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The Use of Be + Past Participle Construction in English Writing of Chinese College Students-A Corpus-based Study摘 要Be + Past Participle结构常常被定义为被动语态，这引起了一些歧义。Sylviane Granger在1983年提出，passive几乎成为一个空洞的术语。她指出，passive要么是语义上的术语，要么是指形态上的定义。若是语义上的术语，那么它就指所有的主语是动作的承受者或动词产生结果的受害者，如在下例中，他发现自己遭受了威胁（He found himself threatened）, 他把头发剪了（He had his hair cut）。Granger说，如果采用语义上定义的话，那就几乎对这种结构没有任何限制了。这也就无法解释He suffered a heavy headache 和He got the sick为什么不能被称为被动句。若是在形态上的定义的话，它要么指所有的be(get, feel, become)等+过去分词结构，或者仅仅指这种结构中的一部分。为了正确划分被动语态结构，语言学家尝试运用了一系列的标准。这些标准要么是太模糊，要么是太笼统，容易遭到批评。更不用说这些语言学家们在被动句的定义上，存在着巨大的差异。自然而然，那些冠以被动语态研究的书籍及文章大量出现，这些研究处理不同的结构或是从不同的角度去研究。在这种情况下，Sylviane Granger提出，采用Be + Past Participle结构而非passive来囊括被动语态句型。因此，她把Be + Past Participle结构按照句子结构，词汇标准和语义标准分成了七个种类，其中一类被叫做passive。按她所说，Be + Past Participle Construction的意义比passive更广阔。在本文中，passive保持它的传统意义。 本文采用了Sylviane Grange对Be + Past Participle结构的定义以及划分，对中国学习者语料库CLEC与本族语语料库LOCNESS中这一结构的使用情况上进行了统计分析，了解中国英语学习者与本族语使用者对Be + Past Participle这一结构使用的分布情况以及他们的使用特点，在此基础上，对中国大学生英语学习者在这一结构的误用进行分类，并对学习者产生错误的原因进行分析及总结。为了尽可能地避免方法上的缺失，我们采用了手工定性分类和计算机定量统计相结合的研究方法，排除貌似Be + Past Participle结构的句子，力求最大程度保证统计的客观和全面。本研究分三步进行：1）语料收集和处理，2）语料对比与分析，3）差异解释和启示。在对所统计数据进行分析，采用语料库中常用的软件，对比对数似然率log-likelihood ratio，并进行显著性检验。本作者试图从动词种类和时态的角度，着重对比中国学生和本族语使用者在使用Be + Past Participle结构上的差异，并得出了以下结论：（1），在使用Be + Past Participle结构的数量上，中国英语学习者总体少于本族语使用者。每一百个句子中，这一结构出现的次数是12.69，而本族语使用者是24.69。 （2），中国大学生英语学习者水平越高，在使用Be + Past Participle结构时，准确率也就越高，也越能接近本族语使用者的水平; 非英语专业大学英语四级水平的学生使用较多的Be + Past Participle结构，使用数量上高于非英语专业六级的学生，仅次于英语专业学生，但其使用错误率最高。中国学生在被动语态使用上的错误主要体现在助动词的遗漏和被动语态使用不足两方面。（3），中国大学生英语学习者使用较多passive，其总数占到Be + Past Participle结构的77%。他们除了在verbal pseudo-passive，mixed Be+ Ved combinations和usually passive category的使用上少于本族语使用者， 在Be + Past Participle的其它四种形式passive, adjectival pseudo-passive, peripheral combination和statal combination的使用上无显著差异；相比于本族语使用者，中国大学生英语学习者使用较多的有施动被动语态（agentful passive）。（4）, 不同英语水平的学生在使用Be + Past Participle结构时,呈现不同的特点。但总的趋势是，在词语选择上，中国大学生英语学习者使用较多的高频动词如use, make, do等，使用词语类型较为单调；在时态的选择上，中国英语学习者倾向于选择一般现在时。 总之，本文是对中国大学英语学习者在使用Be + Past Participle结构的一次探索性研究，希望本文的研究能对教师在Be + Past Participle结构的教学以及学生对这一结构的学习有所帮助。关键词： BE+过去分词结构；语料库；英语写作AbstractThe reason why this thesis does not bear the title The Use of Passive in English Writing of Chinese College Students is that “passive” has caused some confusion. “Passive” has become a near vacuous term (Granger, 1983). According to Sylviane Granger, it, basically, is either defined semantically or formally. If it is used as a semantic notion, it refers to all structures in which the subject functions as “undergoer” or “sufferer”, i.e. cases such as He found himself threaten, He had his hair cut, etc. If one adopts this semantic definition, it seems that there are almost no limit to the kind of structure one can incorporate (Granger). There are no priori reasons why one should exclude cases such as He suffered a heavy headache or He got the sick. When “passive” is defined formally, it either refers to all be (or get, feel, become) + past particle constructions or only to a subset of these. Linguists differ greatly in the exact composition of the subset of structures to which they will assign the label “passive”. As a consequence, different books or articles entitled the Passive may turn out to deal with totally different structures or study it from different perspectives. Under such circumstances, Sylviane Granger proposed to use Be + Past Participle Construction instead of passive. She, therefore, has broken down this structure into seven categories on the basis of structural, lexical, and semantic criteria, only one of which is called passive. According to her, Be + Past Participle Construction has more general meaning than that of passive. On the basis of a comprehensive review of the current theoretical background, this work presents a contrastive study on the differences between native speakers and non-native speakers concerning the Be + Past Participle Construction. A systematic contrastive analysis is conducted on real-life linguistic data collected from Chinese Learners English Corpus (CLEC) and Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (LOCNESS). Considering that superficial well-formedness itself is not a guarantee of freedom from errors, manual qualitative classification has been utilized in addition to computer-based quantitative statistics to ensure the adequacy of our work which would otherwise have been inadequate. Discussion is presented in three steps: 1) date collection and classification, 2) contrast and analysis of the data, 3) find and explain the differences and similarities in the data. The author attempts to conduct a contrastive analysis between Chinese college learners English writing and native speakers in acquiring the Be + Past Participle Construction from the perspectives of verb types and grammar. It tries to detect the similarities and differences between Chinese college students and native college students. Some conclusions have been drawn as follows:1) Chinese college English learners much under use this construction in comparison with native speakers. We also found that the percentage of Chinese college English learners in using this form is 12.69 in per one hundred sentences while that of native speakers is 24.69. In order to see the difference clearly, we brought the raw frequencies of Be + Ved in the two corpora to occurrences per 100,000 words; we found that there are about 625 instances of Be + Ved in CLEC but 1,228 instances in LOCNESS. 