| Summary: | This paper studies the nature of the BEI-construction in Cantonese, with Mandarin as the
standard language of comparison. Although the BEI-construction has been much studied in
Mandarin, the same in not true for Cantonese.
Although this construction has traditionally been termed a "passive", I will show that it
can have a different range of semantic interpretations in Cantonese. I argue that BEI is not
confined to passive, but is used under certain circumstances to form a causative construction
as well. The differences in behaviour between passive-BEI and causative-BEI can be seen in
tests with anaphoric binding. I conclude that while the passive structure is mono-clausal, the
causative structure must be bi-clausal.
The Cantonese BEI-constructions have an obligatory agent-phrase which cannot be
dropped. This differs from Mandarin and the challenge is to find an account for this
phenomenon, especially if we are to claim that this construction is a passive. The optionality
of the agent phrase is characteristic of passives and yet Cantonese deviates from this norm. I
argue that passive in Cantonese is a syntactic process and predict that only transitive verbs
may participate in this construction. I utilize the universal v-VP structure on transitive verbs,
proposed by Chomsky (1995), to guarantee that the external theta role must be retained.
I also examine the much debated status of BEI which is used in the BEI-construction.
Although this construction can be used to derive both a passives and a causatives, it does not
necessarily mean that two separate BEIs must be posited. I conclude that BEI can be treated
as a category-neutral element which can interact in both causative and passive structures. To
support this proposal I appeal to the functional versus lexical distinction of categories and
projections. === Arts, Faculty of === Linguistics, Department of === Graduate
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