ISSN 1859-1531 - THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG, JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, NO. 12(109).2016
89
Ước
+
-
-
+
- - +
Khao khát
+
-
-
+
- - -
Thèm
+
-
-
+
- - -
(Symbols: + : yes
- : no)
6.4. Frequency of Occurrence of Wishing Verbs in
English and Vietnamese
Table 4. Relative Frequency of WishingVerbs in English
Wishing Verbs
Occurences
%
Want
265
35.1
Wish
165
21.9
Hope
163
21.6
Long
21
2.8
Desire
17
2.2
Expect
124
16.4
Total
755
100
As can be seen from the table, English people have a
strong tendency to use
“want” the most (35.1%). The
second preferred verbs are
“wish” and
“hope” making up
21.9% and 21.6% respectively of the total samples in the
data. Other verbs are allocated from 2.8% to 16.4%. The
frequency of occurrence
of the verb “desire” is the lowest
with 2.2%.
Table 5. Relative Frequency of Wishing Verbs in Vietnamese
Wishing Verbs
Occurences
%
Hy v
ọng
38
5.5
Mu
ốn
390
56.8
Mong
118
17.2
Ước
67
9.7
Khao khát
20
2.9
Thèm
54
7.9
Total
687
100
Like
“want” in English,
“mu
ốn” in Vietnamese takes
the biggest percentage (56.8%), followed by
“mong”
(mong
đợi, mong chờ, mong mỏi, mong ngóng, trông chờ)
and
“
ước” (ước mong, mong ước, ước muốn, ao ước, ước
ao,
ước nguyện, mơ ước, ước gì) with 17.2% and 9.7%
respectively. Other verbs like
“hy v
ọng”, “khao khát”
(khát, khát khao) make up between 2.9% and 5.5%. It can
be noticed that
“thèm" (thèm khát, thèm mu
ốn, thèm ước,
thèm thu
ồng) has the modest percentage (7.9%).
7. Conclusions and Suggestions
From the semantic analysis of the examples taken
from English, American and Vietnamese literary works,
we can come to the conclusion that the differences in the
meanings of wishing verbs between both languages are
not great. They express mental processes of
wanting,
hoping, wishing. However, the
diversity in the shades of
meanings of these wishing verbs is based on the
degrees
of volition. Accordingly, verbs denoting
possibility of
desire include
“want, expect, hope” (“mong, mu
ốn, hy
v
ọng”) and verbs denoting
high degree of desire are
“desire, wish, long” (“
ước, khao khát, thèm”). Besides,
“hope” (“hy v
ọng”) is treated as
“epistemic anxiety”
while
“want” (“mu
ốn”) is treated as denotic, a kind of
directive. Also, it must be admitted that it is not always
easy to distinguish
“want” (“mu
ốn”) and
“wish”
(“
ước”) because the former considered as a
manipulative verb denotes directly communicated desire
whereas the latter is used when the
probability of such
direct manipulative contact is lower.
With the exception of some differences in shades of
meaning of certain verbs, the study has pointed out that
“mu
ốn” in Vietnamese indicates both mental desire and
human physiological needs while the latter does not exist
with
“want / wish” in English. On the other hand,
“wish”
covers the meanings of annoyance and polite imperative,
which
cannot be found with “
ước” in Vietnamese in
terms of semantics.
In order to help Vietnamese learners of English learn
and use them effectively, some suggestions for language
learning and teaching are put forward:
To start with, that most learners of English choose the
verbs
“want / wish” to express their volition is very
common. Other verbs like
“hope / expect / desire” seem
to be ignored. The
teacher should, therefore, spend more
time helping students familiarize with them as well as
explain the specific meanings of each verb so that they
can make flexible choice of these wishing verbs in both
written and spoken forms.
Second, understanding and distinguishing the
meanings of each verb is far from easy.
Learners of
English just look for the equivalent verbs without caring
about their distinctive semantic features, which prevents
them from expressing their ideas effectively. They
sometimes pay little attention to the differences in
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