A study on differences of using pasive voi in english and vietnamese = nghiên cứu về sự khác nhau trong cách dùng câu bị động của tiếng anh và tiếng việt luận văn tốt nghiệp đại học

vinh university foreign languages department===    === nguyễn phan quỳnh trang A STUDY ON DIFFERENCES OF USING PASSIVE VOICE IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE nghiên cứu về sự khác nhau tron

vinh university foreign languages department

===    ===

nguyễn phan quỳnh trang

A STUDY ON DIFFERENCES OF USING PASSIVE

VOICE IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

(nghiên cứu về sự khác nhau trong cách dùng câu bị động của tiếng anh và tiếng việt)

GRADUATION THESIS

Field: Linguistics

Vinh - 2011

vinh university foreign Languages department

===    ===

A STUDY ON DIFFERENCES OF USING PASSIVE

VOICE IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

(nghiên cứu về sự khác nhau trong cách dùng câu bị động của tiếng anh và tiếng việt)

graduation thesis

Field: Linguistics

Supervisor: Nguyễn thị kim anh, m.a

Student: Nguyễn phan quỳnh trang, 48B - English

Vinh - 2011

In completion of this thesis, first of all I would like to express my sincerethanks and deep gratitude to my supervisor, Nguyen Thi Kim Anh for all herexperienced guidance, valuable suggestions and advice throughout this thesis

My gratitude is also sent to all the staff at the Department of ForeignLanguages of Vinh University, who always create favorable conditions for me tocomplete my study

I am grateful to my friends, who provided me with inspiration for theresearch topic and who helped me with the research data

Finally, I am thankful to my family who constantly gave me support andencouragement during the time my study was carried out

Vinh, May 20th, 2011

Nguyen Phan Quynh Trang

Unnaturalness is one of the most common mistakes that the majority ofEnglish learners, and even some advanced ones, make as translating passive-meaning sentences from English into Vietnamese In order to help learnersovercome those problematic translations, the author has done a research on thepassive voice in the two languages, English and Vietnamese The research hasthree main parts In the first part, some general descriptions of passive voice ineach of the language will be made to give readers certain backgroundinformation about this interesting language phenomenon In the second part,several contrastive points will be performed to explore the causes of mistakesoften made In the last one, some implications for teaching as well as suggestionsfor translating passive-meaning sentences from English to Vietnamese will bedone so as for learners to achieve good language transference

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i

ABSTRACT ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iii

ABBREVIATIONS v

PART A INTRODUCTION 1

I Justification of the Study 1

II Aims of the Study 1

III Methods of the Study 2

IV Scope of the Study 2

V Format of the Study 2

PART B INVESTIGATION 4

Chapter I THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 4

1.1 Definition of passive voice 4

1.2 Characteristics of passive voice 5

1.3 Views about classification of passive voice 6

1.4 The usage of passive voice in English and Vietnamese 9

1.4.1 The usage of passive voice in English 9

1.4.2 The usage of passive voice in Vietnamese 11

Chapter II SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES OF USING PASSIVE VOICE IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE 13

2.1 Passive voice in English and Vietnamese 13

2.1.1 In English 13

2.1.2 In Vietnamese 17

2.2 Similarities and differences between English and Vietnamese passive voice 20

2.2.1 Similarities 20

2.2.2 Differences 20

Chapter III SUGGESTIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 25

3.1 Some suggestions for better translation 25

3.2 Implications for English teaching and learning of passive voice 26

PART C CONCLUSION 31

1 Recapitulation of the study 31

2 Recommendations for further study 31

REFERENCE APPENDIX 1 APPENDIX 2

1. Eg: for example

2. Etc.: et cetera

PART A INTRODUCTION

I Justification of the Study

In the modern time of internationalization and globalization, English hasbecome the most commonly used language that has been learnt by more and morepeople in the world In Vietnamese, more than in anywhere else, learning English tocatch up with the time has become an ultimate issue

However, the learning of English in our country is not always satisfactory,Vietnamese learners, competent in grammar and vocabulary as they are, still makemistakes In English language, passive voice is acknowledged and used as agrammar point to teachers of English The difference in language origins marks abig gap between English and Vietnamese as well as their passive voice form.Moreover, Vietnamese people do not often use the passive voice, but usuallychange it into the active voice Or even when the passive voice is used, the wordorder in Vietnamese is different from that in English

