MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNVERSITY

HOÀNG BÍCH NHUNG

A STUDY ON SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC
FEATURES OF THE THINKING VERB GROUP IN
ENGLISH AND THEIR VIETNAMESE
EQUIVALENTS
(NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC ĐẶC ĐIỂM CÚ PHÁP VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA
CỦA NHÓMĐỘNG TỪ THINKING TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ
TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT)
M.A. THESIS
Field: English Language
Code: 60220201
Hanoi, 2015


MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNVERSITY

HOANG BICH NHUNG

A STUDY ON SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC
FEATURES OF THE THINKING VERB GROUP IN
ENGLISH AND THEIR VIETNAMESE
EQUIVALENTS
(NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC ĐẶC ĐIỂM CÚ PHÁP VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA
CỦA NHÓM ĐỘNG TỪ THINKING TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ
TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT)
M.A. THESIS


Approved by
SUPERVISOR

Đặng Ngọc Hướng
(Signature and full name)
Date:……………………

i


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to
my supervisor, Dr. Dang Ngoc Huongwho has patiently and constantly
supported me through the stages of the study, and whose stimulating
ideas, expertise, and suggestions have inspired me greatly through my
growth as an academic researcher.
A special word of thanks goes to all the lecturers in the Faculty
ofPost-graduate studies, Hanoi Open Universityand many others,
without whose support and encouragement it would never have been
possible for me to have this thesis accomplished.
Last but not least, I am greatly indebted to my family, my husband
and my loving daughter for the sacrifice they have devoted to the
fulfillment of this academic work.

ii


ABSTRACT
This study is an attempt to uncover the syntactic and semantic

C

Complement

E

English

NP

Noun phrase

O

Object

S

Subject

Sb

Somebody

Sth

Something

V


Table 4

A summary of the meaning nuances of THINK and their

51

Vietnamese equivalents
Table 5

A summary of the meaning nuances of ASSUME and

51

their Vietnamese equivalents
Table 6

A summary of the meaning nuances of PONDER and

52

their Vietnamese equivalents
Table 7

A summary of the meaning nuances of REMEMBER and

52

their Vietnamese equivalents
Table 8



TABLE OF CONTENTS
Certificate of originality

i

Acknowledgements

ii

Abstract

iii

List of abbreviations

iv

List of tables and figures

v

CHAPTER1 INTRODUCTION

1

1.1

Rationale


4

CHAPTER 2LITERATURE REVIEW

6

2.1

Previous studies

6

2.2

Review of theoretical background

7

2.2.1

Theoretical framework

7

2.2.1.1

Theory of syntax

7


14

2.2.2.2

Concepts of the THINKING verbs

15

2.3

Summary

17

vi


CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY

18

3.1

18

Research-governing orientations

3.1.1 Research questions

18


3.3

22

Summary

CHAPTER 4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

24

4.1

24

Syntactic features of the THINKING verbs in English and their
Vietnamese equivalents

4.1.1

Syntactic features of THINKING verbs

24

4.1.1.1

Object as NP and object omission

25



4.1.2.4

REMEMBER and their Vietnamese equivalents

36

4.1.2.5

KNOW and their Vietnamese equivalents

37

4.1.2.6

BELIEVE and their Vietnamese equivalents

38

4.2

The THINKING verbs and their Vietnamese equivalents with

40

respect to semantic features

vii




Recapitulation

62

5.2

Concluding remarks

64

5.3

Limitation of the research

65

5.4

Suggestions for a further research

65

REFERENCES

viii


CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

their syntactic features yet. Moreover, the equivalents between two languages
English and Vietnamese has not been implemented yet.
In the process of teaching English verbs in general, and teaching the
THINKING verbs in particular, it is recognized that this verb group makes
students confused much especially their syntactic and semantic features of the
THINKING verb group and their Vietnamese equivalents.
As there are a lot of THINKING verbs, learners can use different
words to express their ideas. However, a great number of peoplemake
mistakeswhen they usethe THINKINGverbsin different situations to
communicate.

