the basic
stock of words.
An illustration will be supplied by a group of synonymous nouns: hope,
expectation, and anticipation. They are considered to be synonymous because they all
   They are, however,
much less interchangeable than the previous group because of more strongly pronounced
difference in shades of meaning. Expectation may be either of good or of evil.
Anticipation, as a rule, is a pleasurable expectation of something good. Hope is not only
a belief but a desire that some event would happen. The stylistic difference is also quite


component parts commonly referred to as semantic features or semantic properties or
jNguyen Hoa, 2004:123). The basic view of this approach is that the lexical
meaning of the word or lexeme can be decomposed into components or constituent parts
called semes. So it is also called the semantic decomposition of the word or lexeme. One
of the commonest examples used by linguists is the set of features which are said to
compose the lexemes woman, bachelor, spinster, and wife as follows:
Woman: <+female> <+adult> <+human>
Bachelor: <+ male> <+adult> <+human> <+unmarried>
Spinster: < + female> <+adult> <+human> <+unmarried>
Wife: < +female> <+adult> <+human> <+married>
Usually, componential analysis is applied to a group of related words, which may differ
from one another only by one or two components. This approach was developed in
anthropological linguistics for the study of kinship or other terms in various languages.
Componential analysis, also called feature analysis or contrast analysis, refers to the
description of the meaning of words through structured sets of semantic features, which

thus departs from the principle of compositionality. Componential analysis is a method
typical of structural semantics which analyzes the structure of a word's meaning. Thus, it
reveals the culturally important features by which speakers of the language distinguish
different words in the domain (Ottenheimer, 2006, p. 20). This is a highly valuable
approach to learning another language and understanding a specific semantic domain of
an Ethnography.
21
CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY
In this chapter, the research questions will be restated in 2.1, the data collection
will be described in 2.2 and the analytical framework of the study will be outlined in 2.3,
data analysis and discussions will be presented in 2.4. Particularly, in section 2.4 which
constitutes the central focus of the current study, syntactic and semantic features of the
verbs Say, Tell, Speak and Talk and their Vietnamese equivalents will be thoroughly

broad sense and narrow sense. The former means anything that is written such as tables,
catalogues, text, books, brochures, etc. while the latter means a writing that expresses
and communicate thought, feelings, ideas, and attitudes, towards life in the serious fuller
and deeper sense of the words. Moreover, these sources are found to provide the most
fertile examples for the lexical items under study.
The bilingual dictionaries, the Vietnamese version of the novel Fanity Fair
translated by Tran Kiem are used for this study because they are well known and are
confirmed by reliable publishing houses such as Literature Publishing House, Publishing
House of Cultural and Informatics.
22
After identifying different senses of the four verbs in English together their
Vietnamese equivalents, these senses are brought into consideration. The following part
represents the analytical framework used to analyze the data.
2.3. Analytical Framework
The theoretical framework applied for this study is componential analysis.
According to theory about componential analysis, this method analyses the meaning of
related words, which provide that the relationships between terms are based upon certain
shared and contrastive features. In other words, the approach of componential analysis
functions as breaking down the meanings of terms into their respective constituents of
meaning, then comparing these semantic components in order to clarify the meanings of
terms.
By using componential analysis, it is possible for us to describe the words of a
language with respect to components of meaning contrastively. For this reason,
componential analysis has become an important methodological concept for semantically
differentiating the words in the field of meaning and for studying synonyms.
This method aims to bring into focus the features which distinguish. This
principle involved here may allow us to aim for a more precise definition of meaning.
However, the idea that a word can be subjected to this type of clinical, accurate analysis
is rather misleading. This approach is only concerned with conceptual meaning, not
associative mean.




3
Make statement




4
Show ideas/ information neutrally/objectively




5
Repeat words

6
Suggest/Give an example or a possibility

7
Express opinion





13
Mention or describe sth /sb: 

14
Be able to use a particular language: 

15
Discuss sth, usually sth serious or important

16
Give information to sb, especially unwillingly:

17
Gossip


(3) Do you speak English? (Be able to use a particular language
(4)Professor Wilson was invited to speak about the results of his research
(make a speech to an audience)
           
about a poor girl whom George once loved (mention or describe sth/sb)
Talk (v) means (1) to say things; to speak in order to express feelings, ideas, etc. (2) to
discuss sth, usually sth serious or important, (3) to say words in a language, (4) Gossip
For example: (1) We talked on the phone for over an hour (say things)
(2) T (discuss sth)
(3) Are they talking Swedish or Danish? (Say words in a language)
- people will talk (Gossip)
All verbs have some common denotative meanings, for example, all verbs have
the  . They are the
markers that show the similarity in terms of meaning which is the basis for arranging
these verbs in the same synonymic group. However, these are also features that show one
or more specific meanings of a word which bring about its distinction in terms of
meaning compared with others in the same synonymic group. Those features are
distinguishes, which take an important role in the work of differentiating synonyms.
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Consider the following examples which are extracted from Oxford Advanced 
Online Dictionary(2003) as illustration for the idea:
(1) 
(2) He told everybody he saw the news
(3) Please speak more slowly
(4) The baby is just starting to talk.
It can be seen that all the verbs do the same work of producing a sound to
communicate. In sentence (1), the speaker used words to tell you that he does not believe
you and the information is basically informedin a neutral way. In sentence (2), the
speaker wants to give information to somebody by speaking. In sentence (3) the listener
would like the Speaker to use his/her voice more slowly. In sentence (4) the baby is

