Englishization and language change in modern Chinese in Taiwan

Englishization and language change in modern Chinese in Taiwan

JIA-LING HSU*

ABSTRACT This paper is a study of the impact of English on modern Chinese morphology and syntax in Taiwan. This process, termed ‘Englishization’ (Kachru, I989), was initiated by the translation o f Western literary works, mainly from English, into written Chinese. First, the historical background of this process in modern Chinese will be briefly addressed. Second, the morphological and syntactic features of Chinese that have been influenced by English, and the mechanism by which these features have been brought about, will be discussed.

This study has two purposes: to describe the Englishized features based primarily on previous observa- tions of other scholars, and to present new observations of the recent developments in this process. The evidence comes from limited empirical data collected from newspapers, magazines, and creative literary texts.

This research has confirmed that translation is an initiator of syntactic change and provides the mechan- ism through which such a process takes place. The results of the study indicate that the Englishization of modern Chinese, initiated by translation, has developed further with time and has become an inevitable trend.

INTRODUCTION

’

In this paper, I will discuss the impact of English on modern written Chinese, or what has been termed ‘Englishization’ (Kachru, 1989), at the level of syntax and morphology in Taiwan.

Since the beginning of the process of Englishization, Chinese scholars have been observ- ing the syntactic change initiated by the translation of English literary works into Chinese. In terms of the domain and coverage of the Englishized syntactic featxes, Wang’s analysis (1 945) is by far the most comprehensive and systematic, surpassing all the other studies in this area. His work, however, was completed almost fifty years ago.

Methodologically and linguistically speaking, only three empirical studies have been con- ducted so far (Tsao, 1978; Chuo, 1979; Kubler, 1985). However, their methodologies remain to be refined and their scope and domain need to be expanded.

There are also works that are not based on linguistic frameworks but are merely frag- mentary and anecdotal (e.g., Yu, 1979, 1981; Huang, 1984), and some of them are judg- mental (wei, 1953; Huang, 1963). The scope and domain of these studies is largely limited. Since Englishization of modern Chinese syntax is an on-going process, and the phenomenon of Englishization has expanded further with time, an empirical study is needed to reassess the influence of English on Chinese in Taiwan at the presdent time. This study is designed not only to describe the Englishized features, but also to update the iiter- ature on the recent developments in this process.

In the discussion of the process of Englishization, a word of caution is in order: the three terms Englishization, Europeanization, and Westernization will be used interchangeably to denote the same process of influence of Western languages, mainly English, on Chinese.

*Department of English, Ming-Chuan College. 2 5 0 Chung-Shan N. Road, Section 5. Taipei, Taiwan. Republic of China.

The translation of Western or European works into Chinese started near the end of the sixteenth century (Tsien, 1954: 305). However, it was not until after the 1919 May-Fourth Modernization Movement that English became the major source language of most Chinese translations of literary works (Ma, 1963). Therefore, most Chinese scholars, for example, Wang ( 1 9 4 9 Kubler (1 9 8 5 ) , and Li (1 980) refer to the process as Europeanization. It is hoped that the interchangeable use of these three terms will not cause any confusion in the discussion.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

At the turn of the twentieth century, a great need for modernization was perceived by a small number of Chinese elites as a means of saving China from exploitation and division by Western imperial colonizers (Cheng, 1983). These elites used the translation of a large number of Western works, chiefly from English into Chinese, as a tool to introduce Western concepts, ideas, and thoughts to Chinese people. Buihua, the modern Chinese vernacular oral form, was proposed to serve as the written medium, instead of

wenyun,

the classical literary written form, which had been the medium for two millennia.

During the process of translation, some translators ‘often simply carried over the constructions of the language they were translating from verbatim into Chinese’ (Kubler, 1985: 26). There are two possible reasons for this: either a conscious, deliberate effort to

bring the foreign language grammar into Chinese, or simply laziness. For those translators desiring to incorporate Western grammar into Chinese, Western languages were regarded as more precise and logical than Chinese. They insisted that, ‘in order to be faithful to the original, we must remodel the Chinese language in exact accordance with the rhetorical taste and grammatical order of a Western language’ (Tsung, 1928: 37 1). Hence, some of the stylistic and structural features of the original were imitated through translation of Western works into the vernacular (Ma, 1963: 53).

Some translators, on the other hand, could not find, at that time, the Chinese equivalents for many of the English constructions. The easiest way to translate is word for word; thus, they simply did the translation on a verbatim basis (Kubler, 1985: 26). As a result, a great number of Westernized Chinese translations appeared.

One more factor contributes to the Englishization of Chinese syntax. The new written medium for translation, huihuu at that time, was ‘very fluid and not yet standardized’ (Kubler, 1985: 24), and there was uncertainty as to how it was to be written. Hence, ‘it was especially receptive to outside influences of all kinds’ (Kubler, 1985: 24). In addition, ‘in this period new features in Chinese grammatical constructions were experimented with and developed’ (Li, 1962: 1).

As a consequence of all these factors, although grammar has generally been admitted to be the most conservative part of a language, European grammars, and particularly English grammar, have become assimilated into modern Chinese grammar. Syntactic change has thereby occurred in the modern vernacular written form, baihuu, initiated by translation.

THE INFLUENCE OF ENGLISH ON MODERN CHINESE SYNTAX AND MORPHOLOGY

As stated at the beginning of this paper, this study will update and analyse the recent trends in the Englishization of Chinese grammar. In the following sections, I shall discuss

the types of data used in the study, the methodology for analysis, and the results of the analysis.

In the discussion of Englishized Chinese syntactic and morphological features, Wang’s (1 945)2 and Kubler’s (1 985) research will be heavily cited. Wang has completed by far the most comprehensive analysis of Englishized syntactic features. Kubler has conducted a similar study, though it is smaller in domain and limited to only one novel. Updated information on developments since Wang’s time will be presented, based largely on the empirical data collected by the writer.

