英語の受身と日本語の受身 : 二つの構文の乖離について

概要

論文の詳細を見る
Japanese students of English tend to make errors and mistakes attributable to the difference in functions between the Japanese and English passives. R. Lakoff 1973 cites the following examples : 1. The accident was occurred on June 19. 2. Bill was died last night. These errors were very likely caused by the students at an elementary level who did not know that intransitive verbs cannot be passivized in English. However, another factor relating to these errors needs to be discussed. The students were not only unaware of the syntactic difference but also the functional difference between Japanese and English passives. Japanese passives are appropriate to express the encoder's personal attachment to the passive subject, whereas passives in English are frequently used to make a statement detached from personal experience. Also, the English passive has another important function in clarifying and maintaining the focus of the discourse in which the statement appears. This paper discusses these two functional aspects of the English passive, i. e., detachment and cohesion, from a Japanese student's perspective. It is suggested that the study of the English passive as a cohesive device will be beneficial to students of English.
山形県立米沢女子短期大学の論文
1993-12-28