To compare the syntactic and semantic features of the

THINKING verbsare important to learners, so that they can have good
knowledge to use these THINKING verbs correctly.
For the above reasons, the topic “A Study on syntactic and semantic
features of the THINKING verb groupin English and their Vietnamese
equivalents” is chosen with the purpose of finding out the equivalents of
English and Vietnamese THINKING verbs.Especially, the study only focuses
on six English THINKING verbs think, assume, ponder, remember, know and
believe.We hope that with the thesis, we can contribute a small part to help
students of English as well as Vietnamese people who learn English and who
are interested in English THINKING verbs.
1.2Aims of the research
The thesis is aimed at investigating the syntactic and semantic
features of English THINKING verbs in English and their Vietnamese
2


equivalents with a view helping Vietnamese learnershave a better

English and in Vietnamese are very helpful in contrasting two languages.
ii) Practical significance
Practically, the study will help the Vietnamese learners of English as
a foreign language use the English THINKING verbs effectively in daily
communication. The findings of the study is hopefully to be beneficial to
those whose are engaged in teaching English as well as those who want to
learn English as a foreign language.
1.6 Structure of theresearch
Thestudy

isorganizedintofivechapters:

Introduction,

Literature

Review, Methodology, Findings and Discussion, and Conclusion.
Chapter1 - Introduction - gives the reason why this topic has been
chosen for the research as well as its aims and objectives, scope,
significance and organizational structure.
Chapter2 – Presents theLiteratureReview including all the previous
studies related to the research area and a review of theoretical
background,which is considered as a foundation for conducting the whole
research.
Chapter 3 – Methodology – describes all the research-governing
orientation and methods applied for implementing this research.
Chapter 4 – Findings and Discussion – gives a detail description and
discussion on the syntactic and semantic feature of THINKING
4


semantic features, it has only mentioned the equivalents of these verbs in
English and French.
Susanna

Karlsson

(2008),

Re-thinking

THINK

in

contrastive

perspective.In his study, he discussed eight verbs: think, know, feel, see, hear,
see, wantanddoin terms of syntactic and semantic features in English and
Swedish equivalents.
About Vietnamese THINKING verb group, Hoàng Tuệ (1962), Giáo
trình việt ngữ and Nguyễn Kim Thản (1997),Động từ trong tiếng Việt, these
authors studied about the classification of words in Vietnamese including the
6


THINKING verbs in Vietnamese. Hoàng Phê (1998), Vietnamese dictionary
analyzed and improved to the meaning and the structures of the THINKING
verbs. In addition, some authors of Journal of Science and technology in Da
nang and Journal of Science of Hue University such as: Lê Minh Giang and
Ngũ Thiện Hùng (2011), Sự khác nhau giữa động từ thực hữu và không thực

language to language but there is always a major class verb, which includes
word referring to motion, rest, attention, giving and speaking.
Syntax is understood to be the theory of the structure of sentences in a
language. This view has its direct antecedents in the theory of immediate
constituents, in which the function of syntax is to mediate between the observed
forms of a sentence and its meaning.
Bloomfield (1993), he states “we could not understand the form of a
language if we merely reduced all the complex forms to their ultimate
constituents”. He argued that in order to account for the meaning of a sentence,
it is necessary to recognize how individual constituents such words and
morphemes constitute more complex forms.
Syntax is now the study of the principles and rules that govern the ways
in which words are combined to form phrases, clauses and sentences in a
language. Syntax, which is a subfield of grammar, focuses on the word order of
a language and the relationships between words. In other words, morphology
deals with word formation out of morphemes whereas syntax deals with phrase
and sentence formation out of words.
Syntax structures are analyzable into sequences of syntactic categories or
syntactic classes, these being established on the basic of the syntactic
relationships and linguistic items have with other items in a construction.
Every language has a limited number of syntactic relations. Subject and
object are probably universal of syntactic relations, which apply to every
language. However, just as the criteria for the major words class noun and verb
differ from language to language, so do the ways in which syntactic relations are
marked.
2.2.1.2 Theory of semantics
Semantics is a branch of linguistics, which deals with meaning or the content of
communication. According to Hurford and Heasley (1983:1), “semantics is the
8


