Resumen de Internal and External Mechanisms of Englishization: Changes in Marked and Unmarked Chinese Passive Constructions

Liulin Zhang, Luke Amoroso

• English

  The Chinese language is changing, and like other languages, has been becoming more like English. This article focuses on the Englishization (Europeanization) of certain Chinese passive constructions. Previous research indicates that written Chinese has seen an increase in the use of the 被 bèi passive construction (BEIC) and a concomitant decrease in use of the notional passive construction (NPC) over time. This assertion is supported by a corpus-based analysis. An apparent-time research study shows that, in general, younger, more educated participants (those hypothesized to have more exposure to English) are more likely to use BEIC than are older, less educated participants in the sentence continuation task. However, this difference between groups is not captured in the binary forced choice task due to the increased use of BEIC under a conscious condition by the older, less educated participants. This finding sheds light on the psychological mechanism of internalization involved with Englishization.

• 中文

  正如世界上的许多语言一样，自十九世纪末二十世纪初以来，汉语语法不断欧化，尤其变得越来越接近英语。围绕着汉语书面语中的被动表达，前人研究指出“被”字句的使用频率在不断增高，而汉语特有的无标记被动句的适用范围越来越小。这一观察得到了历时语料的支撑。同时，视时实验的研究结果显示，相对于年长、受教育程度较低的被试，年轻、受教育程度较高的被试在自由造句时更青睐“被”字句，可是这一差异在单项选择题中并不明显：相对于自由造句任务考察被试对语言下意识的使用，单项选择题考察的语言知识需要有意识的控制，年轻、受教育程度高的使用者在两个任务中的表现没有明显差异；可是年长、受教育程度高的被试在单项选择题中自觉地提高了“被”字句的使用频率。这说明汉语欧化的社会机制是通过教育，由受高等教育的年轻一代向全社会扩散；心理机制则是从外在的显性知识不断内化以至于达到完全自动化的过程。