AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE ATTITUDINAL MEANING OF THE COLLOCATIONS OF ADJECTIVE + “RA/ĐI” IN VIETNAMESE VS. THE ENGLISH TRANSLATIONAL EQUIVALENTS

Abstract

This investigation aimed to discover the attitudinal meaning of the collocations of Adjective + “Ra/Đi” in Vietnamese vs. the English translational equivalents in the light of cognitive semantics. The investigation was carried out through the adoption of qualitative, contrastive approaches to examine syntactic and semantic features of the conceptual and metaphorical meaning the collocation Adjective + "Ra/Đi" in Vietnamese and their equivalents in English. I would like to collect sentences, phrases containing instances of “Adj. + Ra/Đi” in Vietnamese and its equivalents in English in bilingual books, novels, short stories, newspapers, magazines and Vietnamese-English dictionaries… with about 200 Vietnamese samples and about its 200 equivalents in English as the population of the observed instances. The most important and significant aspect of this investigation, the similarities and differences between Vietnamese and English way of expressing the meaning of “Adj. + Ra” in Vietnamese in the light of cognitive semantics, was presented in order to help learners, teachers and translators have better use of the conceptual and attitudinal meanings of this combination in Vietnamese and into English. In the view of cognitive semantics, “Ra/Đi” in Vietnamese in the combination “Adj. + Ra/Đi” comes from the meaning of spatial concept to psychological concept. Moreover, changing from the meaning of “narrow and wide” – “limited and unlimited” to the meaning of surprising or even epistemic meaning, “Ra/Đi” in this case shows the way from physical awareness to emotional awareness with internal-oriented nuance of critics who are heavily subjective.