Linguistic features of the “annoying” verb group in english and vietnamese equivalents

2018 - 2020 (I)
ENGLISH LANGUAGE

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A.THESIS
LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF THE
“ANNOYING” VERB GROUP IN ENGLISH
AND VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS.
(Đặc điểm ngơn ngữ của nhóm động từ “ANNOYING”
trong Tiếng Anh và tương đương trong Tiếng Việt)

HOÀNG DIỄM TUYẾT

HOANG DIEM TUYET

Field: English Language
Code: 8.22.02.01

Hanoi -2020


MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A.THESIS
LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF THE
“ANNOYING” VERB GROUP IN ENGLISH AND
VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS.
(Đặc điểm ngôn ngữ của nhóm động từ

“ANNOYING” trong Tiếng Anh và tương đương
trong Tiếng Việt)
HOANG DIEM TUYET
Field: English Language
Code: 8.22.02.01
Supervisor: Dr. Dang Ngoc Huong
Hanoi-2020


CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report
entitled “LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF THE ANNOYING VERB GROUP IN
ENGLISH AND 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, 2020

Hoang Diem Tuyet

Approved by
SUPERVISOR

Date:………………………………

i


ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my
supervisor, Dr. Dang Ngoc Huong who 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 Falculty of Postgraduate studies, Hanoi Open University 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 and my loving daughter for
the sacrifice they have devoted to the fulfilment of this academic work.

ii


ABSTRACT
This study is an attempt to uncover the linguistic features of the English
ANNOYING verbs: annoy, trouble, disturb, bother and worry from the analysis of
their syntactic and semantic features based on the theoretical framework of
componential analysis. Special attention was paid to different senses 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
verds, their Vietnamese translational equivalents are examined. The result of the
study showed that the five English verbs 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
verb is determined by its relations with other words. That is why we can only
identify exactly the meaning of any word when we have to put it in a certain
context. A further implication resulting from the findings included in this study
could be equally beneficial for teacher and learners who would like to expand their
knowledge. The most typical ways of perceptivity the linguistic is analyzed by

means of five English ANNOYING verbs annoy, trouble, disturb, bother and
worry.

iii


LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
C

Complement

E
NP
O

English
Noun phrase
Object

S
Sb
Sth

Subject
Somebody
Something

V
Vi

Verb
Vietnamese

iv


LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
Table 4.1: Subject (S) element of English Annoying verb group and their
equivalents in Vietnamese
34
Figure 4.1: Type of Annoying verb group in corpus
36
Table 4.2: A summary of the meaning nuances of Annoying verb group and their
Vietnamese equivalents

49

v


TABLE OF CONTENTS

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

i

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

iv

v

TABLE OF CONTENTS

vi

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rationale

1
1

1.2. Aims and objectives of the study

2

1.3. Research questions

3

1.4. Method of the study
1.5. Scope of the study
1.6. Significance of the study

3
3
4

1.7. Structure of the study
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1. Previous studies
2.2. Theoretical background
2.2.1. Theory of syntax
2.2.2. Theory of semantics
2.2.3. Overview of English verbs

4
6
6
9
9
14
16

2.2.4. Overview of the ANNOYING verbs
2.3. Theoretical framework
2.3.1. Syntactic features of verbs in term of sentence elements
2.3.2. Semantic features of ANNOYING verbs group
2.4.Summary
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY
3.1. Research approach

20
21
21
22
24
26
26

3.1.1.Research questions
3.1.2.Research setting
3.2.Methods of the study
3.3.Data collection and data analysis.
3.3.1.Data collection techniques
3.3.2.Data analysis techniques
3.4.Summary

26
27
27
29
29
30
30
vi


CHAPTER

4:

SYNTACTIC

AND

SEMANTIC

FEATURES

OF

ANNOYING VERB GROUP AND THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS.

