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Richard Xiao z.xiao@lancaster.ac.uk

Bridging contrastive study and language acquisition research A corpus-based study of passives in English and Chinese. Richard Xiao z.xiao@lancaster.ac.uk. Overview of the talk. Corpora for contrastive study Passives in English and Chinese Passive errors in Chinese learner English.

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Richard Xiao z.xiao@lancaster.ac.uk

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  1. Bridging contrastive study and language acquisition researchA corpus-based study of passives in English and Chinese Richard Xiao z.xiao@lancaster.ac.uk Penn State

  2. Overview of the talk • Corpora for contrastive study • Passives in English and Chinese • Passive errors in Chinese learner English Penn State

  3. Corpora for contrastive study Penn State

  4. Parallel corpora? No • Two types of multilingual corpora • Parallel corpus = source texts + translations • Some misunderstandings, e.g. • ‘translation equivalence is the best available basis of comparison’ (James 1980: 178) • ‘studies based on real translations are the only sound method for contrastive analysis’ (Santos 1996: i) • But… Penn State

  5. Evidence of translationese (1) • An unrepresentative special variant • A ‘third code’ (Frawley 1984: 168) • Four core patterns of lexical use (Laviosa 1998) • a relatively low proportion of lexical words over function words • a relatively high proportion of high-frequency words over low-frequency words • a relatively great repetition of most frequent words • less variety in most frequently used words Penn State

  6. Evidence of translationese (2) • Beyond the lexical level - • Normalization, simplification (Baker 1993/1999) • Explicitation (Øverås 1998) • Sanitization (Kenny 1998) • Aspect markers twice as frequent in L1 Chinese (McEnery & Xiao 2002) • Parallel corpora: unreliable for contrastive study Penn State

  7. Comparable corpora: Yes • Comparable corpus = same sampling techniques + similarbalance and representativeness • Well suited for contrastive study • Some E-C contrastive studies • Aspect marking (e.g. McEnery, Xiao & Mo 2003) • Situation aspect (e.g. Xiao & McEnery (2004a) • Collocation and semantic prosody (e.g. Xiao & McEnery 2005) Penn State

  8. Passives constructionsin English and Chinese Penn State

  9. Corpus data • Two English corpora • Freiburg-LOB (FLOB) • BNCdemo • Two Chinese corpora • Lancaster Corpus of Mandarin Chinese (LCMC) • LDC CallHome Mandarin Transcripts Penn State

  10. Text categories in FLOB and LCMC Penn State

  11. Two major passives types in English • Be vs. get-passives • Dynamic vs. stative • e.g. Go and get/*be changed! (BNCdemo) • Infinitival complements • e.g. they liked to be/*get seen to go to church (BNCdemo) • Contrast in overall frequencies • 955 vs. 31 instances of be-passives vs. get-passives per 100K words • Writing vs. speech • Normalised frequencies (per 100K words) • Be-passives: 854 (W) vs. 101 (S) • Get-passives: 5 (W) vs. 26 (S) Penn State

  12. Long vs. short forms by register • Long vs. short passives • Distribution in speech & writing • Short passives more frequent in S than W • LL=209.225 for 1 d.f., p<0.001 Penn State

  13. Long vs. short forms by passive type • Get-passives are more likely than be-passives to occur in shortforms • LL=76.015 for 1 d.f., p<0.001 • Agentsin get-passives Impersonal, e.g. • got caught by the police • Inanimate, e.g. • got knocked down by a car • Personal agents: informationally dense, semantically indispensable, e.g. • The bleeding fat girl, he got asked out by her. (BNC) Penn State

  14. Adverbials in English passives • Passives with no adverbial are much more common than those with an adverbial – true for both be- and get-passives • Adverbials are more frequent in be- passives than get-passives • 17.7% of be-passives; 7% of get-passives • Less diversified in get-passives • Typically ‘have an intensifying or focusing role’ (Carter & McCarthy 1999: 53) • Proportions of be-passives with an adverbial are similar in S & W • 19.5% (S) vs. 17.3% (W) • BUT the proportion of get-passives with an adverbial is much greater in W than S • 15.2% (W) vs. 6.6% (S) Penn State

