A Contrastive Study Of English And Chinese Passive Structures From The Perspective Of Typology

Passive structure is a topic that has attracted attention widely in academic circles.There are more contrastive studies on English and Chinese passive structure from the perspective of cognition,semantics and syntax.There are few contrastive studies on English and Chinese passive structure from the perspective of typology,which only stays in the stage of description and classification.Passive structure exists widely in world languages.It is impossible to explain the whole picture on syntactic phenomenon of English and Chinese passive structure only by contrasting two kinds of passive structures.English and Chinese passive structures are taken as the objects in this study.Based on the real corpus,this study is conducted from the perspective of typology,aiming to reveal the typological implication on contrast between English and Chinese passive structures and explore reasons for the contrast at the typological level.This study focuses on solving the following three research questions.Firstly,what kinds of passive structures do English and Chinese passive structures respectively belong to?Secondly,what are the similarities and differences between English and Chinese passive structures from the perspective of typology?Thirdly,what are reasons for similarities and differences between English and Chinese passive structures from the perspective of typology?In order to solving the questions above,50 kinds of language samples were firstly selected to observe types of passive structures.Secondly,based on classification of types on passive structures,English and Chinese passive structures were contrasted from the perspective of typology.Finally,reasons for the contrast between English and Chinese passive structures from the perspective of typology were explored from the diachronic perspective.The findings are shown as follows.Firstly,taking into account language family,frequency of language use and level of language development,50 languages are randomly selected from world languages to form language sample database for observation.Passive structures in the 50 languages can be classified into five types from the perspective of marking method,affix passive structure,particle passive structure,word order passive structure,copula passive structure and functional word passive structure.Four tendentious conclusions can be drawn by observing types of passive structures,language family and word order on language samples.Functional word passive structure tends to appear in SVO languages and it tends to appear in Sino-Tibetan language family.Copula passive structure tends to appear in Indo-European language family.Particle passive structure tends to appear in SOV languages.Secondly,the characteristics of copula and functional word passive structure are summarized.English passive structure belongs to copula passive structure and Chinese passive structure belongs to functional word passive structure.The two kinds of passive structures have three differences.In terms of marking method,past participle of copula and main verb assumes the role to express passive meaning at syntactic and semantic level in copula passive structure while only functional word in functional word passive structure assumes this role.The Proto-Agent argument in copula passive structure is marked by preposition while it is placed between functional word and main verb with unmarked form.Moreover,in terms of generation method,copula passive structure is generated by syntactic transformation while functional word passive structure is basegenerated.Finally,in terms of argument structure,when main verb in copula passive structure is a ditransitive verb,there can be three-argument passive structure.Nevertheless,in functional word passive structure,whether main verb is a ditransitive verb or not,there can be three-argument passive structure.The Proto-Agent argument in copula passive structure usually appears at the end of clause while it usually appears between functional word and main verb in functional word passive structure.There is also a similarity between the two types of passive structures.No matter in copula passive structure or functional word passive structure,Proto-Patient argument is taken as subject.Finally,reasons for the contrast between English and Chinese passive structure at the typological level is tried to be found.Through discussion on copula passive structure represented by English passive structure and functional word passive structure represented by Chinese passive structure at the diachronic level,it is found that the two types of passive structures have differences in development process.There are four differences.Firstly,in terms of marking method,both of copula and main verb in copula passive structure have changed while only functional word in functional word passive structure have changed.In copula passive structure,agent argument can appear in passive structure since it is produced.As for functional word passive structure,passive structure without agent argument appears before passive structure with it.Moreover,in terms of generation method,copula passive structure is always generated through syntactic transformation and functional word passive structure is always base-generated.In terms of argument structure,the number of arguments in copula passive structure do not change during evolution while it in functional word passive structure changes from less to more.Finally,in terms of semantics,the syntactic meaning of copula passive structure has changed from more to less during evolution while it does not change.In a consequence,it is speculated that the differences between copula passive structure and functional word passive structure at the diachronic level is one of the reasons for the differences between the two passive structures at the synchronic level.The contrast of English and Chinese passive structure is further studied from the aspect of typology,which compensates the deficiencies of previous studies.It essentially deepens the understanding of English and Chinese passive structures and provides some theoretical guidance for teaching.It also brings enlightenment to similar study.