CORPUS OF DATA

The corpus of data includes: full coverage of two days’ issues of the newspaper Central

Daily News (CDN), on October 11, 1989 and January 16, 1990, and a thirty-minute

coverage of radio news from Broadcasting Corporation of China on December 7, 1990; miscellaneous portions of issues of CDN,3 some articles from magazines: and writings of prose by contemporary Chinese writers in Taiwan.5 The data was collected between 1989 and 1993.

DATA ANALYSIS

All the Englishized syntactic features occurring in the texts examined were recorded and categorized. Wang’s observations, along with those of others (e.g., Tsao, 1978; Kubler, 1985; Yu, 1987) were taken as a starting point for comparison. Any deviations from the observations of the above scholars were recorded as new developments. A frequency count of the major syntactic patterns was made, to indicate the development of the most common and uncommon patterns.

ENGLISHIZED FEATURES

Generally speaking, all the Englishized morphological and syntactic devices observed by Wang in 1945 are now found to be in widespread use. The major features are presented in the following sections.

MORPHOLOGY

1 . Pluralization sufJix -men

The traditional use of the pluralization suffix m e n , observed by Wang (1945) was originally limited to the personal pronouns, e.g., women ‘we’ and tamen ‘they,’ and nouns of human relations, e.g., xiongdimen ‘brothers’ and jiemeimen ‘sisters.’ As regards the plurality of other nouns, it is usually ‘either left unmarked or else indicated by combinations of numbers and measures or by context’ such as sun ge erzi ‘three sons’ (Kubler, 1985: 49). Since Englishization, Chinese people have begun to extend the use of the pluralizer -men

to nouns denoting persons, e.g., zuojiamen ‘writers,’ xuezhemen ‘scholars,’ nongfitmen

‘peasants,’ and pongyournen ‘friends.’ Wang remarks that in his time, such usage was not common, Words like haorenmen ‘good people’ and weiyuanmen ‘committee members’ were hardly heard. Nowadays, however, as the data in this study indicates, such extension of

the pluralizing suffix to nouns denoting humans is very common in newspapers. It is even extended to nonhuman nouns such as dongwumen ‘animals,’ gomen ‘dogs,’ (CDN, June 28, 1993, p. 3), and maomen ‘cats’ (CDN, April 7,1992, p. 3), though such usage is still rare.

As previously mentioned by Kubler, in Chinese the plurality of nouns is either unmarked or marked by preceding numbers. Therefore, the pluralization marker men is not needed. Such a language constraint, however, is violated in the October 25, 1991 edition of Cenfrul Daily News, where a usage such as fade sige erzimen ‘his four sons’ (word-for-word transla- tion in the original Chinese order) appeared. This usage may be an accidental one. However, it does indicate the possibility of the impact of English grammar on the initiator of this usage.

Up to now, as shown by the data, Englishization has not gone as far as to extend the suffix -men to inanimate nouns. This may well be due to the resistance from the native linguistic constraint. But one cannot exclude the possibility that this extension may happen some day, as long as this trend of Englishization continues.

2. Adverbial sufix -de

In Chinese, an adjective can be changed into an adverb by adding the adverbial suffix -de, e.g., man ‘slow’

+

-de = mande ‘slowly.’ However, it is not the case that all adverbs are

marked with the marker -de. Yet now the Chinese tend to believe that, since English gram- mar requires the presence of the suffix -1y in de-adjectival adverbs, Chinese adverbs should also be marked with the suffix -de. Therefore, -de is even attached to words that are already adverbs. For example, huran ‘suddenly,’ tongshi ‘simultaneously,’ and shouxian ‘first’ are already adverbs, and thus d o not need the marking of any suffix. Adding the suffix -de to these adverbs results in new forms such as hurande *‘suddenlyly’ and tongshide *‘simul- taneouslyly’ (Kubler, 1985).

According to Kubler (1985: 60), ‘the tendency in modern Chinese, both written and spoken, automatically to use a redundant suffix -de with all adverbs reflects no doubt a con- scious desire on the part of Chinese to distinguish the word classes of their language by

means of formal grammatical elements.’ Kratochvil also notes that present trends in Chinese grammar seem to indicate that ‘the balance has begun to shift in favour of a much greater redundancy in the occurrence of the non-contextual devices’ (1 968: 142, quoted in Kubler, 1985: 60).

As a result, the recent trend in the use of -de is that ‘one can now freely and very extens- ively change all words into adverbs’ (Beijing Shifan Xueyuan, 1959: 147, quoted in Kubler, 1985: 61). The fifty-one examples found in the data seem to support this observation. Adjectives, adverbs, nouns, and even verbs could be marked with -de to function as adverbs. Take the following instance from CDN, for example.

hua se jing ye bu tui flower color should also not fade

jianchi de zhanfangzhe guyoude seze persist adverbial suffix bloom

(October 11,1989, p. 5)

original color

But the flower did not fade away at all and it persistently bloomed in its original color. The word jianchi in the above sentence is a verb. After being suffixed with -de, a new adverb jianchide has been coined, which has no equivalent in English. Such extension in the

use of the adverbial suffix -de may be viewed as hypercorrection and a native device, no longer determined by its original English model.

3. Other prefies and sufixes

Below are other native devices that have resulted from the influence of English affixes:

fei- ‘non-’; fan- ‘anti-’;

fu-

‘vice-’; hou-, -hou ‘post-’; -zhe ‘-er, -or’; -jia ‘-ist’; -zhuyi ‘-ism’; -Xing ‘-tion’, -ty, -ness’; -hua ‘-ize, -ify’; -du ‘-th.’

The first four morphemes function like prefixes.“ Words are directly suffixed to them to yield the meaning, e.g., feichengyuan ‘nonmember,’ fanshehui ‘anti-social,’ fuxiuozhung

‘vice-chancellor,’ and houxiandai ‘postmodern.’

