Transcript TESL.3050.bei construction

The bei 被construction
Li, Charles N. & Thompson, Sandra A. (1981).
Mandarin Chinese - A Functional
Reference Grammar. Los Angeles: University
of California Press.
The passive in Mandarin
• is generally applied to sentences containing the
coverb bei 被
• The simple pattern is NP1 bei NP2 verb
– Ta bei jiejie ma le “He was scolded by his older sister.”
• An even simpler form is when the second NP is
dropped.
– ta bei ma le “He was scolded.”
– wo bei qiang le “I was robbed.”
1.1 Adversity
• The bei in Mandarin, like Japanese,
Vietnamese, Thai and other Asian
languages is used essentially to express
an adverse situation.
– Jiaozi bei (gou) chi diao le. “The dumplings
were eaten by the dog.”
– Nei zhi niao bei wo de erzi fang zou le. “The
bird was let go by my son.”
– Ta changchang bei ta laopo da. “He is often
beaten by his wife.”
• Can you say?:
– Ta changchang bei ta laopo bao. “He is often
hugged by his wife.”
1.2 With verbs of perception or
cognition
• the sentence carries a negative meaning
whereas the verbs alone have a neutral
meaning.
– Wo kanjian ni le. “I saw you.”
– Wo tingdao le ni de sheng yin. “I hear you.”
– Zhangsan bei ren kanjian le. “Mr. Zhang was
seen by people.”
– Nei jian shi bei ta faxian le. “The matter was
discovered by him/her.”
Influence by Western languages
• The number of bei constructions that do not express
adversity is increasing, particularly in written language.
• This is clearly due to the influence of Indo-European
languages, especially English and also Russian.
• This is due mainly to translators translating English
passive sentences automatically into bei.
• Previously (pre 1970s) the nonadversive use was limited
to writing and some speech primarily with verbs
borrowed or introduced into Chinese in modern times.
– E.g.. xuan 选 jiefang 解放 fanyi 翻译
1.3 English passive
• often does not correspond to the bei
construction in Mandarin.
• The converse is also true.
– Nei ben shu yijing chuban le. “That book has
already been published.”
– Ta shuo de hua ren ren dou dong. “What
he/she said was understood by everyone.”
Generalization
• The topic prominence of Mandarin,
together with the restrictions of the bei
construction to adverse messages
combine to reduce the usage of passive in
Mandarin Chinese.
是的 Non adverse
• Zhei ben xiaoshuo shi wo muqin xie de.
“This novel was written by my mother.”
– Compare: *Zhei ben shu bei wo muqin xie de.
• Zhei ge fangzi shi zhangsan sheji 设计 de.
“This house was designed by Zhangsan.”
Indirect Object adversely affected
• The IO can represent the one adversity affected
in a bei sentence.
• Tamen wen le wo xuduo wen ti. “They asked me
many questions.”
• Wo bei tamen wenle xuduo wenti. I was asked
many questions by them (negative feeling).
• However very few verbs that take both an IO
and a DO can occur in bei construction with the
IO being adversely affected. Why?
• Because most of these verbs have a positive
meaning.
Bei 被 and ba 把 together
• Bei and ba can occur in the same sentence.
– Wo bei ta ba wo de dian nao da po le. “My computer
was destroyed by him.”
• In this case, the ba must come after the bei for
logical reasons. The one who destroyed the
computer is the agent, not the one being
affected by the adverse situation. Therefore, the
agent, which is the bei noun phrase,
immediately follows the ba noun phrase.
The ba 把 construction
• In general, the direct object is placed
immediately after ba and before the verb.
• subject ba direct object verb
– Kuai yidian ba zhei kuai doufu na zou. “Take this
piece of toufu away quickly.”
• Native speakers know by intuition when to use it
and when not. However, how are you taught to
translate this into English?
• Compare the ba construction to topic
prominence.
Variant forms
• The most common variant forms involve substituting bei
with gei 给, jiao 叫, and rang 让.
• Which of the four passive markers is preferred seems to
depend on what dialect of Mandarin is being spoken.
• The one distinction we can make is bei has no meaning
on its own, whereas the other three do when used in
other contexts.
• This could possibly result in some ambiguity.
– Wo bei ta tou le liang kuai qian. “Two dollars were stolen from
me by him.”
– Wo rang ta tou le liang kuai qian. “I allowed him to steal two
dollars.”