THE
32

4.1. Syntactic features of English Annoying verb group in terms of sentence
elements
4.1.1. Subject (S) element
4.1.2 Verb (V) element

32
32
35

4.1.3. Object (O) element
4.2. Semantic features of the Annoying verb group in English
4.2.1 Annoy verb in English

40
43
43

4.2.2 Trouble verb in English
4.2.3 Disturb verb in English

43
44

4.2.4 Bother verb in English
45
4.2.5 Worry verb in English
46
4.3. Comparison between the syntactic and semantic features of annoying verb
group in English and their Vietnamese equivalents
47
4.3.1. In terms of syntactic features
47
4.3.2. In terms of semantic features
4.4. Summary
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION

48
52
53

5.1. Recapitulation
5.2. Concluding remarks
5.3. Limitation of the research
5.4. Suggestions for further research
REFERENCES
APPENDIX: RESEARCHED SENTENCES

53
54
55
55
56
59

vii


CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 . Rationale
In the shedding lights of globalization and economic integration, English has
become more important than ever before in Vietnam; English is known as the
communication tool between Vietnam and other countries worldwide. In Vietnam,
besides the English major graduates the non-English major graduates who can
successfully achieve the certificate of TOEIC (Test of English for International
Communication) will have more accesses to the employment opportunities offered
by companies, organizations and institutions in the near future. Unfortunately,
studies (Ngo, 2011; Nguyen et al., 2014; Nguyen & Tran, 2015) reported that
despite the certificates, there are still many inherent problems in English
communications of Vietnamese learners due to the lack of word understanding.
Language is an essential form of communication. It allows people to convey
and elaborate their perspective. It means that language is the bridge to connect
people all over the world. Therefore, language is a subtle and complex instrument
used to communicate an incredible number of different things. Being a basic
component of language, word plays an important role in communication. Word
helps us to express many shades of meaning at different levels of style. It means
that word-meanings can be understood in different ways depending on contexts. For
that reason, learners, users or translators of English often meet a lot of difficulties in
expressing what need to be said or written.
Among language units, Verbs play a vital role in grammar and have
multitude of assignments in English and Vietnamese. It is defined Wegner (2006)
that verb is a part of speech that is used to describe motion or convey a subject in
action. Due to the significance of verbs in both English and Vietnamese, there are
an abundance of studies investigating the linguistic features of Verbs English and

their counterpart language, Vietnamese. Such significant studies include “Rethinking THINK in contrastive perspective” by Karlsson (2008), “Verbs of
thinking and speaking” by Faure (2009), “Some English verb phrases versus
Vietnamese verb phrases” by Pham (2009), “A contrastive analysis of grammatical
and semantic features of “hearing” in English and Vietnamese” by Le (2011),
“Syntactic and semantic features of THINKING verb group in English and their
Vietnamese equivalents” by Bach (2016), etc. However, there is hardly any
significant study exploring the syntactic and semantic features or such emotion

1


verbs as to hate, to dislike, to fear, to envy, to mind, etc. It is also realized that
verbs related to senses of human beings are used regularly. In such emotion verbs,
English learners really concern with “ANNOYING” because they not only have
meanings as shown in dictionaries but also relate to attitudes and feelings that are
not easy for English learners to understand and translate into Vietnamese.
In Vietnamese, the verb group “annoying” (“tức giận” or “chọc tức”) does not
only indicate an emotional status but also imply other situations in real life
communication. To some extent, it is not too difficult to find such circumstances in
which people use the verb “ANNOYING”: tức nổ ruột”, “tức anh ách”, etc.
Especially, in Vietnamese language “annoying” may refer to such other meanings
as “phiền nhiễu” or “quấy rầy”, “quấy rối”, etc. Due to the varied expressions of
“annoying” in English and their equivalents in Vietnamese, it is difficult for English
learners to understand the conveyed meanings of “ANNOYING” in different
circumstances and translate this verb group into Vietnamese, and vice versa.
Last but not least, during the teaching experiences, it is identified that English
learners may know a lot of English lexical items by learning vocabulary word-lists
by heart but they do not know how to use them in appropriate contexts. As a result,
they often have failure in communication. In addition, no studies have mentioned
this annoying verb group, so the thesis hopes to contribute to the research "gap".

