Syntactic and semantic features of the sensory verbs group in english and their vietnamese equivalents

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY
I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report
entitled “SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF THE SENSORY
VERBS

GROUP

IN

ENGLISH

AND

THEIR

VIETNAMESE

EQUIVALENTS” submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of Master in English Language. Except where the reference is indicated,
no other person‟s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text
of the thesis.
Hanoi, 2018

Ngo Thi Lan Anh

Approved by
SUPERVISOR

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phan Van Que
Date: ……………………

i


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My thesis has been successfully completed thanks to the assistance and
guidance of my teachers, friends, colleagues and family.
Firstly, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor,
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phan Van Que for his patient motivation and immense
knowledge. His guidance helped me in all the time of research and writing of
this thesis.
Besides, my sincere thanks also go to all the lecturers in the Faculty of
Post - graduate Studies, Hanoi Open University for their very useful and
interesting lectures which have laid the foundation for my thesis.
I am grateful to my boss, Mr. Vu Dinh Ngo (Dr.), the rector of Viet Tri
University of Industry, for the support he gave me during my studies, all my
colleagues and friends who provided welcome distractions and emotional
support while the work was being done.
Last but not least, my warmest thanks are due to 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 features of
the sensory verb group in English as well as the similarities and differences in
using the sensory verb group in English and Vietnamese based on the theoretical
framework of componential analysis. Special attention is paid to different senses
governed by contexts where these five verbs are used. In order to help

Vietnamese learners of English to have a deep understanding of other nuances of
meanings conveyed by these English verbs, their Vietnamese equivalents are
examined. The participants of the study are five English verbs see, hear, feel,
smell, taste which are taken from different sources such as dictionaries, books,
novels in English and Vietnamese. The data are collected by the activities of
reading the materials, identifying and classifying. They are quoted the certain
phrases and sentences from the texts. The data in this study are analyzed by
explaining them in terms of their meanings and syntactic features. The results of
the study show that the five English verbs of the sensory verb group in English
under discussion can occur in the same syntactic patterns, but may have different
meanings depending on the situation in which they are used and they can occur
in different syntactic patterns that reflect various meanings in real-life
communication. They also reveal that the meaning of a verb is determined by its
relations with other words, that is why if we want to identify exactly the meaning
of any word, we have to put it in a certain context. A further pedagogical
implication resulting from the findings included in this study could be equally
beneficial for teachers and learners who would like to expand their knowledge
concerning the most typical ways of perspectivising the linguistic scene by
means of the sensory verb group in English.

iii


LIST OF TABLES

Page
Table 4.1: The sentence patterns of the sensory verb group

38

Table 4.2: Sentence patterns of the sensory verb group in English and

45

Vietnamese.
Table 4.3: Type of the sensory verbs in English and Vietnamese

50

Table 4.4: SEE meaning and their Vietnamese equivalents

52

Table 4.5: HEAR meaning and their Vietnamese equivalents

53

Table 4.6: FEEL meaning and their Vietnamese equivalents

54

Table 4.7: SMELL meaning and their Vietnamese equivalents

54

Table 4.8: TASTE meaning and their Vietnamese equivalents

55

iv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Co

Object complement

Cs

Subject complement

E.g.

For example

i.e.

That is

NP

Noun phrase

O

Object

Oi

Indirect object

Od

Direct object

Pre

Preposition

S

Subject

Sb

Somebody

Sth

Something

V

Verb

v


TABLE OF CONTENTS

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY..................................................................... i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................... ii
ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................. iii
LIST OF TABLES....................................................................................................iv
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...................................................................................v
Chapter 1 ....................................................................................................................1
INTRODUCTION .....................................................................................................1
1.1. Rationale for the study..........................................................................................1
1.2. Aims and objectives of the study ..........................................................................2
1.3. Research questions ...............................................................................................2
1.4. Methods of the study ............................................................................................3
1.5. Scope of the study ................................................................................................3
1.6. Significance of the study ......................................................................................5
1.7. Design of the study ...............................................................................................6
Chapter 2 ....................................................................................................................7
LITERATURE REVIEW .........................................................................................7
2.1. Previous studies ....................................................................................................7
2.2. Theory of syntax and semantics ...........................................................................9
2.2.1. Theory of syntax ................................................................................................9
2.2.2. Theory of semantics ........................................................................................11
2.2.3. Overview of English verb ................................................................................14
2.2.3.1. Definition of the verb ...................................................................................14
2.2.3.2. Classification of the verb ..............................................................................15
2.3. Overview of the sensory verbs ...........................................................................17
2.3.1. Definition of the sensory verbs ........................................................................17
2.3.2. Concepts of sensory verbs ...............................................................................19
2.4. Summary ............................................................................................................21
Chapter 3 ..................................................................................................................22
vi