9


Richards, John Platt, Heidi Weber (1987:172) state that “the study of meaning is
semantics. Semantics is usually concerned with the analysis of the meaning of
words, phrases, or sentences and sometimes with the meaning of utterances in
discourse or the meaning of a whole text.”
David Crystal (1992:347) defines that “semantics is the study of meaning in
language”. Structural semantics applied the principles of structural linguistics to
the study of meaning through the notion of semantic relations (also called sense
relation), such as synonymy and antonyms. In generative grammar, the semantic
component is a major area of the grammar’s organization, assigning a semantic
representation to sentences, and analyzing lexical terms of semantic features.
The theory of semantic field views vocabulary as organized into areas, within
which words (lexical items) interrelate and define each other.
Theory of syntactic and semantic is carried out first with main purpose to decide
the theoretical framework of the study in the chapter four.
2.2.1.3 Overview of English verbs
2.2.1.3.1Definition of the verb
In most languages, verbs are part of speech expressing existence, action,
or occurrence. Moreover, verb is considered to be the king of all parts of speech
in English. At the heart of every sentence is a verb, an action word that is
generally indicates what someone or something is doing or perhaps merely
indicates being.
R.M.W.Dixon (1991) defines that “a verb is the center of a clause”. A
verb refer to some activity and there must be a number of participants who have
roles in that activity as: Sinbad carried the old man; or it may refer to a state,
and there must be a participant to experience the state as: My leg aches.
A set of verbs is grouped together as one semantic type partly because
they require the same set of participant roles. All giving verbs require a Donor, a

person, number, and mood
- Refers to an action or state

11


Generally in English, the verb tense shows the time of the action or state;
the aspect of a verb defines the temporal flow (or lack thereof) in the described
event or state.
Thompson (1965), states that verbs are not affected by number, person,
gender, mood, voice, and tense.
2.2.1.3.2 Verb classification
According to R. Quirk et al (1985), verbs are classified into two types:
intensive verbs and extensive verbs.
a. Intensive verbs
Intensive verbs are also called copular verbs, and they are usually
followedby a noun, or a noun phrase, and adjective or prepositional phrase.
Intensive verbs are used to describe the subject. It means that the focus is on one
thing – the subject only. Intensive verbs appear in the structure “S V C” or “S V
A”. Words or phrases, which are followed by an intensive verb work as the
subject compliment and they apply to the subject, not the verb. Let’s consider
the following examples:
Your dinner seems ready (SVC)
My office is in the next building. (SVA)
(Quirk, Randolph, 1985: 721)
b. Extensive verbs
Extensive verbs are most other verbs, they do not have subject
compliment. Extensive verbs are used to say what the subject is doing. It coversa
wider area; it takes the information away from the subject. Words or phrases,
which are followed by an extensive verb work as the verb’s object. They apply

13


specific tense and a subject with which they grammatically agree. A
complete sentence must contain a finite verb. Verbs create the relationship
between the subject and the object of the verb.
In a command, there is still this relationship with the subject and
object understood. “Go!” (Subject –you– understood, verb “go!”
object away– understood.)
The form of the verb must agree with the number of its subject, which
will be a noun or noun group, for example 'They were not home' (as
opposed to 'They was not home'). Confusion can arise when deciding
whether the subject is singular or plural, for example 'This group of students
is very clever', or when there are two subjects, for example 'Ice cream and
strawberries are delicious' (not 'is delicious').
2.2.2 Theoretical background
2.2.2.1Overview of the THINKING verbs
In general, in English, there are thinking verbs whose frequency of use is
very high in both English and Vietnamese. Besides, thinking verbsare found in
English as: Anna Wierzbicka (1972) studies about the semantic features of
verbs such as: think, know, and want. On the other hand, in another study of
R. M. W. Dixon (1991),A new approach to English grammar on semantic
principles. These studies studied on the semantic of these verbs in terms of
semantic features.
Gilbert Ryle (2009), Concept of mind. Richard Faure (2009), Verbs of
thinking and speaking. The authors have already discussed the discusses the
definition of the mind and similarities and the differences between verbs of
thinking and speaking. Susanna Karlsson (2008), Re-thinking THINK in
contrastive perspective. The research studied on syntactic and semantic features



15