ABSTRACT
This chapter explores passive constructions in Chinese, which are usually marked by the morpheme bei. It explains issues concerning the bei construction and attempts to provide a principled account of its diverse patterns. The chapter provides a preliminary analysis of bei constructions, particularly the canonical patterns. The issue of bei constructions as passive constructions has long been of great interest and is still of great controversy among linguists working on Chinese, and naturally a number of characterizations have been made in the literature. Although bei has been generally acknowledged as the morphological marker of Chinese passive sentences, there has been no consensus so far on the syntactic function and even the part of speech of the passive morpheme. The chapter also explores the initial analysis to the problematic patterns. It provides an analysis within the dynamic syntax framework.