METHODOLOGY ..................................................................................................22
3.1. Subjects ..............................................................................................................22
3.2. Instrumentation ...................................................................................................22
3.3. Procedures ..........................................................................................................24
3.4. Statistical Analysis .............................................................................................25
3.5. Summary ............................................................................................................25
Chapter 4 ..................................................................................................................27
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ............................................................................27
4.1. Syntactic and semantic features of the sensory verbs group in English .............27
4.1.1. Syntactic features of the sensory verb group in English ..................................27
4.1.1.1. In terms of their sentence patterns ................................................................27
4.1.1.2. In terms of their sentence elements ..............................................................30
4.1.2. Semantic features of the sensory verb group in English ..................................34
4.1.2.1. SEE verb in English......................................................................................34
4.1.2.2. HEAR verb in English ..................................................................................35
4.1.2.3. FEEL verb in English ...................................................................................36
4.1.2.4. SMELL verb in English................................................................................36
4.1.2.5. TASTE verb in English ................................................................................36
4.2. Comparison between the syntactic and semantic features of sensory verb group
in English and their Vietnamese equivalents .............................................................37
4.2.1. In terms of syntactic features ...........................................................................37
4.2.1.1. In terms of their sentence patterns ................................................................37
4.2.1.2. In terms of their sentence elements ..............................................................38
4.2.2. In terms of semantic features ...........................................................................41
4.2.2.1. SEE meaning and their Vietnamese equivalents ..........................................43
4.2.2.2. HEAR meaning and their Vietnamese equivalents.......................................44
4.2.2.3. FEEL meaning and their Vietnamese equivalents ........................................45
4.2.2.4. SMELL meaning and their Vietnamese equivalents ....................................46

4.2.2.5. TASTE meaning and their Vietnamese equivalents .....................................47

vii


4.3. Some implications for teaching and learning the sensory verb group “see, hear,
feel, smell, taste” .......................................................................................................48
4.3.1. Some implications for teaching the sensory verb group ..................................48
4.3.2. Some implications for learning the sensory verb group ..................................50
4.4. Summary ............................................................................................................52
Chapter 5 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................53

5.1. Summary of Findings ............................................................................... 53
5.2. Concluding remarks ................................................................................. 54
5.3. Limitations of the current research .....................................................................55
5.4. Recommendations for further study ...................................................................56
REFERENCES ..........................................................................................................57

viii


Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rationale for the study
We all know that English is widely spoken all around the world draws the
attention of many linguists. Therefore, becoming a fluent speaker of English is
also one of the essential demands of most English learners. However, in
communication, we have difficulties in expressing our ideas, especially in
transferring meanings of words from a language to another one, in our case from
English to Vietnamese. It is known that the ability to express freely in

communication is of great importance for future career, especially in modern
societies where contacting with foreigners often occurs. In addition, there still
exist many difficulties in learning and teaching English in Vietnam. Many
Vietnamese learners can write and read English quite well but they do not use it
correctly and fluently in real-life communication.
The verb is perhaps the most important part of the sentence. A verb states
what is happening in the sentence. Among verbs of English, we find that the
sensory verbs see, hear, feel, smell, taste are quite frequently used. These verbs
can occur in different syntactic patterns that reflect various meanings in
communication. They can occur in the same syntactic patterns, but may have
different meanings depending on the situation in which they are used.
Many studies describe about the semantic features of the sensory verb
group but they have not been exploited in terms of their syntactic features yet.
Moreover, the contrastive comparison between two languages English and
Vietnamese has not been implemented yet. In the process of teaching English
verbs in general, and teaching the sensory verb group in particular, it is
recognized that this verb group makes students confused much especially their
syntactic and semantic features of the sensory verb group and their Vietnamese
equivalents.

1


As a result, that is why the subject “Syntactic and semantic features of
the sensory verb group in English and their Vietnamese equivalents” is
chosen to study. We hope to contribute a small part in studying and teaching the
sensory verb group in English. In this study, the sensory verb group in English is
described in a variety of contexts and situations. 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 speech act verbs.