  15. Pragmatic meanings Penn State

  16. Collocation analysis • Observation of pragmatic meanings of get-passives is supported by collocation analysis • z score>3.0, frequency>3, L0-R1 • Collocates of get-passives are more likely to show a negative pragmatic meaning • Negative get-passives: 46.5% in BNCdemo (one collocate in FLOB: married) • Negative be-passives: 27% in BNCdemo and 8% in FLOB • Get-passives NOT necessarily more frequently negative in S • Proportions of negative cases: 45.8% (W) vs. 37.3% (S) • Exceptionally high co-occurrence frequency of a few neutral collocates of get-passives in S (married, paid, dressed, changed) Penn State

  17. Collocation vs. style • Get-passives are more informal in style • More restricted in collocation, more likely to refer to daily activities and be used in informal expressions • GET - dressed, changed, weighed, fed (i.e. eat), washed, cleaned • GET - pricked, hooked, mixed (up), carried (away), muddled (up), sacked, kicked (out), stuffed, thrown (out), chucked, pissed, nicked • Rarely found among the top 100 collocates of be-passives Penn State

  18. Style vs. distribution • Stylistic difference > distribution • Be-passives: over 8 times as frequent in FLOB (A-R) as in BNCdemo (S) • Of written genres, more common in informative texts (A-J) than imaginative writing (K-R) • Exceptionally frequent in H & J (cf. Biber 1988) • Get-passives typically occur in speech and colloquial, informal genres • Over 5 times as frequent in speech as in writing • Of written genres, exceptionally frequent in E (leisure) & R. Penn State

  19. Syntactic functions • Finite vs. non-finite • Finite: predicate • Non-finite: adjectival, adverbial, complement, object, subject • Typically used as predicates • 97% of be-passives and 96% of get-passives • Sometimes found in object and complement positions • Rarely used as subjects • Distribution of get-passives is more balanced across syntactic functions Penn State

  20. Passives in Chinese: Notional, syntactic vs. lexical • Marked (47%) vs. unmarked (53%) passives • Unmarked passives: notional or pseudo-passives • Topic sentences (topic + comment) • e.g. fan (meal)<*bei (PSV)> zuo-hao (do-ready) le (PERF) ‘The dinner is cooked (ready)’ (LCMC) • Syntactic vs. lexical passives • Passivised verbs do not inflect morphologically • Syntactic passive markers • Bei: the most frequent, ‘universal’ passive marker • Gei, jiao, rang: not fully grammaticalised, typically in colloquial genres & dialects • Wei…suo: archaic, only in formal written genres • Lexical passives: ai, shou(dao), zao(dao) • Inherently passive Penn State

  21. Long vs. short passives • Bei and gei: in both long (40%, 43%) and short (60%, 57%) passives • Wei,jiao and rang: only in long passives • Shou and zao: more frequent in short (68%, 63%) than long (32%, 37%) passives • Ai: almost exclusively in short passives (97%) • Long passives: in speech and colloquial genres; short passives: typically in written genres such as J, H and G Penn State

  22. Agent NPs in syntactic vs. lexical passives • Can be systematically interpreted as attributive modifiers of (nominalised) verbs in lexical passives, but cannot in syntactic passives, cf. • A) danshi (but) zhe (this) yi (one) jianyi (proposal) zaodao (suffer) Xide (West Germany) zongli (prime minister)<de (PRT)> jujue (reject/rejection) ‘But this proposal was rejected by the prime minister of West Germany’ (LCMC) • B) wo-men (we) na-ge (that-CL) che (car), bei (PSV) Xinhuan (Xinhuan) <*de (PRT)> nong-huai (ruin) le (PERF) ‘Our car was ruined by Xinhuan’ (CallHome) Penn State

  23. Syntactic functions • Most frequent in the predicate position • 76% of syntactic passives (74% of bei); 75% of lexical passives • Non-predicate uses • Attributive modifier: second most important syntactic function (14%) • Uncommon as subjects or complements Penn State