The researcher chooses to study on the topic “An investigation into linguistic
features of “ANNOYING” verb group in English and Vietnamese equivalents”. It is
expected that the findings of this current study would provide a meaningful
understanding for the teachers, the learners and the translators to understand and use
“ANNOYING” in English and Vietnamese effectively.
1.2 . Aims and objectives of the study
The overarching aim of this current study is exploring the linguistic features
(syntactic and semantic features) of “ANNOYING” verb group in English and
comparing this verb group with their equivalents in Vietnamese to provide more
insights into the meaning and usage of this verb group.
The following specific objectives are derived from the overall aim:
(1) To describe and analyze linguistic features (syntactic and semantic
features) of “ANNOYING” verb group in English and their equivalents in
Vietnamese;

2


(2)

To compare linguistic features (syntactic and semantic features) of

“ANNOYING” verb group in English and their equivalents in Vietnamese;
1.3 . Research questions
The following research questions are formulated:
(1) What are linguistic features (syntactic and semantic features) of
“ANNOYING” verb group in English and their equivalents in Vietnamese?
(2) What are the similarities and differences in linguistic features (syntactic
and semantic features) of “ANNOYING” verb group in English and their
equivalents in Vietnamese?

1.4 . Method of the study
In this current study, the descriptive and contrastive methods are employed to
describe, analyze and find out the relationship between syntactic and semantic
features of “ANNOYING” verb group in English and their Vietnamese equivalents.
Corpora of literature work and Web corpus are used to collect the data for the
analysis. Data is described, classified, and analyzed systematically for the
contrastive analysis. Since the whole research work relied on the corpora, it was
important that these works should be carefully read and that examples should be
cautiously selected to ensure a satisfying reliability of the results. The patterns from
the data collection are used from dictionaries and grammar books for confirming the
reliability and validity of the study.
1.5 . Scope of the study
In order to effectively communicate, there are various language aspects
included in the usage of each word in both English and Vietnamese such as
syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, pronunciation, etc. However, under the scope of the
MA thesis this current study only focuses on two linguistic categories of studied
word, including syntactic features and semantic features. Additionally, the
similarities and differences in syntactic and semantic features of “ANNOYING”
verb group in English and their equivalents in Vietnamese” are also the major areas
of concern in this study.
Also, this study only compares - contrasts linguistic features (syntactic and
semantic features) of “ANNOYING” verb group in English and their equivalents in
Vietnamese on the basis that English is the source language, Vietnamese equivalent
is the target language (one-way comparison). This thesis has no ambition to

3


compare -contrast the English verb group "ANNOYING" with the Vietnamese verb
group "QUẤY RẨY" or similar meaning ((two-way comparison).

1.6 . Significance of the study
The research findings expectantly provide both theoretical and practical
contributions to English learning and teaching. Theoretically, although there are
some foreign and domestic studies investigating the linguistic features of verb
groups in English and their equivalents, the area of focus mainly concerns the
semantic aspect. This current study expects to provide more consolidated insights
into both syntactic and semantic aspects of “ANNOYING” verb group as well as
the similarities and differences in English and Vietnamese; therefore, English
learners and scholars can use this study as a reliable reference. Practically, the
research findings will enhance the understanding of English learners regarding the
use of “ANNOYING” verb group in English and Vietnamese, facilitating their reallife communication. Lastly, the investigation into similarities and differences in
linguistic features also draws some implications for English teaching pedagogy for
vocabulary teaching.
1.7 . Structure of the study
There are five chapters in this current study including:
Chapter 1: Introduction
This chapter describes the rationale for the study, aim and objectives
governing the study, research questions, scope of the study, a summary of method,
the significance and the design of the study.
Chapter 2: Literature review
This chapter critically explores the theoretical fundamentals concerning the
area of study. This chapter starts with the theory of syntax and semantics; then
English and Vietnamese verbs are described and classified. Furthermore, an
overview of “annoying” verb group is provided. Lastly, the previous studies
concerning linguistic features of verb groups in English and Vietnamese are also
presented in this chapter.

4

Chapter 3: Methodology
This chaper describes research approach, methods of the study and data
colection and data analysis
Chapter 4: Findings and discussion
This chapter presents and analyses the research findings obtained from the
corpus of “ANNOYING” verb group in English and Vietnamese. This chapter also
discusses the similarities and differences in syntactic and semantic features of
“annoying” in English and their Vietnamese equivalents.
Chapter 5: Conclusion
This chaper briefly summarizes the whole research procedures and findings.
Limitations of the study, pedagogical implications, and suggestions for further
studies are also included in this final chapter.