Table 2: Syntactic and Semantic Regularities of English verbs Studied
Syntactic function / Semantic Role
SAY
TELL
SPEAK
TALK
SUBJECT
SPEAKER
ACTIVE
PASSIVE
+
+
+
+
+
(+)
+
+
INDIRECT
OBJECT
ADDRESSEE

- O
i
to-phrase
-
+

++

+
+
+
++
+
+
(+)
(+)
(+)

+
+
+
++
+
+
+
+
-

+
+
+
-
-
-
-
+

on
on
in
for
against
at
after
from -
-
(+)
+
(+)
(+)
+
(+)
-
-
+
(+) -
-
(+)
++
(+)
(+)

+
(+)
-
-
MANNER
ADVERBIAL

++
(+)
++
+
Symbols: ++ : frequent; (+) : possible but rare - not exist
+ : typical; ? : improbable
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As we can see the table 2, the verbs Say, Tell, Speak and Talk have been analyzed
here in terms of their syntactic features, which are actualized by the nuclear syntactic
constituents, i.e. the Subject (S), the Direct Object (O
d
), the Indirect Object (Ø-O
i
) and
the nonnuclear constituents of the sentence, i.e. the Prepositional Object (O
p
), and
Adverbials (Adv). The four verbs studied from the point of view of the Speaker,
characterized as Source / Transmitter / Sender or Reporter, whose predominant role is
that of active Subject. All of them allow the Hearer / Listener / Receiver / Receptor as an
Addressee, expressed by a to- Indirect Object (O
i
) or, with speak and talk, as an

to manner of speaking verbs. It is also the most Topic-oriented of them, often taking an
O
d
as its MessageTopic. Speak seldom does so. Speak refers to the faculty of speech
and to speech production complemented by a pronounceable entity or code.
From the table above, it must be noticed that the four verbs studied, to
some extent, have the same syntactic structures. However, they are used different
constructions in some cases. To provide readers a critical view, the following analysis
will be presented.
SAY:
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Basically, the verb Say is a transitive verb which always takes a direct object. The
direct object of Say may assume a number of forms, ranging from direct speech to
pronominal items. Say may also be used intransitively, i.e. without any nuclear
constituents functioning as its direct object. Here are some examples of the direct object
of Say:
(i) a direct speech
(1)"said
(ii) a that-clause (noun clause)
(2) In the letter she said that the party was wonderful,
(iii) a wh-noun clause (especially in negative and questions):
(3)say when she would return
The verb is never followed directly by an indirect object pronoun. This is perhaps
the most common difficulty students have with say. If there is an indirect object, it must
 said  to me * He said me 
Much more common than say, however, in this kind of utterance - when you want to
mention the person or persons you are addressing the words to - is the verb Tell.
(iv) Noun phrases as the object of Say
There is another set of NPs which may also be assigned to this category. These are NPs
involving the noun ('word' or 'words') and an adjective specifier, e.g. 'say bitter words' =

preposition about ranks first, followed by other prepositions that can introduce the Topic
such as on, of
SPEAK
This verb can take a direct object, but it does so rarely. Again, it may be followed by a
limited number of nouns, including expressions such as speak the truth and speak kind
words, as well as speak (names of languages):
(13) speak his mind
(14) She never had the courage to speak a word on the subject to
Rebecca; The verb Speak is used with the names and numbers of languages:
(15
speak a little Italian.
(16)I also know a little Spanish, so I can speak four languages.
This verb takes a to/with- indirect object which means that the receiver of the
message is drawn into the linguistic scene. The former option is considerably more
popular than the latter.
(17spoken to the manager about it.
Speak is followed by an adverb, which is usually an adverb of manner, as illustrated
below:
(18) remained a very powerful figure because he was able to speak so well.
The usage of the circumstance adverbial informs the listener of the way the message is
conveyed. Though not very frequent, it is one of the syntactic possibilities of Speak
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TALK:
Most often, Talk does not have a direct object. It does occur in certain
expressions with a direct object, but these are idiomatic such as talk shop, talk sense, talk
turkey, ect.
(19) Are you two going to talk shop all night?
(20) You're always talking nonsense and scandal
This verb can take a to/with-indirect object:
(21) talk to Julie. And she never talked to him