The rest of the morphemes function as suffixes. Among these morphemes, the following are found to be in the widest currency, according to the data.

a. -hua: -Hua, ‘which denotes change of state or action’ (Kubler, 1985: 73), corresponds

to the English suffixes -ize and -ify, e.g., guojihua ‘internationalize’ and shehuihua ‘social- ize.’ Ever since this innovation was introduced into Chinese through translation, its use has been expanded in such a manner that it is no longer determined by the original English model. Sixty-three instances are found of such usage in this study. Words such as

shiyonghua ‘to make practical,’ renxinghua ‘to make humanly,’ dixiahua ‘to make under-

ground,’ and ruanhua ‘to make soft,’ are all native innovations that do not correspond to any English words.

b. -Xing: This suffix is used ‘either to form attributives indicating quality or capacity, or to form abstract nouns meaning state, condition, o r quality, somewhat like the English mor- phemes -tion, -ity, and -ness’ (Kubler, 1985: 73). Tsao observes that this suffix has been in such extensive use that ‘it is safe to say whenever we see the suffix attached to a stem, the new combination is a noun’ (1978: 44). In the data, forty-eight words were found to be formed with this suffix, some of which do not have corresponding English words, such as

yishuxing ‘the quality of being artistic,’ kongzhixing ‘the quality of being controlled,’

pipanxing ‘the quality of being judgmental.’ It seems that any lexical item, be it a verb, a noun, or an adjective, could serve as the stem for this suffix to form a new noun.

In summary, as demonstrated by the above examples, though the innovative use of the suf- fixes may be a result of the influence of English, they have gained their native currency by being expanded beyond the original scope of English use. Wang ( 1 945) notes that with these new suffixes in the language, Chinese people could create new words without having to trace them back to the original English model. In this respect, Chinese morphology is enriched by the inventory of these suffixes. Most significantly, as remarked by Kubler, ‘at least partially due to the influence of the European languages, modem Chinese is gaining a morphology which it did not previously possess in a systematic way’( 1985: 142). This study indicates that, based on such a systematic way of gaining a morphology, contemporary Chinese people tend to create as many new words as possible, without resistance from native language constraint.

SYNTAX

1 . Increasing use

of

subjects

According to Li and Thompson (1 98 l), Chinese is a topic-prominent language whereas English is subject-prominent. For an English sentence to be complete, it must have a subject

and a predicate. The subject typically occurs before the verb and the verb agrees with it in number. In contrast, in Chinese, it is the topic and not the subject that determines a com- plete sentence. The topic is what the sentence is about. It ‘sets a spatial, temporal, or indi- vidual framework within which the main predication holds’ (Li and Thompson, 198 1 : 1 5). It is an essential element in the discourse. By discourse we mean ‘the context in which a given sentence occurs, whether it is a conversation, a paragraph, a story, or some other kind of language situation’ (Li and Thompson, 1 98 1 : 100). In a piece of discourse, as soon as the subject can be interpreted from the context, it is omitted. Generally speaking, it is quite common for a piece of Chinese discourse consisting of twenty sentences to have only one subject at the very beginning of the first sentence, as long as this piece of discourse has a certain topic referring to the same person or to the same thing throughout the discourse.

Due to the influence of English, some Chinese have started to perceive the need to insert a subject in every sentence, so that the sentence can be considered grammatical. Owing t o

such a belief and practice, the use of subjects has increased considerably. In the data, there are seventy-eight instances of redundancy via the use of subjects. Below is an example where the subject tarnen, ‘they,’ marked in parenthesis, is redundant.

sanshiduowei guonei chubanyezhe bari qingchen more than thirty domestic publishers eight morning dida falankefu, (tamen) canjia shiyiri arrive in Frankfurt they

dao shiliuri juxingde disishiyijie falankefu to sixteenth held forty-first Frankfurt shuzhan

book exhibition.

participated in eleventh

More than thirty domestic publishers arrived in Frankfurt on the morning of the eighth to participate in the forty-first book exhibition held in Frankfurt from the eleventh to the sixteenth.

( C D N , October 1 1,1989, p. 3)

Since Chinese people tend to use subjects more commonly in sentences nowadays, Kubler comments that ‘because of European language influence, modern Chinese seems to be moving slowly from a topic-comment-type sentence structure to a subject-predicate one like that of Western languages’ (1985: 142-1 43). The written data of formal reporting found in newspapers in this study seems to confirm such a tendency.

2 . Increased use of the copula verb ‘shi’ ( t o be)

Wang (1945: 97-98) notes that in Chinese, a descriptive sentence’ takes adjectives as predicates and does not require the presence of any verb before the adjectives in the predic- ate, for instance:

zhe duo hua hen piaoliang this classifier flower very beautiful This flower is very beautiful.

An assertive sentenceX takes noun phrases as predicates and the verb shi is used, for example:

ta

shi

hao ren

heis goodman He is a good man.

However, due to the influence of English grammar, which requires the copula verb to be

to precede predicate adjectives, Chinese people have started to use shi, the equivalent of

to

be, used before the noun phrases in the assertive sentences, to precede the adjectives in the descriptive sentences. In such cases, the word de also follows the adjectives. Such a construction of shi

. . .

de was used only occasionally in traditional Chinese. Kubler remarks that 'it has now, as Wei (1 953: 44-5) points out, become much more frequent than before' (1 985: 134). Such usage of shi

. . .

de is in wide currency in Taiwan nowadays.

What is worth noting is the development of another way of using shi with adjectives, which is to delete de after the adjectives. Such usage is completely Englishized, with the verb shi functioning as a one-to-one corresponding word for the English copula verb be.

Wang states that, compared with the shi

. . .

de construction, this usage 'further contradicts the vernacular usage' (1945: 276): It is the observation of the author that this feature is employed frequently in the news reports of TTV (Taiwan TV Station)."' In this study, though, this usage is still rare. Take one instance from the data, for example:

zhengde

shi

huopo waixiang Zhengde is lively outgoing Zhengde is lively and outgoing.

(CDN, January 16,1990, p. 6)

According to Wang, by using shi before adjectives, the Europeanized grammar tends to convert a descriptive sentence into an assertive sentence." He makes a quite disapproving comment (1945: 278):

Such usage is to remove one of the three types of sentences in Chinese, namely, the descriptive sentence, and it does not in the least cope with the Chinese language convention.

.