2) Chinese learners with different English levels are greatly different in terms of the use of Be + Ved construction. Students that use Be + Ved construction most are English major seniors, who are followed by college English major seniors. It is out of our expectation that Be + Ved forms which occur in College English Band 6 are less often than that in College English Band 4. Chinese English learners misemploy too much word forms of passives and the inadequate use of passives.3) In terms of the use of the seven types of Be + Past Participle Construction, Chinese college English learners show no significant difference in the use of verbal pseudo-passive, mixed Be+ Ved combinations and usually passive category. And Chinese English learners tend to produce more agentful passives compared to native speakers.4) Learners with different English proficiency display different features in the use of Be + Past Participle Construction. As a whole, learners with high English proficiency master this form better than those with low English proficiency. In the choice of passive verbs, they also tend to choose some frequently used verbs resulting from the small vocabulary size. Such verbs as consider, do, find, give, made, or use are almost always employed by Chinese college English learners in passive constructions, and predominantly in the present tense.The research is just a tentative study on the use of Be + Past Participle Construction by Chinese college English learners. It describes and explains Chinese students respective linguistic behavior, so as to offer some useful suggestions for references in foreign language instructions. And it is hoped that the findings will be of great significance in the teaching and learning of Be + Past Participle Construction.Keywords: Be + Past Participle Construction; corpus; English writing 第64页ContentsChapter 1 Introduction1.1 Research Background1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Research1.3 Organization of the ThesisChapter 2 A Brief Review of the Relevant Literature2.1 Historical Research on Passive Voice 2.1.1 Traditional Analysis 2.1.2 Structural Analysis 2.1.3 Transformational analysis2.2 Formal Classification of Be +Ved Construction2.3 Grangers Classification of Be + Ved Construction 2.3.1 Three Clear-cut categories2.3.1.1 Passive 2.3.1.2 Adjectival Pseudo-passive2.3.1.3 Verbal Pseudo-passive2.3.2 Three Sets of Borderline Cases 2.3.2.1 Mixed Be+ Ved Combinations2.3.2.2 Usually Passive Category2.3.2.3 Peripheral Combinations2.3.3 A Special Class：Statal CombinationChapter 3 Methodology3.1 Corpus-based Approach3.2 Description of Corpora 3.2.1 CLEC 3.2.2 LOCNESS3.3 Procedure 3.3.1 Data Collection 3.3.2 Data ProcessingChapter 4 Results and Discussion4.1 Overall Patterns of Be + Ved Construction in CLEC and LOCNESS 4.1.1 Comparison of Be + Ved Construction in CLEC and LOCNESS 4.1.2 Use of Be + Ved Construction by Chinese Learners with Different English Proficiency4.2 Distribution of Be + Ved Categaries in CLEC and LOCNESS4.2.1 Passive 4.2.1.1 Verb Features of Passive in CLEC and LOCNESS4.2.1.2 Agentful VS Agentless Passive4.2.1.3 Get + Ved4.2.2 Adjectival Pseudo Passive4.2.3 Verbal Pseudo Passive4.2.4 Three Sets of Borderline Cases4.2.5 Statal Combinations4.3 A Case Study of Two Sub-Corpora of CLEC and LOCNESS4.4 Errors with BE + VED Construction4.5 Discussion Chapter 5 Conclusion and Implications5.1 Major Findings 5.2 Pedagogical Implication5.3 Limitations of the StudyAcknowledgementBibliographyAppendix List of the 280 Passivized VerbsArticles published during MA StudyChapter 1 IntroductionThe first chapter is devoted to the following aspects: research background, purpose and significance of the research, and the structure of the thesis.1.1 Research BackgroundThe reason why this thesis does not bear the title The Use of Passive in English Writing of Chinese College Students is that “passive” has caused some confusion. “Passive” has become a near vacuous term (Granger, 1983). According to Sylviane Granger, it, basically, is either defined semantically or formally. If it is used as a semantic notion, it refers to all structures in which the subject functions as “undergoer” or “sufferer”, i.e. cases such as He found himself threatened, He had his hair cut, etc. If one adopts