Syntactic and semantic features of “go” in english and “đi” in vietnamese

2018 - 2020

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

ENGLISH LANGUAGE

M.A. THESIS

SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES
OF “GO” IN ENGLISH AND “ĐI”
IN VIETNAMESE
(Đặc điểm cú pháp và ngữ nghĩa của từ “go”
trong tiếng Anh và “đi” trong tiếng Việt)

VŨ HẢI ANH

VŨ HẢI ANH

Field: English Language
Code: 8.22.02.01

HANOI, 2020


MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

M.A. THESIS

SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES

OF “GO” IN ENGLISH AND “ĐI”
IN VIETNAMESE
(Đặc điểm cú pháp và ngữ nghĩa của từ “go”
trong tiếng Anh và “đi” trong tiếng Việt)
VŨ HẢI ANH

Field: English Language
Code: 8.22.02.01
Supervisor: Đặng Nguyên Giang, Ph.D.

HANOI, 2020


CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project
report entitled “Syntactic and Sematic Features of “Go” in English and “Đi”
in Vietnamese” 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

acknowledgement in the text of the thesis.
Hanoi, 2020

Vũ Hải Anh

Approved by
SUPERVISOR
(Signature and full name)

Date:………………………..

i

due


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my deepest appreciation to my supervisor, Mr.
Đặng Nguyên Giang, Ph.D, for his continuous support during the completion
of my thesis, for his patience, motivation, and immense knowledge. His
guidance helped me in all the time of the research. I could not have imagined
having a better advisor and mentor for my master study.

Besides my supervisor, I would like to thank all my lecturers at Hanoi
Open University for their enthusiasm and tremendous knowledge, and also for
their insightful comments and encouragement.
My sincere thanks are also for all of my friends and especially my
beloved parents for their unconditional loves and support during my study at
Hanoi Open University.

ii


ABSTRACT
An investigation of go in English and đi in Vietnamese in terms of
syntactic and semantic features is carried out in the present study. Description
and contrastive analysis are regarded as the main methods used in the thesis.
The findings of the study are concerned with the similarities and differences
between go in English and đi in Vietnamese in terms of syntactic and
semantic features. In order to collect the data, a hand search approach of the
dictionaries in both languages has been conducted, which helps to establish
the number of meanings of each word.
In the present study, the theoretical fameworks (theory of contrastive
analysis; theory of syntax and semantics) are applied to both English and
Vietnamese. Additionally, an overview of some theoretical background
dealing with the general concepts of syntax, semantics, words, polysemy of
words and word classification is presented for the background of analyzing
the syntactic and semantic features of the two words go in English and đi in
Vietnamese.
Our investigation reveals that go in English and đi in Vietnamese may
function as verbs. The biggest difference between go in English and đi in
Vietnamese in terms of syntactic features lies in the verbal forms and the coordinate possibility of each in the clauses. In terms of semantic features, the
findings of the study reveals that there are 8 main meanings in common

conveyed by the two verbs, go in English and đi in Vietnamese. When
working as a verb, đi in Vietnamese has more meanings than go in English.
There are 10 meanings conveyed by đi, unique to Vietnamese whereas go has
4 meanings which are unique to English. Go in English may be a noun which
has five main meanings, and đi in Vietnamese can function as a particle and

iii


an auxiliary which has 4 meanings. The thesis also presents the implications
for English teaching and learning as well as translation.

