LAM DONG DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

PEDAGOGICAL COLLEGE OF DA LAT

RESEARCH PROPOSAL
A COMPARISON OF ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE
EMOTIONAL VERBS

Supervisor: Le Thi Thuy Van , M.A.

Researchers: Nguyen Hoang Nhi
Class: English 44

Dalat, November, 2021

LAM DONG DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
PEDAGOGICAL COLLEGE OF DA LAT

RESEARCH PROPOSAL
A COMPARISON OF ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE
EMOTIONAL VERBS

Supervisor: Le Thi Thuy Van , M.A.

Researchers: Nguyen Hoang Nhi
Class: English 44

Dalat,November , 2021
PART 1: INTRODUCTION
PART 2: CONTENT
PART 3: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
REFERENCES
APPENDIX

PART 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rationale
- Motion verbs are ones of the verbs that possess the biggest quantity of meanings and
highest used frequency in English. According to R. Quirk (1985), I have found it useful
to classify verbs into seven major semantic domains, in which activity verbs (or motion
verbs) are the most common verbs. In the distribution of semantic domains, the most
common verbs (i.e. verbs that occur at least 50 times per million words) are far from
evenly distributed across the seven semantic domains. 50% of all common verbs are
activity verbs (139 out of 218 common verbs). They occur almost in conversation,
fiction, news and academic prose. Overall, activity verbs (or motion verbs) occur much
more commonly than verbs from any other semantic domain. According to Leech (1971,
p.215), motion verbs are considered as the most common ones with high frequency.
However, motion verbs are kinds of fairly complicated words.
- For Vietnamese students, the differences in two languages cause a lot of difficulties in
using words. They may feel confused when encountering such verbs or may not use them
effectively. For example, in English we say : “I will go to Hanoi tomorrow”, although
speaker can stay at any position. But in Vietnamese we can say “Ngày mai tôi sẽ đi Hà
Nội”, “ Ngày mai tôi sẽ ra Hà Nội”, “Ngày mai tôi sẽ về Hà Nội.” When we say “ra, đi
and về” in English, we can use “go” to express our thought. But in Vietnamese, “ra” is
used when speaker is staying or living in the South or Middle land, về is used when
speaker has fatherland is Hanoi. Therefore, go in English can be translated into
Vietnamese ra, đi and về. Or to express “Anh ta đi lảo đảo như người say”, in English it
is said he was staggering along as if drunk but in Vietnamese for English learners at the
beginning stage of efficiency will use the structure go + adverbial phrase of manner to
describe the motion. Thus, English learners, especially Vietnamese students find it very
difficult when they meet such cases in their communication and studying.
- An emotional verb is a verb that expresses an action or a state of an emotional or
psychological nature. With an emotional verb, generally someone feels something.
Examples of emotional verbs are the following: amuse, annoy, baffle, bewilder, bore,
confuse, depress, disappoint, excite, frighten, frustrate, interest, motivate, overwhelm,
please, puzzle, shock, surprise. Metaphors offer us means of enriching the language we
use. Several metonymies and metaphors have developed to express emotions and some of
them involve verbs of motion to visualize or convey the emotion, as for example: He flew
into a rage and She jumped for joy. There are different kinds of motion verbs and for
purposes of delimitation this thesis will study verbs expressing full body movements over
land, through and on water and through air and how these are used in metonymy and
metaphor to express emotions. Motion and emotion merge in these metaphorical
expressions and as Lakoff and Johnson explain; “[the metaphor] permits an
understanding of one kind of experience in terms of another” (1980: 235). They further
claim that; “Since much of our social reality is understood in metaphorical terms, and
since our conception of the physical world is partly metaphorical, metaphor plays a very
significant role in determining what is real for us” (1980: 146). Metaphors have become
an ordinary way of expressing things as for example: “He fell in love, The anger welled
up inside her” . Some metaphors are indeed so common they are understood almost
literally.
- From all the above mentioned, I would like to choose the topic: “Comparision of
English and Vietnamese Emotional Verbs” to study with the hope to contribution an
awareness of this kind to the learners of English in Vietnam.

