MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A. THESIS

SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF
THINKING VERB GROUP IN ENGLISH AND THEIR
VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS
(CÁC ĐẶC ĐIỂM VỀ CÚ PHÁP VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA NHÓM CÁC
ĐỘNG TỪ SUY NGHĨ TRONG TIẾNG ANH VÀ TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG
TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT)

BACH THI DUONG

Hanoi - 2016

1


MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A. THESIS

SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF
THINKING VERB GROUP IN ENGLISH AND THEIR
VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS
(CÁC ĐẶC ĐIỂM VỀ CÚ PHÁP VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA
NHÓM CÁC ĐỘNG TỪ SUY NGHĨ TRONG TIẾNG ANH
VÀ TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT)


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc. Prof. Dr.
Hoang Tuyet Minh, for her enthusiastic and useful guidance, insightful
comments, and encouragement without which this thesis would not have been
completed.
My special thanks go to all my lecturers in Faculty of Graduate Studies,
Hanoi Open University for their precious assistance, knowledge and
enthusiasm.
I am grateful to all the participants for their enthusiastic participation in
the thesis. Especially, I am indebted to my classmates – English Language
Department, especially Le Thi Hai Yen for her great support.
Last but not least, I would like to express my indebtedness to my family,
especially my parents, husband who have given me constant support and love
during the completion of the thesis.

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ABSTRACT
This thesis is intended to deal with the thinking verbs in terms ofsyntactic
and semantic features in English and their Vietnamese equivalents. Before
going deeply into this kind of verb, the English verb is introduced with its
definition and classification. Then its syntactic and semantic features are also
presented with definition, position and examples.
In the chapters following this, thinking verb and its features are presented
with clear examples and at the same time they are analyzed and compared with
Vietnamese equivalents to find out the similarities and differences between the
two languages in the concern area.
The study attempts to provide readers, particularly students of English,
solution to their problem when using thinking verbs and their features and their

14-15

Table 4.1 Complement clause possibilities for THINKING verbs

32-33

Table 4.2 Sentence patterns of the THINKING verb group in English
and Vietnamese

41

Table 4.3 Frequency of types of structures in English THINKING
verbs and Vietnamese equivalents

45

Table 4.4 Syntactic features of thinking verbs in English and
Vietnamese

46

Table 4.5 A summary of the meaning of THINK in English and their
46

Vietnamese equivalents
Table 4.6 A summary of the meaning of REMEMBER in English and
their Vietnamese equivalents

47



1

1.2 Aims of the study

2

1.3 Objectives of the study

2

1.4 Scopes of the study

2

1.5 Significances of the study

3

1.6 Structure of the study

3

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

5

2.1 Previous studies

5


according

to

their

complementation

11

2.2.4 Classification of sentences in terms of sentence pattern,
sentence elements and verb complementation

14

2.2.4.1 Sentence pattern

14

2.2.4.2 Sentence elements

16

2.2.5 Overview of THINKING verbs

19

2.2.6 Definition of the THINKING verbs



24

3.2.4 Principles/criteria for intended data collection and data analysis

24

3.3 Research methods

25

3.3.1 Major methods and supporting methods

25

3.3.2 Data collection techniques

26

3.3.3 Data analysis techniques

27

3.4 Summary

27

CHAPTER 4

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION


4.2 Semantic features of thinking verb groups in English

33

4.3 The THINKING verb group in English and their Vietnamese
equivalents

41

4.3.1 In terms of syntactic features

41

4.3.1.1 In terms of their sentence pattern

41

4.3.1.2 In terms of their sentence elements

42

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4.3.2 In terms of semantic features