iv


TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ii

ABSTRACT

iii

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

viii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1

1.1. Rationale

1

1.2. Aims and objectives

2

1.3. Research questions

2

1.4. Research methods

3

1.5. Scope of the study

3

1.6. Significance of the study

3

1.7. Structure of the study

4

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

5

2.1. Review of the previous studies

5

2.2. Words and word classes

6

2.2.1. Polysemy of words

6

2.2.2. Word classes

8

2.3. Summary

13

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

14

3.1. Data collection

14

3.2. Research Methods

15

3.3. Underlying theoretical frameworks

15

3.3.1. Theory of contrastive analysis

15

3.3.2. Theory of syntax and semantics

18

3.4. Summary

22
v


CHAPTER 4: A COMPARISON BETWEEN “GO” IN

ENGLISH AND “ĐI” IN VIETNAMESE IN TERMS OF
SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES

24

4.1. Syntactic features of “go” in English and “đi” in
Vietnamese

24

4.1.1. Syntactic features of “go” in English
4.1.1.1. “Go” as a verb

24

4.1.1.2. “Go” as a noun

34

4.1.2. Syntactic features of “đi” in Vietnamese

34

4.1.2.1. “Đi” as a verb

34

4.1.2.2. “Đi” as a particle

37

4.1.2.3. “Đi” as an auxiliary

38

4.1.3. A comparison between “go” in English and “đi” in
Vietnamese in terms of syntactic features

38

4.1.3.1. Syntactic features found in both languages

38

4.1.3.2. Syntactic features unique to English

39

4.1.3.3. Syntactic features unique to Vietnamese

40

4.2. Semantic features of “go” in English and “đi” in
Vietnamese

42

4.2.1. Semantic features of “go” in English
4.2.1.1. “Go” as a verb

42

4.2.1.2. “Go” as a noun

46

4.2.2. Semantic features of “đi” in Vietnamese

47

4.2.2.1. “Đi” as a verb

48

4.2.2.2. “Đi” as a particle

51

4.2.2.3. “Đi” as an auxiliary

52
vi


4.2.3. A comparison between “go” in English and “đi” in
Vietnamese in terms of semantic features

52

4.2.3.1. Semantic features found in both languages

52

4.2.3.2. Semantic features unique to English

54

4.2.3.3. Semantic features unique to Vietnamese

56

4.3. Summary

59

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION

61

5.1. Recapitulation

61

5.2. Concluding remarks

64

5.3. Implications

65

5.3.1. For English teaching and learning

65

5.3.2. For translation from English to Vietnamese and vice
versa

66

5.4. Limitations and suggestions for further studies

66

5.4.1. Limitations

66

5.4.2. Suggestions for further studies

66

REFERENCES

67

vii


LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 2.1. Word types in English

9

Table 2.2. Word types in Vietnamese

11

Table 4.1. Forms and functions of the verb go (Adapted from
Quirk & Greenbaum (1987))

24

viii


CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rationale
Vocabulary is a basic component of language proficiency which
provides the basis for learner’s performance in other skills, such as speaking,
reading, listening and writing. Therefore, acquiring vocabulary is a
fundamental process when using other language because it will not only
develop the writing skills, but also the remaining ones.
The part of speech indicates how the word functions in meaning as well
as in grammar within the sentence. An individual word can function as more
than one part of speech when used in different circumstances. Understanding
parts of speech is essential for determining the correct definition of a word
when using the dictionary.

Many people have a difficult problem in using the vocabulary of both
English and Vietnamese, especially for teaching and translation. In English, a
word can have many meanings and it can also be combined with other words
to create phrases, clauses and sentences. Therefore, teachers and interpreters
need to have full knowledge of words and their syntactic and semantic
features.
In English, go is rich in meaning which can be listed in some
expressions, for example, go out of the way, go overboard, go for it, go into
overdrive, etc.
In Vietnamese, đi does not only indicate a physical activity only but
also imply other meanings in real life communication. To some extent, it is
not too difficult to find examples with đi: ông ấy đã đi ngày hôm qua, đi đến
kết luận, chạy đi chờ chi, etc. Especially, modern Vietnamese language,

1


which has developed and reflected the life in its own way, has been
supplemented with many new words, or new interpretations to the existing
words such as đi phong bì, đi khơng em?, sợ tái mặt đi, etc.
Each language has its own phonological, morphological and syntactical
features that could present difficulties for language learners. There are many
studies on syntactic and semantic features of specific words between English
and Vietnamese; however, there have been no studies on syntactic and
semantic features of go in English and đi in Vietnamese.
For the above reasons, I decided to carry a study entitled “Syntactic and
semantic features of “go” in English and “đi” in Vietnamese” as my MA
thesis with an attempt to support learning and teaching for teachers and
learners.
1.2. Aims and objectives