  24. Interaction with aspect • Interacting with aspect closely (Xiao and McEnery 2004b) • Syntactic passives convey an aspectual meaning of result • Bare passives account for the largest proportions of syntactic (40%) and lexical (78%) passives • BUT perfective -le is not uncommon in both syntactic (17%) and lexical (11%) passives • RVCs and resultative de-structure are more common in syntactic passives; bare forms are more frequent in lexical passives • Passivised verbs in bare forms are uncommon in syntactic passives, especially when they function as predicates Penn State

  25. Pragmatic meanings • Typically express a negative pragmatic meaning • “usually of unfavourable meanings” (Chao 1968: 703) • Universal passive marker bei derived from its main verb usage, meaning ‘suffer’ (Wang 1957) • Under the influence of Western languages, Chinese passives are no longer restricted to verbs with an inflictive meaning • Proportions of negative pragmatic meaning • Syntactic passives: gei (68%), rang (67%), bei (52%), jiao (50%), wei (19%) • Lexical passives: ai (100%), zao (100%), shou (65%) • Collocates of bei-passives • 51% negative, 39% neutral, 10% positive Penn State

  26. Distribution across genres • 11 times as frequent in writing as in speech • Most common in religious writing (D) and mystery/ detective stories (L) • Mystery/detective stories are often concerned with victims who suffer from various kinds of mishaps or what criminals do to them • In religions, human beings are passive animals whose fate is controlled by some kind of supernatural force • Least frequent in news editorials (C) and official documents (H) • Universal passive marker bei • Contrast in proportions between long vs. short passives typically less marked in 5 types of fiction (K-P), humour (R) and speech (S) • Predominantly negative in speech (S); more often than not negative in news editorials (C), mystery/detective stories (L), and adventure stories (N); but rarely negative in official documents (H) and academic prose (J) Penn State

  27. Contrast: Overall frequencies • Passive constructions are significantly more common in English than in Chinese (nearly 10 times as frequent) • English (be-)passives occur in both dynamic and stative situations; Chinese passives can only occur in dynamic events • Chinese passives typically have a negative pragmatic meaning; English passives (esp. be-passives) do not • Unmarked notional passives are more common in Chinese • Chinese topic-oriented; English subject-oriented • English tends to over-use passives, esp. in formal writing (Quirk 1968; Baker 1985); Chinese tends to avoid syntactic passives wherever possible • Chinese uses topic sentences instead Penn State

  28. Contrast: Long vs. short passives • The agent NP in the long passive follows the passivised verb in English but precedes it in Chinese • Short passives are predominant in English; long passives are not uncommon in Chinese • Passives are used in English to avoid mentioning the agent • The agent must normally be spelt out in Chinese passives • This constraint has become more relaxed nowadays • When it is difficult to spell out the agent… • Passives are used in English • In Chinese, a vague expression such as ren/youren ‘someone’ or renmen ‘people’ is used instead of using passives Penn State

  29. Contrast: Pragmatic meanings • Chinese passives are more frequently used with a negative pragmatic meaning than English passives • Chinese passives were used at early stages primarily for unpleasant or undesirable events; the semantic constraint on the use of passives has become more relaxed, especially in writing • Rank order of meaning categories • English: neutral > negative > positive • Chinese: negative > neutral > positive • In this respect, the get-passive is more akin to Chinese passives than the unmarked be-passive – more stylistically oriented Penn State

  30. Contrast: Syntactic functions • Passives are most frequently used in the predicate position in English and Chinese • Proportion of passives used as predicates in English (over 95%) is much greater than that in Chinese (76% on average) • More frequent in the object than subject position in both languages • More frequent as attributive modifiers in Chinese; more frequent as complements in English • Passives in Chinese (esp. bei-passives) are more balanced across syntactic functions than English passives • Chinese passives in the predicate position typically interact with aspect but this interaction is not obvious in English Penn State