That, as a result, has caused some misunderstanding in translation fromEnglish to Vietnamese and vice versa The study on differences of using passivevoice in English and Vietnamese, by contrast with others, has been a ratherneglected pursuit over recent years and few textbooks in the area on the Vietnamesebackgrounds

That is the reason why the passive voice in English and in Vietnamese hasbeen chosen for investigation in this study

II Aims of the Study

My study aims at:

 Presenting, describing and analyzing the passive voice in English and inVietnamese

 Identifying the similarities and differences between these two languages

 Making some suggestions for teaching and learning the passive voice toteachers of English

III Methods of the Study

The linguistic contrast in our thesis is intended to be description-inducedand comparison-induced rather than data-induced A number of materials ongrammar, notably on passive voice are studied to build up a theoreticalbackground for our thesis

IV Scope of the Study

Due to constraints in time and knowledge, the central focus of the study is onthe use of passive voice in English in comparison with Vietnamese Thoroughoutthe study, the similarities and differences of using passive voice in the twolanguages are drawn out The research is confined to the description, analysis andcomparison of the function, forms and meanings of the passive voice in English andVietnamese, which makes a ontribution to the improvement of teaching andlearning of English to Vietnamese learners

V Format of the Study

This study consists of three parts:

Part A: Introduction presents the justification of the study, aims of the

study Methods, scope as well as format of the study are also mentioned in thisfirst part

The most important part in the study is Part B: Investigation In this part,

the following three chapters are dealt with

Chapter I: Theoretical background

Chapter II: Similarities and differences of using passive voice in English

and Vietnamese

Chapter III: Suggestions and implications

Part C: Conclusion gives a recapitulation of the study and some suggestions

for further studies

PART B INVESTIGATION

Chapter I

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1.1 Definition of passive voice

Passive voice is not a derivative of active voice, which is outcome ofpeople’s different meaning expression Passive voice describes the whole process ofcertain event from the patient’s point of view It is a marked form of voice There

are three markers in passive voice, be, -ed, and by, which has its meaning and

significance respectively Typical passive could be classified into two categories,passive with agent and passive without agent, or, agentive passive and non-agentivepassive In the agentive, the agent will not appear but will be implicit in the context

In the English language, the English passive voice is formed with an auxiliary verb

(usually “be” or “get”) plus a participle (usually the past participle) of a transitive

verb For example, the sentence “I was punished” is called a passive voice because the subject “I” receives the action of the verb “punish” getting punishment Passive

voice emphasizes the process rather than person or agent who is performing theaction Passive (or passive verb) refers more generally to verbs using thisconstruction and the passages in which they are used In English, a passive verb isperiphrastic; that is, it does not have a one-word form, but consists of an auxiliaryverb plus the past participle of the transitive verb The auxiliary verb is usually a

form of the verb “to be”, but other auxiliary verbs, such as get, are sometimes used.

The passive voice can be used in any number of tenses

A.J.Thomson and A.V.Martinet in “A Practical English Grammar” (1989),

defined: “The passive of an active tense is formed by putting the verb “ to be” into

the same tense as the active verb and adding the past participle of the active voice”

Eg: The ball was thrown by the boy.

1.2 Characteristics of passive voice

Characteristically, English is a typical inflectional language, in which thereare various inflectional variants English belongs to explicit linguistic category Theactive-passive relation involves two grammatical “level”: the verb phrase and theclause In the verb phrase, the difference between the two voice categories is thatthe passive adds a form of the auxiliary and the past participle of the main verb Atthe clause level, passivization involves rearrangement of two clause elements andone addition (A) The active subject becomes the passive agent, (B) the active

object becomes the passive subject, and (C) the preposition by is introduced before

the agent The process of active-passive transformation for mono-transitive sentencewith nominal object can be represented:

Lan hit the ball

Active subject Active verb Active object

-> The ball was hit (by Lan)

Passive subject Passive verb Optional agent

The prepositional agent phrase of passive sentence is an optional sentenceelement Consequently, voice transformation can be expressed in this formula:

Noun phrase 1 + active verb phrase + noun phrase 2

Noun phrase 2 + passive verb phrase + (by noun phrase)

Although the structure of a sentence changes under voice transformation, its

meaning remains the same In Lan hit the ball and The ball was hit by Lan, Lan is

the “performer of the action” in both voice In the sentence structure, however, theactive subject corresponds to the passive agent

1.3 Views about classification of passive voice

The passive construction has been classified in many different ways

Summarizing the discussion of the passive scale in the “A Grammar of

Contemporary English” (1972), Quik set up the following subcategories.