1.2. Aim and Objectives

Aims and objectives of the study:
- The aim of this study is to investigate what the use of some verbs of motion in
emotional metaphors reveals about the connections between something utterly concrete,
such as motion, and something very abstract, such as emotion. In order to gain the aim of
the study, the objectives of the study are as follows:
• To identify metaphorical meanings of motion verbs expressing emotion in English and
Vietnamese.
• To find out the differences and similarities between metaphorical meanings of motion
verbs expressing emotion in English and their Vietnamese equivalents
• To suggest some implications for teaching and learning metaphorical meanings of
motion verbs expressing emotion in English.
1.3. Scope of the Study
The concepts of motion verbs, emotion verbs and metaphor will be studied from a
cognitive linguistic perspective. The verbs of motion will be picked on the basis of the
extent to which they describe full body movement transportation through one or several
spatial areas, i.e. verbs naming transportation and movement of the whole body through
water, air and over land will be studied. The emotion metaphors will be retrieved from
metaphor dictionaries and corpus data and analyzed with respect to the use of the motion
verbs and the conveyed emotion. Only metonymy and metaphor that help conceptualize
emotions will be studied. The basic meanings of the English motion verbs and their
Vietnamese equivalents are collected and synthesized basing on many English
dictionaries and English –Vietnamese dictionaries. Metaphorical meanings of these verbs
are collected from books, literature works as well as dictionaries.
In this study, English is considered as the source language and Vietnamese as target
language. Therefore, metaphorical meanings of English motion verbs are analyzed in
details and then their Vietnamese equivalents are found out based on their basis meaning
in dictionaries and actual context in works, stories, newspapers.
1.4. Research Questions
- The following questions will be answered:
• How are verbs of motion used in metaphors for emotion in English and Vietnamese?
• What are the similarities and differences between metaphorical meanings of motion
verbs expressing emotion in English and their Vietnamese ?
• What are implications for teaching and learning metaphorical meanings of motion verbs
expressing emotion in English?
1.5.Hypotheses
- To achieve the set goals, the research suggests the following hypotheses:
• The metaphorical meanings of motion verbs expressing emotions in English and
Vietnamese may be the similarities.
• The metaphorical meanings of motion verbs expressing emotions in English and
Vietnamese may be the differences.
• The study is expected to be used as a good reference for learning and researching
language. The result of the study through analysis and comparison between two
languages may be of great benefits for teachers and learners of English, as well as helpful
in using the language effectively in life.
1.6. Organization of the Study
- To gain the above goals, the study is divided into four parts:
+ Part I: Introduction: deals with the rationale to choose the thesis, the aims, the
objectives, the scope, research questions, hypotheses, organization, the methods and work
plan off the study.
+ Part II: Literature Review: summarizes the results of the previous studies in Vietnam
and overseas, theoretical background of the study in order to build the theoretical
framework of the study.
+ Part III: Findings and discussion: points out the metaphors of verb emotion in
English and their Vietnamese equivalents and comparison verbs of motion in emotion
metaphors in English and the Vietnamese equivalents is made. Implications for teaching
and learning English motion verbs expressing emotion are given.
+ Part IV: Conclusions: summaries the whole contents of the study, indicating
implications for teaching English motion verbs and the limitations of the study, thus
giving some recommendations and suggestions for a further study.
1.7. Methods and Procedures
In general, research methods may be understood as all those methods/techniques that are
used for conduction of research. In other words, all those methods or techniques the
researchers use during the course of studying his research problem. Since the object of
research, particularly the applied research, is to arrive at a solution for a given problem,
the available data and the unknown aspects of the problem have to be related to each
other to make a solution possible. A comparative study is a diachronic comparison of two
or more linguistic systems with a view to classifying languages into families. It is
concerned with the history and evolution of languages. A comparative study is interested
in establishing the similarities or correspondences between languages. Therefore, in order
to obtain the purposes of the study, descriptive and comparative methods are used.
Descriptive method is used to describe the metaphorical meanings of English motion
verbs expressing emotion and their Vietnamese equivalents. Comparative method is used
to make a comparison between the metaphorical meanings of English motion verbs
expressing emotion and their Vietnamese equivalents in order to point out the similarities
and differences between them.
1.8. Work plan
- From 9/ 21-- to 10/ 21--: choose the topic and write the research proposal.
- From 11/ 21-- to 12/ 21--: collect the data.
- From 12/ 21-- to 1/ 21--: finish part 1 and 2.
- From 2/ 21-- to 3/ 21--: analyze the data to finish part 3.
- From 4/ 21-- to 5/ 21--: complete the research.
PART 2: CONTENT
Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
2. 1.1. Previous studies
2. 1.2. An overview of metaphor and metonym
2. 1.3. An overview of emotion
1.4. Verbs of motion in emotion metaphors
 1.5. An overview of motion verbs and motion verbs expressing emotion in
Vietnamese

