Vietnamese Passive Sentences from a Typological Perspective

Author: Assoc. Prof, Dr. Nguyen Hong Con (PGS. TS. Nguyễn-Hồng-Cổn)

SEALS XVIII
The 18th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society

21-22 May 2008
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi

ABSTRACT

There exist different views on passive sentences in Vietnamese.  Some researchers claim that the Vietnamese language does not have passive voice, so does not have passive sentences.  Other researchers argue that Vietnamese may not have passive voice as a morphological category, it still have passive sentences as syntactic constructions. Yet, there is no consensus among these researchers as far as identification criteria for this kind of constructions is concerned.

Aiming at a more relevant solution to the above-mentioned issue, the present paper will critically review the different approaches to Vietnamese passive sentences and discuss about their syntactic structure from a typological perspective. The paper will have three parts: The first one presents a review of two different approaches to passive sentences in Vietnamese; The second one discusses about Vietnamese passive sentences from a typological perspective; The third one differentiate  passive sentences from other types of sentences in Vietnamese. 

 1.   Two different approaches to passive sentences in Vietnamese

The issues of passive voice/passive sentences in Vietnamese have always been the most controversial among Vietnamese linguists. Their different approaches to Vietnamese passive sentences could be put into two groups -the morphological approach and the syntactic approach: the former denies and the later acknowledges the existence of passive sentences in Vietnamese.

 1.1   The morphological approach 

Some researchers (Trần Trọng Kim 1936, M.B. Emeneau 1951, L. Cadière1958, etc.) claim that Vietnamese is an isolating language, its verbs do not have passive voice, therefore it does not have passive sentences as do inflecting languages (such as Russian, French, etc.). To transform an active sentence to the passive sentence,  the verb in inflecting languages has to change it’s form from active voice to passive voice.  The verbs in Vietnamese do not change their forms so they do not satisfy these strict morphological criteria of passive voice as a grammatical category.  Not intending to contrast active voice and passive voice in Vietnamese, L.C. Thompson (1965: 217) also considers that the constructions with được/bị are just the translation equivalents of passive constructions in Indo-European languages.  He calls these logical passive expressions and does not consider them as real passive constructions.

Besides the absence of passive voice as a morphological catergory, some researchers base on the fact that Vietnamese is a topic-prominent rather than subject-prominent language to deny the existence of  passive sentences in Vietnamese.  They argue that in topic-prominent languages there must not be  passive constructions because passive constructions are typical of subject-prominent languages which have passive voice.  This argument could be traced back to Ch.N. Li & S.A Thompson’s typological classification between two types of “topic-prominent languages” and “subject-prominent languages” (1976). These authors claim that passive constructions are very common in subject-prominent languages but usually absent or rarely present in topic-prominent languages. And if they do occur in topic-prominent languages, they usually carry a special meaning, like the adversity passive in Japanese.  Based on this idea of Ch.N. Li & S.A.Thompson, some researchers (Nguyễn Thị Ảnh 2000, Cao Xuân Hạo 2001) also think that there is no passive voice and consequently no passive sentences in Vietnamese.

Those who support the view that there is no passive sentences in Vietnamese also base on a conception that bị/được are transitive verbs so they could not be considered as passive markers.
Nguyễn Kim Thản (1977) considers that bị/được are independent verbs occupying the main role in the sentence’s predicate and are not function words marking the intransitive verb’s passive use, because:  In terms of meaning, được means receiving or undergoing something pleasant (for example: được ăn – be able to eat), and bị means suffering from something unhappy (for example: bị ốm - suffer illness) or it could be said to express an unlucky state of the logical subject.  In terms of grammatical characteristics, bị and được are still used as main verbs and have a high diversity of complements. Based on this argument, he concludes that these verbs still keep their full meanings and  grammatical characteristics of main verbs and not those of function words, and the subsequent constituents are all their complements. In other words, Nguyễn Kim Thản does not acknowledge bị/được as passive markers of intransive verbs and to him Vietnamese verbs do not have the passive voice (p.185-191).  This view is supported and further elaborated by Nguyễn Minh Thuyết (1986, 1998).  Despite the fact that these two scholars do not acknowledge the existence of passive voice in Vietnamese as in other Indo-European languages, they both consider that Vietnamese has its own ways of expressing passive meanings, which are the syntactic structures (Nguyễn Kim Thản) or lexical means (Nguyễn Minh Thuyết). According to Nguyễn Thị Ảnh (2000), the passive voice as a grammatical category is expressed by absolutely obligatory morphological devices is found only in subject-prominent languages. Vietnamese is a topic-prominent language so its passive voice does not have such particular marking devices.  To prove that Vietnamese does not have passive voice as a grammatical category, the author has provided many examples showing that được/bị are main verbs and are not function words marking “passiveness”.  This view is supported by Cao Xuân Hạo (2002).

