16/07/2005cl 2005, birmingham 1 passive constructions in english and chinese: a corpus-based study...
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16/07/2005 CL 2005, Birmingham1
Passive constructions in English and Chinese: a corpus-based study
Tony McEnery
Richard Xiao
16/07/2005 CL 2005, Birmingham2
Aims and objectives
Using comparable corpus data– to explore passives in written and spoken English– to explore passives in written and spoken
Chinese– to contrast passives in the two languages
16/07/2005 CL 2005, Birmingham3
Corpora
English– FLOB: ca. one million words, written British English, 500
samples, 15 text categories, 1991-1992– BNCdemo: ca. four million words, the demographically
sampled component of the BNC (conversational data) Chinese
– LCMC: ca. one million words, written Mandarin Chinese, 500 samples, 15 text categories, 1991-1992
http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/corplang/lcmc– LDC CallHome Mandarin: ca. 300,000 words, telephone
conversations, 120 transcripts of 5-10-minute continuous telephone conversations
16/07/2005 CL 2005, Birmingham4
Text categories covered FLOB/LCMC
Code Text category No. of samples Proportion
A Press reportage 44 8.8%
B Press editorials 27 5.4%
C Press reviews 17 3.4%
D Religion 17 3.4%
E Skills, trades and hobbies 38 7.6%
F Popular lore 44 8.8%
G Biographies and essays 77 15.4%
H Miscellaneous (reports, official documents) 30 6%
J Science (academic prose) 80 16%
K General fiction 29 5.8%
L Adventure fiction 24 4.8%
M Science fiction 6 1.2%
N Adventure fiction 29 5.8%
P Romantic fiction 29 5.8%
R Humour 9 1.8%
Total 500 100%
16/07/2005 CL 2005, Birmingham5
Passives in English (1)
Be vs. get-passives– Be-passives occur in both dynamic and stative situations– Get-passives occur only in dynamic situations
Go and get/*be changed!– Only be-passives are appropriate in infinitival complements
they liked to be/*get seen to go to church– Be-passives are predominantly more frequent than get-passives
955 vs. 31 instances per 100K words in FLOB/BNCdemo– Be-passives are more frequent in writing while get-passives are
more frequent in spoken data Normalised frequencies (per 100K words)
– Be-passives: 854 in FLOB and 101 in BNCdemo– Get-passives: 5 in FLOB and 26 in BNCdemo
16/07/2005 CL 2005, Birmingham6
Passives in English (2)
Long vs. short passives (1)– For both be and get-
passives, short forms are much more frequent than long forms in written as well as spoken data
– Short passives are significantly more common in spoken than written English
LL=209.225 for 1 df, p<0.001Corpus
FLOBBNCdemo
Pe
cen
tag
e
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
Agent type
agentless
agent
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Passives in English (3)
Long vs. short passives (2)– Get-passives are more likely
than be-passives to occur without an agent
LL=76.015 for 1 df, p<0.001– The agents in get-passives are
typically impersonal (e.g. got caught by the police) or even inanimate (e.g. got knocked down by a car)
When personal agents appear, they are typically informationally dense and thus semantically indispensable
– e.g. The bleeding fat girl, he got asked out by her.
