earticle

영어

Passivization in Chinese takes place by placing the active Patient in subject position and demoting the active Agent to the bei-phrase. There are two noticeable differences between Chinese and English. First, the transitive verb in Chinese remains the same in the passive. Second, the bei-phrase is obligatorily present, which is a significant structural indicator of passive. These structural differences are shown to yield a host of different perceptual patterns of English passives by Chinese EFL learners. For our discussion, we have taken a survey among 50 Chinese college students to examine how they perceive English passives into Chinese. In this survey, we asked them to translate 5 short passives and 5 long passives with the by-phrase. The survey results reveal that the former give rise to a variety of Chinese constructions such as accusative constructions, ba-constructions, ergative constructions, existential constructions, and middle constructions other than Chinese passives. The latter, on the other hand, are perceived as accusative constructions and ba-constructions. We attribute this to the fact that passivization in Chinese is not highly productive and the subjects are strongly influenced by the by-phrase in their perception of English passives.