1.2       The syntactic approach

In contrast to the first view, some other researchers consider that even though Vietnamese does not have passive voice as a morphological category, it does have  passive sentences as syntactic constructions.  Nguyễn Phú Phong (1976) acknowledges “the passiveness” as a grammatical category in Vietnamese.  He argues that it is possible to identify an alternation of active-passive sentences in Vietnamese which correspond to the translated active-passive sentences in French and points to the formal relations among constituents of each type of sentences in common terms.  He also considers  được, bị, do  passive auxiliaries.  Hoàng Trọng Phiến (1980) states that “in Vietnamese the opposition between passive and active voices is not done through purely grammatical ways but through lexico-grammatical ways”  (p.167).  According to this author, the syntactic structure of a Vietnamese passive sentence are  as follows:

-  The subject of the passive is the object of the alternative active.

-  The predicate of the passive  includes an auxilary bị/ được/ d  and a transitive verb.

 -  The agentive subiect  are optional to be present in  the passive.

                                                                         (Hoàng Trọng Phiến, 1980: 166-67)

Lê Xuân Thại (1989) also has a similar view when he claims that even though Vietnamese does not have passive sentences completely similar to those in inflecting languages, it does have sentences which could be named passive with the following characteristics:

-        The subject denotes the action’s patient, not the action’s agent.

-        The predicate  are added by bi/được.

-        The predicate may be followed by a clause.
For example:

(1)   Em   học sinh   này  được  cô giáo  khen

      adr.  student    this   get    teacher   appraise

    “This student is appraised by the teacher”

(2)   Thành phố   Vinh     bị      máy bay    giặc     tàn phá

         city          Vinh   suffer  airplanes  enemy   destroy

        “Vinh city is destroyed by enemies’ airplanes.”

Besides, he also acknowledges that bị/được could be absent from passive sentences, for example:

(3)   Bữa cơm   được      dọn ra

  meal        get  set out 

  “The meal (is) set all.”

(4)   Ngôi nhà   này     xây bằng gạch

 house      this  build    by bricks

 “This house (is) built by bricks.

Diệp Quang Ban & Nguyễn Thị Thuận (2000) also support the existence of passive sentences in Vietnamese.  They argue that, the passive voice in Vietnamese is not marked in the form of verbs but in the form of a special syntactic construction with established grammatical and semantic characteristics.  Accordingly they come up with the following characteristics of Vietnamese passive constructions:

- The appropriate grammatical means for expressing the passiveness in Vietnamese are function words  (bị/được) and word order.

- Verbs joining in passive constructions are transitive verbs which have semantic relations with entities expressed by noun phrases as subjects before được/bị.

- Semantically, the passive sentences have the following structure: i) The subject of the passive is assigned to the semantic roles as pacient, recipient, goal, beneficiary. ii) The types of state of affairs of passive sentences are actions with two semantic characteristics [+dynamic] and [+control].

          - Syntactically, passive sentences have two clauses in their construction:  C-V [C –V].

            In brief, according to these two authors, the passive voice in Vietnamese are not expressrd by the form of verbs but by a syntactic construction with specific grammatical and semantic characteristics, i.e passive construction/sentence.

2.  Vietnamese passive sentences from a typological perspective

2.1  Are there passive sentences in Vietnamese?

The review presented so far has shown that in order to prove the existence of passive constructions/sentences in Vietnamese it is necessary to clarify 3 points of controversy:

- Vietnamese does not have passive voice as a morphological category, therefore there is no passive construction/sentence.

-  Vietnamese is a topic-prominent language, therefore it does not have “passive construction” or the passiveness is a marginal syntactic phenomenon.

- Được/bị are not function words (verbal auxiliaries), but are modal verbs or lexical verbs, therefore they can not be used as passive markers.

