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

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

vinh university foreign languages department

===    ===

nguyễn phan quỳnh trang

A STUDY ON DIFFERENCES OF USING PASSIVE

VOICE IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

( nghiên cứ u về sự khác nhau trong các h dù ng câu bị độ ng củ a tiếng anh và tiếng việt)

Field: Linguistics

vinh university foreign Languages department

===    ===

A STUDY ON DIFFERENCES OF USING PASSIVE

VOICE IN EN GLISH AND VIETNAMESE

Field: Linguistics

Supervisor: NguyÔn thÞ kim anh, m.a

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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

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

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

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

Vinh, May 20th, 2011

Nguyen Phan Quynh Trang

ABSTRACT

Unnaturalness is one of the most common mistakes that the majority of English learners, and even some advanced ones, make as translating passive-meaning sentences from English into Vietnamese In order to help learners overcome those problematic translations, the author has done a research on the passive voice in the two languages, English and Vietnamese The research has three main parts In the first part, some general descriptions of passive voice in each of the language will be made to give readers certain background information about this interesting language phenomenon In the second part, several contrastive points will be performed to explore the causes of mistakes often made In the last one, some implications for teaching as well as suggestions for translating passive-meaning sentences from English to Vietnamese will be done 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

ABBREVIATIONS

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 has become the most commonly used language that has been learnt by more and more people in the world In Vietnamese, more than in anywhere else, learning English to catch 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 make mistakes In English language, passive voice is acknowledged and used as a grammar point to teachers of English The difference in language origins marks a big gap between English and Vietnamese as well as their passive voice form Moreover, Vietnamese people do not often use the passive voice, but usually change it into the active voice Or even when the passive voice is used, the word order in Vietnamese is different from that in English

That, as a result, has caused some misunderstanding in translation from English to Vietnamese and vice versa The study on differences of using passive voice in English and Vietnamese, by contrast with others, has been a rather neglected pursuit over recent years and few textbooks in the area on the Vietnamese backgrounds

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

II Aims of the Study

My study aims at:



 Identifying the similarities and differences between these two languages

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

III Methods of the Study

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

IV Scope of the Study

Due to constraints in time and knowledge, the central focus of the study is on the use of passive voice in English in comparison with Vietnamese Thoroughout the study, the similarities and differences of using passive voice in the two languages are drawn out The research is confined to the description, analysis and comparison of the function, forms and meanings of the passive voice in English and Vietnamese, which makes a ontribution to the improvement of teaching and learning 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 this first 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 of people‟s different meaning expression Passive voice describes the whole process of certain 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-agentive passive 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 the action Passive (or passive verb) refers more generally to verbs using this construction and the passages in which they are used In English, a passive verb is periphrastic; that is, it does not have a one-word form, but consists of an auxiliary verb 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 there are various inflectional variants English belongs to explicit linguistic category The active-passive relation involves two grammatical “level”: the verb phrase and the clause In the verb phrase, the difference between the two voice categories is that the passive adds a form of the auxiliary and the past participle of the main verb At the clause level, passivization involves rearrangement of two clause elements and one 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 sentence

with 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 sentence element 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, the active 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 difference between 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 the interpretation 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 instrumental interpretation Consequently an active subject must be supplied

Without expressed agents:

Sentence (8) exemplifies the most common type of passive, which has no expressed 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 members have both verbal and adjectival properties They are verbal in having active analogues:

(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 present perfect

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 categories are the borderline cases and they are very much related to, and sometimes can be put 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 central passives 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 and verbal 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, especially when 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 p c a t i b tr m

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

In the case of the passive voice we can notice that the agent can totally disappear 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 the actor 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 not mentioned 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 very unspecific The real actor is unknown and that is why it will often be left out of the sentence

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 detailed information and they will also start wondering what sort of special relationship we have to that mechanic in the neat blue overall Moreover, it will be usually unimportant 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 unknown are general descriptions or technical manuals There we do not normally describe who performs an action but what actions must be performed

In fluent English, passives occur naturally and spontaneously, without a conscious 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 or not However, the passive meaning does Therefore, the term “passive voice” can still be used so as for things to be synchronized and easier to understand In this paper, the author will not go into details about the controversy, but will only describe some background information about the passive voice

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

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

keep the subject of the two clauses the same “N ph i h c r t ch m ch m i c

m i l m vi c cho c ng ty kia y ” (He made a lot of efforts, so he was invited to work for that company) has the same subject due to the passive voice “ c m i”

The last is they do not know who the performer is In the sentence “ m qua nh

b c p” hat house was robbed last night), no one knows who the robber is

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

+ verb (unchanged forms) An example can be found in the sentence “N b ph t”

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

meanings: “N c gặp th t ng” The instances here demonstrated active voice,

not the passive one

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

passive meaning “N c c giáo khen” On the other hand, passive voice with the word “bị” is used when people want to mention negative aspects: “N b ánh”

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 t m quá” and

“Anh sinh ra ở âu?” are two passive meaning sentences without “ c/ bị”

In short, a relatively neglected aspect of the linguistic system is the resource for our investigation What we have done so far in this chapter is to look at definition 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 the active verb The subject of the active verbs becomes the “ agent” of the passive verb 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, present continuous, 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

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 past participle does not necessarily refer to past time For regular and irregular past participle 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

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