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Article In: International Journal of Corpus Linguistics: Online-First Articles

The passive voice of subjective experience and objective response

A corpus-assisted analysis of the semantic-pragmatic interface of the Chinese 遭 zāo, 受 shòu, and 得到 dédào constructions

ORCiD logo with link | Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
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Abstract
The passive voice in Chinese is the focus of extensive research seeking to understand its diverse discourse functions. Adopting a corpus-assisted approach, this paper brings attention to an underexplored category of passives — Chinese lexical passive constructions (LPCs) — and analyzes the semantic and pragmatic aspects of the zāo, shòu, and dédào structures. Quantitative and qualitative analysis helps to identify the semantic frames triggered by each LPC, highlighting potential differences in how events are conceptualized. Based on evidence from three corpora representing distinct discourse domains, the paper contends that LPCs differ in the range of events they represent as well as the affective valence they convey. As such, they constitute three distinct ways of conceptualizing the effects of an action, allowing the speaker to express their subjective-objective response to the event. This supports the unique form-function relationship of each LPC and informs the pragmatic implications involved in their selection.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Chinese LPCs — An overview
  • 3.Data and methodology
    • 3.1Corpora and data
    • 3.2Methods
  • 4.Semantic frames associated with LPCs
    • 4.1Semantic frames triggered by the zāo construction
    • 4.2Semantic frames evoked by the shòu construction
    • 4.3Semantic frames activated by the dédào construction
    • 4.4Overlapping frames among the LPCs
  • 5.Affective valence of LPCs
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • The following glosses are used throughout this paper
  • References
References (37)
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