With regards to the first point, we agree with the view that the “passive voice” as a morphological category should not be identified with thosepassive construction.  This view has been discussed by many authors from different angles (Nguyen Kim Thản, 1977; Hoàng Trọng Phiến, 1980; Lê Xuân Thại, 1989; Diệp Quang Ban & Nguyễn Thị Thuận, 2000).  Evidences from passive sentences in other languages also show that, the morphological forms of verbs are just one of the morpho-syntactical devices used to mark the passive voice (M. Kenan 1985, Shibatani 1994). If we take the strict morphological criteria  for  “passiveness”, even in such languages like English or French the passive voice will not meet this strict requirement, because the passive voice in these languages is not marked only by morphological form of the verb, but also by an auxilary (be in English, êtrein French) and word order. So it is possible to conclude the fact that Vietnamese does not express the “passiveness” by morphological markers and therefore does not have a passive voice as a morphological category does not mean it does not have syntactically passive constructions/sentences.  We will return to this issue later when we will discuss the syntactic characteristics of Vietnamese passive sentences.

With regards to the second point which considers that Vietnamese is a “topic-prominent” language (and not a “subject-prominent language) and therefore does not have passive constructions, we think there is a need to discuss more details here.  First of all, we should restate here Li & Thompson’s view that the topic (what the sentence is about) and the subject (denoting the agent of the action expressed by the predicate) do not exclude each other like in topic-prominent languages there are no subjects, or in subject-prominent languages there are no topics.  Even in a typical “topic-prominent” language like Chinese or Vietnamese, these functions do not exclude each other in most sentences. A syntactic description of Chinese sentences offered by Li & Thompson in a subsequent work (1981) also highlights that there are more sentences with subjects (topic on non-topical) than sentences with only topics (without subjects), and sentences with topical subjects prevail.  If we apply both the topic and the subject functions in Li & Thompson’s understanding to analyze Vietnamese sentences, we will see that Vietnamese has a large number of sentences where subjects are identical with topics (especially in the cases where predicate is a transitive verb).  Once the subjects are so prevalent, and the majority of transitive constructions also have subjects (which may be topical or non-topical), there is no reason why the “passiveness” is not present or it is marginal.  Moreover, it should be noted that Ch. N. Li & S. A. Thompson do not absolutely exclude the passive voice out of topic-prominent languages, they just do not consider it a typical passive voice, i.e. it is not “purely morphological” passive voice as it is in Indo-European languages.

Because of the typological characteristics of the Vietnamese language as an isolating language, its grammatical catergory in general and the “passiveness” in particular do not have  morphologocal markings as they do in inflectional languages.  In one of his research, Dyvik (1984) came to a conclusion that if “subject” is acknowledged as a part of sentence in Vietnamese, it is not as clear as the subject in Indo-European languages, because  grammatical properties of the subject in Vietnamese are more abstract.  Just as the subject, the “passiveness” could only be indentified by ways of rather “abstract” criteria.
In other words, both “subject” and “passiveness” occur in Vietnamese although they are not as clear as similar categories in Indo-European languages (p.7-12).

            With regards to the third point which is related to the syntactic function and meanings of được/bị, we consider the fact that these words are grammatically important and to some extent have lexical meanings does not exclude their function as markers of passive relations if we look at this issue from the gramaticalization viewpoint.

            - Grammatically, with various arguments Nguyễn Kim Thản (1977), Nguyễn Minh Thuyết (1976), Nguyễn Thị Ảnh (2000) and Cao Xuân Hạo (2001) all consider that được/bị are not function words used to mark the “passiveness” but modal verbs, or even lexical verbs occupying the role of main verbs in predicates.
Dyvik (1984), in contrast, tries to prove that được/bị are gradually losing their roles as a main verb to become an auxiliary marking the “passiveness” on its way of grammaticalization.  Agreeing with Dyvik, but we still think
that even if được/bị play the central
grammatical role in predicates as shown by some researchers, that does not mean these words can not function as passive markers.  This is similar to the auxiliares of passive sentences in English (be), in French (être), or in Russian (byt'). An auxiliary  like be, will have almost no semantic role in creating the lexical meaning of a passive state which results from the form of the transitive verb (the past participle), but will play the central grammatical role in the predicate of passive sentences.  The evidence is that it is the auxiliary be, and not the past participle, has the morphological agreement in persons and numbers with the subject of a passive sentence.  Thus, grammatically the auxiliary verb be is not different from a main verb in the predicate of active sentences.  Yet this does not impede it from being a passive marker.