5


CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Previous studies
There are significant foreign and domestic linguistic studies concerning the
linguistic features of verbs as an important component in a sentence.
Thepkanjanaa & Uehara (2010) carried a study to find out some syntactic and
semantic discrepancies among three seemingly semantically equivalent verbs
denoting one of the most basic actions in any language, i.e. the verbs meaning ‘kill’
in English, Chinese and Thai. Specifically, it examines the possibility of these verbs
to appear in two syntactic patterns in which English is used as the metalanguage:
(A) X kill Y dead, and (B) X kill Y but Y not die. The different syntactic properties
among these verbs suggest that the verbs for ‘kill’ in the three languages are not
completely semantically equivalent. It is found that the resulting dead event of kill
in English is lexically entailed but that of shā in Chinese is merely implied. Thai is a
more complicated case. The verbs for ‘kill’ in the three languages are thus classified

into different categories based on their syntactic and semantic properties.
White, Hacquard, and Lidz (2014) also examined semantic information and
the syntax of propositional attitude verbs. According to White, Hacquard, and Lidz
(2014), propositional attitude verbs, such as think and want, have long held interest
for both theoretical linguists and language acquisitionists because their syntactic,
semantic, and pragmatic properties display complex interactions that have proven
difficult to fully capture from either perspective. This paper explores the granularity
with which these verbs’ semantic and pragmatic properties are recoverable from
their syntactic distributions, using three behavioural experiments aimed at explicitly
quantifying the relationship between these two sets of properties. Experiment 1
gathers a measure of 30 propositional attitude verbs’ syntactic distributions using an
acceptability judgment task. Experiments 2a and 2b gather measures of semantic
similarity between those same verbs using a generalized semantic discrimination
(triad or “odd man out”) task and an ordinal (Likert) scale task, respectively. Two
kinds of analyses are conducted on the data from these experiments. The first
compares both the acceptability judgments and the semantic similarity judgments to
previous classifications derived from the syntax and semantics literature. The
second kind compares the acceptability judgments to the semantic similarity
judgments directly. Through these comparisons, we show that there is quite finegrained information about propositional attitude verbs’ semantics carried in their

6


syntactic distributions—whether one considers the sorts of discrete qualitative
classifications that linguists traditionally work with or the sorts of continuous
quantitative classifications that can be derived experimentally.
Rajendran (2006) also conducted another significant research in this field
which compares and contrasts syntax and semantics of verbs of communication in
English and Tamil. The study indicates that the verbs grouped under
communication show different types of communication that differ in their semantic

structure as well as argument structure. A number of communicative processes are
involved in the act of communication. The communicative domain includes
speaking, saying, explaining, declaring, asking-1, asking-2, summoning, praising,
reproving and discussing. Under each communicative domain a good number of
verbs are used to express different shades of meaning in the domain. The members
of a domain are related to one another as synonyms or stylistic variants or by
possessing additional semantic feature of manner, which differentiate one from the
other.
The contrastive study of verbs of communication in English and Tamil by
Rajendran (2006) reveals that in spite of the differences in the make-up of argument
structure and their realization in the surface structure, there is a kind of universal
tendency in expressing communication. English makes use of comparatively more
number of verbs by lexicalizing certain shades of meaning to denote a particular
type of communication. It is possible to think of a grammar of transfer to transfer
the argument framework of English into Tamil and vice versa. A trans-lex-grammar
(i.e. transfer grammar) may be attempted after finding the argument structure of
each verbs and the generative nature of meaning extension (i.e. the rules to generate
the polysemy form the core monosemy). The present research is a milestone in such
a pursuit.
In Vietnam, there are also some significant studies focusing on comparing
linguistic features of verbs, verb group, or verb phrases in English and Vietnamese.
Le (2011) made a contrastive analysis of grammatical and semantic features of
words and idioms related to “hearing” (WRHs) in English and Vietnamese Hearing
is the process of detecting and perceiving sounds by using ears. It is realized by the
researcher that both English and Vietnamese have different verbs and idioms to
express that meaning. The researcher also found out some meaningful findings.
Firstly, in grammatical aspect, all WRHs in both languages are verbs. And except