 Agentive passives

Agentive passive involves with expressed agent and without expressed agent

Sentence (1) and (2) have a direct passive-active relation The differencebetween the next two is that the former has a personal, the latter a non-personal agent:

With expressed agents:

This is a passive with two possible active transforms depending on theinterpretation of the by-phrase

Sentence (6) is an active transform like (4) with a non-personal agent; (7) is

an active transform where the by-phrase has been given an instrumentalinterpretation Consequently an active subject must be supplied

Without expressed agents:

Sentence (8) exemplifies the most common type of passive, which has noexpressed agent, or agentless passives.

 Quasi-passives

(9) We are encouraged to go on with the project

(10) John was interested in linguistics

The passive sentences (9) and (10) represent a mixed class whose membershave both verbal and adjectival properties They are verbal in having activeanalogues:

(11) (The results) encourage us to go on with the project

(12) Linguistics interested John

 Non-agentive passives/ intensive active complement construction

(13) The modern world becomes more highly industrialized and mechanized

Sentence (13) has no active transform or possibility of agent addition, sine no

“performer” is conceived of The participles have adjectival values: compare

industrialized-industrial and mechanized-mechanical Beside a number of such

“resulting” verbs ending in –ize (organize, etc), this class includes “ existing”

constructions, as in:

(14) The house is already sold

The corresponding active of which is not (15) but (16):

(15) (The agent) already sells the house

(16) (The agent) has already sold the house

In this case, voice transformation involves aspectual shift from presentperfect

As in the case of (14), often have an indirect voice relationship Recognizing

that The house is already sold is related both to agentive passive The house has

already been sold and to the intense complement construction.

(17) The house is already gone

Granger (1983) has concentrated on the “be + past participle” construction,and classified it into seven categories, namely, passives, adjectival pseudo-passives,verbal pseudo-passives, mixed be + Ved combinations, usually passive category,peripheral combinations and stative combinations

Examples (18)-(24) illustrate them respectively:

(18) That attitude was maintained by the government in the further nine

days debates in the Lords.

(19) Perhaps the tick is rather more complicated.

(20) She has been rather elusive as far as I am concerned, so I do not

really know her.

(21) I am amazed at the price of houses out here.

(22) I feel we are all faced with this problem.

(23) I am fairly closely connected with that work.

(24) But I have these two houses that are built on to the next door’s back

garden sort of thing…

Granger’s classification is in great detail Actually the latter four categoriesare the borderline cases and they are very much related to, and sometimes can beput into the first category

As a matter of fact, though they choose different terms, Granger’s and Quirk

et al’s classifications are more or less overlapped For instance, Quirk et al’s centralpassives are the same as Granger’s passives, semi-passives are to some extent equal

to mixed be –Ved combinations Pseudo-passive are divided into adjectival andverbal pseudo-passives in Granger’s classification.

1.4 The usage of passive voice in English and Vietnamese

1.4.1 The usage of passive voice in English

The passive voice is used more often in writing than in speaking However,there are some particular cases in which the passive voice is employed, especiallywhen the role of the receiver is more important than that of the doer For instance,

in “The child was struck by the bike”, people will pay more attention to the child’s

health condition than to the bike However, people do not want to talk about who

does the action In the sentence “The vase was broken”, the performer of breaking the vase is concealed, but the message of “the broken vase” is still transferred The

doer may be afraid of some punishment or compensation Moreover, the performer

is not important, not known or known by many people because it is too popular For

instance, the sentence “My house was robbed last night” does not mention the doer

of the action as no one knows who the robber is Or in “Bill Clinton was elected

president”, everyone knows that the performers are the American citizens

The speakers want to put more emphasis on the main point of the sentence

For example, the passive voice “The poor should not be taxed by the legislature” focuses more on the point – the poor The active voice “The legislature should not

tax the poor” somehow diminishes the sentence’s essence (Grinker: 1994).

Eg: My bike was stolen (Xe đạp của tôi bị trộm)

In the example above, the focus is on the fact that my bike was stolen Thespeaker does not know, however, who did it

In the case of the passive voice we can notice that the agent can totallydisappear from the sentence and the patient takes the front position This has two

effects First, the patient becomes the topic of the sentence and second, because theactor is not mentioned, the action itself gets the focus of the information.