.The increase of subject is merely to make the sentences redundant without violating the Chinese grammar; the increase of use of verb shi (preceding the adjectives) is to overthrow the (Chinese) language habit that has existed for thousands of years.

In spite of Wang's disapproval, the shi

. . .

de construction, which was used occasionally before, has now gained popularity in Taiwan. In addition, this study indicates that there seems to be a new development on the completely Englishized usage of shi.

3. Lengthening of sentences: modifying clauses with head nouns

In traditional Chinese, a head noun is always preceded by its modifier. When a head noun is modified by an adjective which is too long and too complicated, the whole sentence is divided into several short and syntactically simple ones.

Nonetheless, due to the necessity of incorporating English relative clauses into Chinese grammatical structure in translation, people have lately adopted a procedure: the head noun is preceded and modified by the modifying clause, which is marked with the sub- ordinating particle de. Take the following sentence from CDN, for example

(1)

xian nian sishier sui,

(2)

biye yu zhengzhan now aged forty-two years,

xuexiao,

(3)

xianhou ceng duoci huode shuicaihua

Academy has numerous won watercolor painting shoujiang

&

first prize subordinating marker Lin Shun Xiong toward dongwu de

animal adjectival marker sketch always has his unique

de shoufa

adjectival marker way

graduated from Politics-War

Lin Shun Xiong, duiyu miaohui yixiang you qi dute

Lin Shun Xiong, who is now forty-two years old, graduated from the Politics-War Academy, and has won numerous first prizes in watercolour painting contests, has his unique way of sketching animals.

(CDN, January 16, 1990, p. 3)

In the above sentence, the head noun

Lin Shun Xiong is modified by the modifying clause,

consisting of three subclauses marked by underlined numbers. In contrast, the traditional way of stating this is as follows.’’

Lin Shun Xiong, (I) xian nian sishier sui,

(2)

biye Lin Shun Xiong, now aged forty-two years graduated yu zhengzhan xuexiao,

(3)

xianhou, ceng duoci huode from Politics-War Academy has numerous won shuicaihua shoujiang,

(4)

duiyu dongwu de watercolor painting first prize

miaohui yixiang you qi dute de shoufa sketch always has his unique adjectival marker way

Lin Shun Xiong is forty-two years old now. (Subject deleted) graduated from the Politics- War Academy. (Subject deleted) has won numerous first prizes in watercolor painting contests. (Subject deleted) has his unique way of sketching animals. The Englishized long sentence is broken up into four syntactically simple and short sentences.

Wang notes that the construction of long modifying clauses is ‘a new style resulting from the influence of Western languages and it is not identical to the original form in terms of the grammatical structure’ (1945: 281). This conclusion is based on the following linguistic facts. In English, the head noun can always be modified and followed by the relative clauses, and thus it is easy to produce very long sentences. In Chinese, the subordinate clause precedes its headnoun and since there is no category of relative pronoun o r relative adverb- ial, it is very difficult to produce long sentences. In order to accommodate the English relative clause into Chinese structure, the translators make the following changes when translating: 1) move the head noun from before the relative clause to after it, 2) delete the

relative pronoun or relative adverbial, and 3) use the subordinating marker de to precede and modify the head noun. The diagram below demonstrates these changes.

toward animal

English: N (head noun)

+

relative pronoun

+

X

Chinese:

X

+

de (subordinating particle)

+

N (head noun) relative adverbial

As shown above, such a device is not identical to the original structure but is a new style brought about by the English influence. Ma (1 963: 53) describes such constructions as ‘so

long and complicated that it is hard to grasp their full meaning.’

Quite interestingly, the findings of this study indicate that this long-winded and intangible construction has gained such popularity with journalists that it is employed extensively in newspapers and, to a much lesser degree, in magazines. This feature occurs with the highest frequency (ie., ninety-nine occurrences) among all the structures found in the data. Only

four were found in radio news reports. Compared with Wang’s findings, the length of the structure tends to be longer. Generally speaking, the average length is one to two subclauses used in one modifying clause. Yet, as demonstrated in the above example, there are also several instances of long clauses consisting of three

or

even four subclauses. Such usage, termed by Wang ‘mostly a fashion for the time being‘ (1945: 283) (forty-eight years ago), has been developed into a common usage in today’s newspapers and magazines.

4. Variety of third person and impersonal singular and plural pronouns

In traditional Chinese, no gender difference is made between the third person singular pronouns. All these forms are represented by ta

-#&

(with the radical

4

meaning human and

&

meaning also). Since 1917, however, due to the influence of European grammar13 (Wang, 1945: 316), people not only make a gender differentiation by using different written forms of ta

+!!

,

for the masculine pronoun and f a

%

(with the radical meaning

female) for feminine, but also copy the neuter if from English and use the written form f a

t; (with the radical A meaning

roof

and

k

meaning knife) to refer to something inanimate or abstract.

Furthermore, two new words are created to make differences not even seen in English. One is ta

!#

(with the radical meaning ox), which originally referred to objects, now referring to animals. Wang observes (1945: 316) that f a

&

was originally created to represent neuter. Nevertheless, on the one hand, ta

8

is a word already present in Chinese; on the other hand, the meaning of the radical in ta

&,

which refers to

wu

‘objects,’ was hardly understood by the general public. Ta e w o n out over fa

!#

in becoming the neuter pronoun. As noted by Kubler (1985: 76), the current general practice of using neuter f a is that 'cis used for inanimate objects and &for animate ones.‘

The presence of the other ta &is pointed out by Huang (1963: 3). It refers to God, as created by missionaries when translating the Bible into Chinese. The radical of this new pronoun -iT; is believed by the author to have been copied from those of the characters shen

$+ (deities and gods), zhi &(deities and gods), and qi @(pray), where the radical?

.

means ‘revealing and expressing,’ used to denote the aspects pertaining to gods and deities.

In this respect, Englishized Chinese grammar has even come one step ahead of English. Hock (1 990) says that these patterns of pronouns have become nativized and have taken on a life of their own, and are no longer determined by English. One must, however, note that all these five pronouns are pronounced the same, and with the same tone. A distinction

between the forms is made in the written language and not in the spoken form.

