ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 has argued about a prosodic account of the origin of the Bei passives in Classical Chinese. This chapter First divides the passive Bei sentences into long Bei-sentences and the short Bei sentences. From the diachronic perspective, it is argued that the [Bei-V] passives in Archaic Chinese were born as Prosodic Words and compounds motivated by the disyllabic foot formation. When disyllabic verbs developed in the Eastern Han Dynasty, [Bei VσVσ] forms began to appear. The prosodic system, however, does not allow the [σ-σσ] verb-complement structure to be prosodic words and compound. The [Bei VσVσ] forms were thus analyzed as phrases, giving rise to the [Bei VP] and [Bei [NP V]] structures, which have further developed into the long Bei sentences (structured by A’-movement) in Mandarin Chinese. It concludes that prosody not only activates but also advances and further constrains syntactic structures in natural languages.