  31. Contrast: Distribution • Unmarked English (be-)passives more frequent in informative (A-J) than imaginative writing (K-R); get-passives more common in speech and informal written genres • H and J show very high proportions of passives in English, but they have the lowest proportions of passives in Chinese • Unmarked English passives function to mark objectivity and a formal style but Chinese passives do not have this function • In Chinese, wei typically occurs in formal written genres; jiao, rang and gei are used in colloquial genres • Mystery/detective stories (L) and religious writing (D) show exceptionally high proportions of passives in Chinese • Different distributions are associated with different functions • English (be-)passives: an impersonal, objective and formal style • Chinese passives: ‘inflictive voice’ Penn State

  32. Contrast: Typological differences • Klaiman’s (1991: 23) 3-way classification of grammatical voices • Basic (unmarked) voice: active/middle voice • Derived/non-basic (marked) voice: passivisation • Pragmatic voice: involving ‘assignment to some sentential arguments of some special pragmatic status or salience’ (Klaiman 1991: 24) • English passive: derived voice • Chinese passive: pragmatic voice Penn State

  33. Passive errors in Chinese Learner English Penn State

  34. Corpora • CLEC: the Chinese Learner English Corpus • One million words • Essays • Five proficiency levels • LOCNESS: the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays • 324,304 words • Essays • British A-Level children and British/American university students Penn State

  35. Under-use of passives Penn State

  36. Long vs. short passives • Long passives are slightly more frequent in Chinese learner English • Long passives in CLEC • 9.14%: 888 out of 9,711 • Long passives in LOCNESS • 8.44%: 461 out of 5,465 • Not statistically significant • LL=2.184, 1 d.f., p=0.139 Penn State

  37. Pragmatic meanings • Passives are more frequently negative in Chinese learner English • CLEC • Negative: 25.7% • Positive: 5.9% • Neutral: 68.4% • LOCNESS • Negative: 16.8% • Positive: 4.4% • Neutral: 78.8% • LL=7.4, 2 d.f., p=0.025 Penn State

  38. Passive errors vs. learner levels • Learners at higher levels generally make fewer passive errors • Four major types of passive errors • Under-use is the most important error type • Learning curve is not a straight line, especially for difficult items Penn State

  39. Error types vs. learner levels • Error types are associated with learner levels • LL=51.774, 12.d.f., p<0.001 • Similar learner groups make similar types of errors • ST2 >> ST3: statistically significant (LL=27.303, 3 d.f., p<0.001) • ST3 >> ST4: not significant (LL=6.955, 3 d.f., p=0.073) • ST4 >> ST5: statistically significant (LL=18.563, 3 d.f., p<0.001) • ST5 >> ST6: not significant (LL=6.987, 3 d.f., p=0.072) ST2 ST3/ST4 ST5/ST6 (High (Junior/Senior (Junior/Senior school non-English English major students) major students) students) Penn State

  40. Under-use: L1 transfer • Borne out of the contrastive analysis • Confirmed by the CLEC-LOCNESS comparison • Result of L1 transfer • Typically occur with verbs whose Chinese equivalents are not normally used in passives, e.g. • A birthday party will hold in Lily’s house. (ST2) • …or our efforts will waste. (ST4) • The woman in white called Anne Catherick. (ST5) • Also under the influence of Chinese topic sentences • The supper had done. (ST2) Penn State

  41. Over-use: three major types • Intransitive verbs used in passives, e.g. • A very unhappy thing was happened in this week. (ST2) • Their friendships are not died off with the passing of time (ST4) • I was graduated from Zhongshan University (ST5) • Misuse of ergative verbs, e.g. • …the science <sic. secince> is developed quickly (ST4) • …infant mortality was declined (ST4) • Passive training effects, e.g. • …many machines <sic. machine> and appliances <sic. appliance> are usedelectricity as power (ST5) • Because they have been masteredeverything of this job… (ST4) Penn State

