Passive constructions in English and Chinese : a corpus-based contrastive study

Xiao, Richard and McEnery, Tony and Qian, Yufang (2006) Passive constructions in English and Chinese : a corpus-based contrastive study. Languages in Contrast, 6 (1). pp. 109-149. ISSN 1569-9897

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Abstract

This article combines the corpus-based and contrastive approaches, seeking to provide a systematic account of passive constructions in two typologically distinct languages, namely British English and Mandarin Chinese. We will first explore, on the basis of written and spoken corpus data, a range of characteristics of passives in the two languages including various passive constructions, long vs. short passives, semantic, pragmatic and syntactic features as well as genre variations. On the basis of this exploration, passive constructions in the two languages are contrasted in a structured way. Methodologically, this study demonstrates that comparable monolingual corpora can be exploited fruitfully in contrastive linguistics.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Languages in Contrast
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/core/keywords/englishlanguageandlinguistics
Subjects:
?? englishgenrepassiveenglish language and linguisticsgeneral psychologylinguistics and languagegeneral social sciencesgeneral arts and humanitiespsychology(all)social sciences(all)arts and humanities(all) ??
ID Code:
56757
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
23 Aug 2012 11:30
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
16 Jul 2024 09:07