Chapter 2: VERBS OF MOTION IN EMOTION METAPHORS IN ENGLISH

AND THEIR VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS
2.2.1. Verbs of motion in emotion metaphors in English
2.2.2. A comparison between verbs of motion in emotion metaphors in English and their
Vietnamese equivalents
2.2.3. Implications for teaching and learning motion verbs expressing emotion in English
to Vietnamese EFL learners of English.
PART 3: CONCLUSION
1. Summary of the study
2. Conclusion
3. Limitations and Suggestions for Further Studies

REFERENCES
In English
1. Barcelona, A. Editor. 2003. Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads: A Cognitive
Perspective. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
2. British National Corpus “A”-files, Lulea University of Technology. CALD:Cambridge
Advanced Learner‟s Dictionary.
3. Crossroads: A Cognitive Perspective. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 93-105.
Saeed, John I. 2003. Semantics. United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
4. Dixon, R.M.W. 1990. A new approach to English grammar on semantic principles.
Claendon Press- Oxford.
5. Faber, P. B. and R. Mairal Us n. 1999. Constructing a Lexicon of English Verbs. Berlin
and New York: Mouton de Gruyter
6. Fillmore, C. FrameNet. http://framenet.icsi.berkeley.edu/ (2005-05-23) Goatly, A. 1997.
The Language of Metaphors. London and New York: Routledge.
7. Haser, V. “Metaphor in semantic change” in A. Barcelona 2003. Metaphor and Metonymy
at the Crossroads: A Cognitive Perspective. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 171-
187.
8. Ko vecses, Z. and Radden, G. “Towards a Theory of Metonymy” in Panther and Radden
1999. Metonymy in Language and Thought. The Netherlands and USA: John Benjamins,
Human Cognitive Processing.
9. Lakoff, G. 1987. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things. Chicago and London: The
University of Chicago Press.
10. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago and London: The
University of Chicago Press.
11. Langacker, R. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, volume I. Stanford, California:
Stanford University Press.
12. Langacker, R. 1991. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, volume II. Stanford,
California: Stanford University Press.
13. Langacker, R. 2002. Concept, Image, and Symbol The Cognitive Basis of Grammar.
Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
14. Leech, G.N. 1971. Meaning and the English Verbs. New York: Academic Press.
15. Levin, B. 1993. English Verb Classes and Alternations. A Preliminary Investigation.
Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
16. Niemeier, S. “Straight from the heart – metonymic and metaphorical explorations” in
Barcelona 2003. Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads: A Cognitive Perspective.
Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 195-211.
17. Panther, K-U and Radden, G. Ed. 1999. Metonymy in Language and Thought. The
Netherlands and USA: John Benjamins, Human Cognitive Processing.
18. Persson, G. 1990. Meanings, Models and Metaphors. Almqvist & Wiksell International:
The University of Umea .
19. Quirk, et al. (1985). A Comprehensible Grammar of the English language. New York:
Academic Press.
20. Quirk, R. and S Greenbaum, G. Leech, J. Svartvik.(1985). A comprehensive grammar of
the English language. New York: Academic Press.
21. Radden, G. “How metonymic are metaphor?” in Barcelona 2003.
22. Saeed, John I. 2003. Semantics, United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
23. SIL International. http://www.sil.org/linguistics/glossaryoflinguisticterms/ (2005-04- 26)
http://www.sil.org/lingualinks/lexicon/metaphorsinenglish/ (2005-05-16)
24. Talmy, L. 1975. Semantics and Syntax of Motion. In Syntax and semantics (vol. 4), ed.
by John P. Kimball. New York: Academic Press.
25. Talmy, L. 2000. Toward A Cognitive Semantics. Volume I: Concept Structuring
Systems. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The MIT Press.
26. Ungerer, F. and H. J. Schmid. 1999. An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics. New York:
Pearson Education Inc.
27. Wildgen,W. 2003.Time, Motion, Force, and the Semantics of Natural Languages.
University of Bremen: www.fb10.unibremen.de/homepages/wildgen/pdf/antwerpen_time.pdf
(2005-03-02)
28. WT: Wilkinson, P.R. 1993. Thesaurus of Traditional English Metaphors. London &
New York: Routledge.
In Vietnamese
29. Cadiere, L. 1958.Cú pháp tiếng Việt. Paris,
30.
Nguyễn Tài Cẩn. 1975. Ngữ pháp tiếng Việt. Hà Nội.
31. Nguyễn Đức Dân. 1980. Từ điển tần số tiếng Việt. Paris.
32.
Nguyễn Đình Hoà (1979), Vietnamese verbs, New York: Barron‟s Educational
Series. Available at http://www. google.com.vn/search?hl=vi&source=hp&q=
33. Lê Khả Kế. 1991. English-Vietnamese Dictionary. Nhà Xuất Bản: Thành Phố Hồ Chí
Minh.
34. Nguyễn Lai. 2001. Nhóm từ chỉ hướng vận động Tiếng Việt hiện đại. Hà Nội.
35. Lê Văn Lý. 1948. Le parler vietnamien. Paris.
36.
Hoàng Tuyết Minh. 2014. Bƣớc đầu xác định mô hình từ vựng h a nghĩa tố chỉ
phƣơng hƣớng của sự tình chuyển động trong tiếng Việt dƣới g c nhìn của ngữ nghĩa

