HISTORY OF THE PASSIVE CONSTRUCTIONS IN CHINESE UNTIL THE 10TH CENTURY

This paper is mainly on the origin and the development of the passive bei-sentences, but the different types of other passive constructions are also traced according to their chronological order. The verb bei ＂to receive, to suffer, to undergo, to be affected＂ begins to be used, under the Han period...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Chinese Linguistics 1989-06, Vol.17 (2), p.335-372
Main Author: 贝罗贝(Alain Peyraube)
Format: Article
Language:English
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This paper is mainly on the origin and the development of the passive bei-sentences, but the different types of other passive constructions are also traced according to their chronological order. The verb bei ＂to receive, to suffer, to undergo, to be affected＂ begins to be used, under the Han period, in the ＂V1 + V2＂ serial verb construction (where V1 = bei), by analogy with the ＂V1 jian + V2＂ structure which is common since Late Archaic Chinese, and where jian is an auxiliary verb marking the passive. Like jian, bei has then a verbal status and V2 is the object of V1. There has been a single lexical replacement: V jian ＞ V bei. As for the ＂bei + Agent + V＂ form which becomes common only from Sui-Tang times, the ＂wei + Agent + V＂ form, widespread since the Han, could also have served as a model, but there was no single lexical replacement. A grammaticalization process intervened changing the verb bei into the preposition bei. This mechanism took place in the ＂V1 bei + NP-Agent + V2＂ serial verb construction.
ISSN:0091-3723