1.2. Aims and objectives of the study
The main aim of research is to help Vietnamese learners have a better
understanding of the sensory verb group in terms of syntactic and semantic
features, from which they will be able to use them correctly and appropriately in
their spoken and written discourse.
To achieve the mentioned aims above, the following objective can be put
forward:
- To describe the syntactic and semantic features of the sensory verb group
in English.
- To make comparison of the sensory verb group between English and
Vietnamese in terms of syntactic and semantic features.
- To suggest some implications for teaching and learning these verbs.
1.3. Research questions
Based on the above mentioned aims and objectives, the thesis is expected to find
out the answer for the following questions:
1. What are the syntactic and semantic features of the sensory verb group in
English and their Vietnamese equivalents?
2. What are the similarities and differences of the sensory verb group in
English and their Vietnamese equivalents in terms of syntactic and semantic
features?
3. What are possible implications for teaching and learning the sensory verb
group?
2


1.4. Methods of the study
The methods are used in this study include descriptive and contrastive
analysis ones. The descriptive method is exploited to give complete and evident
descriptions of the syntactic and semantic features of the sensory verb group in
English.

Besides, the contrastive analysis method is useful to identify similarities and
differences with their Vietnamese equivalents. In particular, the data were
collected from different sources such as dictionaries, news, books.
The application of this work will, hopefully, contribute greatly to find out
appropriate methods for teaching English sensory verb group in Vietnamese and
make changes how Vietnamese learners of English not only in their study at
university as a compulsory subject but also in their daily use of English as a
foreign language. As mentioned previously, regarding English lexical terms,
students often learn English words‟ definitions separately with their actual uses.
In fact, teachers and students often make their own examples without collecting
and analyzing examples of collocations indicating how native speakers combine
some words with each other while others are not used frequently. They also have
difficulty in using the words in the conversation, in contexts. Therefore, this
study suggests them about types of verb and discovers the rules to make use of
them. The effects will be vital to students and should be encouraged to be
applied at university as well as for learners of English.
1.5. Scope of the study
According to Gisborne (2011), verb of perception classified three types:
Listen – class
(Agentive verbs)
Look

Hear – class
(Experiencer verbs)
See

Sound – class
(Percept verbs)
Look

Listen

Hear

Sound

Feel

Feel

Feel

Smell

Smell

Smell

Taste

Taste

Taste

3


In this study, the major point is to focus on the five basic sensory verbs “see,
hear, feel, smell, taste” in terms of the syntactic and semantic features in the
stories to show evidence detail. Experiencer verbs group are not only

outstanding but also typical characteristics for these group. While this group can
be expressed in the form of progressive, verb groups often do not appear as a
continuous (except for some special cases to emphasize). It is expressed in the
accomplishment process.
Eg:
Jane had been a week in town without either seeing or hearing from Caroline
(Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice)
He saw the carriage waiting in the open street.
(Charles Dicken, A Tales of Cities)
I heard Joseph read on a while afterwards.
(Emily Bronte, Wuthering Height)
English is considered as source language, meanwhile Vietnamese is target
language. So, the syntactic and semantic features of the sensory verb group in
English are compared with their Vietnamese equivalents. The applications of this
study will, hopefully, contribute greatly to find out appropriate methods to
teaching English verbs in Vietnam and make changes how Vietnamese learners
of English not only in their study at school as a compulsory subject but also in
their daily use of English as a foreign language. As mentioned previously,
regarding English lexical terms, students often learn English words‟ definitions
separately with their actual uses. In fact, teachers and students often make their
own examples without collecting and analyzing examples of collocations
indicating how native speakers combine some words with each other while
others are not used frequently. They also have difficulty in using the words in the
conversation, in contexts. Therefore, this study suggests them the definitions of
the verbs, different types of parts of speech and discover the rules to make use of