SỞ GD & ĐT LÂM ĐỒNG CỘNG HÒA XÃ HỘI CHỦ NGHĨA VIỆT NAM
TRƯỜNG CĐSP ĐÀ LẠT Độc lập – Tự do – Hạnh phúc

PHIẾU ĐĂNG KÍ THỰC HIỆN KHOÁ LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP

Kính gửi: Trưởng khoa Tự Nhiên và Xã hội

Họ và tên: Nguyễn Hoàng Nhi
Sinh viên lớp: Sư phạm Tiếng Anh K44- Khoa: Tự nhiên và Xã hội
Tên đề tài khoá luận: A Comparision of English and Vietnamese Emotional Verbs
Giảng viên hướng dẫn: Cô Lê Thị Thùy Vân
Mô tả vắn tắt đề tài
1. Lý do chọn đề tài:
- Motion verbs are ones of the verbs that possess the biggest quantity of meanings and
highest used frequency in English. According to R. Quirk (1985), I have found it useful
to classify verbs into seven major semantic domains, in which activity verbs (or motion
verbs) are the most common verbs. In the distribution of semantic domains, the most
common verbs (i.e. verbs that occur at least 50 times per million words) are far from
evenly distributed across the seven semantic domains. 50% of all common verbs are
activity verbs (139 out of 218 common verbs). They occur almost in conversation,
fiction, news and academic prose. Overall, activity verbs (or motion verbs) occur much
more commonly than verbs from any other semantic domain. According to Leech (1971,
p.215), motion verbs are considered as the most common ones with high frequency.
However, motion verbs are kinds of fairly complicated words.
- For Vietnamese students, the differences in two languages cause a lot of difficulties in
using words. They may feel confused when encountering such verbs or may not use them
effectively. For example, in English we say : “I will go to Hanoi tomorrow”, although
speaker can stay at any position. But in Vietnamese we can say “Ngày mai tôi sẽ đi Hà
Nội”, “ Ngày mai tôi sẽ ra Hà Nội”, “Ngày mai tôi sẽ về Hà Nội.” When we say “ra, đi
and về” in English, we can use “go” to express our thought. But in Vietnamese, “ra” is
used when speaker is staying or living in the South or Middle land, về is used when
speaker has fatherland is Hanoi. Therefore, go in English can be translated into
Vietnamese ra, đi and về. Or to express “Anh ta đi lảo đảo như người say”, in English it
is said he was staggering along as if drunk but in Vietnamese for English learners at the
beginning stage of efficiency will use the structure go + adverbial phrase of manner to
describe the motion. Thus, English learners, especially Vietnamese students find it very
difficult when they meet such cases in their communication and studying.
- An emotional verb is a verb that expresses an action or a state of an emotional or
psychological nature. With an emotional verb, generally someone feels something.
Examples of emotional verbs are the following: amuse, annoy, baffle, bewilder, bore,
confuse, depress, disappoint, excite, frighten, frustrate, interest, motivate, overwhelm,
please, puzzle, shock, surprise. Metaphors offer us means of enriching the language we
use. Several metonymies and metaphors have developed to express emotions and some of
