Acknowledgements


Chapter Four: Contrastive Analysis



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Chapter Four: Contrastive Analysis

In English, as in many other inflectional languages, Passive voice can be clearly defined based on the syntactic features. We use “can ” because the category of Passive voice is seen from different views: Traditional and modern view. The traditional view sees passive voice as the interchangeable role of the object in the active sentence into the subject in the passive constructions. The modern view (in Functional Grammar) sees passive constructions with different semantic roles of the passive subject and its metal functions.

In Vietnamese, on the other hand, the presence of Passive voice and passive sentence is a controversial issue. Since the early days of Vietnamese research, passive sentence’s features were rigidly transformed from European languages. The inappropriate features of these artificial sentences lead to the refusal of passive constructions in the next stage of Vietnamese research. The argument about passive constructions lasts up to the time being. Among modern concepts of passive constructions, the most logical supporter is Ban (2004) in which he has successfully applied the latest view of language research into Vietnamese. Ban (2004) has successfully applied Functional grammar to dealing with different semantic roles of the passive subject in Vietnamese. Meanwhile he also suggests the distinguishing features of passive constructions in Vietnamese and other passive related constructions, which have caused arguments up to now.

In this part, the author intends to compare and contrast the difference between English passive constructions and the Vietnamese passive constructions syntactically, semantically and pragmatically.


4.1. Contrast of English and Vietnamese passive constructions syntactically

4.1.1 Syntactic similarities


The Passive constructions in both languages share several common features. The first common characteristic is the grammatical function between the subject and the object in which the object in active sentence turns into the grammatical subject in the passive sentence. In addition, the agent is the optional part in both of two languages. The compulsory existence of the "by - phrase" - " "§­îc/bÞ/ + agent + Verb” in both of two languages is due to the pragmatic structure. The sentence focus is on new information ( which is on the agent not on the action).


4.1.2 Syntactic differences


The syntactic differences between the passive constructions in English and Vietnamese focus on the three main areas as follows: the obligatory and compulsory parts, the grammatical properties of passive subjects and the passive noun phrase in the two languages.

a. The obligatory and compulsory parts in Passive constructions.

The obligatory and compulsory parts in Passive constructions are different between two languages. To begin with, the typical passive constructions in the two languages are summarized as follows:



In English

In Vietnamese

Be + PII

BÞ,®­îc +embedded sentence

(transitive verb)



Become/get + PII




From the above summary, the first difference is in the compulsory parts in two languages. All passive constructions in English are related to PII and one verb among fixed verbs like be, get, have …The Vietnamese passive construction, on the other hand, does need three conditions with the presence of passive functional words and the transitive verbs in the predicator/ the embedded sentence.

The second difference is in the optional parts in two languages. In English these parts include the agent phrase, adjunct, noun modifiers, which sometimes turn out to be decisive to the naturalness of Vietnamese passive constructions. As suggested by ThuyÕt (1998) and QuÝ (2003), in Vietnamese these parts can include agent, adjunct showing causes, reasons or circumstances even the subject modifier. To some extend, the parts which are optional in English turn out to be the “compulsory” parts in Vietnamese which make the passive sentences natural in use.

All the sentences in the following examples satisfy the pattern of Vietnamese passive, but not all sentences are natural in Vietnamese :

a. ThuyÒn bÞ ( hä) ®Èy.

b. ThuyÒn ®· bÞ (hä) ®Èy.

c. ThuyÒn bÞ (hä) ®Èy råi.

Among the Vietnamese passive sentences, the sentence a.( ThuyÒn bÞ ( hä) ®Èy) sounds unnatural. When this sentence is added with adverbs like ®·, råi it turns out to be natural in use.



b.Noun phrase passivization

According to Borsley, R. (1999:149) noun phrases can be derived from the semantically related passive sentences. This has been proved with the illustration of the D- structure in the theory ( part 2.4 Passive constructions and noun phrase passivization). These noun phrases can be called the passive noun phrases, which contain deverbal nouns derived from verbs. On the S- structure, from the following active sentences:

1.a The active sentence: The Vikings destroyed the monastery.

1.b The active sentence: The king betrayed the country.

There are such passive sentences:

2.a The passive sentence : The monastery was destroyed by the Vikings.

2.b The passive sentence: The country was betrayed by the king.

These pairs of sentences are semantically identical to the following noun phrases with the insertion of s’ (the possession in the example 3), of (the possession in the example 4) and the combination of both s’ and of. When these passive noun phrases are in contrast with the Vietnamese ones, the differences are revealed.

Example 3



The monastery ‘s destruction by the Vikings

ViÖc tu viÖn bÞ ph¸ huû do ng­êi Viking g©y ra

The country ‘s betrayal by the king

ViÖc tæ quèc bÞ quèc v­¬ng ph¶n béi

Example 4

The betrayal of the country by the king

ViÖc/ ph¶n béi tæ quèc cña quèc v­¬ng

Example 5

The Vikings’ destruction of the monastery

ViÖc ng­êi Viking ph¸ huû tu viÖn

The king ‘s betrayal of the country

ViÖc quèc v­¬ng ph¶n béi l¹i tæ quèc

The differences in passive noun phrases are in the syntactic features between the original passive sentences and the derived passive noun phrases. The English passive noun phrase are formed based on the movement of the by – phrase plus the insertion of possessive markers of and s’. The formation of passive noun phrase in English is proved with the rule of Case filter in the theory of TG and P &P quoted by Borsley. R.(1999:149).

Meanwhile, in Vietnamese as the comparison partly points out, the related passive noun phrases in Vietnamese do need typical subordinators of noun phrases. These subordinators include such words as viÖc, sù …In Vietnamese the typical subordinators of noun phrases are the compulsory parts of noun phrases, which can be one of the distinguishing features of Vietnamese nominalizations.

In short, the passive constructions in English and Vietnamese share 2 common features. The first feature is the identical function of grammar between the object in active and the subject of the corresponding passive. The next common feature is the optional part expressed by the “by - phrase” in English versus the phrase of " được/bị + agent + Verb" in Vietnamese.

The obligation parts in English passive structures are clearly defined which always consists of passive participles. Whereas in Vietnamese, the pre-modifier, post-modifier (of the noun phrase) and adjunct (of verb) – the optional parts in English – have the decisive role to the type of sentence (passive / non - passive) and to the naturalness of passive sentence in Vietnamese . Finally, the difference in the formation of the passive noun phrase is pointed out. The English noun phrase passivization is based on the movement of the by –phrase, the insertion of possessive markers. The Vietnamese ones, on the other hand, do need the presence of subordinators such as sù, viÖc and others.



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