1、 华中科技大学硕士学位论文基于语料库的中国学习者英语被动语态习得的研究姓名：庄红玲申请学位级别：硕士专业：外国语言学及应用语言学指导教师：阙紫江20050401华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文摘 要被动语态是英语中一个很重要的语法项目,对中国学习者而言是一个难点。由于英语和中文被动语态在构成方式，结构特点和时态等方面存在很大的差异，中国的英语学习者在习得英语被动语态时由于受母语的负迁移的影响，难免会遇到很多的学习障碍。然而，对于中国学习者习得英语被动语态的状况鲜有人来进行研究。而以往国内的被动语态的研究多是对英、汉被动含义进行对比分析,以找出英汉被动语态的相似和不同,而使用语料库
2、的研究方法来对中国学习者的被动语态习得进行的研究仍很欠缺 ,而国外的使用语料库来研究母语为汉语的学习者的研究就更是寥寥无几。而事实上使用语料库这一研究工具来对不同的学习者进行基于语料库的对比研究，从而对中国学习者的被动语态习得情况进行分析和总结，对于被动语态的教和学都是会有很大的启发和促进作用的。本研究试图通过对中国学习者语料库及选自英语国家语料库中的五个子库的相关语料的对比分析,了解中国学习者与本土学习者对英语被动语态的使用的分布情况以及使用特点，在此基础上，对学习者在被动语态上的误用进行分类分析，并对学习者产生错误的原因进行分析及总结。研究结果表明，英语中“ Be-Ven ”这一典型结构是
3、中国学习者使用最频繁的表达被动含义的结构。同时，通过分析，揭示了中国学习者被动使用时常犯的普遍性错误，其中在所有的错误中所占比例最大的是被动使用不足。而产生这些错误的主要原因是受母语的负迁移的影响,而学生对被动语态语法规则的掌握不熟练以及对英语中动词的复杂用法不熟悉也是导致错误的重要原因。本文对中国学习者被动语态的习得情况进行了总结，并在此基础上对被动语态教学提供了建设性意见，因此具有一定的现实意义和使用价值。关键词:被动语态 中国学习者 语料库 对比研究III华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文AbstractThe passive voice is a crucial gramm
4、ar item in English, for Chinese learners, it is adifficult grammar point. However, Due to the great difference which exists between theChinese passive voice and the English passive voice, such as in the aspects of the ways offormation, the characteristics of the structure, the tense etc, the Chinese
5、 learners willinevitably come across a lot of obstacles in the process of acquiring the passive voice. Sofar the research about the acquisition of the Chinese learners English passive voice is stilllacking. The domestic research about the English passive voice is mainly restricted to thetheory and c
6、omparative study between Chinese passive voice and English passive voice,aiming at finding out the similarity and difference of the two kinds of passive voices.While the corpus-based study of the acquisition of the Chinese learners English passivevoice remains unexplored, still less the study abroad
7、 of the passive voice acquisition of thelearners whose native language is Chinese.As a matter of fact, it is of great significance to analyze and conclude the Chineselearners acquisition of the English passive voice and put forward some suggestions andenlightenment for the foreign language learning
8、and teaching, basing on the corpus whichis a helpful and useful resource for the EFL.This thesis is aimed at revealing the distribution and characteristics of the passivevoice employed by Chinese students by comparing the utilization of passive voice in ST3,a subcategory of CLEC (Chinese Learner Eng
9、lish Corpus), with that in five sub-corporafrom BNC (British National Corpus). It is a computer-aided and corpus-based study. Theconcordance tool, Wordsmith is employed. Based on the study, it attempts to classify themisutilization of passive voice by Chinese learners, analyze the reasons that resul
10、t in themistakes.The result of this study indicates that “Be-Ven”, the typical structure of the passiveI华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文voice in English, is the most frequently used pattern by Chinese students to conveypassiveness. In the meantime, mistakes that are made universally by Chinese students arere
11、searched into and found out. Types of mistakes are classified into different groupsaccording to their nature, while causes for the production of mistakes are analyzed. At thesame time, the reasons resulting in the production of these mistakes are also investigatedand given. First of all, negative tr
12、ansfer of the first language accounts for the mostmistakes made by the students. Learners un-solid memorizing of the basic rules withregard to the forms of past participles and their unfamiliarity with the complicated verbs ofEnglish language also leads to the misutilization of passive voice by stud
13、ents.At last, a conclusion is drawn to the acquisition of the Chinese learners Englishpassive voice, based on which some constructive advice is provided to the teaching ofpassive voice, so this study is of empirical and realistic value.Key words: passive voice, Chinese learners, corpus, comparative
14、studyII独创性声明本人声明所呈交的学位论文是我个人在导师指导下进行的研究工作及取得的研究成果。尽我所知，除文中已经标明引用的内容外，本论文不包含任何其他个人或集体已经发表或撰写过的研究成果。对本文的研究做出贡献的个人和集体，均已在文中以明确方式标明。本人完全意识到，本声明的法律结果由本人承担。学位论文作者签名：日期： 年月 日学位论文版权使用授权书本学位论文作者完全了解学校有关保留、使用学位论文的规定，即：学校有权保留并向国家有关部门或机构送交论文的复印件和电子版，允许论文被查阅和借阅。本人授权华中科技大学可以将本学位论文的全部或部分内容编入有关数据库进行检索，可以采用影印、缩印或扫描等
15、复制手段保存和汇编本学位论文。保密，在_ _年解密后适用本授权书。本论文属于 不保密。（请在以上方框内打“”）学位论文作者签名：日期：年月日指导教师签名：日期：年月华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文IntroductionThe significance of the present studyThe passive voice is a crucial grammar item in English, for Chinese learners, it is adifficult grammar point. However, so far the research about t
16、he acquisition of the Chineselearners English passive voice is still lacking. The domestic research about the Englishpassive voice is mainly restricted to the theory and comparative study between Chinesepassive voice and English passive voice, aiming at finding out the similarity anddifference of th