            - Semantically, được/bị indeed still carry the meaning of “enjoy” or “suffer”. However, even this semantic feature does not prohibit them from being passive markers if we put được/bị in the process of grammaticalization.  In his article titled “The formation of oppositions among the three words “được/bị/phải”, Nguyễn Tài Cẩn (1978) considers that “bị” has shifted from a morpheme to a word, and from a lexical word to  grammatical one.  Đinh Văn Đức (1986: 118-19) offers more detailed explanations about the grammaticalization of được/bị and the relationships between their grammatical meaning of passiveness and their modal meanings: “There is a group of Vietnamese verbs such as  cần (need), muốn (want), có thể (can), toan (inted), định (intend), dám (dare), bị (suffer), được (get, enjoy), etc., which clearly have no meanings at all.  The lexical meanings of these verbs are very insignificant, they have been grammaticalized but they have not yet become true function words. These verbs have very narrow intensions so their extensions should be broad – they are always accompanied by secondary constituents. While expressing the meanings of need (cần - need), possibility (có thể - can), intension (toan – inted to , định – intend , dám – dare), wish (mong -wish, muốn-want), passiveness (được-get/enjoy; bị - suffer), etc., these verbs are used according to speakers’s attitudes towards and assessments of the realities.  These relations reflect the subjective consciousness:  When we say “Tôi được khen” (I  was appraised) or “Tôi bị phạt” (I am punished), the words được/bị are the grammatical markers of the passiveness but the passive meaning here could be understood depending on the nuances of “good luck” or “bad luck”, and the meanings of “good luck” or “bad luck” are completely dependent on the understanding and assessments of the speakers.  Consequently được/bị have temporarily become modal words…” (p.139-140).   Agreeing with this explanation, we think the fact that được/bị still keep their original lexical meanings while functioning as function words (passive markers) is quite normal of the grammaticalization.

            This analysis has highlighted that it is not surprising if được/bị still have the syntactic attitudes of a lexical verb (as a main verb in the predicates) and still keep their original lexical meanings (bị means suffering from something unhappy and được means enjoying something beneficial) while playing the roles of an auxiliary marking the passiveness.  According to Keenan (1985: 257-61), in languages with periphrastic passive, there are at least 4 types of verbs used to mark passive predicates: (i) intensive/relational verbs (like be in English, byt’ in Russian,  ªtre in French, etc.), (ii) giving-receiving verbs (like the passive constructions with get in English), (iii) motion verbs (like gayee in Hindi), and (iv) enjoying-suffering verb (like được/bị in Vietnamese).  Clearly, the fact that Vietnamese uses modal verbs được/bị as auxiliary verbs expressing the passiveness is not an exception.

            With the arguments presented above we have come to the following conclusion:

Theoretically and practically we have enough evidences to talk about the
presence of passive sentences in Vietnamese.

 

2.2  Typology of Vietnamese passive sentences

As presented above, there are different views on passive sentences in Vietnamese.  Even among those who acknowledge passive sentences, there is no consensus as far as their identifications are concerned.  We consider that, just like in other languages, Vietnamese passive sentences are syntactically transformed from the alternative active sentences, despite the fact that not all active sentences could be transformed into passive ones.  Of course, the syntactic transformations should satisfy certain semantic and pragmatic constraints of passive sentences.

            Formally, a prototypical passive sentence in Vietnamese could be identified and differentiated from an active sentence via the following syntactic criteria:

-  The subject of the passive is derived from the object of the alternative active.  Depending on each sentence, the subject of the passive  could be a patient, a recipient, a goal, or an intrument (see also Diệp Quang Ban  & Nguyễn Thị Thuận, 2000).

-  The predicate of the passive is derived directly from the predicate of the alternative active by adding an auxiliary được/bị before the transitive verb.

-  The oblique of the passive is derived from the subject of the alternative active.  These oblique is usually optional (in passive sentences without agentive oblique NP).  If they are not omited, they could be replaced before the predicate (in passive sentences with agentive oblique NP) or after predicate provided that a preposition bởi is added (in passive sentences with agentive oblique PP).