  42. Misformation: L1 interference • Result of L1 interference • Related to morphological inflections • Passivised verbs do not inflect in L1 Chinese • Tend to use uninflected verbs or misspelt past participles in passives, e.g. • The door is wrap with two coats of iron (ST5) • His relatives can not stop him, because his choice is protect by the laws. (ST6) • Since the People’s Republic of China <sic. china> was found on October 1, 1949… (ST2) • I was moving at that time, but I didn't cry. (ST2) Penn State

  43. Auxiliary omission: L1 interference • Result of L1 interference • Unmarked ‘notional passives’ are abundant in Chinese • Tend to omit or misuse auxiliaries in passives, e.g. • …and we will not satisfied with what we have done. (ST4) • In China, since the new China established, people’s life has gotten <sic. goten> better and better. (ST3) • I am not a smoker, but why dowe forced to be a second-hand smoker? (ST5) Penn State

  44. Conclusions • While passive constructions express a basic passive meaning in both English and Chinese, they also show a range of differences which are associated with their different functions in the two languages • Most passive-related errors made by Chinese learners of English can be accounted for from a contrastive perspective • A combination of contrastive study and learner corpus analysis can bring insights into language acquisition research Penn State

  45. Thank you! Penn State

  46. References (1) • Baker, M. (1993) ‘Corpus linguistics and translation studies’. In M. Baker, G. Francis & E. Tognini-Bonelli (eds.) Text and technology (pp. 233-52). Amsterdam: Benjamins. • Baker, M. (1999) ‘The role of corpora in investigating the linguistic behaviour of professional translators’. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 4: 281-98. • Baker, S. (1985) 1985. The Practical Stylist [6th ed.]. New York: Harper & Row. • Biber, D. (1988) Variation across Speech and Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. • Carter, R. and McCarthy, M. (1999) ‘The English get-passive in spoken discourse’. English Language and Literature 3(1): 41-58. • Chao, Y. (1968) Grammar of Spoken Chinese. Berkeley: University of California Press. • Frawley, W. (1984) ‘Prolegomenon to a theory of translation’. In W. Frawley (ed.) Translation: Literary, linguistic and philosophical perspectives (pp. 159-75). London: Associated University Press. Penn State

  47. References (2) • James, C. (1980) Contrastive Analysis. London: Longman. • Kenny, D. (1998) ‘Creatures of habit? What translators usually do with words?’ Meta 43(4). • Klaiman, M. (1991) Grammatical Voice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. • Laviosa, S. (1998) ‘Core patterns of lexical use in a comparable corpus of English narrative prose’. Meta 43(4). • McEnery, A and Xiao, Z. (2002) ‘Domains, text types, aspect marking and English-Chinese translation’. Languages in Contrast 2(2): 211-31. • McEnery, A., Xiao, Z. and Mo, L. (2003) ‘Aspect marking in English and Chinese’. Literary and Linguistic Computing 18(4): 361-78. • Mcenery, A., Xiao, Z. and Tono, Y. (2005) Corpus-Based Language Studies. London: Routledge. • Øverås, S. (1998) ‘In search of the third code: An investigation of norms in literary translation’. Meta 43(4). Penn State

  48. References (3) • Quirk, R. (1968) The Use of English [2nd ed.]. London: Longman. • Santos, D. (1996). Tense and Aspect in English and Portuguese: A contrastive semantical study. PhD thesis. Universidade Tecnica de Lisboa. • Wang, L. (1957) ‘Hanyu beidongju de fazhan (Development of Chinese passives)’. Yuyanxue Luncong (Studies in Linguistics) Vol. 1. Beijing: Commercial Printing. House. • Xiao, Z. and McEnery, A. (2004a) ‘A corpus-based two-level model of situation aspect’. Journal of Linguistics 40(2): 325-63. • Xiao, Z. and McEnery, A. (2004b) Aspect in Mandarin Chinese. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. • Xiao, Z. and McEnery, A. (2006) ‘Collocation, semantic prosody and near synonymy: a cross-linguistic perspective’. Applied Linguistics. [In press] • Xiao, Z, McEnery, A. and Qian, Y. (2006) ‘Passive constructions in English and Chinese: a corpus-based contrastive study’. Languages in Contrast 3(1). Penn State

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