46

4.3.3 Similarities and Differences of thinking verbs in English and

60

REFERENCES

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 RATIONALE
The verb is perhaps the most important part of the sentence. A verb or
compound verb asserts something about the subject of the sentence and express
actions, events, or states of being. The verb or compound verb is the critical
element of the predicate of a sentence.
There have been a lot of researchers conducting investigations into
THINKING verbs in both English and Vietnamese. In English with these
studies:Anna Wierzbicka (1972) she studies about the semantic features of
verbs such as: think, know, and want;R. M. W. Dixon (1991),A new approach
to English grammar on semantic principles; Gilbert Ryle (2009), Concept of
mind; Richard Faure (2009), Verbs of thinking and speaking;Susanna Karlsson
(2008), Re-thinking THINK in contrastive perspective. In Vietnam with studies:
Hoàng Tuệ (1962), Giáo trình Việt ngữ ; Nguyễn Kim Thản (1997),Động từ
trong tiếng Việt; Hoàng Phê (1998), Vietnamese dictionary. In some Journals of
Science and technology Lê Minh Giang and Ngũ Thiện Hùng (2011), Sự khác
nhau giữa động từ thực hữu và không thực hữu trên cứ liệu tiếng Anh và đối
dịch tiếng Việt; Nguyễn Thị Thu Hà (2012), Ngữ nghĩa của động từ nghĩ trong
tiếng Việt. These studies thoroughly describe about the semantic features of the
THINKING verbs but they have not been exploited in terms of their syntactic

learners of English to learn this verb group effectively.
1.3 OBJECTS OF THE STUDY
In order to gain the above aims, the studies carries out the following objecttives:
(i)

Analysing syntactic and semantic features of thinking verbs in
English.

(ii)

Comparing the syntactic and semantic features of these thinking verbs
in English and their Vietnamese equivalents.

(iii)

Offering some implications for better learning thinking verb group in
English.

1.4 SCOPES OF THE STUDY
It is unfeasible to discuss the thinking verbs in details. Therefore, within this
study, the author focuses on analyzing them(concerning syntactic and semantic
features of these verbs), and just brief the similarities and differences between
them.

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To serve the purpose of the study, some implications will be suggested to
help Vietnamese learners of English have a better understanding of the
THINKING verbs and then use them in daily communication effectively.

between them.
Chapter 5 makes conclusions on each of the research objectives, implications,
limitations and suggestions for further research.
References come at the end of the study.

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CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
2.1 PREVIOUS STUDIES
Up to now, there have been a number of studies on different kinds of verb in
English and Vietnam. The description and analyses are based on the starting
points from Chomsky. The other descriptions of syntactic and semantic view are
through different ages in the history of linguistic as William Bullokar in “Brief
Grammar for English”(1785). THINKING verbs are 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. 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. The authors have already discussed the discusses the
definition of the mind and similarities and the differences between verbs of
thinking and speaking
In Vietnamese, verbs have been recognized and explained systematically.
It should be noticed the works of Diệp Quang Ban, who wrote “Ngữ pháp tiếng
Việt” (NXB Giáo dục, 2005), and Nguyễn Hữu Quỳnh, Nguyễn Thu Minh with

derpinning syntactic analysis in traditional grammar is that phrases and
sentences are built up of a series of constituents, each of which belongs to a
specific grammatical category and serves a specific grammatical function.
Syntax is a set of rules in language. It dictates how words from different parts of
speech are put together in order to convey a complete thought. According to
R.M.W. Dixon (1991), syntax deals with the way in which words are combined
together. Verbs have different grammatical properties from 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
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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