The transformation of  Vietnamese active sentences into alternative
passive sentences could be summarized as follows:

               NP₁        V        NP₂                    (active sentence)

              a)     NP₂ được/bị    V                    (non-agentive passive sentence)

              b)     NP₂   được/bị NP₁    V          (passive sentence with agentive oblique NP)

              c)     NP₂   được  V   bởi   NP₁        (passive sentence with agentive PP)

            (NP – Noun Phrase, NP₁ – Agentive NP ;  NP₂ – Patient NP,   NP₃ – Recipient NP

          PP – Prepositional Phrase, V-  Predicative Verb, Aux – Auxilary Verbs, Pr - Prepostion)

Following are some illustrating examples:

          NP₂   được/bởi    V

(5)    Nó       được        khen

          he       get          appraise

         NP₂     Aux         V

          “ He is appraised.”

(6)    Tôi      bị           mắng

           I        suffer     scold

            NP₂   Aux V

            “I am scolded.”

           NP₂  được/bị NP₁     V

(7) Nó được     thầy        khen.

          he get      teacher   appraise

NP₂   Aux       NP₁      V

       “He is appraised by his teacher.”

(8)
Tôi      bị        mẹ         mắng

I      suffer   mother  scold

                      NP₂   Aux NP₁        V

          “I am scolded by my mother.”

          NP₂   được/bị    V bởi       NP₁

(9) Ngôi nhà  này  được   xây dựng  bởi   những  tay thợ   lành nghề

House     this   get      build by        workers skilled

                   NP₂       Aux V            Pr                 NP₁

“This house is built  by skilled workers.”

(10) Tiếng  con chim sơn ca    bị        át đi     bởi    tiếng còi  tàu    rúc

       singing lark               suffer   drown   by       wristle train  hoot

                           NP₂             Aux         V Pr               NP₁

               “The    lark’ singing is drown by the train’s wristle.”

Thus, with regards to the structure of passive sentences in Vietnamese, the main means used to marking the passiveness are word order and được/bị acting as function words (auxilaries).  If we compare Vietnamese passive sentences with passive sentences from languages belonging to different typologies, from highly synthetic ones like Russian, to less synthetic ones like English, it will become clear the fact that Vietnamese, a typical analytic language which uses purely syntactic devices (i.e, word orders and function words) to express the passivenes, conforms to the general laws about the typological differences among languages.  These differences are represented in the following table:

Passive Types	Passive marking means	Language	Examples
Synthetic	form of verbs (purely morphological)	Russian	Rabotchie stroili dom“Workers built the house” Ø Dom stroilsa rabochimi “The house was built by workers.”
Analytic	form of verbs + auxilary + word order (morpho - syntactic)		Rabotchie postroili dom“Workers have built the house” Ø Dom byl postroen rabotchimi “The house has been built by workers”
		English	Workers built the houseØ The house was built by workers
	auxilary + word order(purely syntactic)	Vietnamese	Công nhân đã xây xong ngôi nhà“Workers have built the house” Ø Ngôi nhà đã được công nhân xây xong “The house has been built by workers.”

 3.  Differentiation of passive sentences from other types of sentences

It is necessary to distinguish types of protypical passive sentences in Vietnamese (identified according to the above-mentioned criteria) from other types of sentences which are similar in forms or meanings but which are not the passive per se.

  3.1  Passive sentences NP₂  được/bị V   vs. pseudo-passive sentences NP₁ được/bị V

NP₁ được/bị V is a type of active sentences which have the subject NP₁  denoting the experiencer or actor of the state of affairs expressed by the predicates V. V could be an intransitive verb (Tôi bị ngã - I fell, Nó được nghỉ - He has a day off) or a transitive verb (Tôi bị nghe lời phàn nàn - I have to listen to the complaints; Nó được xem phim - He got to watch the movie).  NP₂ được/bị V is a type of passive sentences which have the subject NP₂ denoting a non-agentive semantic role (patient, recipient) and V is a transitive verb (Tôi bị mắng - I was scolded;  Nó được khen - He was appraised). In this second type of sentences, the agentive oblique NP₁ could appear before V or could not.  It should be noted that when NP₁ is absent, the passive sentences NP_2/3  được/ bị V (11, 13) will have the surface structures similar to those of the active sentence type NP₁ được/ bị V  (12, 14):

                      (11)  Tôi      bị mắng

                               I       suffer   scold

                               NP₂   Aux     V    

                              “I am scolded.”

