A Contrastive Study Of Errors Made In English And Chinese Passives

Passive is a common and complex grammatical term in both English and Chinese. Linguists and ordinary speakers are always interested in this area. The languages of English and Chinese belong to two different language systems: English is a subject-predominant language, which has changes in configuration, and verbs have different changes in different circumstances. And in English the subject of a sentence is indispensable so that the relationship between patient and agent are very strict, and if the subject is the patient or an active's receiver it should use passives. While Chinese is a topic-prominent language which does not have any changes in configuration, the verbs do not have changes in any situations. The subject in Chinese sentences usually is a topic which can be an agent or a patient. And Chinese does not use passives as often as English does because Chinese marked passives usually have a negative meaning, and when Chinese want to express a positive passive meaning, the unmarked passives should be used other than the marked passives. Therefore, the passives in English and Chinese share some similarities and discrepancies. These differences often cause errors made by both learners of English and learners of Chinese.The present study aims at exploring what kinds of errors the learners of English and Chinese would be made while they acquire English and Chinese passives, and the relationship among those observed errors the learners made. The study uses questionnaires as the main instruments of data collection, and after that, the errors are classified according to the grammatical passive rules. Based on the data analysis, the following conclusions are obtained: errors can be classified into errors of structure and errors of application. The frequencies of errors made by both English and Chinese learners are basically the same, while errors in complement is a exception; negative transfer and overgeneralization are the main causes of these observed common errors made by English and Chinese learners.