7

“listen” in English that is intransitive, the most verbs in the two languages are both
transitive and intransitive. However, the number of transitive and intransitive in two
languages are not the same. Furthermore, English has complex-transitive verbs, but
Vietnamese does not have this kind of verb. Secondly, although in syntactic field all
verbs can be followed by different structures, English verbs can be followed by an ing verb form or a infinitive verb form. Vietnamese is an isolating language,
therefore, we do not have these structures. Thirdly, all idioms in English and
Vietnamese are in the structure of verb phrases. In other words, they are all verbal
idioms. Therefore, they have functions as verbs. However, English idioms has both
lexical verb and be verb function as main verb in the phrases, Vietnamese idioms
have only lexical verb. English idioms can appear in different tenses. Vietnamese is
a tenseless language, therefore, Vietnamese idioms are tenseless too. Fourthly,
semantically both English and Vietnamese WIRHs can be classified into 4
meanings based on the criteria of different manners of auditory perception,
including informing about the perceiving sound with sense of hearing; informing
about listening attentively; informing about hearing without the knowledge of the
speaker, and informing about hearing unattentively or unclearly. Moreover, in each
meaning, a lot of words and idioms are used. Idioms are verbal idioms in both
languages, but English verbs can be simple and derived verbs, Vietnamese can be
simple and compound verbs. Some words can collocate with different words or
phrases so they have different shades of meanings and they can be flexibly used in
many different contexts. English verbs can collocate with nouns, noun phrase, a ing form verb, a infinitive form verb, or adverb. Vietnamese verbs can collocate
with nouns, noun phrase, or adj. English is an inflecting language, therefore, its
faculty of combination is richer than Vietnamese’s. There are verbs that can use to
denote different meanings such as “Hear” in English and “Nghe” in Vietnamese
thanks to their different collocations.
Tran (2014) also carried out a contrastive analysis of English and Vietnamese
verb phrases. It is revealed by the researcher that both English and Vietnamese verb
phrases have three parts: the central element, the pre-additive element, and the postadditive element. Among them, the central element must be a verb and it is
obligatory while the two parts of additive elements can be optional to go with the

head verb. However, English has the notion of tense such as present tense, past
tense and future tense but Vietnamese doesn’t. Similarly, form of the English verb

8


phrase changes in interrogative and negative sentences while Vietnamese also keeps
the same form and adds subordinate words. When the verb phrase functions as a
subject of the sentence, its form must change to “V-ing” in English but keep the
same in Vietnamese. Moreover, some English verbs must be followed by a
preposition, whereas Vietnamese do not need. In addition, there are similarities and
differences in form of each part between two languages. In both languages, the
central part must contain head verbs, some of which must be followed by objects
and some of which may not. However, in English verb phrases, it contains only one
head verb but not a series of verbs like in Vietnamese. In other words, unlike
English, Vietnamese have form of one verb goes directly after another verb as a
range
Bach (2016) attempted to examine syntactic and semantic features of
“THINKING” verb group in English and their equivalents in Vietnamese. The
researcher briefly described English verbs, particularly “THINKING” verb group,
with reference to the definition and classification. In this research, 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 attempted to
provide readers, particularly students of English, solution to their problem when
using thinking verbs and their features and their complementation.
2.2 . Theoretical background
2.2.1. Theory of syntax
The simplest imaginable syntactic theory would be that a grammar consists of
a list of all the well-formed sentences in the language. The most obvious problem

with such a proposal is that the list would have to be too long. There is no fixed
finite bound on the length of English sentences, as can be seen from the following
sequence:
(2.1) Some sentences go on and on.
Some sentences go on and on and on.
Some sentences go on and on and on and on.
Some sentences go on and on and on and on and on.
Every sentence in this sequence is acceptable English. Since there is no bound
on their size, it follows that the number of sentences in the list must be infinite.
Hence, there are infinitely many sentences of English. Since human brains are
9


finite, they cannot store infinite lists. Consequently, there must be some more
compact way of encoding the grammatical knowledge that speakers of English
possess.
Moreover, there are generalizations about the structure of English that an
adequate grammar should express. For example, suppose the list in (2.1) were
replaced by one in which every other sentence reversed the order of the words some
and sentences:
(2.2) Some sentences go on and on.
*Sentences some go on and on.
*Some sentences go on and on and on.
Sentences some go on and on and on.
Some sentences go on and on and on and on.
*Sentences some go on and on and on and on.
*Some sentences go on and on and on and on and on.
Sentences some go on and on and on and on and on. . . .
Of course, the sentences with the word “sentences” before the word “some”
are not well-formed English. Moreover, no natural language exhibits patterns of that