Passive type
get-passivebe-passive
Pe
rce
nta
ge
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
Agent type
agentless
agent
16/07/2005 CL 2005, Birmingham8
Passives in English (4)
Adverbials in be and get-passives– Adverbials are more frequent in be
than get-passives 17.7% for be-passives and 7% for
get-passives– Types of adverbials are less varied
in get than be-passives Typically they ‘have an intensifying
or focusing role’ in get-passives (Carter and McCarthy 1999: 53)
– Proportions of be-passives with an adverbial are similar in writing and speech
17.3% vs. 19.5% in FLOB and BNCdemo
– Proportion of get-passives with an adverbial is greater in writing than in speech
15.2% vs. 6.6% in FLOB and BNCdemo
Passive type
get-passivebe-passive
Pe
rce
nta
ge
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
Adverbial type
No adverbial
Adverbial
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Passives in English (5)
Semantic and pragmatic properties (1)– Get-passives are frequently used to indicate speaker
attitude towards the events described (typically a negative evaluation) while be-passives do not appear to be used in this way
Passive type Negative Positive Neutral
Be-passive 15% 4.7% 80.3%
Get-passive 37.7% 3.4% 58.9%
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Passives in English (7)
Semantic and pragmatic properties (2)– Collocations (L0-R1, z score>3.0, frequency>3) of
get-passives are more likely to show an inflictive meaning than be-passives
Get-passive: 46.5% (BNCdemo) and (married in FLOB); be-passive: 27% (BNCdemo) and 8% (FLOB)
However, get-passives are NOT necessarily more frequently negative in spoken English
– Negative instances: FLOB: 45.8%; BNCdemo: 37.3% Exceptionally high co-occurrence frequency of a few
neutral verbs, e.g. married , paid , dressed , changed
16/07/2005 CL 2005, Birmingham11
Passives in English (8)
– Semantic and pragmatic properties (3) Collocations reveal that get-passives are more informal in style
than be-passives– The get-passive is more restricted in collocations and is likely to
co-occur with verbs referring to daily activities and informal expressions (based on BNCdemo)
GET - dressed, changed, get weighed, fed (i.e. eat), washed, cleaned
GET - pricked, hooked, mixed (up), carried (away), muddled (up), sacked, get kicked (out), stuffed, thrown (out), chucked, pissed, nicked
– These verbs are rarely found among the top 100 collocations for the be-passive in BNCdemo
16/07/2005 CL 2005, Birmingham12
Passives in English (9)
Variations across text categories– Be-passives are over 8 times as
frequent in FLOB as in BNCdemo Text categories A-J typically show
higher proportions of be- passives than K-R
In written genres, official documents (H) and academic prose (J) show exceptionally high proportions of be-passives
Biber’s (1988) MDA: be-passives (long and short) positively weighted on D5 (abstract vs. non-abstract information)
– Get passives typically occur in colloquial and informal genres
Get-passives are over 5 times as frequent in BNCdemo as in FLOB
In writing, skills/trades/hobbies (E) and humour (R) show exceptionally high proportions of get-passives
be-passive
get-passive
Passive type
AB
CD
EF
GH
JK
LM
NP
RS
Genre
0.00
10.00
20.00
Per
cen
t
16/07/2005 CL 2005, Birmingham13
Passives in English (10)
Syntactic functions– Finite vs. non-finite positions
Finite: predicate Non-finite: adjectival, adverbial, complement, object, subject
– English passives are by far the most frequent in the predicate position
97% for be-passives and 96% for get-passives– Non-finite forms
relatively common in object and complement positions Rare in the subject position
– The distribution of get-passives across syntactic functions is more balanced than that of be-passives
16/07/2005 CL 2005, Birmingham14
Passives in Chinese (1)
Syntactic vs. lexical passives– Syntactic passives
bei: most frequent and ‘universal’ passive marker gei, jiao, rang: not fully grammaticalised, colloquial and
dialectal Wei(-agent-)suo: archaic and typically found in formal
written genres
– Lexical passives: ai, shou, zao Lexical meanings are inherently passive
16/07/2005 CL 2005, Birmingham15
Passives in Chinese (2)
Long vs. short passives– Bei and gei are found in both long (40%, 43%) and short (60%,
57%) passives– Wei(-agent-)suo, jiao and rang only occur in long passives– Shou and zao are more frequent in short (68%, 63%) than long
(32%, 37%) passives– Ai typically occurs in short passives (97%)– In lexical passives, the agent NPs can be systematically
interpreted as attributive modifiers of nominalised verbs, but they cannot in syntactic passives
– Long passives tend to be used in speech and colloquial genres while short passives are found in typical written genres such as academic prose (J), official documents (H) and biographies (G)
16/07/2005 CL 2005, Birmingham16
Passives in Chinese (3)
Syntactic functions– Most frequent in the predicate position
76% for syntactic passives (bei 74%); 75% for lexical passives
– Non-predicate positions: attributive, adverbial, nominal, object, subject
The attributive use is the second most important syntactic function (14%)
Rare in the subject position Not found as a complement
16/07/2005 CL 2005, Birmingham17
Passives in Chinese (4)
Interaction between passives and aspect– Chinese passives are closely allied with aspect
syntactic passives convey an aspectual meaning of result– Bare passives account for the largest proportions for
syntactic (40%) and lexical (78%) passives– Perfective -le is frequent in both syntactic (17%) and lexical
(11%) passives– RVCs and resultative de-structure are more common in