them involve verbs of motion to visualize or convey the emotion, as for example: He flew
into a rage and She jumped for joy. There are different kinds of motion verbs and for
purposes of delimitation this thesis will study verbs expressing full body movements over
land, through and on water and through air and how these are used in metonymy and
metaphor to express emotions. Motion and emotion merge in these metaphorical
expressions and as Lakoff and Johnson explain; “[the metaphor] permits an
understanding of one kind of experience in terms of another” (1980: 235). They further
claim that; “Since much of our social reality is understood in metaphorical terms, and
since our conception of the physical world is partly metaphorical, metaphor plays a very
significant role in determining what is real for us” (1980: 146). Metaphors have become
an ordinary way of expressing things as for example: “He fell in love, The anger welled
up inside her” . Some metaphors are indeed so common they are understood almost
literally.
- From all the above mentioned, I would like to choose the topic: “Comparision of
English and Vietnamese Emotional Verbs” to study with the hope to contribution an
awareness of this kind to the learners of English in Vietnam.

2. Mục tiêu nghiên cứu:

Aims and objectives of the study:
- The aim of this study is to investigate what the use of some verbs of motion in
emotional metaphors reveals about the connections between something utterly concrete,
such as motion, and something very abstract, such as emotion. In order to gain the aim of
the study, the objectives of the study are as follows:
• To identify metaphorical meanings of motion verbs expressing emotion in English and
Vietnamese.
• To find out the differences and similarities between metaphorical meanings of motion
verbs expressing emotion in English and their Vietnamese equivalents
• To suggest some implications for teaching and learning metaphorical meanings of
motion verbs expressing emotion in English.

3. Các nội dung nghiên cứu

- To gain the above goals, the study is divided into four parts:
+ Part I: Introduction: deals with the rationale to choose the thesis, the aims, the
objectives, the scope, research questions, hypotheses, organization, the methods and work
plan off the study.
+ Part II: Literature Review: summarizes the results of the previous studies in Vietnam
and overseas, theoretical background of the study in order to build the theoretical
framework of the study.
+ Part III: Findings and discussion: points out the metaphors of verb emotion in
English and their Vietnamese equivalents and comparison verbs of motion in emotion
metaphors in English and the Vietnamese equivalents is made. Implications for teaching
and learning English motion verbs expressing emotion are given.
+ Part IV: Conclusions: summaries the whole contents of the study, indicating
implications for teaching English motion verbs and the limitations of the study, thus
giving some recommendations and suggestions for a further study.

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