The bei 被 construction

1. The bei被construction Li, Charles N. & Thompson, Sandra A. (1981). Mandarin Chinese - A Functional Reference Grammar. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

2. The passive in Mandarin • is generally applied to sentences containing the coverb bei被 • The simple pattern is NP1 bei NP2 verb • Ta bei jiejie ma le “He was scolded by his older sister.” • An even simpler form is when the second NP is dropped. • ta bei ma le “He was scolded.” • wo bei qiang le “I was robbed.”

3. 1.1 Adversity • The bei in Mandarin, like Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai and other Asian languages is used essentially to express an adverse situation. • Jiaozi bei (gou) chi diao le. “The dumplings were eaten by the dog.” • Nei zhi niao bei wo de erzi fang zou le. “The bird was let go by my son.”

4. Ta changchang bei ta laopo da. “He is often beaten by his wife.” • Can you say?: • Ta changchang bei ta laopo bao. “He is often hugged by his wife.”

5. 1.2 With verbs of perception or cognition • the sentence carries a negative meaning whereas the verbs alone have a neutral meaning. • Wo kanjian ni le. “I saw you.” • Wo tingdao le ni de sheng yin. “I hear you.” • Zhangsan bei ren kanjian le. “Mr. Zhang was seen by people.” • Nei jian shi bei ta faxian le. “The matter was discovered by him/her.”

6. Influence by Western languages • The number of bei constructions that do not express adversity is increasing, particularly in written language. • This is clearly due to the influence of Indo-European languages, especially English and also Russian. • This is due mainly to translators translating English passive sentences automatically into bei. • Previously (pre 1970s) the nonadversive use was limited to writing and some speech primarily with verbs borrowed or introduced into Chinese in modern times. • E.g.. xuan 选 jiefang 解放 fanyi 翻译

7. 1.3 English passive • often does not correspond to the bei construction in Mandarin. • The converse is also true. • Nei ben shu yijing chuban le. “That book has already been published.” • Ta shuo de hua ren ren dou dong. “What he/she said was understood by everyone.”

8. Generalization • The topic prominence of Mandarin, together with the restrictions of the bei construction to adverse messages combine to reduce the usage of passive in Mandarin Chinese.

9. 是的 Non adverse • Zhei ben xiaoshuo shi wo muqin xie de. “This novel was written by my mother.” • Compare: *Zhei ben shu bei wo muqin xie de. • Zhei ge fangzi shi zhangsan sheji 设计de. “This house was designed by Zhangsan.”

10. Indirect Object adversely affected • The IO can represent the one adversity affected in a bei sentence. • Tamen wen le wo xuduo wen ti. “They asked me many questions.” • Wo bei tamen wenle xuduo wenti. I was asked many questions by them (negative feeling). • However very few verbs that take both an IO and a DO can occur in bei construction with the IO being adversely affected. Why? • Because most of these verbs have a positive meaning.

11. Bei被 and ba把 together • Bei and ba can occur in the same sentence. • Wo bei ta ba wo de dian nao da po le. “My computer was destroyed by him.” • In this case, the ba must come after the bei for logical reasons. The one who destroyed the computer is the agent, not the one being affected by the adverse situation. Therefore, the agent, which is the bei noun phrase, immediately follows the ba noun phrase.

12. The ba把 construction • In general, the direct object is placed immediately after ba and before the verb. • subject ba direct object verb • Kuai yidian ba zhei kuai doufu na zou. “Take this piece of toufu away quickly.” • Native speakers know by intuition when to use it and when not. However, how are you taught to translate this into English? • Compare the ba construction to topic prominence.

13. Variant forms • The most common variant forms involve substituting bei with gei给, jiao叫, and rang让. • Which of the four passive markers is preferred seems to depend on what dialect of Mandarin is being spoken. • The one distinction we can make is bei has no meaning on its own, whereas the other three do when used in other contexts. • This could possibly result in some ambiguity. • Wo bei ta tou le liang kuai qian. “Two dollars were stolen from me by him.” • Wo rang ta tou le liang kuai qian. “I allowed him to steal two dollars.”