4. Research Methods
The descriptive method is used to give a detailed
description of semantic features of wishing verbs in
English and Vietnamese. The contrastive method is
employed with the aim to identify the similarities and
differences of wishing verbs in English and Vietnamese in
terms of semantics.
5. Data Collection and Data Analysis
755 samples (in English) and 687 ones (in
Vietnamese) containing wishing verbs such as “want,
wish, desire, expect, hope, long”, “hy v
ọng, mong muốn,
ước, thèm, khao khát” were collected from novels and
short stories of English, American and Vietnamese
original to ensure the authenticity of the corpus.
The data collected is qualitatively and quantitatively
processed to find the similarities and differences of wishing
verbs in terms of semantics in the two languages mentioned.
6. Findings and Discussions
In general, the investigated wishing verbs express
what the speakers want (to do) as well as wish someone to
do. They have some semantic features in common but
each of them has something different from the others.
Based on their semantic features, the data in this paper is
organized into the following main fields, including
possibility of desire, direction for action, regret, high
degree of desire, human physiological needs, annoyance
and polite imperative. All of them have the definitions
collected from “Oxford Advanced Learner’s
Dictionary”(in English) and “T
ừ điển tiếng Việt” (in
Vietnamese). The points of view of Palmer, Swan about
wishing verbs are also considered in this paper.
6.1. Semantic Features of Verbs Denoting Wishes in
English
6.1.1. Possibility of Desire
Such verbs as “want, expect, hope” contribute to
collecting the data in this subgroup:
(3) I want to make him happy.
[14, p.184]
(4) She is expecting
a
baby.
[15,
p.840]
(5) She is hoping it will be a girl.
[15, p.840]
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