In our daily world we can mainly find two reasons why the actor is notmentioned in a sentence It is either unknown or unimportant

The first case is totally clear When we leave our house in the morning and

cannot find our car we will probably call the police and say something like: “My

car has been stolen” Of course we could also say: “Somebody has stolen my car”.

But that would not provide any new information because somebody is veryunspecific The real actor is unknown and that is why it will often be left out of thesentence

The second case is also not very complicated We take our car to the garage

and tell our colleagues during our breakfast talk: “My car is being repaired” We get a general murmur of acknowledge Of course we could also say: “Mr Smith,

the nice mechanic in that neat blue overall, is repairing my car.” However, our

colleagues will frown at us because they are simply bored by such detailedinformation and they will also start wondering what sort of special relationship wehave to that mechanic in the neat blue overall Moreover, it will be usuallyunimportant which of the mechanics repairs our car at the garage and thus will not

be mentioned at all

Other very obvious examples of situations in which the actor is unknownare general descriptions or technical manuals There we do not normally describewho performs an action but what actions must be performed

In fluent English, passives occur naturally and spontaneously, without aconscious change from ‘active’ to ‘passive’ In fact, active equivalents would be

hard to produce for sentences like: Rome was not built in a day The passive is

sometimes deliberately chosen in preference to the active, especially when speakers

do not wish to commit themselves to actions, opinions, or statements of fact of

which they are not completely certain: The matter will be dealt with as soon as

We always prefer the passive when we wish to avoid using a vague word as

subject (e.g someone, a person, etc.): After my talk, I was asked to explain a point I

had made Conversely, the passive may be avoided when we wish to make what is

described personal: They operated on father last night The passive is used in

English where other European language might prefer an indefinite pronoun subject

like “one” In a formal context we would avoid “one”: The form has to be signed in

the presence of a witness The passive is obligatory in notices such as English

Spoken, Loans Arranged, Shoes Repaired, etc Such notices are normally

abbreviated: English (is) spoken.

1.4.2 The usage of passive voice in Vietnamese

In Vietnamese, there is some controversy of whether passive voice exists ornot However, the passive meaning does Therefore, the term “passive voice” canstill be used so as for things to be synchronized and easier to understand In thispaper, the author will not go into details about the controversy, but will onlydescribe some background information about the passive voice

Vietnamese people do not often use passive voice in their daily lives, butmany writers do use it in their works Here are some cases in which the passivevoice is used First, they want to emphasize the result of something For example, in

“Hàng nghìn người bị chết trong trận động đất”, the result “hàng nghìn người”

(thousands of people) is emphasized Second, the writer or the speaker wants to

keep the subject of the two clauses the same “Nó phải học rất chăm chỉ mới được

mời làm việc cho công ty kia đấy!” (He made a lot of efforts, so he was invited to work for that company) has the same subject due to the passive voice “được mời”.

The last is they do not know who the performer is In the sentence “Hôm qua nhà

đó bị cướp” (That house was robbed last night), no one knows who the robber is.

The passive voice in Vietnamese is often expressed and recognized by thetwo words “bị /được” Therefore, the structure can be drawn out like this: “được/ bị

+ verb (unchanged forms) An example can be found in the sentence “Nó bị phạt”.

However, there are some cases that the two words do not perform passive

meanings: “Nó được gặp thủ tướng” The instances here demonstrated active voice,

not the passive one

Passive voice with the word “được” is used when people want to mention

passive meaning “Nó được cô giáo khen” On the other hand, passive voice with the word “bị” is used when people want to mention negative aspects: “Nó bị đánh”.

Nevertheless, not all passive meanings are marked with the two words above.There are some kinds of special passive voice in which some sentences still have

passive meaning without any of the two words For example: “Mặt tô đậm quá” and

“Anh sinh ra ở đâu?” are two passive meaning sentences without “được/ bị”.

In short, a relatively neglected aspect of the linguistic system is the resourcefor our investigation What we have done so far in this chapter is to look atdefinition of passive voice and some issues related to this, which works as a bridge

to the investigation in the next chapters

Chapter II

SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES OF USING PASSIVE VOICE

IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

2.1 Passive voice in English and Vietnamese

2.1.1 In English

Active voice and passive voice refer to the form of a verb In the active, the

subject of the verb is the person or thing doing the action For example: John

cooked the food last night In the passive, the action is done to the subject The food was cooked last night The passive of an active tense is formed by putting the verb

“to be” into the same tense as the active verb and adding the past participle of theactive verb The subject of the active verbs becomes the “ agent” of the passiveverb The agent is very often not mentioned When it is mentioned it is preceded by

“by” and placed at the end of the clause For example: This tree was planted by my

grandfather The passive occurs very commonly in English It is not merely an

alternative to the active, but has its own distinctive uses

Passives can be formed in four ways The first ways is a tense of “be” plus

past participle We have 13 kinds of passive voice corresponding with 13 tenses.

