Formal and colloquial adversity passives in standard Chinese
Résumé
A semantic analysis of the polysemy of analytic passive constructions instandard Chinese (Mandarin) that belong to both formal and colloquial levels of language is undertaken here. The three passive constructions inquestion all have the basic syntactic form of NP(undergoer)-BEI/RANG/JIAO-NP(agent)-VP.
The view of the formal bei-passive as an adversity passive in its continuing,traditional usage in the spoken language is upheld and supported principally by the evidence of the semantic analysis. Its treatment as a polysemous structure results in division into two main types — the formal bei passive and the bei passive of 'translatese' in written language. For the second type, it will be shown that the influence of European languages in translation has led to the loss of the adversity feature, the requirement of an overt agent, and a perfective predicate.
Finally, an argument in favor of considering the colloquial adversity passives formed by rang and jiäo to contain certain semantic features, distinct both from one another and from the bei-passive, is presented. It is contended that rang forms passives of 'avoidable' events whereas jiäo forms passives expressing the unexpected nature of the event. Both contrast to bei,where the serious nature of the adversity is encoded.