4


them. The effects will be vital to students and should be encouraged to be

applied at school as well as for self- learners of English.
1.6. Significance of the study
Theoretically, it is true that lexical aspect has been given little attention
so far and teachers instead only pay attention to grammar or other aspects. Thus,
students are often not provided with full understandings towards English
collocations of some certain words and only learn their definitions. A frequent
difficulty is that students might find some common expressions complicated
because they have no idea while a combination of the word with another one is
not approved. In order to overcome such a trouble, the research is carried out in
order to offer needed knowledge as to syntactic and semantic features of the
English verbs see, hear, feel, smell, taste. By providing an innovative approach
to learning English lexical terms, the author expects to change how students
learn English words as well as how teachers change their traditional methods of
teaching vocabulary. If words are separated from their specific contexts and are
exposed to students only through their meanings in dictionaries, it is not easy for
these 2nd language users to obtain the real meanings of the words in different
cases.
Practically, The author hopes that this study „s findings and conclusion
would make great contributions to raise the importance of studying English
verbs see, hear, feel, smell, taste with reference to their Vietnamese equivalents.
First of all, when students study about collocations, they might learn them by
heart easily, however, the main problem will lie in applications of these words in
appropriate contexts. Therefore, learning about the syntactic and semantic
features of these verbs is the beginning of the whole process. The main step is to
understand comprehensively how they are applied in diverse situations and
students can only do this by analyzing examples made by native speakers, not
their own. This research offers them a method to do this. Secondly, regarding
translation, students will have problems with understand the meanings if they
5

learn the words‟ definitions separately with its locations and meanings. This
study‟s implications are to deal with these issues in hope that will help students
overcome their troubles. Findings of this study will provide information that can
help learners and translators gain an insight into how the speech act verbs with
see, hear, feel, smell, taste can be employed in discourse in English by
Vietnamese learners and translators.
1.7. Design of the study
This thesis consists of five main parts:
Chapter 1: Introduction – gives a brief overview of the study as well as its aims
and objectives, scope, significance and organization of the study.
Chapter 2: Literature Review - presents all the previous studies related to the
study area and a review of theoretical background employed for conducting the
thesis.
Chapter 3: Methodology – describes in detail all research-governing
orientations and research methods.
Chapter 4: Findings and Discussion - makes comparison on the syntactic and
semantic features of the sensory verb group in English and Vietnamese.
Chapter 5: Conclusion - summaries the whole content of the study, indicates the
limitation, thus gives some recommendations and suggestions for a further study.
References come at the end of the study.

6


Chapter 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter provides an overview of the theoretical background as well as
relevant knowledge and summaries of previous research‟s findings and
conclusion associated with the theme of the research. In other words, the review

is to explain several related terms and definitions as to semantics, syntax,
collocation, lexical unit and approach, verb and structures with the verbs: see,
hear, feel, smell, taste. These later would further highlight the features conducted
of the study as well as suggest an array of possible implications for teaching and
learning the English verbs see, hear, feel, smell, taste.
2.1. Previous studies
There have been a lot of dictionaries such as: Từ điển Anh – Anh –
Việt” (2008); Từ điển Việt - Anh” (2000); published by Publishing House of
Cultural and Informatics, Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary (2003);
Dictionary of Contemporary English (2003) in which mentioned about verbs:
see, hear, smell, taste, feel; Besides, Gibson, J.J (1966) in “The Senses
Considered as Perceptual systems”; Evans, N.; Rogers, A. (1971) “Three kinds
of physical perception verbs”; Rogers, A. (1972) “Another look at flip perception
verbs”; Alm-Arvius, C. (1993) “The English Verb See: A Study in Multiple
Meaning”; Iraide Ibarretxe-Antunano (1999) “Polysemy and Metaphor in
Perception verbs”; Nicholas, I. and Davis, W. (2000) “ In the mind‟s ear: the
semantic extensions of perception verbs in Australian”… Sweetser (1990)
investigates the multiple meanings in the semantic field of English verbs of
human senses. She shows that lexical polysemy cannot be understood
independently of human cognitive structure. The fact that everyday cognition is
metaphorically shaped, at least partially, helps us to understand the way in which
the senses of polysemous words are related.
Some studies of Vietnamese researchers that the author has found so far
tend to make comparisons between ways of using some popular structures with
7


the verbs they chose. They also listed grammatical structures and provided a
wide range of examples and Vietnamese translated versions in order to help
other linguists to obtain the examples‟ meanings more broadly. Thanks to this,

when these authors presented their conclusion, their findings can be viewed on a
more comprehensive scale.
Nguyen Kim Than (1977) “Động từ Tiếng Việt”, Nguyen Thi Quy
(1995) “Vị từ hành động và các tham tố của nó”. Nguyen Thi Tuyet and
collaboration (1996) “Cách dùng động từ tiếng Anh” pointing out clearly 3
groups which contributed to the governance of these verbs in the related
contexts: Verbs of speaking, verbs of reporting, verbs of senses. According to
this studies, verbs of sense are classified 3 items below:
Sense

