MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY NGUYEN THI LE THUY ‘GET’ PHRASAL VERBS IN TERM OF SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES WITH REFERENCE TO VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS (NHỮNG ĐẶC ĐIỂM CÚ PHÁP VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA CỤM THÀNH NGỮ ‘GET’ VÀ NHỮNG TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT) M.A. THESIS Hanoi, 2013 NGUYỄN THỊ LỆ THỦY FIELD: ENGLISH LANGUAGE 2011- 2013 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY NGUYEN THI LE THUY ‘GET’ PHRASAL VERBS IN TERM OF SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES WITH REFERENCES TO VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS (NHỮNG ĐẶC ĐIỂM VỀ CÚ PHÁP VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA CỤM THÀNH NGỮ ‘GET’ VÀ NHỮNG TƯƠNG ĐƯƠNG TRONG TIẾNG VIỆT) M.A. THESIS Field: English Language Code: 60220201 Supervisor: Ly Lan, Ph.D. Hanoi, 2013 i DECLARATION I hereby declare that no part of the enclosed Master Thesis has been copied or reproduced by me from any other’s work without acknowledgement and that the thesis is originally written by me under strict guidance of my supervisor. Any help that I have received in my research work and the preparation of the thesis itself has been acknowledged. In addition, I certify that all information sources and literature used are indicated in the thesis’s references. Hanoi, December 15 th 2013 Nguyen Thi Le Thuy APPROVED BY ________________________________________________ (Supervisor’s signature and full name) ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For the completion of this work, I have been fortunate to receive invaluable contributions from many people. I would like to express my deeply thanks to my supervisor, Ly Lan Ph.D, who step by step guides me during my writing thesis. Without her assistance, excellent suggestions, expert advice and detailed critical comments, the work could not have been completed. I own her a debt of gratitude that cannot be measured. In addition, I am greatly indebted to all my lectures at the Faculty of Graduate Studies at Hanoi Open University for their useful lectures, supports, encouragement and for inspiring me the love for English foreign language teaching and doing scientific research. Besides, the study could not have been prepared without the support and provision of useful materials from all my colleagues and friends. Therefore, their kindness will never be forgotten. I would also give my deepest gratitude to my family for their constant support and encouragement during the time I was attending the course and while the work was in progress. Finally, although great efforts have been made to complete the thesis I am aware that this study is far from perfect. Hence, constructive comments are welcome for more perfection of the thesis. iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Adv. Adverb Dpt. Department E.g. For example i.e. That is N. Noun N°. Number O. Object Part. Particle Pro. Pronoun Prep. Preposition p. Page Qty. Quantity Ref. Reflexive Smb. Somebody iv Smt. Something Ss. Students UNETI University of Economics and Technical Industries V Verb * An asterisk signifies that what follows it is incorrect ^ Caret indicates omissions [ ] Reference Number [ : ] Reference Number and page are separated by ‘:’ For example: [ 15: 27] the reference number is 15 and the page in the reference is 27 ( : ) Illustration examples reference resources (reference number : page number) v LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 2.1: Information of the participants Table 2.2: The learners’ acquisition levels on the syntactic features Table 2.3: The learners’ acquisition levels on the semantic features Table 3.1: Syntactic mistakes committed by the participants Table 3.2: Semantic mistakes committed by the participants Figure 2.1: The total of non-passed and passed participants vi TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iii LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES, GRAPHS v TABLE OF CONTENTS vi PART I: INTRODUCTION 1 1. Rationale of the study 1 2. Aims and objectives of the study 3 3. Research questions 3 4. Scope of the study 3 5. Methods of the study 4 6. Design of the study 5 PART II: DEVELOPMENT 6 Chapter 1: Theoretical background 6 1.1. Literature review 6 vii 1.1.1. The Ancestors of Phrasal verbs in Old English 6 1.1.2. Phrasal Verbs in Middle English 7 1.1.3. Phrasal Verbs in Early Modern English 8 1.1.4. Phrasal Verbs in Present-day English 9 1.2. Theoretical background 10 1.2.1. Overview of English Phrasal Verbs 10 1.2.2. Definition of English Phrasal Verbs 11 1.2.3. Classifications of English Phrasal Verbs 13 1.2.3.1. Intransitive Phrasal Verbs 16 1.2.3.2. Transitive Phrasal Verbs 19 Chapter 2: Methodology 23 2.1. Research design 23 2.2. Research participants 24 2.3. Research procedures 25 2.4. Data collection instrument 26 2.4.1. Selective material 26 [...]