ISSN 1859-1531
- THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG, JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, NO. 12(109).2016
85
AN INVESTIGATION INTO SEMANTIC FEATURES OF WISHING VERBS
IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE
Luu Quy Khuong¹, Ngo Thi Truc Mai
2
¹University of Foreign Language Studies, The University of Danang; lqkhuong@cfl.udn.vn
2
Master Student Course 30, English Language Major, The University of Danang; trucmaidx@gmail.com
Abstract - The studies of the semantics of volitional verbs show
that these verbs have their own characteristics with diversified
structures and meaning nuances. Based on the descriptive and
contrastive methods, this paper aims to
provide a detailed
description of semantic features of wishing verbs in English and
Vietnamese. The English samples and Vietnamese ones of
wishing verbs are collected from novels and short stories by
English, American and Vietnamese writers for the analysis to find
out their semantic features. Based on the theories of some
researchers such as Lock [7], Halliday [4], Di
ệp Quang
Ban and
Hoàng V
ăn Thung [1], a contrastive analysis has been carried out
to explore the similarities and differences between English
volitional verbs of wishes and Vietnamese ones in terms of
semantics. The paper also shows the distributions as well as the
frequency of these verbs in both languages. The findings then
serves as a foundation to put forward a
number of implications for
English language teaching and learning to help Vietnamese
learners of English have effective communication.
Key words - semantic features; mental process; volition;
volitional verbs; wishing verbs; wishes.
1. Rationale
Volition is the speaker’s mental process associated with
the process of sensing, different from verbal process
involved in actions. The mental process of volition, which
means
wanting, ordering, demanding, preferring, wishing
and telling someone else to do something, can be
expressed
by many different means such as modal verbs, lexical
verbs, adjectives, adverbs, nouns... In many cases, verbs are
preferable because verbs occur in English sentences as the
most important critical component of sentence meaning
and completeness. Therefore, volitional verbs have so far
been an interesting issue for linguists to investigate.
As a mental state,
wishes have their own importance.
The
states of emotions like hopes, dreams and desires
express the inner perception and cognition utterance. The
subgroup of wishing verbs is considered as the most
common one with high frequency. They express the
subjective idea of speakers and purposes of utterance. Let
us look at the following examples:
(1) The manager
wants to talk to the workforce.
[6, p.596]
(2)
Miss Garbo wishes to be alone.
[6, p.596]
Both
“want” and
“wish” in (1) and (2) are used to
express desires.
“Wish + to infinitive”, however, is a
more formal way of saying
“I want to...” or
“I would like