The aim of the study is clarifying the features of go in English and đi in
Vietnamese to help the learners to study and use these words corectly and
effectively.
In order to achieve the aim, the study is expected to reach the following
objectives:
- To investigate the syntactic features of go in English and đi in
Vietnamese;
- To investigate the semantic features of the go in English and đi in
Vietnamese;
- To uncover the similarities and differences between go in English and
đi in Vietnamese in terms of syntactic and semantic features.
1.3. Research questions
The objectives of the study can be elaborated into the research

2


questions as follows:
What are the syntactic features of go in English and đi in Vietnamese?
What are the semantic features of go in English and đi in Vietnamese?
What are the similarites and differences between go in English and đi
in Vietnamese in terms of syntactic and semantic features?
1.4. Research Methods
Due to the main aims and objectives of the study, description and
contrastive exploitation would be mainly carried out throughout the process.
Also, the thesis makes use of the English language as the target and the
Vietnamese one as the source language (the base language).
Descriptive method is used to describe in details the syntactic and
semantic features of go in English and đi in Vietnamese.
Contrastive analysis will be used to identify the similarities and

differences between go in English and đi in Vietnamese in terms of syntactic
and semantic features.
1.5. Scope of the study
The present study investigates the syntactic and semantic features of go
in English and đi in Vietnamese. The description and the analysis of the
features of the two words are from recently published dictionaries. All the
authors of these works affirm that all the forms and meanings of these words
are current and used, or understood by most native speakers. In this study,
almost all the examples containing the word open are collected from Oxford
Learner’s Dictionary, and the examples containing the word đi are from
Vietgle Dictionary and daily language implied in real life communication
situations.

3


1.6. Significance of the study
Theoretically, the study will provide a comprehensive and overall
knowledge about the syntactic and semantic features of go in English and đi
in Vietnamese. Moreover, the similarities and differences between these two
words in English and in Vietnamese are very helpful in contrasting two
languages.
Practically, the study will help teachers and translators to be able to
master some suggestions and hints in teaching and translating these two
words effectively because these two words consists of several meanings and
make people confused when their syntactic and semantic features are under
many unknowns.
1.7. Structure of the study
In addition to the introduction, the conclusion and the references, the
thesis is composed of four chapters:

Chapter 1: Introduction;
Chapter 2: Literature review;
Chapter 3: Methodology
Chapter 4: A comparison between “go” in English and “đi” in
Vietnamese in terms of syntactic and semantic features
Chapter 5: Conclusion

4


CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1. Review of previous studies
There have been a number of studies related to this topic. In English,
Quirk et al. (1987) focus on studying form and derivate of go because
according to Quirk the verb go consist of one morpheme as a root. Langacker
also learnt about go in aspect of striking analogies between the ways in which
different domains are structured. Martin also mentioned go with some
functional grammar.
In Vietnamese, there are many studies related to the syntactic and
semantic features of English and Vietnamese linguistics, however, there have
been no studies on the syntactic and semantic characteristics of the words of
go in English and đi in Vietnamese. Some studies that mention the syntax and
semantic issues that we can refer to are: “Study on Syntactic and Semantic
Features of the Giving Verb Group in English and their Vietnamese
Equivalents” By Quản Thị Thanh Huyền (2018), “Study on Syntactic and
Semantic Features of the Thinking Verb Group in English and their
Vietnamese Equivalents” by Hồng Bích Nhung (2015), “A Contrastive
Study of the Verb ‘Go' in English and “đi” In Vietnamese: A Perspective of