... sense of nuances in the semantics of both the source-language and target-language texts In my process of English teaching, get phrasal verbs have made me pay a great interest to, because they possess a number of syntactic and semantic features as well as other stylistic peculiarities 2 In order to find a better way to acquire the get phrasal verbs, especially in doing translation from English into Vietnamese. .. 31 Chapter 3: Findings and Discussions 35 3.1 Syntactic features of 'Get' phrasal verbs 35 3.1.1 Intransitive features 36 3.1.2 Transitive features 37 3.1.2.1 Get phrasal verbs can be separated by their object 39 3.1.2.2 Get phrasal verbs cannot be separated by their object 40 3.2 Semantics features of 'Get' phrasal verbs 42 3.2.1 Non-idiomatic and literal meanings of get phrasal verbs 42 3.2.2... Vietnamese and vice versa, the topic relating to get phrasal verbs with reference to Vietnamese equivalent has been chosen for my graduation paper 2 Aims and objectives of the study The thesis is aimed at analyzing the syntactic and semantic features of get phrasal verbs and raising Vietnamese learners’ awareness of these verbs, so that they could be able to use them exactly and successful in their... meaning of the whole two-part verb is equal to the meaning of the sum of its two parts" However, he concedes: "But in many cases, knowing the meaning of the parts does not help us to know the meaning of the whole" Thus, to add the meaning of bring to the meaning of up will not help us to understand the meaning of bring up in the expression He brought up a point Nor will it help us to understand bring... syntactic and semantic features of get phrasal verbs? (ii) What are the difficulties faced by learners at University of Economic - Technical Industries in understanding the above features of get phrasal verb? (iii) What are the implications for mastering get phrasal verbs? 4 Scope of the study 3 It is due to the framework of a Master thesis, this study focuses mainly on get phrasal verbs with reference. .. methods to evaluate participants’ ability in understanding English and Vietnamese idioms on friendship in terms of syntactic and semantic feature of get phrasal verbs Then, the statistic method is applied to present quantitative descriptions in a manageable form to simplify large amounts of data in a sensible way In addition, comparative method is used to analyze the get phrasal verbs with reference to. .. communication in English There are two main objectives of this study The first objective is pointing out some syntactic and semantics features of get phrasal verbs with reference to Vietnamese equivalent; and the second one is proposing some implications for mastering get phrasal verbs in an effective way 3 Research question In conducting the study, following question should be answered: (i) What are the syntactic. .. descriptions in a manageable form to simplify large amounts of data in a sensible way In addition, comparison method is used to analyze the get phrasal verbs with reference to Vietnamese equivalent, hence pointing out the distinctive features of get phrasal verbs which cause difficulties for Vietnamese learners and suggesting some implications for teaching these verbs to learners at University of Economics... One of the challenging things of acquiring English is phrasal verbs, which seem to be too hard for them to master, hence inevitable errors in using the phrasal verbs in communication: both spoken and written English In theory, phrasal verbs are generally considered to be idiomatic combinations of a verb and an adverbial particle The exact status of the latter is still being debated, scholars being... position of phrasal verbs in English Grammar and what status they have According to Levitchi, the verb is considered to be the heart of a sentence It “is a part of speech denoting actions: to work, to go, to sing; process in the form of actions: to stand, to lie; the appearance of a characteristic: to bud, the modification of a characteristic: to harden; an attitude: to be glad” [22:83] English verbs . MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY NGUYEN THI LE THUY GET PHRASAL VERBS IN TERM OF SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES WITH REFERENCE TO VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS. MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY NGUYEN THI LE THUY GET PHRASAL VERBS IN TERM OF SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC FEATURES WITH REFERENCES TO VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS. In order to find a better way to acquire the get phrasal verbs, especially in doing translation from English into Vietnamese and vice versa, the topic relating to get phrasal verbs with