17、e two kinds of passive voices. While the corpus-based study of theacquisition of the Chinese learners English passive voice remains unexplored, still lessthe study abroad of the passive voice acquisition of the learners whose native language isChinese. For example, Yip (1995)s study is concerned abo
18、ut the pseudo passives, and thesubject of the study is only confined to the students of Taiwan. According to this, thisresearch attempts to probe into the acquisition of the Chinese learners English passivevoice based on the corpus-CLEC（The Chinese Learners English corpus ）and thereference corpus- f
19、ive sub-corpora from BNC (The British National Corpus), then themisemploying phenomenon of the Chinese learners English passive voice will beclassified and analyzed so as to give some suggestions and hints to the teaching andlearning of the passive voice.The reasons for the present researchAs it is
20、well known, the English passive voice is one of the most important anddifficult grammar points in the English language, which has been paid great attention bythe linguists. As an English learner, the author picks up this topic mainly due to thefollowing reasons:Firstly, due to the great difference w
21、hich exists between the Chinese passive voice andEnglish passive voice, such as in the aspects of the ways of formation, the characteristics1华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文of the structure, the tense etc, the Chinese learners will inevitably come across a lot ofobstacles in the process of acquiring the pass
22、ive voice. Previous studies of the passivevoice tend to be comparative analyses of the Chinese passive and English passive whichaim to find out the difference between each other, while the Chinese learners acquisitionof the English passive voice has been paid little attention to and seldom researche
23、d. As amatter of fact, it is of great significance to analyze and conclude the Chinese learnersacquisition of the English passive voice and put forward some suggestions andenlightenment for the foreign language learning and teaching, basing on the corpus whichis a helpful and useful resource for the
24、 EFL.Secondly, on reflecting on the authors experience of being a college English teacher,the author has also come to realize that learning obstacles always exist in the process ofthe students learning or utilizing the English passive voice. Thus the author was inspiredby the idea of doing a further
25、 research into this area.Last but not least, it is sincerely hoped that the study in this paper can be helpful toboth language teaching and learning, as well as that more attention could be drawn to theacquisition of the passive voice.Overview of the thesisOverall, this thesis consists of five parts
26、, the content of which are listed as following:The introduction section of this thesis introduces the background in this field based onwhich this study is developed, explains the reasons of present study and draws the outlineof the thesis.Part one summarizes various definitions on the passive voice,
27、 the classification of theEnglish passive voice as well as the functions of passive voice. A summary of the previousstudy on passive voice is also provided in this part.Part two then focuses on the methodology of this study, with research questions, thecorpus, the searching tools, data analysis intr
28、oduced.2华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文Part three hereby reports the results based on the data, on top of these results, thediscussion part then attempts to provide the answers to the questions raised in thisresearch.Finally comes to the conclusion part which presents the major findings, revealspedagogical
29、implications and limitation of the present study, as well as putting forwardsuggestions for the further study.3华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文1 Literature review1.1 Corpus Linguistics, Learner Corpora and SLA ResearchSince the present research adopts a corpus linguistic approach and is based on thelearner c
30、orpora to investigate the Chinese English learners acquisition of verb patterns, itis necessary for us to review the meeting point of corpus linguistics, learner corpora andSLA research.Corpus linguistics, as a newly emerging approach for studying language, is nowattracting more and more researchers
31、 attention. Leech (1991) emphasized its significanceby referring to it not only as a new methodology, but also as “a new research enterprise”.It can inspire some of our initiative ideas about language by using large numbers ofauthentic data; it can help us to solve those problems, which have not bee
32、n adequatelysolved by other approaches; it makes extensive use of computer for analysis available, andthus brings us into “an expanding universe” (Leech 1991:25) , and it depends on bothquantitative and qualitative analytical techniques so that it can provide us with bothstatistically reliable resul
33、ts and the precise data of each specimens usage.In light of all the advantages, the influence of the corpus linguistics has almostextended to every field of linguistic study, including language teaching and learning,which is one of the most important branches of linguistic study. In order to assist