As regards the current usage of these pronouns found in the data, ta% is not only used to

refer to a female person, but also, as in English, to a ship, a country, an airplane, a train, a

A

newspaper, or a school, a practice which was barely seen in Wang’s time. The use of f a

%

to refer to an animal was not mentioned by Wang at all. The four occurrences of this usage found in the newspaper indicate that this is a new development.

Tu

&,

referring to God, was also not observed by Wang. It occurs mostly in the Chinese version of the Bible. It is found in two recent editions of a magazine (Sinorarnu, February 1991, p. 62, and Septem- ber 1991, p. 52) where it is even used to refer to Buddha in Buddhism and the Jade Emperor - China’s Lord of Heaven in Taoism. This finding seems to suggest that the use of this pronoun has been extended from the Christian god to gods in general.

Among these pronouns, the use of impersonal ta

e

is the most controversial one. Both Wang (1945) and Zhang (1966) argue that, based on traditional vernacular Chinese, this word is not needed, especially when it refers to an inanimate object. According to the tradi- tional rule, if an inanimate thing occurs in the subject position, and is referred to again in the text, the same noun phrase is repeated. Take, for example, the following text from Wang’s book.

dangchu tian jia you huashuyi ke, originally Tian family have birch

dixiong san ge yin fen lejia, brothers three classifier because divine family

g huashu bian ku le;

that birch tree start wither

houlai gandong le ta xiongdi men,

later move they brothers plural marker renjiu gui zai yi chu,

still come back in one place

-~

na huashu ye jiu rongle. that birch tree also start thrive

Originally the Tian family had a birch tree. Because the three Tian brothers divided the

family’s property, the birch tree started to wither. Later, the three brothers were so

moved by such an act that they decided to put the property back together. The birch tree thrived again.

As seen above, the noun phrase

nu huashu ‘that birch tree’ is repeated twice when it is

in the subject position of the sentence.

The influence coming from English grammar has now changed Chinese language habits in the usage of fa ‘I?. English grammar dictates that, when an inanimate noun phrase is referred to again, it is replaced by the neuter pronoun it. Due to such an influence, Chinese people have become self-conscious about using f a

’& in the subject position, and tend

to

avoid the repetition of the same noun phrase. As a consequence, in the data, we find extensive usage of f a functioning exactly like its English counterpart if in the subject position, used to refer to the virtue of modesty, the city of Peking, a newspaper, the beauty of European scenery, a baby, the water in a river, and so on.

In the case of an inanimate thing being referred to again in the object position, it is usually omitted in traditional vernacular Chinese. Nevertheless, since English grammar always requires an object to follow a transitive verb, nine cases of using ta e i n the object position,

one classifier

as in English practice, were found in magazines and creative literary texts, whose usage, as commented on by Wang, is ‘affecting the structure

of

the Chinese sentence’ ( 1 945: 3 2 2 ) . Consider the following example from creative literary writing.

zai chang de ren dou shuo, zhe shi Guangdong laide over there people all say this is Guangdong come yuebing, zhishi kanzhe bu gan chi

g

moon cake only looking not dare eat it

People over there just looked at the moon cake, exclaiming ‘this is from Canton,’ without daring to eat it.

(Yen, 1986: 32)

The underlined tu in the object position referring to the inanimate object ‘moon cake’ in the above sentence is not used in traditional vernacular Chinese. Though the use of tu in an

object position is infrequent in traditional Chinese, the increase in the frequency of this usage found in this study suggests that the influence of English has accelerated this process. With the plural form of the pronouns, traditionally, all third person and impersonal plural pronouns are represented by turnen

&

m.

Nowadays, in modern Chinese, there are three other variations coming into shape in the written form. Turnen

m

is used to refer to all third person female pronouns. Turnen

8.R9

refers to the plural form of inanimate objects. Tumen

%

On this phenomenon, Wang (1945: 3 18) suggests that the difference in the plural forms of modern Chinese pronouns does not result from the imitation of English grammar, since English does not make a gender differentiation in the third person and impersonal plural pronouns. Such a device is a nativized one. While translators are coining the new usage, since there is no restriction from any realistic language constraint, there is ample room for making any kind of distinction. This case may again be one of hypercorrection.

receives a great deal of dis- approval from grammarians. Cited by Chao, ‘the word fu has no plural form, so we cannot use turnen to represent things in the plural number’ (Chinese Language Special Class, 1963: 135, quoted in Kubler, 1985: 8 2 ) . Chan also comments disprovingly,

‘famen

is not to be used for the neuter they or them in

any

position’ (1 959: 4, quoted in Kubler, 1985: 82).

As indicated by the data, probably due to the resistance from native Chinese constraints, there are only three instances found of such a usage, which is a relatively small number com- pared with those of other features found in this study.

5 . Extended use of the passive construction of ‘bei’

The syntactic marker bei deriving ‘originally from a

full

verb meaning “be inflicted upon”’ (Tsao, 1978: 47) has long been discussed by a great number of scholars, such as Wang

(1945), Wei (1953), Huang (1963), Zhang (1966), Tsao (1978), Yu (1987), and others. Their discussions are, however, mostly limited to the extension of bei from the traditional ‘unhappy and unhoped-for state’ to a ‘state of happiness or something hoped for.’ As a matter of fact, there are some developments formed in the past few years which have not yet been thoroughly discussed in the literature.

According to the findings in this research, in recent years, developments in the use of the passive construction can be characterized in three ways: 1) an increase in the usage of

refers to the plural form of animate objects.

Among these plural pronouns, the neuter turnen

passive constructions, 2) a violation against the traditional vernacular usage, and 3) the consistent use of the feature bei to denote the passive voice in almost all instances instead of

alternative constructions.

With respect to the increase in passive constructions, Zhang (1 966) notes that, compared with English people, Chinese people do not tend to use the passive voice as frequently, due to differences in ways of thinking. Where the situations for applying a passive construction remain the same, Chinese people tend to choose an active voice to express the meaning, while English speakers choose a passive one.