this semantic definition, it seems that there are almost no limit to the kind of structure one can incorporate (Granger). There are no obvious reasons why one should exclude cases such as He suffered a heavy headache or He got the sick. When “passive” is defined formally, it either refers to all be (or get, feel, become) + past particle constructions or only to a subset of these. In order to delimit passive structures, linguists (Curme1931, Fries 1952, Onion1971, etc.) use a whole array of criteria which are kept rather vague and are generally open to criticism. Needless to say, linguists differ greatly in the exact composition of the subset of structures to which they will assign the label “passive”. As a result, different books or articles entitled the Passive might turn out to deal with totally different structures or study it from different perspectives. Under such circumstances, Sylviane Granger proposed using Be + Past Participle Construction instead of passive. She, therefore, has broken down this structure into seven categories on the basis of structural, lexical, and semantic criteria, only one of which is called passive. From her point of views, Be + Past Participle (short for Be + Ved) Construction has more general meaning than that of passive. Throughout this study the term passive is thus kept in its traditional meaning. This thesis adopts Grangers definition, and the author attempts to conduct a analysis between Chinese college learners English writing and native speakers in acquiring the Be + Ved Construction from the perspectives of verb types and grammar. It tries to detect the similarities and differences between Chinese college students and native college students.1.2 Purpose and Significance of the ResearchThis thesis is aimed at revealing the distribution and characteristics of the Be + Ved Construction employed by Chinese students by comparing Be + Ved constructions in CLEC and LOCNESS. As a matter of fact, it is of great significance to analyze Chinese learners acquisition of Be + Ved forms and put forward some suggestions and enlightenment for the foreign language learning and teaching, basing on the corpus which is a helpful and useful resource for the EFL. We try to analyze the overall patterns of Be + Ved construction used by Chinese college learners and native learners from aspects of overuse, underuse, nonuse and frequency in order to get a clear idea of how Chinese learners use this construction in relation to native speakers. The research is just a tentative study on the use of Be + Past Participle Construction by Chinese college students and it is hoped that the findings will be of great significance in the teaching and learning of Be + Ved Construction. 1.3 Organization of the ThesisThis thesis consists of five chapters and is structured as follows:Chapter one offers a general introduction to the main idea of the thesis, such as the significance of the thesis, the purpose of this research and the organization of the thesis. Chapter Two summarizes a brief review of the relevant study of passive as well as various classifications of the passive voice. Chapter Three is mainly concerned with the methodology of the present research，dealing with the choice of the corpora data and concordance used in the present research and the procedure of the data collection and processing. Chapter Four is the main body of this thesis, which gives a detailed analysis of Be + Ved in Chinese college learners writing and tries to find out the features in the use of Be + Ved construction by Chinese college learners. Chapter Five draws a conclusion of this research, which represents the findings and limitations of this research and proposes some issues to the future studies.Chapter 2 Literature ReviewIn this chapter, historical research on passive voice will be introduced. Different books and articles entitled the passive have caused some confusion (Granger, 1983). For the past decades, different approaches have been adopted and various views have been expressed. The second section is the former classification of Be + Ved construction. The last section main introduce Grangers definition of Be + Ved and her seven categories of Be + Ved form.2.1 Historical Research on Passive VoiceIn this section, traditional, structural and transformational analysis of passive will be presented. From the point of view of some scholars the passive voice can be divided into several groups, while from other standards it may be confusing and not so clear-cut.2.1.1 Traditional AnalysisTraditional grammarians maintain that the active-passive relationship takes the form of a correlation of both structure and meaning. And they put more emphasis on a correlation between structure and meaning and the function of the passive. For traditional grammarians passive sentences are described mainly according to their relations with their active counterparts. Aware of the