syntactic passives while bare forms are more frequent in lexical passives
– Bare verbs are uncommon in syntactic passives, especially when the passive constructions function as predicates
16/07/2005 CL 2005, Birmingham18
Passives in Chinese (5)
Semantic properties– Chinese passives are “usually of unfavourable meanings” (Chao
1968: 703) Prototypical passive marker bei derived from its main verb usage,
meaning ‘suffer’ (Wang 1957) However, under the influence of Western languages, passives are no
longer restricted to verbs with an inflictive meaning in Chinese– Proportions of negative semantic prosodies
Syntactic: gei (68%), rang (67%), bei (52%), jiao (50%), wei…suo (19%)
Lexical: ai (100%), zao (100%), shou (65%)– Collocations of bei-passives
51% negative, 39% neutral, 10% positive
16/07/2005 CL 2005, Birmingham19
Passives in Chinese (6)
Variations across text categories– Passives are 11 times as frequent in writing than in speech– In writing, passives are most frequent in religious texts (D) and
mystery/detective stories (L), but least common in news editorials (C) and official documents (H)
Unlike English, Chinese passives are rare in official documents (H) and academic prose (J)
– Be-passives function to mark objectivity and a formal style but Chinese passives do not have this function
– Bei-passives The contrast in proportions between long and short forms is typically
less marked in 5 types of fiction, humour and speech More frequently negative in news editorials (C), mystery/detective
stories (L) and adventure stories (N); predominantly negative in speech; but rarely negative in official documents (H) and academic prose (J)
16/07/2005 CL 2005, Birmingham20
Contrast (1): Frequencies
Passives are nearly 10 times as frequent in English as in Chinese
– Be-passives can be used for both stative and dynamic situations whereas Chinese passives can only occur in dynamic events
– Chinese passives typically have a negative semantic prosody while English passives (especially be-passives) do not
– English has a tendency to overuse passives, especially in formal writing (Quirk 1968; Baker 1985) whereas Chinese tends to avoid syntactic passives wherever possible ()
16/07/2005 CL 2005, Birmingham21
Contrast (2): Long vs. short forms
The agent NP in the long passive follows the passivised verb in English but precedes it in Chinese
Short passives are predominant in English while long passives are much more common in Chinese
– Passives are used in English to avoid mentioning the agent– The agent must normally be spelt out in Chinese passives
But this constraint has become more relaxed nowadays When it is difficult to spell out the agent
– Passives are used in English– A vague expression such as ren ‘someone’ and renmen
‘people’ is often specified instead of using passives in Chinese
16/07/2005 CL 2005, Birmingham22
Contrast (3): Semantic properties
Chinese passives are more frequently used with an inflictive meaning than English passives
– Chinese passives were used at early stages primarily for unpleasant or undesirable events; but the semantic constraint on the use of passives has become more relaxed, especially in writing
– In this respect, the get-passive is closer to Chinese passives than the unmarked be-passive, which is more stylistically oriented
– Proportions of meaning categories English: neutral > negative > positive Chinese: negative > neutral > positive
16/07/2005 CL 2005, Birmingham23
Contrast (4): Syntactic functions
As a verb construction, the passive is most frequently used in the predicate position in both English and Chinese
The proportion of passives used as predicates in English (over 95%) is much higher than that in Chinese (76% on average)
Passives are more frequent in the object than subject position in both languages
Passives often function as attributive modifiers in Chinese but as complements in English
Passives in Chinese (bei-passives in particular) are more balanced across syntactic functions than English passives
Chinese passives in the predicate position typically interact with aspect but in English the interaction between passives and aspect is not obvious
16/07/2005 CL 2005, Birmingham24
Contrast (5): Genre variations
Be-passives occur more frequently in informative than imaginative text categories while get-passives are most commonly found in colloquial genres and informal written genres
– Official documents (H) and academic prose (J) show very high proportions of passives in English, but have the lowest proportions of passives in Chinese
In Chinese, wei…suo typically occurs in formal written genres and jiao, rang and gei in colloquial genres
Mystery/detective stories (L) and religious writing (D) show exceptionally high proportions of passives in Chinese
– Mystery/detective stories are often concerned with victims who suffer from various kinds of mishaps or what criminals do to them
– In religions, human beings are passive animals whose fate is controlled by some kind of supernatural force
The difference in the overall distribution of passives is closely associated with the different functions of passives in the two languages
– (be-passives) marking an impersonal, objective and formal style in English– an ‘inflictive voice’ in Chinese
16/07/2005 CL 2005, Birmingham25
Conclusions
Passive constructions express a basic passive meaning in English and Chinese, but they also show a range of differences
These differences are associated with their different functions in the two languages
Comparable monolingual corpora provide a useful tool for contrastive linguistics
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