The parallelism between ba and bei has been noted and stated explicitly in Hsueh (1989), where he considers the two constructions as both involving an [A X B + C]
construction, X being either ba or bei, as shown below.
(98) [A ba B + C]: in connection to A, B turns out to be what C describes.
(99) [A bei B + C]: in connection to B, A turns out to be what C describes.
The insight in Hsueh’s informal account is that in the two constructions, C remains constant, while A and B are reversed. In light of this parallelism, we will now examine Bender’s formal analysis of ba and the analysis of bei proposed in section 4.
Ba‘s lexical form and meaning are repeated in (100) and (101).
(100) (↑ PRED) = ‘ba <(↑ SUBJ)(↑ OBJ)(↑ XCOMP)>’
(101) (↑ SUBJ) is responsible for the fact that (↑ OBJ) turns out as (↑ XCOMP) describes.
From this analysis, we can derive that ba is also a three-place predicate, as in (102), where x, the logical subject and also the instigator, is assigned to SUBJ; y, the experiencer patient, is linked to OBJ; and z, a propositional theme, is mapped to XCOMP. The mapping of ba’s thematic structure is summarized in (103).
(102) ba <x y z>,x is responsible for affectingy as z describes (103) ba <x y z>
↓ ↓ ↓ S O XCOMP
As stated earlier, repeated in (104), bei is also a three-place predicate. Given bei’s lexical form in (105), we can likewise derive the syntactic assignment of its assignment roles, shown in (106).
(104) bei <x y z>, x is responsible for (adversely) affectingy as z describes (105) (↑ PRED) = ‘bei <(↑SUBJ) (↑OBJ) (↑XCOMP)>’
(106) bei <x y z>
↓ S (O) XCOMP
In contrast to the syntactic assignment of ba in (106), in the bei construction the logical subject, or x, is indeed either demoted to a less prominent GF, i.e., OBJ, or syntactically null, while the patient or experiencer role, y, is promoted to SUBJ. The bei construction fits in the universal characterization of the passive perfectly and is thus a genuine (promotional) passive. More precisely, it is the passive counterpart of the active ba construction.
In this characterization of bei passive, the optional occurrence of the post-bei NP, or the agent NP, receives a functional explanation. However, J. Huang (1999: 447), among many others (e.g., Her 1991, C. Huang 1992), observes that agent deletion is generally prohibited in the environment in which bei occurs, i.e., the V-NP-V configuration, offers (107) and (108) as examples.
(107) *Zhangsan, wo shi __ shengqi le. (J. Huang 1999 (44)) Zhangsan I cause angry PERF
‘Zhangsan, I have caused to be angry.’
(108) *Li Xiaojie, wo bi __ gaijia le. (J. Huang 1999 (45)) Li Miss I force remarryPERF
‘Miss Li, I have forced to remarry.’
This is an important argument for the distinct structures of the short passive and the long passive, because if the long passive simply allows agent deletion to form the short passive, it would constitute an exception to the otherwise general prohibition.
However, again, this (intuition-based) observation is not supported by corpus data.
Numerous counterexamples were found to this misconceived prohibition, and some precisely in a ‘short’ bei passive no less, as shown in (109).
(109) a. Gongchandang dangquan hou, nainai bei bi gaijia.58 Communist-Party took-power after granny BEI force remarry
‘After the Communist Party took power, Granny was forced to re-marry.’
b. Ta bei qiangpo cansai.59 he BEI force join-game
‘He was forced to participate in the game.’
c. Ta bei quan likai bianji danwei.60
he BEI advise leave editing department
‘He was advised to leave the editing department.’
58 http://hk.epochtimes.com/5/10/14/10024.htm
59 http://www.wmfield.idv.tw/84
60 http://blog.sina.com.tw/nanosoft/article.php?pbgid=751&entryid=19542
d. Ta bei shuifu chengwei yi min guanggao AE.61 he BEI persuade become a CL advertising AE ‘He was persuaded to become an advertising AE.’
The prohibition of an object gap in the so-called pivot construction in Mandarin is thus clearly a myth. A distinct structure and analysis for the short passive is thus unjustified and all bei passives are in fact long passive in nature with an optional agent phrase. Tang’s (2001) debate on how to account for the obligatory agent phrase in the long passive is thus also a non-issue.
Finally, it must be noted that the parallelism between ba and bei by no means implies a derivational relationship between the two, either morphologically or syntactically. Thus, there are real contrasts between bei and ba; see J. Huang, A. Li and Y. Li (2008: sec. 5.1) for an excellent summary on their similarities and differences.62
5. Conclusion
It has been widely assumed that the Mandarin bei passive comes in two forms: the long passive and the short passive, depending on the presence or absence of the agent.
Thus, previous formal accounts pose two different structures and two lexically different bei’s. Based on fresh empirical data mainly from corpus in Taiwan Mandarin, this paper has demonstrated that bei behaves rather similarly with or without the agent phrase and thus that positing two distinct bei’s and two different structures cannot be justified. This paper has demonstrated that Fillmore (1992:35) is right that corpora allow the establishment of new facts, some of which one ‘couldn't imagine finding out about in any other way’. Research within the generativist approach thus cannot and should not rely on introspected data only (e.g., Smith 1999:15); generative linguistics and corpus linguistics can indeed converge and compensate for each other (Her and Wan 2007).
More importantly, a unified account of the bei construction is offered within the Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG), where bei is shown to be a verb requiring three arguments. In order to settle the debate whether the bei construction is a genuine passive or not, this paper has also explored the properties of a universal notion of passive and concluded that the syntactic feature that unites all passives is the demotion or suppression of the logical subject, or the external argument, in its syntactic assignment. In light of this universal characterization of the notion of passive, bei is shown to be precisely the passive counterpart of the active ba construction.
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