Embodiment in Cognitive Linguistics” By Hà Thị Hồng (2010), “Syntactic
and Semantic Features of the Sensory Verbs Group in English and their
Vietnamese Equivalents” by Ngô Thị Lan Anh (2018). It should be noticed
the works of Nguyễn Tài Cẩn (1981). In his book, he mentioned the role and
types of compound words formed from a word go. Besides, some famous

5


authors in Vietnam have the works relating to đi such as Diệp Quang Ban
(2010), Lê Biên (1998), Hoàng Phê (2006), etc.
2.2. Words and word classes
A word is a unit of language consisting of one or more spoken sounds
or their written representation that functions as a principal carrier of meaning.
Words are composed of one or more morphemes and are either the smallest
units susceptible of independent use or consist of two or three such units
combined under certain linking conditions. Words are usually separated by
spaces in writing, and are distinguished phonologically as by accent in many
languages.
All words belong to categories called word classes (or parts of speech)
according to the part they play in a sentence. The main word classes can be
divided in to nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions,
conjunctions, etc.
2.2.1. Polysemy of words
According to Nordquist (2018), polysemy is the association of one
word with two or more distinct meanings, and a polysemy is a word or phrase
with multiple meanings. The word "polysemy" comes from the Greek for
"many signs." The adjective forms of the word include polysemous or
polysemic.
Polysemy is characterized as the phenomenon whereby a single word

form is associated with two or several related senses. It is distinguished from
monosemy, where one-word form is associated with a single meaning, and
homonymy, where a single word form is associated with two or several
unrelated meanings. Although the distinctions between polysemy, monosemy

6


and homonymy may seem clear at an intuitive level, they have proven
difficult to draw in practice (Vicente & Falkum, 2017).
Polysemy is pervasive in natural languages, and affects both content
and function words. While deciding which sense is intended on a given
occasion of use rarely seems to cause any difficulty for speakers of a
language, polysemy has proved notoriously difficult to treat both theoretically
and empirically. Some of the questions that have occupied linguists,
philosophers and psychologists interested in the phenomenon concern: (i) the
representation, access and storage of polysemous senses in the mental lexicon,
(ii) how to deal with polysemous words in a compositional theory of meaning,
(iii) how novel senses of a word arise and are understood in the course of
communication. In psycholinguistics, the debate revolves mainly around the
differences in access, storage and representation of polysemous senses vis-àvis homonymous meanings (the different related meanings of polysemous
expressions are usually called senses). Computational and theoretical
linguistics (Asher, 2011; Copestake & Briscoe, 1995; Jackendoff, 2002;
Pustejovsky, 1995) describe models that can integrate various forms of
polysemy into a compositional theory of meaning. Pragmaticists (Carston,
2002/2016; Falkum, 2011), psychologists (Srinivasan & Rabagliati, 2015),
philosophers of language (Recanati, 2004/2016; Vicente, 2015) and recently
also cognitive linguistics (Evans, 2009/2015) propose accounts of how
polysemous senses arise and are understood, with an eye on the issue of
whether the generation of senses reflects our conceptual structures.

Distributional semantics approaches describe and distinguish senses on the
basis of words’ distributional properties, extracted by statistical analysis of
the contexts in which words occur (under the assumption that words with

7


similar distributional properties have similar semantic properties: Lenci,
2008; Baroni, Bernardi & Zamparelli, 2014). Lexicographers (Kilgarriff,
1992, Hank, 2013) also try to tackle the question of how many senses a
polysemous expression can be said to have mainly by looking at collocation
patterns. A trend towards an increasing interaction between these fields can be
observed, as the different research topics just listed are intimately related.
2.2.2. Word classes
English has four major word classes: nouns, verbs, adjectives and
adverbs. They have many thousands of members, and new nouns, verbs,
adjectives and adverbs are often created. Nouns are the most common type of
word, followed by verbs. Adjectives are less common and adverbs are even
less common.
Many words belong to more than one-word class. For example, book
can be used as a noun or as a verb; fast can be used as an adjective or an
adverb:
It’s an interesting book. (noun)
We ought to book a holiday soon. (verb)
He loves fast cars. (adjective)
Don’t drive so fast! (adverb)
The other word classes include prepositions, pronouns, determiners,
conjunctions and interjections.
Similarly, Vietnamese has four basic types of words: nouns, verbs,
adjectives, pronouns. In addition, there are a number of other word types such

as conjunctions, number words, auxiliary words, adverbs, etc.
In both Vietnamese and English, we need to understand and
acknowledge there are many words belong to many word types. In English,