Intentional

Unintentional

Current

activity

activity

sensation

Sight

Look at

See

Look

Hearing

Listen to

Hear

Sound

Smell

Smell

Smell

Smell

Taste

Taste

Taste

Taste

Feel

Touch/Feel

Touch/Feel

Feel

In order to help other researcher reach a profound understanding of her
conclusions, the author examined cautiously and presented the Vietnamese
translational equivalents for each quotation used. Regarding componential
analysis, the author described this method‟s function as breaking down into
pieces their meanings of terms and then making several comparisons between
the semantic components so as to discriminate the above-mentioned meanings.
In terms of the proper methods used to carry out associated studies,
three authors of the study Automatic Classification of English Verbs Using Rich
Syntactic Features (2008) proved the informative characteristic of syntactic
features in verb classification. The study used both qualitative and quantitative
8


methods with the purpose of obtaining speech and data analyses to draw
conclusion with regards to the instructive significance of syntactic features in
automatic verb classification. What‟s more, while classifying 13 semantic
syntactic subsets of English verb types, White (2002) figured out the ways
children who are hard for heading or deaf define vocabulary and semantic
syntactic features of verbs in their process of learning English.
Up to now, there has been some researches about English verbs see,
hear, smell, taste, feel … However, there has been no research about “English
verbs see, hear, smell, taste, feel and their equivalents in Vietnamese”. Thus,
“Study on the syntactic and semantic features of the sensory verb group with
reference to their Vietnamese equivalents” is chosen my topic.
2.2. Theory of syntax and semantics
2.2.1. Theory of syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the set of rules, principles, and processes that govern
the structure of sentences in a given language, usually including word order. The

term syntax is also used to refer to the study of such principles and processes.
Regarding how syntax is defined, it is clear that syntax is the study of structure
of language. In other words, its main targets are said to be the set of rules,
principles, and processes that govern the structure of sentences in a given
language. For this reason, the goal of many syntacticians is to discover the
syntactic rules common to all languages. They are to dictate how words from
different parts of speech are put together to convey a complete thought.
Syntax is the study of how combine to the form sentences and the rules
which govern the formation of sentences. However, syntactic structure is
understood as the arrangement of words and morphemes into larger units
(phrases, clauses, and sentences). Meaning is associated with the way in which
words are combines to make phrases, clauses and sentences. Compare The dog
bit the postman and The postman bit the dog, which involve the same word
meanings but quite different sentence meanings because of their different
9


syntactic arrangements. As Dixon (1991) claims, there is a principled interaction
between the meaning of a word and its grammatical properties. Once a learner
knows the meaning and grammatical behavior of most of the words in a
language, then from the meaning of a new word he can infer its likely
grammatical possibilities, or from observing the grammatical use of a new word,
he may be able to infer a good deal about what it means. Every verb, in its
capacity as the core of a clause, is defined semantically in terms of the semantic
roles of the participants in the state or event codes by the clause. Within the
clause, these participants occupy the grammatical roles of, most commonly,
subject, direct object, indirect object, adverb or predicate. These grammatical
roles are marked in English by a combination of morphology and word-order.
But they also have other, more subtle, grammatical-behavioral properties, such
as various constraints on their distribution in grammatical environment.

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 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
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) 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.
10


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.

Theory of syntax is a source of studying syntactic features in general and
sensory verbs group in particular.
2.2.2. Theory of semantics
In linguistics, semantics is the subfield that is devoted to the study of
meaning, as inherent at the levels of words, phrases, sentences, and larger units
of discourse (termed texts, or narratives). The study of semantics is also closely
linked to the subjects of representation, reference and denotation. The basic
study of semantics is oriented to the examination of the meaning of signs, and
the study of relations between different linguistic units and compounds.
Semantic features play a very important part in differentiating the match
between word and meaning. We need a very large number of features to do this
work. But linguists believe that a much smaller number of features would be
needed in writing grammar description. But Jack Richards, John Platt and Heidi
Weber [52,p.254] say semantic features are “the smallest units of meaning in a
word. The meaning of a word may be described as a combination of semantic
features”

According to

David Crystal [23,p.346], semantic feature is “a

minimal contrastive element of a word‟s meaning, in some approaches called a
semantic component.” e.g. Boy = + young + male + human.
11