Here are six cases in which have common use including: present simple, presentcontinuous, present perfect, past simple, past continuous, past perfect

Eg: Active : He cooks/ has cooked the food.

At the moment, we are cooking the food.

He cooked the food yesterday.

He was cooking the food at 7 p.m yesterday.

He had cooked the food before we arrived.

Passive: The food is/ has been cooked.

The food is being cooked at the moment.

The food was cooked yesterday The food was being cooked at 7 p.m yesterday.

The food had been cooked before we arrived.

We form negatives and questions in the same way as in active sentences

Eg: The bread is not baked in a factory

Where is the bread baked?

The next is the future and modal verbs in the passive We use “be plus a

passive participle” after will, be going to, can, must, have to, should, etc.

Eg: We will bake the bread next -> The bread will be baked next

We are going to bake the bread -> The bread is going to be baked

We should bake the bread soon -> The bread should be baked soon

However, we can form passive sentence by using infinitive: “to be” or “to

have been” plus past participle.

Eg: He is/ was to cook the food

-> The food is to be/ was to have been cooked

The last way is using –ing form: “being” or “having been” plus past

participle.

Eg: He hated being made fun of in public

We form the passive with a form of “be and a past participle” The pastparticiple does not necessarily refer to past time For regular and irregular pastparticiple rules applying to use of tenses in active apply in the passive For example,

an action in progress now requires the present progressive Your steak is being

grilled and will be ready in a minute.

The passive occurs only with verbs used transitively, that is, verbs that can

be followed by an object For example: Someone found this wallet in the street change into passive This wallet was found in the street Many verbs can be used

transitively or intransitively

Eg: The door opened (perhaps by itself)

The door was opened (perhaps by someone)

The passive can refer to things or people

Eg: The Company has sent Lan to California for a year

-> Lan has been sent to California for a year.

Verbs like bring and give which can have two objects, e.g Tom gave me

(indirect) a pen (direct), can have two passive forms: I was given a pen by Tom

(indirect object become subject), and A pen was given (to) me by Tom (direct object

become subject) Because we are often more interested in people (or animals) than

things, personal subjects tend to be more common than impersonal ones Thus, I

was given this pen is more likely to occur than This pen was given to me In

sentences like the second example, to (or for) can be omitted before a personal

pronoun (This pen was given me) but not usually otherwise: This pen was given to

my father.

Many stative verbs cannot be used in the passive, even when they are

transitive: I love beans on toast (active voice only) Verbs like measure, which can

be stative or dynamic, can only be passive in their dynamic sense

Eg: Stative: This desk measures 125 x 60 cms

Dynamic: This desk has been measured

Only present and past progressive forms are common For example He is

being interviewed now He was being interviewed at 10 However, modals with

progress passive sometimes occur: I know Mark was going to have an interview this

afternoon He may be being interviewed at this very moment.

Transitive constructions with the pattern “verb plus adverb particle” (A gust

of wind blew the tent down) can be used in the passive: Our tent was blown down (by a gust of wind) For possible passives with “verb plus preposition”: The newsagent’s has been broken into Only a few verbs of the type “verb plus particle

and preposition” (We have done away with the old rules) can be used in the passive:

The old rules have been done away with.

Passive constructions are common after “verbs followed by the –ing form”,

such as enjoy, like and remember For example: Most people don’t like being

criticized and after verbs followed by a to –infinitive: He hates to be criticized We

can use the passive (-ing form only) after conjunctions such as on and after: On/

after being informed that her mother was seriously ill, she hurried back to England.

A few active verbs sometimes have a passive meaning: This surface cleans

easily really means “It can be/It is cleaned easily”.

A small number of verbs are used more frequently in the passive than in the

active For example be born, be married, be obliged: I am not obliged to work

overtime if I do not want to.

Adverbs of manner can occur before or after the participle: This room has

been badly painted.

English often uses the passive where other European languages use reflexive

verbs: burn myself, hurt myself, etc I was hurt in a car crash last summer We do

not normally use the passive when responding spontaneously: What is the matter?

-I have cut myself.