                                   (12) Tôi     bị       ngã·

I      suffer fall

                                           NP₁   Aux    V

                                          “I fell.”

(13) Tôi được tặng        giấy khen

        I      get     award   Certificate of Merit

NP₃   Aux     V      NP₂                 

      “I was awarded with a Certificate of Merit.”

(14) Tôi được   xem     phim

          I      get watch  movie

NP₁   Aux     V        NP₂

                                            “I got to watch the movie.”

Some researchers base on this characteristics to consider sentence type NP₂ ®­îc/ bÞ V (like examples 11, 13) as active sentences just as sentence type NP₁ ®­îc/ bÞ V (like examples 12, 14) and not as passive sentences.  To our understanding, these two sentence types look similar in their surface structures but different in their deep structures:  sentences like 12 and 14 have experiencer subjects (i.e, their subjects coinciding with the experiencers of process); sentences like 11 and 13 have patien subjects (i.e,  their subjects coinciding with  the patients of action).  These two types of constructions can be distinguished by a transformational test - adding an agentive NPbefore V:

       (11)  Tôi bị     mắng    >      (11’)  Tôi    bị        mẹ mắng

I     suffer  scold
I    suffer   mother scold

NP₂ Aux    V
NP₂   Aux    NP₁       V

“I am scolded”                         “I am scolded by my mother”

 (12)  Tôi   bị   ngã         >     * (12’)  Tôi   bị      mẹ        ngã

I    suffer fall                              I suffer mother   fall

NP₁  Aux  V                               NP₁ Aux   NP₁      V

            “I fell”                                * “I suffer my mother fell”

 (13) Tôi được tặng  giấy khen     >   (13’) Tôi được trường   tặng giấy khen

     I    get  award Certificate of Merit     I    get    school award  Certificate of Merit

NP₂  Aux   V NP₃                           NP₃ Aux   NP₁         V        NP₂

“I was awarded with a Certificate         “I was awarded with a Certificate of Merit of Merit”                                                       by the school”

 (14)  Tôi được xem   phim >    * (14’)    Tôi  được   trường xem    phim         

   I     get   watch  movie                           I      get      school watch   movie

         NP₁  Aux    V     NP₂                           NP₁  Aux     NP₁      V        NP₂

“I got to watch the movie.”              * “ I got the school to watch the movie.”

The test show that sentences 12 and 14 do not accept an agentive NP (mẹ, nhà trường) before V whereas the addition of an agentive NP before V in sentences 11 and 13 does not change the sentence meaning if not make it clearer.  From this test, we can conclude that   NP₂ được/ bị V (11, 13) and  NP₁ được/ bị V (12, 14)  are two different sentence types:  The former type represent a typological type of passive sentences (they are passive both in terms of grammar and semantics), the latter type represent a type of active sentences with the pseudo-passive form (they are passive in terms of grammar but active in terms of semantics), i.e pseudo-passive sentences.

   3.2 Passive sentences NP₂ được/bị V vs. active sentences NP₂  do NP₁ V

    Some researchers consider a sentence like “Hàng này do xí nghiệp chúng tôi sản xuất” (This marchandise is produced by our factory) a passive one (Nguyễn Phú Phong 1976, Nguyễn Kim Thản, 1977), .  According to us, this sentence is not a passive one because of the following reasons:

- First, do in this construction does not have the same functions as được/bị in passive sentences. The evidence is that do can not independently combine with a transituve verb to form a passive predicate.  For example, we cannot say:

 (15)
* Hàng            này    do sản xuất

  Marchandise   this   by     produce

NP₁                      Pr V

   * “ This marchandise  by produced”

In other words, do is always used together with the presence of an agentive subject before a predicative verb, so it ‘s not an auxilary marking the passiveness like ones được/bị.