sort { in this case, having word-order depend on whether the length of the sentence
is divisible by that sheds light on human linguistic abilities ought to explain why
such patterns do not occur in human languages. But a theory that said grammars
consisted of lists of sentences could not do that. If grammars were just lists, then
there would be no patterns that would be excluded – and none that would be
expected, either.
This form of argument – that a certain type of grammar fails to “capture a
linguistically significant generalization” is very common in generative grammar. It
takes for granted the idea that language is “rule governed”, i.e. that language is a
combinatoric system whose operations are “out there” to be discovered by empirical
investigation. If a particular characterization of the way a language works leads to
redundancy and complications, it’s assumed to be the wrong characterization of the
grammar of that language.
A natural first step towards allowing grammars to capture generalizations is to
classify words into what are often called “parts of speech” or “grammatical
categories”. There are large numbers of words that behave very similarly
syntactically. Moreover, they all have plural forms that can be constructed in similar

10


ways (orthographically, simply by adding an -s). Traditionally, the vocabulary is
sorted into nouns, verbs, etc. based on loose semantic characterizations (e.g. ‘a noun
is a word that refers to a person, place, or thing’). While there is undoubtedly a
grain of insight at the heart of such definitions, language users make use of this
division into grammatical categories without committing ourselves to any semantic
basis for them. For purpose, it is sufficient that there are classes of words which
may occur grammatically in the same environments. The theory of grammar can
capture their common behavior by formulating patterns or rules in terms of
categories, not individual words. Someone might, then, propose as a grammar of

English that we have a list of patterns, stated in terms of grammatical categories,
together with a lexicon – that is, a list of words and their categories. For example,
the patterns could include (among many others):
(2.4) a. article noun verb
b. article noun verb article noun
And the lexicon could include (likewise, among many others):
(2.5) a. Articles: a, the
b. Nouns: cat, dog
c. Verbs: attacked, scratched. This mini-grammar licenses forty well-formed
English sentences, and captures a few generalizations. However, a grammar that
consists of lists of patterns still suffers from the first drawback of the theory of
grammars as lists: it can only account for a finite number of sentences, but natural
languages are infinite. For example, such a grammar will still be incapable of
dealing with all of the sentences in the infinite sequence illustrated in (2.1).
We can enhance our theory of grammar to permit infinite numbers of
sentences by introducing abbreviatory devices. In particular, the problem associated
with (2.2) can be handled using what is known as the ‘Kleene star’ (after the
logician Stephen Kleene). Notated as a superscripted asterisk, the Kleene star is
interpreted to mean that the expression it is attached to can be repeated any finite
number of times (including zero). Thus, the examples in (2.2) could be abbreviated
as follows:
(2.6) Some sentences go on and on [and on]∗.
A closely related notation is a superscripted plus-sign (called Kleene-plus),
meaning one or more occurrences of the expression it is attached to. Hence, another
way of expressing the same pattern would be:

11


(2.7) Some sentences go on [and on]+.

We shall employ these, as well as two other common abbreviatory devices.
The first is simply to put parentheses around material that is optional For example,
the two sentence patterns in (2.4) could be collapsed into: article noun verb (article
noun). The second abbreviatory device is a vertical bar, which is used to separate
alternatives1. For example, if we wished to expand the mini-grammar in (2.4) to
include sentences like The dog looked angry, we could add the pattern article noun
verb adjective and collapse it with the previous patterns as: article noun verb (article
noun) adjective. Of course, we would also have to add the verb looked and the
adjective angry to the lexicon.
Patterns making use of the devices just described – Kleene star, Kleene-plus,
parentheses for optionality, and the vertical bar for alternatives – are known as
‘regular expressions’. A great deal is known about what sorts of patterns can and
cannot be represented with regular expressions (Hopcroft and Ullman, 1979), and a
number of scholars have argued that natural languages in fact exhibit patterns that
are beyond the descriptive capacity of regular expressions (Bar-Hillel & Shamir,
1960).
The most convincing arguments for employing a grammatical formalism
richer than regular expressions, however, have to do with the need to capture
generalizations. In (2.5), the string article noun occurs twice, once before the verb
and once after it. Notice that there are other options possible in both of these
positions:
(2.8) a. Dogs chase cats.
b. A large dog chased a small cat.
c. A dog with brown spots chased a cat with no tail.
Moreover, these are not the only positions in which the same strings can
occur:
(2.9) a. Some people yell at (the) (noisy) dogs (in my neighborhood).
b. Some people consider (the) (noisy) dogs (in my neighborhood) dangerous.
Even with the abbreviatory devices available in regular expressions, the same
lengthy string of symbols – something like (article) (adjective) noun (preposition

article noun) – will have to appear over and over again in the patterns that constitute
the grammar. Moreover, the recurring patterns are in fact considerably more
complicated than those illustrated so far. Strings of other forms, such as the noisy