8


based on the place of word in the sentence, on word structure/shapes of
words, we can identify exactly the class of word.
- Based on positions of words:
Table 2.1. Word types in English
Word types

Positions

Examples

Noun

- At the beginning of the sentence The

car

will

be

as a subject, or after the time repainted in red.
adverb at the beginning of the
sentence.

- After adjectives and possessive My car is an old
adjectives.

Japanese car.

- After verbs as an object.

She likes my picture.

- After the articles a, an, the, or We have some apples
designated pronouns: this, that, in refrigerator.
these ... the indicating words: a
few, a little, some...
- Behind enough in structure: We
enough + N + to do something

didn’t

enough time to finish
our report.

9

have


Adjective

- After liking verbs such as to be/ The

flower

is

so

look/ taste/ look/ seem/…in the beautiful.
sentence.
- In front of nouns to represent This

is

a

hard

characteristic of the noun.

problem.

- Using in some special structure:

It is such a beautiful

E.g. What + (a/an) + Adj + N = day that we decide to
How + adj + S + be:
Adverb

go out and jog.

- Before the regular verb, between We have usually had
the regular verb and the auxiliary dinner
verb.

together

on

Sunday.

- Adverbs which indicate the Thank you very much!
degree/level of adjective is standing
before the adjective.
- At end of sentence.

He ran to his school
slowly.

- In special structures, when the Last week, we had a
verb is the regular verb:

wonderful holiday in

E.g. S + V + too + Adv + (for Hoi An.
somebody) + to do something.

She

speaks

too

unclearly for us to
understand.
Verb

After subject in the sentence.

We

have

many

memorable
experiences
week holiday.

10

in

last


- Based on shapes of words:
Nouns usually have ending suffixes in the following phrases: tion,
ment, ness, ity, ship, ant, er, or...
E.g. teacher, applicant, collection, treatment, happiness, identity,
relationship, doctor...

Verbs are usually words that end with suffixes: ate, ize...
E.g. concentrate, organize, realize...
Adjectives often end with suffixes such as ing, ed, ous, ful, ive, ble, al,
ic, like, y...
E.g. interesting, excited, dangerous, careful, attractive, able,
energetic...
The adverb usually ends with the tail “ly”, they are the adjectives add
"ly".
E.g. happily, fluently, luckily...
In contrast, there is more complicated and more things to remember
whenever readers want to differentiate confusing nouns, verbs and adjectives
in Vietnamese. We have some tips to identify words type as follow:
Table 2.2. Word types in Vietnamese
Word types

Tips for word classification

Examples

Noun

- Ability to combine with the Tất cả lớp; một cái bút
number index words such as tất (All the class, a pen)
cả (all), một (one), hai (two),
những (the), các (the) ... in the
front of those number index
words.
- Ability to combine with the Cái bút này (this pen),

11

specifying words: này (this), ấy ngọn đồi ấy (that hill), ở
(that), kia (that), nọ (that), đó tỉnh

nọ

(at

that

(that) ... at the back of those province)
words.
- Ability to create questions Cái bút nào? (Which
with the following questioning pen?)
word “nào” (which) at the back.
- Some words like: sự, cuộc, Sự hi sinh (sacrifice) ,
nỗi, niềm, cái – placed in front cuộc

tranh

cãi

(the

a verb or adjective => creating fight), nỗi nhớ (missing)
a noun.
- A change in grammar function
also leads to a change in word
type.