However, times have changed and so has the usage. Analysis of the data reveals that more and more passive constructions are used these days in newspapers, magazines, creative literary texts, and professional articles. What used to be expressed in an active voice is now replaced by a passive voice, a phenomenon also noted by Yu (1987). Take one instance from CDN as an example:

siwei yenyuan ershiqi ri four actors

tongzhi yao dao xinwenju peiban notify have to go to Bureau of Information accompany li zongtong guanshang xiyen

Lee President view

[These] four actors were notified on the morning of the twenty-seventh to go to the Bureau of Information to accompany President Lee to view the movie The Wedding

Banquet

zaoshang

bei

twenty-seventh morning passive voice marker

The Wedding Banquet

(CDN, March 29,1993, p. 3)

The conventional usage is stated as follows. siwei yenyuan ershiqi ri

four actors

yao dao xinwenju peiban

have to go to Bureau of Information accompany li zongtong guanshang xiyen

Lee President view

[These] four actors received the notice on the morning of the twenty-seventh to go to the Bureau of Information to accompany President Lee to view the movie The Wedding

Banquet.

Such an Englishized usage of bei is considered ‘very un-Chinese’ by Wang Huan (1 957, quoted by Kubler, 1985: 98). Nevertheless, a large number of instances of this type’l can be found in news reports in newspapers, on TV, in creative literary texts, and, to a large extent, in technical articles in magazines addressing recent medical, nutritional, technological, and business developments.

With regard to the violations of vernacular usage, more and more cases are found which suggest that when there is a passive sense involved, the marker of the passive voice bei is

applied to denote the passive sense regardless of the vernacular constraints. According to

zaoshang jiehuo tongzhi twenty-seventh morning receive notice

The Wedding Banquet

Wei (1953), there are two contexts in which the passive marker bei needs to be omitted from the construction, even when a passive sense is involved. These are when:

a. The subject of the sentence is inanimate, e.g., wode shoubiao diu le

my watch lost perfect tense marker My watch was lost.

b. There is no need to express the agent of the action, e.g., nimen dou gai da

you all should beat You all should be beaten.

Yet, nine occurrences of bei denoting the passive sense, resulting in violation of the tradi- tional constraints, are found in newspapers and even more so in technical articles, such as the following:

Entartete Kunst - zhongwen

bei

Entartete Kunst Chinese passive voice marker fanzuo ‘tuifei yishu’ daodi shi shemo yisi? translate degenerate art exactly is what meaning

Entartete Kunst (German) is translated as ‘degenerate art’ in Chinese. What exactly does it mean?

(Yishujia [Artist], May 1992, Vol. 204, p. 231)

In the above example, the passive marker bei should be deleted because Entartete Kunst ‘degenerate art’ is an inanimate subject. However, due to the influence of English grammar which requires the presence of the passive construction of be

+

PP whenever a passive sense is involved, the Chinese equivalent form bei

+

Verb is also employed to denote the passive sense. The nine instances of this usage are all cases of such English influence.ls

Concerning the prevalent use of the feature bei, noted by both Yu (1987) and Kubler (1 985), while in traditional Chinese the passive voice can be expressed using constructions ranging from ‘the coloquial jiao, ai, rang, and gei to the more literary

jiun,

yu, and wei

. . .

suo,

bei has taken precedence over all of these to become the passive par excellence of modern Chinese’ (Kubler, 1985: 89). These two scholars suggest that it may be because the pronunciation of bei is close to that of by in English that bei has become the prevalent pas- sive marker used in contemporary modern Chinese writing. The instances found in this study support such an observation.

In short, ‘modern standard Chinese seems to be developing, under the influence of Euro- pean languages, the category of verbal passive which had not existed in its grammatical system’ (Kratochvil, 1968, quoted in Kubler, 1985: 96). In this research, the much more frequent occurrences of bei suggest that some day the Chinese passive construction may be used exactly in the same manner as the English construction. Also, the marker bei may become the only passive marker the Chinese know of for denoting any passive sense.

6. Dang (when) as a conjunction

phrases such as de shihou ‘the time at which’ or just shi ‘time.’ For example:

In traditional vernacular Chinese, temporal clauses are usually very short, ending with

wo lai de shihou, kandao ta I came temporal clause saw him When I came, I saw him.

When the English conjunction

when

and the long temporal English clauses were intro- duced into Chinese, the translators could barely find a good way to translate them, because there was no parallel structure in Chinese. In addition, the temporal structures in English and Chinese differ. Whereas the English conjunction

when

appears at the beginning of temporal clauses, the traditional Chinese temporal expression

de

shihou only occurs at the

end of the clause to show the temporal order. If

de shihou

is employed in a long temporal clause to mark the meaning of the temporal relationship in the text, the readers might not realize that a temporal relationship was meant until they came to the very end of the clause (Kubler, 1985: 119). Thus, to avoid lack of clarity in meaning, the translators use the word

dung,

originally a verb meaning ‘at the time when,’ ‘at the beginning of a clause, in the same position as the English

when,

and combine it with the traditional expression to form the new pattern

dung.

. .

( d e )

shi

(hou),

“when”’ (Kubler, 1985: 119). For example:

dang

jizhe xunji ‘ruguo xinjiapo yu when reporter ask if Singapore with

zhonggong guanxi zhengchanghua

People’s Republic of China relation normalization dui taiwan hui dailai shemo yingxiang

on Taiwan will bring what effect temporal phrase

liguangyao biaoshi bu hui you

Prime Minister Kuan-Yew Lee said shemo yingxiang

what effect

When the reporter asked, ‘what effect will it have on Taiwan if Singapore normalizes its diplomatic relationship with the People’s Republic of China?’, Prime Minister Kuan- Yew Lee said that it would have no effect on Taiwan.

Wang comments that this device is still a mixture of Chinese and English grammar. If this temporal expression is to be totally Englishized, the Chinese phrase

de

shihou or

shi

should be completely deleted so that

dung

can correspond one-to-one with

when.

