The verb is one of the most fundamental parts of speech in any language and it plays an extremely important role in grammatical structures as well as sentential constructions. Structurally, the verb may have preceding and following elements in the order: preceding element(s) + verb + following element(s). Semantically, the verb is a lexical word denoting process, action and state… In English, there is one kind of verb which often requires the occurrence of one of the following verb forms: bare infinitive, “to” infinitive, -ING form, or -ED form whenever it occurs. That is the “Catenative”. This paper looks at the catenatives in English both in terms of their structures and semantics and then points out some of their equivalents in Vietnamese. Structurally, catenatives can have four basic constructions: (1) NP1 V [(NP1) V]; (2) NP1 V [(NP2 V]; (3) NP1 V NP2 [(NP2) V ] and (4). NP1 V NP2 [(NP1) V] where NP1 stands for the first noun phrase, V for verb, NP2 for the second noun phrase, the round brackets () points out whether the noun phrase in the subordinate clause is identical with the first noun phrase or not and the square brackets [] indicate subordination. Semantically, catenatives may fall into such sub-classes as: “futurity”, “reporting”, “attitude”, “perception”… Each sub-class has its own constructions and it may be right to say that one sub-class of catenatives in English may be equivalent to one or more types of Vietnamese verbs and vice-versa. It is hoped that this paper will make a modest contribution to the research on English and Vietnamese English verb phrases in general and to English and Vietnamese language teaching as a foreign language in particular.
