Abstract
In some languages, active voice can usually be converted to passive voice without any problems. However, there are languages in which the use of the passive voice is quite restricted. This paper analyzes the frequency of the passive voice in Korean, English, Chinese, and Japanese based on the text of the Book of Acts in the New Testament. In the English text, 302 passive constructions were identified, while the Korean, the Chinese and the Japanese text used 198, 104, 215 passive constructions respectively. Korean and Japanese showed no meaningful difference. The four languages also showed differences in the number of passive markers or forms and their usages. Japanese has a single marker for passive voice. In English, two forms are used: the be-passive and the get-passive. The situations of the two other languages are quite different. In Korean, we could enumerate eight or more passive markers. Chinese grammars usually classify four or five passive markers, although some grammarians count twelve passive markers in Chinese. In Korean, eight markers were used with significant frequencies(more than nine cases). In Chinese, the bei(被)-type was mainly used (75 of 104 cases), and the shou(受)-type showed a frequency of 27. We did not find any other passive markers with a significant frequency in the Chinese text.
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