complication of using the Be +Ved form to construct passives sentences, traditionalists mainly adopt two solutions. They either distinguish more than one class of passives or restrict their definition of the passive and exclude a certain number of Be +Ved forms from the field. Onion (1971) is the one who adopts the former solution. “The forms of the passive voice have two distinct meanings: they may express continuous or habitual actionor they may express the state resulting from an action.” Curme (1931) calls these two kinds of passive “actional” and “statal” passive. Other grammarians such as Poutsma (1929), Zandvoort (1975) and Scheurweghs (1961) adopt the latter. They hold that if a Be +Ved construction expresses a state resulting from an action, it is not a passive form but a copular + adjective combination. However, they base their analyses on superficial formal features of the passive construction. It is easy to find passives without actives and actives without passives, which demonstrates that an active construction does not necessarily imply the existence of a passive construction and vice versa. This point can be illustrated in the following examples:(1) They were married at the church.(2) Mary was said to be a good teacher.(3) Jim has a large library. * A large library is had by Jim. Examples (1) and (2) show that they cannot be changed into active voice. The sentence (3) shows that some transitive verbs cannot be passivized. Traditional grammarians have failed to explain these phenomena. Neither have they provided principles for choosing the right voice form. Traditionalists endeavor to give us a thorough insight into the working of the English passives. The above examples serve as a proof of this point. Due to the lack of differentiation between the different levels of analysis such as structural, semantic and functional, their analyses are often confused. Whats more, their insistence on exhaustiveness obscures the general tendency.2.1.2 Structural AnalysisMost of the structuralists approach passive structure on the basis of their analysis of syntax. They hold that the study of language should be descriptive, instead of normative. To begin with, the analysis of passive structures is substituted by the analysis of subject form a purely structural approach. Fries (1952) believes that “subject” then is a formal linguistic structural matter; it is a particular construction for a Class1 word; it is not a matter of meaning of the word with reference to a real situation. Furthermore, other structuralists like Roberts interpret the subject as “undergoer”. According to Roberts (1956), the subject has the meaning of undergoer of the action whenever it occurs in this pattern: 1 A (be) 2-ed. The word be under the symbol for auxiliary means that the auxiliary is to be some form of the word be. The symbol 2-ed means that the verb is to be a past form. Nevertheless, the approaches adopted by structuralists have some defects. For one thing, the passive pattern interpreted by Roberts does not exclusively embrace all passive cases. Some cases even do not take that form. For another, they put more emphasis on the forms and structures, while exclude semantic and pragmatic considerations form their analyses. Their aim is confined to the description of language, short of explanations why language operates the way it does. In addition, their approach prevents linguists from establishing any kind of relationship between actives and passives. Thus in this sense, they perform more poorly than traditionalists detailed investigation of passive structures. 2.1.3 Transformational analysisThere are many linguists who have studied passive voice, and the number of articles and books devoted to the passive voice is impressive. Among these linguists and their theories, we have to introduce Chomskys successive treatments of the passive transformation. Transformationalists return to the active-passive relations but they take a more radical approach. The very touchstone of transformational grammar is the passive transformation derived from the correlation between the active and the passive. Among the transformationalists, Chomsky is the one playing the leading role and attracting many follower. Actually his analysis of passive voice undergoes several models which have deep influence on passive voice. In Chomskys first outline of transformational grammar, he demonstrates the conceptions of phrase structure by means of the active-passive relation. According to him, in a phrase structure grammar, two series of rules are needed, one is appropriate transformations, and the other is grammaticality. See examples (4)-(6).(4) Jennifer admires honesty.(5) Honesty admires Jennifer.(6) Jennifer is admired by Honesty.Sentence (5) is unaccepted because the selection restrictions have been violated. As we know, Honesty is inanimate, it can not
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