- Secondly, the transformation of the object in active sentence into subject in  the sentence type NP₂ do NP₁ V are very limited. Only the pacient object could appear in the position of NP₂ , other types of object (recipient, tool, etc.) do not have this posibility.   For example, we can not perform the following transformation:

(16) Tôi   viết    thư    cho   Nam >    (16’)  * Nam   do   tôi  viết    thư    cho

      I     write  letter   to     Nam              Nam  by    I    write  letter  to

NP₁ V       NP₂    Pr     NP₃                              NP₃    Pr   NP₁  V       NP₂    Pr 

   “I wrote a letter to Nam ”                                  * “ Nam by I write a letter to”

3.3 Passive sentences NP₂  được/bị V  vs. de-trasitive sentences NP₂ - V

Sentences with a pattern NP₂ - V have non-agentive NP at the beginning of the sentence (NPis a recipient, pacient, etc.) followed by a predicate (V) which has the original meaning of a transitive verb, usually accompanied by an auxilary (before V) or an adverb (after V).  For examples:

              (17)  Cửa   mở rồi

                      door open already

                      NP₂    V Adv

                      “The door opened”

 (18) Cầu     đang    xây

 bridge  being build

        NP₂      Aux V

       “The bridge is being built”

(19) Nhà cửa   cuốn    sạch rồi

houses carry    away already

NP₂             V            Adv

“All the houses have been carried away”

According to some researchers,  these  NP₂ - V sentences could be considered as passive (Nguyễn Kim Thản 1977, Lê Xuân Thại 1994).  However, if we take into careful consideration all  NP₂ - V sentences as the above-given examples, it becomes difficult to say whether they are passive or active.   At first they may seem passive because without được/bị they are still understood as having a passive meaning. And if we add được/bị after NP₂, all the above sentences will become passive sentences :

 (18)   Cửa  mở    rồi                    >    (18’)  Cửa   được    mở  rồi

       door open already                                   door get    open   already

       NP₂    V Adv                                          NP₂    Aux    V      Adv

       “The door opened”                                   “The door is opened”

(19)   Cầu   đang   xây                  >        (19’)  Cầu     đang     được   xây

     bridge  being build                                    bridge being get    build

     NP₂ Aux     V                                         NP₂     Aux      Aux     V

   “The bridge is being built”                      “The bridge is being built”

(20)  Nhà cửa  cuốn   sạch rồi  .   >  (20’)  Nhà cửa   bị      cuốn sạch rồi

       houses    carry away already                      houses suffer  carry  away already

    NP₂           V Adv                                   NP₂     Aux       V Adv

    “All the houses are carried away”               “All the houses are carried away”

But if we add an agentive NP before V, all sentences will lose their passive meanings, or in other words, they have active meanings and become active sentences.  For example:

  (18)  Cửa   mở    rồi.         >             (18”)  Cửa    mẹ mở      rồi

door open already                                      door mother open already

NP₂ V     Adv                                           NP₂    NP₁      V      Adv

“The door is open”                                    “The door, mother has opened it”

(19)  Cầu    đang  xây             >         (19”)  Cầu     thợ        đang    xây

   bridge being build                                      bridge workers being  bulid

NP₂      Aux    V                                            NP₂ NP₁          Aux      V

         “ The bridge is being built”                        “The bridge, workers is building it "

  (20) Nhà cửa cuốn sạch rồi              >     (20”)   Nhà cửa  lũ     cuốn     sạch   rồi

            houses  carry away already                        houses flood  carry  away already

                          NP₂ V         Adv                                    NP₂           NP₁      V Adv

                  “All the houses are carried away”            “All the house, the flood carried them away”                  

In the newly formed sentences, the function of NPs cửa, cầu, nhà cửa could be switch from the subject of sentence  to the topic of sentence. These transformation possibilities suggest that the sentences NP₂ -V could be a middle type between the passive and the active sentences, not yet be a typical passive sentence.  We call this as a type of detransitive sentences (see Nguyễn Hồng Cổn, 2004).

4  Conclusion

            The present paper discusses the issue of passive sentences in Vietnamese from a typological perspective of syntax.  Based on a distinction of 3 types of passive sentences which are purely morphological passive, morpho-syntactic passive and purely syntactic, and based on a variety of
evidences, the paper has demonstrated that:

1. Although it has no passive voice as a purely morphological category, Vietnamese still has passive sentences as syntactic constructions, marked by word orders and function words (được/bị); 2. There are 3 types of passive sentences in Vietnamese  (NP₂ được/bị V1, NP₂ được /bị NP₁ V, NP₂ được/bị V bởi NP₁) and all could be identified and differenticated from other sentence types by certain syntactic criteria.

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(*)Bài viết trình bày tại Hội thảo Khoa học Quốc tế Ngôn ngữ học Đông Nam Á lần thứ XVIII tại Malaysia, 7./2008.  In trong Journal of Southeast Asian Linguistics, Vol. 2, 2009

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