34、theresearch in language teaching and learning, learner corpora has been constructed forresearch purposes and for practical use as well.With the purpose of studying Chinese learners English, the Chinese Learner EnglishCorpora (CLEC) has been constructed by Guangdong University of Foreign studies andS
35、hanghai Jiao Tong University under the leadership of Professor Gui Shichun andProfessor Yang Huizhong.As for the relationship of the learner corpora and SLA, leech (1998) proposed that4华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文learner corpora links corpus linguistic study with language teaching and learning. Theyprovi
36、de us with opportunities to solve some research questions, which will either not ariseor be difficult to address without a corpus.Thanks to the learner corpora, CIA can be used to analyze the data. The term CIA(Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis, see Granger 1996) was first introduced by Grangerand
37、has now been recognized by many scholars. Compared with early CA (ContrastiveAnalysis), CIA is more empirical because it utilizes large amount of authentic learnerlanguage, instead of presumably comparable material. Generally speaking, CIA involvestwo kinds of comparison: NL vs. IL (native language
38、vs. interlanguage) and IL vs. IL(interlanguage vs. interlanguage) (Granger, 1998).The first kind of Comparison (NL vs. IL) aims at finding the differences betweenlearners language and native speakers language. The objective of the second kind ofcomparison is to probe into the nature of the interlang
39、uage. While analyzing the data in thepresent research, we adopt the first way of comparison. By comparing the usage of passivevoice by Chinese learners and that of the native speakers, we try to explore the generalstate of the Chinese learners acquisition of English passive voice and the difference
40、of theusage of passive voice between Chinese learners and native speakers.1.2 The definition of the passive voiceA lot of definitions on voice are given in the way of dividing it into several classes,for example, the description of voice by Huddleston (1984), provides a useful definition:“Voice appl
41、ies to a system where the contrasting forms differ in the way semantic roles arealigned with syntactic functions, normally with some concomitant marking on the verb.The terms active and passive are applied on the basis of the alignment of the roles withfunctions in clauses that express an action. If
42、 the subject of a sentence is aligned with anactive role, with the role of agent performing the action, the sentence is called active. Ifthe subject of a sentence is associated with a passive role, the role of patient receiving the5华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文action performed, the sentence is called pass
43、ive, as illustrated in examples (1.1),(1.2):(1.1) Oswald assassinated Kennedy. active(1.2) Kennedy was assassinated by Oswald. passiveAccording to Jesperson (1933), active and passive are the means by which ones and thesame idea can be expressed in two different ways. The English passive is formed w
44、ith anauxiliary, generally be, but often also get or become, and the second participle: Tom beatsJohn (active) and John was beaten by Tom means essentially the same thing.With regards to Quirk (1985), voice is a grammatical category, which makes it possibleto view the action of a sentence in either
45、two ways, without changes in the facts reported:(1.3) The butler murdered the detective. active(1.4) The detective was murdered by the butler. passiveIn these descriptions two elements are inherent in practically all definitions of thepassive voice: the relationship with the active and the use of a
46、special form: be + pastparticiple. The relationship can be differentiated on the basis of the types of relationshipthey recognize. Other forms are sometimes mentioned alongside the be + past participleform: get/become + past participle. (He got killed in the war), the so-called medio-passive(This sh
47、irt washed easily), and these constructions may be said to fulfill a function similarto that of the be+ past participle form, some of which will be discussed in the latersections.To Zhang zhenbang, he defined voice as “The voice in English is a category ofgrammar, it is a form of verb, which express
48、es the active or passive relation between thesubject of the verb and the action that the verb indicates. When the subject is the receiverof the verb, the verb should be changed to passive voice.（Zhang zhenbang, 1983） . ZhangDaozhen also gives the passive voice the similar definition in the book The
49、PracticalEnglish Grammar.Halliday（1985, 1994）classified the voice into two parts: middle and non-middle. If aprocess itself is only involved with one participant rather than the other participants, then6华 中 科 技 大 学 硕 士 学 位 论 文the sentence which signifies the process is in middle voice. For example,(1.5) The glass broke.(1.6) The baby stood up.In example (1.5), the glass is the receiver of the movement broke, in example (1.6), thebaby is the
