A complementation approach to Chinese passives and its consequences

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to defend the complementation approach to Chinese passives and discuss its consequences. Four interesting issues related to Chinese passives are examined: (a) the categorial status of bei in Chinese passives, (b) the possibility of having an empty agent argument, (c) subcategorization of passive verbs and their grammatical status, and (d) the function of gei in passive and nonpassive sentences.The findings of this paper are as follows. First of all, it is argued that bei is not a preposition in Chinese long passives and is not a passive morpheme in short passives. Second, assuming that the complementation approach is on the right track, it is argued that Chinese long passives are ECM structures. Hence, the embedded agent argument can be neither pro nor PRO. The agent argument cannot be a trace either, because movement will be blocked by a null operator adjoined to the embedded clause. Third, after comparing several passive verbs in Mandarin and Cantonese, it is observed that only the passive verbal elements that are less lexical, more functional may enter short passives. Fourth, it is argued that preverbal gei is a marker that marks affectedness, which has nothing to do with passivization. The occurrence of gei in various apparently unrelated contexts is explained under a unified account.

Passive constructions in English and Chinese

“…Bei is not a preposition as has been claimed (e.g. Chao 1968;Li 1994) nor is it a verb (Li 1980;Tang 2001). Neither is bei equivalent to by plus agent or the past participle in English passives.…”

Stability in Chinese and Malay heritage languages as a source of divergence

“…Some argue that bei should be best treated as a verb, while others think that it is a preposition or a passive morpheme. See Tang (2001) for an overview on literature on the categorial status of bei. We will leave the gloss for bei as BEI for now.…”

Word Order Change in Mandarin Chinese from the Perspective of Syntactic Typology and Universals - A Case Study of the Ba + Gei Structure

“…I GEI he make phone.call Perf 'I called him.' ther linguists such as Feng (1995), Ting (1998), Huang (1999), Tang (2001), and Huang et al (2009), however, do not treat gei in the passive voice as a preposition; instead, it is a verb in the so-called long passive voice that includes the optional agent, Lisi, as in (28) or a semi auxiliary in a short passive that does not include the agent, as in (30). In (28), bei introduces a clausal complement Lisi da-le 'Lisi hit' whose null-operator (NOP) object moves to the left-periphery of IP 2 to separate bei and Lisi, two elements that cannot form a moveable constituent like other prepositional phrases like gei ni 'to you' in (29a) and (29b).…”