Forty-eight years have passed, and Wang’s comment has become a reality, embodied in ten occurrences of such usage found in the data. One is the translation of the title of the American Movie

When Sally Met

Hurry

(dung shali yuduo hali)

where

shuli

and

huli

are the transliterations of

Sully

and Hurry. What is surprising is that there is no expression of

de shihou

or

shi

attached in the translation. In other words, this is a totally Englishized structure.

The ten examples found in the data may indicate the beginning of total Englishization in such temporal structure. Hock (1990) suggests that, from this perspective, the use of

dung

. . .

( d e ) shi(hou)

may serve only as a transitional compromise before the stage of complete Englishization is achieved.

not will have

(CDN,January 1 6 , 1 9 9 0 , ~ . 1)

IMPLICATIONS OF THE ENGLISHIZATION OF CHINESE

This research on the Englishization of Chinese provides a case study of how language changes. Syntactic and morphological changes occur, initiated by translation of English literary works into Chinese. This study also provides an explanation for such a process and accounts for the mechnisms by which this process is brought about.16 Since the Chinese case of language contact with English involves ‘borrowing from a prestigious literary language’ (Thomason and Kaufman, 1988: 66), this study presents a relationship of

development between language change and language contact through written texts. Moreover, this study confirms the observation of ‘translation as an initiator of syntactic change’ (Kachru, 1989). It is hoped that research in other languages could be performed in this area, to achieve a better understanding of the relationship between various mechanisms of translation and the resulting language change due to translation.

CONCLUSION

In this study, the recent developments of ten morphological and syntactic Englishized features based on empirical research were presented, a finding not recorded by any other scholars. The written data indicates that most of the Englishized constructions are in wide use in journalistic register, professional jargon, and creative literary texts. These construc- tions include: long modifymg clauses, increase of subjects, passive construction of bei, third impersonal singular pronoun

fa

as a subject, and the morphological suffixes de, Xing, and

hua. The completely Englishized features, such as the temporal conjunction dang and the use of only the copula verb

shi

before adjectives, are beginning to show as new develop- ments. Another device that is manifesting itself as a latest development is the usage of

fa&,

extended from the Christian god to gods in general. The feature that has met the most resist- ance from the native language constraint is the usage of the third impersonal plural pronoun

tarnen

m.

The findings of this research suggest that the process of syntactic change in modern Chinese, initiated by the translation of Western literary works in the written form, has progressed further with time, although some Englishized features are still meeting with resistance from the native constraints. This confirms Tsao’s observation. Tsao remarks (1978: 46-47):

Due to the continuing influence of English, most of the.

.

. innovations originally designed to facilit- ate the translation of English text have been incorporated into contemporary Chinese grammar and a few

. . .

devices in existence before the introduction of English have been expanded con- siderably.

In addition, as most of the frequent occurrences of many Englishized features and the extension of use of some other devices, as shown in this research, suggest that contem- porary Chinese people in journalism and literary creation have become more conscious of the usage of the grammatical features discussed above than they were in Wang’s time. Such a development may be viewed as ‘a conscious desire on the part of Chinese to distinguish the word’ on the one hand and grammatical ‘classes of their language by means of formal grammatical elements’ (Kubler, 1985: 60) on the other. It also serves as a good piece of evidence, indicating the strength of the impact of English on written Chinese and on

Chinese people’s grammatical ideas. It is believed that such a process of Englishization Chinese will continue to become more of a trend.

I . 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. NOTES

The author is grateful to Dr Chin-Chuan Cheng, Dr Braj B. Kachru, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

In Wang’s work, more than thirty Europeanized constructions are presented, based on a corpus of creative literary works in the twenties and thirties. These constructions are compared and contrasted with traditional Chinese vernacular, examples of which are taken from Dreams of the Red Chamber, the paradigmatic classic literary work of standard vernacular, written in the latter half of the eighteenth century in Peking dialect. and which is safely assumed to be a language ‘as yet unaffected by English’ (Tsao, 1978).

Wang also traces the first appearance of certain Europeanized usages. In addition, Wang points out the Chinese syntactic constructions which can never be Englishized according to the intrinsic structural differ- ences between Chinese and English. On the whole, Wang’s work provides the best source of knowledge o n

the impact of English on Chinese syntax.

Portions of the CDN were excerpted from the followingissues- 1989: October 13; 199 1: October 25 (p. 6);

1902: April 5 (p. 3). April 7 (p. 3). September 16 (p. I), and September 30 (p. 2); 1993: March 20 (p. 3). and June 8 (p. 3).

Magazines that contain the data include Cuanghua (Sinorama, Chinese-English Bilingual Monthly) [ Febru- ary 1991.56-63,September 1991.50-53,and July 1992,September 1992,8-121, Lianhewenxue (Unitas,

a Literary Monthly) [May 1989, 113-14, and May 1992, 127-91, Yishujia (Artist) [May 1992, 127-91,

Xinxinwen (The Journalist, Weekly Magazine) [May 1992, 88-91], and Nuxing (Mademoiselle) [April 1092.46-48, 70, and June 1992,601. Issues addressed by the selected articles include: a current social zeal

to pursue Zen Buddhism in Taiwan, the discussion of degenerate art in Germany in the thirties. racial proh- lems in the USA, dietary information for middle-aged women, and so on.

Portions of prose were taken from Wushi Huishou (Reflections ofFi& Years ofL$e) by Yen, Yuan-Shu (1986: 31-54, 101-1 18),and Shei Lai Kan Wo (Who Came 7 o S e e M e ) by Ye,Qing-Bing(l978: 99-1 14, Among these morphemes, hou can be used as both a prefix and a suffix.

A descriptive sentence describes the quality of a person or that of an object (Wang, 1 959: 90).

An assertive sentence asserts that the reference of the subject is the same as that of the predicate o r that thc object or the person referred by the subject has a certain quality or is of a certain kind (Wang, 1959: 97). Wang’s work was written in Chinese. All quotations from Wang are the author’s translations.

The TTV news reports have the highest audience viewing rate among the three TV stations in Taiwan. The author believes that the audience is being influenced by this usage of the shi construction by watching the news.

