A Comparative Study Of Chinese And English Passive Construction Based On Information Dependency Language Model

Passive construction is the sentence in which the subject is the patient of the predicate. Since it is widely used in different languages, the explanation of passive construction becomes the important topic for the linguistic researches. There are quite a few achievements on the topic. However, the comparative studies of the construction in different languages are marginal. People use different constructions to show the notion of passive. Even in the same language, there are different constructions showing the sense of passive. In modern Chinese passive constructions, except those normative ones, there are other types of the construction, like unmarked passive construction, the passive construction with a retained object,"被……给"construction, the construction in which the noun phrase after"被"is not the agent of the action, and the agent-subject bei construction. English employs not only the construction"be + V-en"but"get + V-en"and other similar constructions to express the notion of passive. It is indispensable and comparable to explore the two constructions based the theory that is applicable for the explanation of both the Chinese passive construction and English passive construction. The research attempts to analyze the passive constructions in both modern Chinese and English based on Information Dependency Language Model (IDLM) which is a newly developed formalized theory for the syntactic structure. Then the comparative study of Chinese passive constructions and English ones follows from the aspects of syntactic structure, semantic meaning, pragmatic effect so as to find the similarities and distinctions between the two,which is significant for the corpus annotation.Proposed by Li Liangyan (2009), IDLM considers the general principle in cognitive linguistics (CG) as the guidance and integrates the basic structure of phrase structure grammar (PSG) and dependency grammar (DG). It is a formalized theory for the syntactic structure in the light of annotation in corpus construction. However, the emphasis of the theory lies in that the formalization of the syntactic structure must coincide with the primary cognitive structure. The author holds that IDLM can be applied in the analysis of language.Through the analysis, the author finds that the standard tagmemes transformation and relative morphemes omission are operated in the generation of passive construction. The meaning of"被"in Chinese passive construction is to be influenced by an action or a state. It can be used to show that a subject or an event is influenced by another event related to the subject."be/get + V-en"is employed to indicate certain influence. From the comparative study of Chinese passive constructions and English ones, the author finds the similarities and differences exist in following three aspect. Syntactically, the passive construction in two languages is realized by way of tagmemes transformation and relative morphemes omission. Meanwhile, the occurrence of agentful passive construction is not as high as those agentless according to her survey. Syntactic distinctions lie in following three aspects. Firstly, due to the specific characteristic of the language itself, it is highly productive for Chinese to express the concept of passive syntactically. Secondly, the number in English and Chinese agentful passive constructions is different; there are three standard tagmemes in English agentful construction while there are two in the Chinese ones. So the steps for the generations of the agentful passive construction in Chinese and English are slightly different. Lastly, the construction employed to express the complete sense of passive is different."O<[被>V]"is used in Chinese while"O <[be >V-en]"and"be <[by >S]"are employed in English. Semantically, the transformation of tagmemes and morphemes omission change the focus structure, leading to alternation of the focus compared with active constructions. The semantic distinction is that the Chinese passive constructions are used to indicate a negative meaning mostly while the English counterparts is chiefly used in a middle sense in accordance with the survey. Pragmatically, the alternation of the focus structure actualizes the worth of the chunk. The pragmatic difference appears when the agent is present in the passive construction. That is the sequence of the focus structure. The sequence of the focus structure for Chinese agentful passive construction is"agent→action"and that for English agentful construction is"action/state→agent". The focus for Chinese ones is the action while the agent is the focus in English agentful construction, which provides a different emphasis when using the construction.The thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter one introduces the motivation, the theoretical and practical significance, methodology, data resources and the layout of the dissertation. In chapter two, the literature review about passive construction is introduced syntactically, semantically, pragmatically and cognitively. Besides, previous comparative analysis about Chinese and English passive construction is included. Chapter three is the theoretical foundation of the thesis. Information Dependency Model (IDM), Information Dependency Language Model (IDLM) and IDLM analysis of Mandarin unmarked passive construction is explained. Chapter four is the IDLM analysis of the two constructions and comparative study between them from the perspective of syntactic structure, semantic meaning, pragmatic effect and productivity according the survey in corpus of CCL and COCA respectively. Chapter five is the conclusion.