12


annoying dogs, the dogs that live in my neighborhood, or Rover, Fido, and Lassie
can all occur in just the same positions. It would clearly simplify the grammar if we
could give this apparently infinite set of strings a name and say that any string from
the set can appear in certain positions in a sentence.
Furthermore, an adequate theory of syntax must somehow come to grips with
the fact that a given string of words can sometimes be put together in more than one
way. If there is no more to grammar than lists of recurring patterns, where these are
defined in terms of parts of speech, then there is no apparent way to talk about the
ambiguity of sentences like those in (2.10):
(2.10) a. We enjoyed the movie with Cher.
b. The room was filled with noisy children and animals.
c. People with children who use drugs should be locked up.
d. I saw the astronomer with a telescope.
In the first sentence, it can be us or the movie that is ‘with Cher’; in the
second, it can be either just the children or both the children and the animals that are
noisy; in the third, it can be the children or their parents who use drugs, and so
forth. None of these ambiguities can be plausibly attributed to a lexical ambiguity.
Rather, they seem to result from different ways of grouping the words into phrases.
In short, the fundamental defect of regular expressions as a theory of grammar
is that they provide no means for grouping sequences of elements together to form a
unit. The same holds true of several other formalisms that are provably equivalent
to regular expressions (including what is known as ‘finite state grammar’).
The recurrent strings we have been seeing are usually called ‘phrases’ or

‘(syntactic) constituents’. Phrases, like words, come in different types. All of the
phrases in (2.8) - (2.9) above obligatorily include a noun, so they are called ‘Noun
Phrases’. The next natural enrichment of our theory of grammar is to permit our
regular expressions to include not only words and parts of speech, but also phrase
types. Then we also need to provide (similarly enriched) regular expressions to
provide the patterns for each type of phrase. The technical name for this theory of
grammar is ‘Context-free Phrase Structure Grammar’ or simply ‘Context-free
Grammar’, sometimes abbreviated as CFG. CFGs, which will also let us begin to
talk about structural ambiguity, form the starting point for most serious attempts to
develop formal grammars for natural languages.

13


2.2.2. Theory of semantics
Meaning is inextricably bound up with actions – people intentionally using
language for all kinds of communicative purposes. Some sentences are used to
convey questions; others simple assertions; still others conventionally convey
commands (or ‘directives’, as they are sometimes called). Even a piece of a
sentence, say an NP like the student sitting behind Leslie, can be used in isolation to
perform a simple act of referring to an individual. The kind of meaning that (a
particular use of) a sentence conventionally conveys depends crucially on its
syntactic form. For example, a simple ‘inverted’ sentence like (2.11), where there is
an auxiliary verb before the subject NP, conventionally conveys a question.
(2.11) Is Sandy tall?
And the question posed by (2.11) is closely related to the proposition that is
asserted by an utterance of the non-inverted sentence in (2.12).
(2.12) Sandy is tall.
In fact, uttering (2.12) is a perfectly good way of answering (2.11).
In order to even get started in dealing with semantic problems such as these,

we are going to have to clarify what the units of meaning are and how particular
kinds of sentences or smaller phrases are tied to particular types of meaning by
linguistic conventions. We will make the standard assumption that communication
has two components: linguistic meaning and reasoning about communicative goals).
On this view, when a linguistic expression is uttered, its linguistic meaning makes a
significant contribution to, but does not fully determine the communicative function
of the utterance. Consider, for example, an utterance of (2.13).
(2.13) Do you have a quarter?
The linguistic meaning of this sentence is a familiar kind of semantic object: a
question. And a question of this form has a determinate answer: yes or no.
However, an utterance of (2.13) might serve to communicate much more than such
a simple factual inquiry. In particular, in addition to posing a financial question to a
given hearer, an utterance of (2.13) is very likely to convey a further message – that
the speaker was making the following request of the addressee.
(2.14) Please give me a quarter!
The question conveyed by an utterance of (2.13) is generally referred to as its
literal or conventional meaning. A request like (2.14) is communicated as a further
message above and beyond the message coming directly from the literal meaning of