Wang observes that in modern Chinese, almost all the descriptive sentences can be converted into assertive sentences by attaching shi de (1 959: 99). What is worth a special note is that descriptive sentences do not take copula verbs; all the sentences that take copula verbs are assertive sentences. They have to take the form shi.

.

. de. Shi cannot stand alone in such sentences ( I 945: 109). Wang provides the following examples and illus [rations:

165-176).

zhehua &i hong & this flower copula verb red This flower is red.

The above sentence cannot be stated as:

*zhehua &i hong

this flower copula verb red This flower is red.

Though a descriptive sentence can be converted into an assertive sentence by attaching shi . . . (1.. thcy arc

not the same in terms of their meanings and forms. Take the following two sentences for instance: (1 ) wode shenzi &i _{ganjing &}

my body copula verb clean My body is clean.

(2) wode shenzi hen ganjing my body very clean My body is very clean.

Sentence (1)judges the type of the body, i.e., this body is clean. it implicates a denial that the body is not clcan.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

Sentence (2) just describes the quality or state of the body, which is clean. There is no sense of contrast or denial involved.

Structurally speaking, in sentence ( I ) , the noun phrase after de is deleted. The original sentence should be:

wode shenzi shi ganjing d e w

my body copula verb clean body

My body is a clean one.

Based on the above illustration a distinction should be made between the descriptive and the assertive In sentence (2), there is no deletion involved in the descriptives.

sentences.

This is the author’s writing and constitutes the conventional way of stating this type of sentence.

It is a result of Englishization alone rather than Europeanization that the three written forms&,%, a n d 8 are distinguished.

According to the data in this study, verbs that are used in this type include wendao, xunji ‘ask; tongzhi

‘notify’; zhaodai ‘treat’; and yunxu ‘allow.’ among others.

Verbs used in this type of data include shiyong ‘employ’; fengxichulai ‘extract’; pohuai ‘destroy’; xinlai ‘trust’; and huaiyi ‘suspect,’ among others.

For a general discussion of the relationship between translation and syntactic change, see Danchev (1 984).

REFERENCES

Cheng, Chin-Chuan (1983) Chinese varieties of English. In The Other Tongue. Edited by Braj B. Kachru. New Chuo, Chi-Cheng (1979) The development of the Chinese noun phrase in the past two hundred years: a case study Danchev, Andrei (1984) Translation and syntactic change. In Historical Syntax. Edited by Jacek Fisiak. The Hock, Hans Henrich (1 990) Personal communication.

Huang, Wei-Liang (1 984) Qing Tong Yu Duo Zi (Neatness, Fluency, and Style). Taipei: China Times.

Huang, Zun-Sheng (1963) Zhongguo Wenzi Zhi Ouhua Wenti (Problems Related to the Europeanization of the

Chinese Language). Penang: Guomin Yinwu Co.

Kachru, Braj B. (I 989) Englishization and contact linguistics: dimensions of linguistic hegemony of English. Paper presented at the 1988 Regional Seminar on Language Planning in a Multilingual Setting: the Role of English, National University of Singapore, Singapore, September 6-8, 1988. A revised version in World Englishes,

1994, 13(2).

Kubler, Cornelius C. (1985) A Study of Europeanized Grammar in Modern Written Chinese. Taipei: Student Book c o .

Li, Charles and Sandra Thompson (1 98 1) Mandarin Chinese: a Funcfional Reference Grammar. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Li, Chi (1962) New Features in Chinese Grammatical Usage. Studies in Chinese Communist Terminology. No. 9. Center for Chinese Studies. Institute of International Studies. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Li, Jia-Shu (1980) Ouhua Jufa He Hanyu Guifanhua Wenti (Westernized Syntax and Its Relation to the

Standardization of Modern Chinese). Yuwen Zazhi (Language Magazine), 5,65-69.

Ma, Meng (1 963) Recent Changes in the Chinese Language. Journalofthe Hong Kong Branch ofthe RoyalAsiatic Society, 3,5 1-59.

Thomason, Sarah Grey and Terrence Kaufman ( I 988) Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics.

Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Tsao, Feng-Fu (1978) Anglicization of Chinese morphology and syntax in the past two hundred years. Studies in English Literature and Linguistics. April 1978. pp. 41-54.

Tsien, Tsuen-Hsuin (1954) Western impact on China through translation. The Far Eastern Quarterly, 13(3), 305- 327.

Tsung, Hyui-Puh (1 928) Chinese translations of Western literature. The Chinese Social and Political Science Review, 12(3), 369-378.

Wang, Li (1945) Zhongguo Yufa Lilun (Principles of Chinese Grammar). Chongqing: Shangwu Yinshuguan. Wang, Li (1959) Zhongguo Xiandai Yufa (Grammar of Modern Chinese). Hongkong: Zhonghua Book Co. Wei, Jian (1953) Yuwen Zatan: Ouhua Wenii Shi Jiang (Chats on Language: Ten Lectures on Problems of Ye, Qing-Bing (1978) She Lai Kan Wo (Who Came To See Me). 1st edition. Taipei: Jiuge Book Co.

Yen, Yuan-Shu (1986) Wushi Huishou (Reflections ofFify Years ofLije). 3rd edition. Taipei: Jiuge Book Co. Yu, Guang-Zhong ( 1 979) Lun zhongwen zhi xihua (A discussion on the Westernization of Chinese). Zhong Wai

York Pergamon Press. pp. 125-140.

of Anglicization. M.A. thesis, Fu Jen Catholic University. Hague: Mouton: pp. 47-60.

Europeanization). Hong Kong: Shanghai Book Co.

Wen Xue (Chinese and Foreign Literature), 8(4): 66-80.

Yu. Guang-Zhong ( 1 98 1 ) Fen Shui Ling Shang (On the Watershed: A Collection of Critical Essays). Taipei: Chun

Yu, Guang-Zhong ( I 987) Zhongwen zhi changtai yu biantai (The normal and abnormal states of Chinese). C'enrral Zhang, Zhen-Yu ( 1 966) Yixue Guilun (Principles of Translation). Taipei: Published by the author.

Wen Xue Co.

DailyNews, October 1,1987: p. 10.