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.
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 try to define semantics. Morries
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 revises 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 (Lyons,
1977:116) says that descriptive semantics (i.e. the investigation of the meaning
of expressions in “historically given natural language”), may be regarded as part
of pragmatics. The reason why descriptive semantics is part of pragmatics seem
to have been that he believed that difference in the use of particular expressions
were not only inevitable in language - behavior, 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 studied
how they are related to people”. According to Leech (1983:5) in practice, the
problem of distinguishing language and language use has centered on a
boundary dispute between semantics and pragmatics. Hurford and Heasley

12


(1983:14) further explain that the study of semantics is largely a matter of
conceptually and exploring the nature of meaning in a careful and thoughtful

way, using a wide range of examples, many of which we can draw from our
knowledge.
But Jack 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 antonymy. 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 fields views vocabulary as organized into areas,
within which words (lexical items) interrelate and define each other.
It is widely known that language is obviously used to express meanings
that can be understood among speakers. However, meanings exist in humans‟
minds and what people express is, therefore, already in their minds through
spoken and written forms of languages. Consequently, there should be a subfield studies how speakers convey meaningful messages or receive and
understand these meanings. The sub-field is Semantics which is the study of
meanings in language. In other words, linguists are to find an answer for the
question of how language is organized to be meaningful. Since humans cannot
see meanings, it is the most abstract level of linguistic analysis.
These semantics features of sensory verbs are the basis of analyzing the
semantics features of attention verb group in English and Vietnamese in chapter 4

13


2.2.3. Overview of English verb
2.2.3.1. Definition 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
refers 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 Gift
and a Recipient, as in:
John gave a bouquet to Mary, Jane lent the Saab to Bill.
The women‟s Institutes supplied the soldiers with socks.
(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.
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.
According to Jack C. Richards & et al (1992), a word is a verb when it satisfies
these following criteria:
- Occurs as part of the predicate of a sentence
- Caries markers of grammatical categories such as tense, aspect, person,
number, and mood
- Refers to an action or state

14

Generally, in English the verb tense shows the time of the action or state; the
aspect of a verb defines the temporal flow in the described event or state. Verbs
can be affected by person and number to show agreement with the subject. Some
English verb like forms have properties of speech. Thompson (1965), states that
verbs are not affected by number, person, gender, mood, voice, and tense.
2.2.3.2. Classification of the verb
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 followed by 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 covers a 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)

15


Extensive verbs include three small types: mono-transitive, complex
transitive and ditransitive.
Ditransitive verbs are verbs which take a subject and two objects or have
the structure “SVOO”. 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)
(Quirk, Randolph, 1985: 721)
In contrast, mono-transitive verbs take only one object and appear in the
structure “S V O” as in the following examples:

That lecture bored me. (SVO)
(Quirk, Randolph, 1985: 721)
Verb requires both a direct object and another object or an object complement is
complex transitive verbs. Complex transitive verbs appear in the structure “S V
O C” or “S V O A”. In a complex- transitive construction, the object
complement identifies a quality or attributes pertaining to the direct object. Let‟s
consider the following examples:
Most students have found her reasonably helpful. (SVOC)
You can put the dish on the table. (SVOA)
(Quirk, Randolph, 1985: 721)
The verb is perhaps the most important part of the sentence. A verb states what
is happening in the sentence. Finite verbs locate the condition or action of the
verb in a specific time frame: past, present or future and have a specific tense
and a subject with which they grammatically agree. A complete sentence must

16


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').
2.3. Overview of the sensory verbs
2.3.1. Definition of the sensory verbs
In English, a sensory verb is a verb (such as see, watch, look, hear, listen,
feel, and taste) that conveys the experience of one of the physical senses.
The sensory verbs include verbs referring to the five senses employed in the
process of human sensory cognition.
The verb of perception from a subclass of the verbs of sensory cognition
(henceforth: SVC) that include verbs referring to the five senses employed in the
process of human sensory cognition (i.e. sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste).
That subclass consists of the following lexical items: see, watch, look, hear,
smell, feel, and taste). In Kopytko (1986 a) I referred to the discussed subclass of
VSC as resultative SVC. The reason for that was my attempt to account for the
difference in meaning between the sentences.
Some researchers suggest that verb of perception is the word used to refer
to the action using the senses to the cognitive, such as see, hear... The others
consider verbs of perception are related to the senses and can split the perception

verbs into three sets below:

17