14


the question in (2.13). We will leave the account of such embellished
communication (even the routine ‘reading between the lines’ that occurs more or
less effortlessly in cases like this) to a more fully developed theory of language use
- i.e. to a theory of linguistic pragmatics. The inference from question to request is
pragmatic in nature.
By contrast, the fact that a sentence like (2.13) must have a question as its
literal meaning is semantic in nature. Semantics is the study of linguistic meaning,
i.e. the contribution to communication that derives directly from the conventions of

the language. The semantic analysis that a grammar provides serves as input for a
theory of language use. Such a theory sets as its goal to explain what actually gets
communicated via pragmatic inference derived from the linguistic meaning of an
utterance. For example, pragmatic theory might include a principle like (2.15):
(2.15) Quantity Principle (simplified):
If X is weaker than Y, then asserting X implies the denial of Y.
(2.15) relies on the undefined term ‘weaker’. In some cases (such as the
example that follows), it is intuitively obvious what ‘weaker’ means. But a fullfledged pragmatic theory that included (2.15) would have to provide a precise
definition of this term. This principle leads to pragmatic inference via ‘proofs’ of
the following kind (justifications for steps of the proof are given in parentheses):
(2.16) • A says to B: Two things bother Pat.
• A uttered something whose linguistic meaning is:
‘Two things bother Pat.’ (semantic analysis)
• ‘Two things bother Pat.’ is weaker than ‘Three things bother Pat.’ (a fact in
the context; possibly a more general fact)
• B assumes that A also meant to communicate: ‘It’s not the case that three
things bother Pat.’ (Quantity Principle)
Note that exactly the same pragmatic inference would arise from an utterance
by A of any semantically equivalent sentence, e.g. There are two things that bother
Pat. or Pat is bothered by two things.. This is because pragmatic theory works from
the linguistic meaning of an utterance (as characterized by our semantic analysis)
and hence is indifferent to the form by which such meanings are expressed.
There is much more that could be said about the fascinating topic of pragmatic
inference. Here, the only purpose has been to show that the semantic analysis that

15


must be included in any adequate grammar in fact plays an essential role, albeit an
indirect one, in explaining the communicative function of language in context.

2.2.3. Overview of English verbs
2.2.3.1. Definition of the verb
According to Jackendoff (2002), a verb, from the Latin verbum meaning
word, is a word (part of speech) that in syntax conveys an action (bring, read, walk,
run, learn), an occurrence (happen, become), or a state of being (be, exist, stand). In
the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is
the infinitive. In many languages, verbs are inflected (modified in form) to encode
tense, aspect, mood, and voice. A verb may also agree with the person, gender or
number of some of its arguments, such as its subject, or object. Verbs have tenses:
present, to indicate that an action is being carried out; past, to indicate that an action
has been done; future, to indicate that an action will be done.
Verbs are so common in language use that they hardly need any introduction.
Yet we offer a definition, according to which they denote actions, activities, states,
events, attitudes, processes, changes or existence. Being the second largest class of
words (Carter & McCarthy, 2006), their categorization may prove some difficulty
detailed in the followings.
The starting point of studying English grammar may be the mapping of all
verb types, enabling speakers to produce comprehensible utterances. Once we
present all possible verb types, it may spare us a lot of subsequent explanations, and
its real advantage lies in offering a logical view upon their possible combination to
create tenses. Classifying verbs is important, as they express a multitude of
grammatical categories, such as person (first, second, third) and number (singular,
plural). Furthermore, in a syntactical approach, they express the predicate
(Gălățeanu & Comișel, 1982), offering the following possible characteristics: tense
(present, past, future), aspect (simple, continuous or progressive, perfect (simple),
perfect continuous or progressive), voice (active, passive), and mood (finite:
indicative, imperative, subjunctive; non-finite: infinitive, gerund, participle).
It is natural that verbs are divided into different categories, but the problem is
that in the majority of cases it is not specified which part of grammar this is based
on. For instance, within lexicology, according to their morphological structure,

verbs may be classified as follows:
16