that there is no complete agreement. For some, semantics concerns the study of
meaning as communicated through language, while for some others, semantics
studies all aspects of meaning and they have to add the label “linguistic” to
arrive at a more precise definition. This distinction, however, is not generally
given much importance and leaving aside special formulations, probably all
authors would agree with Kreidler’s definition (to choose just one of them):
linguistic semantics is the study of how languages organize and express
meanings.
Nowadays, there are two ways of approaching semantics. The formal semantics
approach connects with classical philosophical semantics, that is, logic. It
should not be forgotten that semantics was a part of philosophy for many
centuries. Formal semantics tries to describe the meaning of language using the
descriptive apparatus of formal logic. The goal is to describe natural language in
a formal, precise, unambiguous way. Related (though not identical)
denominations for this type of semantics are truth-conditional semantics, modeltheoretic semantics, logical semantics, etc. In truth-conditional semantics, the
goal is to describe the conditions that would have to be met for a sentence to be
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true. Formal semantics follows Frege’s principle of compositionality: the
meaning of the whole is a function of the meaning of the parts. This type of
semantics has proposed very precise and detailed analyses of sentences and
propositions, though at the price of abandoning many of the factors affecting
meaning, such as etymological, cultural or psychological considerations, and
neglecting a detailed analysis of the meaning of words (lexical semantics). The
other approach to semantics we could call psychologically-oriented semantics or
cognitive semantics. This approach does not consider the logical structure of
language as important for the description of the meaning of language, and tends
to disregard notions such as truth-values or strict compositionality. Cognitive
semantics tries to explain semantic phenomena by appealing to biological,

semantic type partly because they require the same set of participant roles. All
giving verbs require a Donor, a Gift and a Recipient, as in:
John gave a bouquet to Mary, Jane lent the Saab to Bill.
Or:
The women’s Institutes supplied the souldiers with socks.
(R.M.W.Dixon, 1991: 9)
All attention verbs take a Perceiver and an Impression (that which is seen
or heard), as in:
I heard the crash, I witnessed the accident, I recognised the driver’s face.
(R.M.W.Dixon, 1991: 9)
Affect verbs are likely to involve an Agent, a Target, and something which is
manipulated by the Agent to come into contact with the target which I call
manip. A manip can always be stated, although it often does not have to be.
Let’s see the following examples:
John rubbed the glass(with a soft cloth).
Mary sliced the tomato (with her new knife).
Tom punched Bill (with his left fist).
(R.M.W.Dixon, 1991: 9)
L.G Alexander (1983) points out a verb is a word or a phrase which expresses
the existence of a state or doing an action.
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Oxford Advanced Learner’s Encyclopedic (1998) states that a verb is a word or
a phrase indicating an action, an event or state.
According to Borahash (1975), the verb is a part of speech denoting an action or
a process.
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. In English, for example, the past-tense sentences ‘I swam’ and ‘I

Intensive verb does not take any object. It presents the relationship
between the subject and the subject complementation. The verb in sentences
with subject complement is a “copular” (or linking verb), which of itself has
little meaning but functions as a link between the complement subject.
There are two subgroups:
Current intensive: be, appear, look, feel, remain, keep...
Her rug is too small for her living room.(SVC)
(E. Warriner, J. & Graham, L.S. 1980:108)
Resulting intensive: become, come, get, go, grow, turn...
She grew tired of his complaints. (SVC)
(E. Warriner, J. & Graham, L.S. 1980:108)
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 to the verb,
not the subject as in:
He stayed very quiet.
(Quirk, Randolph, 1985: 55)
Extensive verbs include three small types: monotransitive, complex
transitive and ditransitive.
Di transitive verbs are verbs which take a subject and two objects or have

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the structure “S V O O”. According to certain linguistic considerations, these
objectives may be called direct, indirect objectives, or primary and secondary
objectives as in the following examples:
I must send my parents an anniversary card. (SVOO)

2.2.4Classification of sentences in terms of sentence pattern, sentence
elements and verb complementation
2.2.4.1 Sentence pattern
Sentence classification is carried out in order to get the foundation of
studying the sentence types in the THINKING verb group in English and
Vietnamese. By eliminating optional adverbials from the clause structures, we
have seven clause types in the classification of the essential core of each clause
structure. Of the obligatory elements, the main verb is the one that wholly or
largely determines what form the rest of the structure will take. From the
examples [1-7] the following seven clause types emerge:

Type

S(ubject)

V(erb)

Someone

was

SV

O(bject(s))

C(omplement) A(dverbial)

[1a]

laughing


have been

in

SVA
Type

the [4a]

garden
Mary

gave

SVO

[5a]

the visitor
A glass of

O
Type

[3a]

totally

milk