Verb

- Ability to combine with Hãy

nhớ

(please

subordinate imperatives: hãy remember…), đừng đi
(please), đừng (don't), chớ (don’t go).
(don't) ... in the front
- A verb can create questions by Bao giờ đến? (When
putting them after: bao giờ will you arrive?)
(when) or bao lâu (how long)
Adjective

- Ability to combine with words Ngọt lắm (very sweet),
which indicate level such as too cold (quá lạnh).
lắm (very), hơi (slightly, little),
rất (very), quá (too), cực kỳ
(extremely).

12


Theoretically, verb, noun and adjective in Vietnamese cannot be
differentiated by their position and shapes of words like in English and single
English words can be translated by many Vietnamese words and vice versa.
1.3. Summary
In this chapter, the literature review includes a review of theoretical

background and the previous studies. An overview of some theoretical
background dealing with the general concepts of syntax, semantics, words,
polysemy of words and word classification is presented for background of
analyzing the syntactic and semantic features of the two words go in English
and đi in Vietnamese. In terms of previous research works, the studies by
oversea and Vietnamese authors are given to briefly review what has been
found and discussed to find out the gap of the study.

13


CHAPTER 3
METHODOLOGY

3.1. Data collection
The thesis cannot be completed without data and information, so data
collection plays an important role in contributing to the success of this thesis.
It is a matter of fact that we can make comparison of languages in various
ways. We may start from categories of traditional grammar, phrases, a whole
vocabulary or a collection of texts (Dirven & Verspoor, 2004, p. 250) with
any appropriate database and procedures. The usage-based or empirically
based (Bybee, 2009) foundation of cognitive grammar suggests that real
linguistic examples taken from genuine usage-data should form the basis for
linguistic analysis and theory construction (Langlotz, 2006; Quirk,
Greenbaum, Leech, & Svartvik, 1985).
Accordingly, the recent development of linguistics has witnessed the
rise of corpus-linguistics, which bases linguistic analyses on large computeraided corpora of both spoken and written language (Kemmer & Barlow,
2000). Cross-linguistic corpus studies require comparable corpora. While
there is a wide range of corpora, such as the Bank of English (owned by
Collins COBUILD) or the British National Corpus for English (BNC), for the

analysis of English, no such corpora are readily available for Vietnamese. We
deliberately use standard reference works; granted, this choice limits the
scope of this study, the dictionaries are a significant part of public discourse
and dictionary entries are, by their nature, extracted from their natural context
(Deignan, 2005). They are thus representative of the way in which a speech
community constructs its cultural models through language – in this case the

14


way in which the English and Vietnamese cultures conceptualize or encode
the emotions in question.
The main data for the present study comes from standard current
dictionaries in both English and Vietnamese, which are valuable tools for the
scientific study of languages (Anshen & Aronoff, 1999) due to their
“objective and readily verifiable reference” (Neumann, 2001, p. 126).
3.2. Research Methods
Due to the main aims and objectives of the study, description and
contrastive exploitation would be mainly carried out throughout the process.
Also, the thesis makes use of the English language as the target and the
Vietnamese one as the source language (the base language).
Descriptive method is used to describe in details the syntactic and
semantic features of go in English and đi in Vietnamese.
Contrastive analysis will be used to identify the similarities and
differences between go in English and đi in Vietnamese in terms of syntactic
and semantic features.
3.3. Underlying theoretical frameworks
We will apply a select range of theories to the investigation of the
syntactic and semantic features of go in English and đi in Vietnamese: the
theory of contrastive analysis and the theory of syntax and semantics.

3.3.1. Theory of contrastive analysis
According to Gass & Larry (2001, p. 72), "contrastive analysis is a way
of comparing languages in order to determine potential errors for the ultimate
purpose of isolating what needs to be learnt and what does not need to be
learnt in a SLL situation". They discuss the two positions of CA, which they
call "predictive" and "explanatory", and "strong" and "weak" version,

15