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

116 Nguyễn Hồng Cổn
(19) Nhà cửa cuốn sạch rồi . > (19’) 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 were carried away. All the houses were carried away.
But if we add an agentive NP1 before V, all the sentences lose their passive meanings, or in
other words, they have active meanings and become active sentences. For example:
(17) Cửa mở rồi. > (17”) 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.
(18) Cầu đang xây > (18”) 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 are building it.
(19) Nhà cửa cuốn sạch rồi > (19”) 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 were carried away. All the houses, the flood carried them away.
In the newly formed sentences, the function of NPs cửa, cầu, nhà cửa could be switched
from the subject of sentence to the topic of sentence. These transformational possibilities
suggest that the sentences of type NP2 - V could be a middle type between passive and
active sentences, instead of typical passive sentences. We call this a type of detransitive
sentence (see Nguyễn Hồng Cổn, 2004).
4 Conclusion
The present paper discusses the issue of passive sentences in Vietnamese from a
perspective of syntactic typology. Based on a distinction of 3 types of passive sentences
which are either purely morphologically, morpho-syntactically, or purely syntactically
passive, and based on a variety of evidence, 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 differentiated from other
sentence types by certain syntactic criteria.
References
Cadière, L. 1958. Syntaxe de la langue vietnamiene. Paris: Ecole Francaise d’Extrême-
Orient. Publications de l’EFEO, 42.
Emeneau, M.B. 1951. Studies in Vietnamese (Anamese) grammar. University of California
publications in linguistics (Vol. 8). Berkeley: University of California Press.