proto-southwestern-tai revised: a new reconstruction - seals 22

Vietnamese Passive 109
(especially in the cases where the predicate is a transitive verb). If 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” should be considered
absent or marginal. Moreover, it should be noted that Ch. N. Li & S. A. Thompson do not
absolutely exclude the passive voice from 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 categories in general and “passiveness” in particular do
not have morphological markings. Dyvik (1984) came to the conclusion that if “subject” is
acknowledged as a part of a 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, “passiveness” could only be identified by more
“abstract” criteria. In other words, both “subject” and “passiveness” occur in Vietnamese
although not as clearly distinguished as in Indo-European languages (p.7-12).
With regards to the third point which is related to the syntactic functions and
meanings of được, bị, we have not considered the fact that these words are grammatically
important and to some extent have lexical meanings to exclude their function as passive
markers if we look at this issue from the viewpoint of grammaticalization.
- Grammatically, 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 “passiveness” but modal verbs, or even lexical verbs occupying the central
role in predicates. Dyvik (1984), in contrast, tries to prove that được, bị are gradually
losing their roles as main verbs, becoming auxiliaries marking “passiveness”. Mainly
agreeing with Dyvik, we suggest that even if được, bị play the central grammatical role in
predicates as stated by some researchers, that does not mean these words can not function
as passive markers. This is similar to the passive auxiliaries of passive sentences in English
(be), in French (être), or in Russian (byt'). An auxiliary like be has 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 plays the central grammatical role in the predicate
of passive sentences. The evidence is that this role is fulfilled by the auxiliary be, and not
the past participle, is the morphological agreement in person and number 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 and 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 consider được, bị to be undergoing the process of grammaticalization. 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: