Research ArticleOpen accessIn the keywordsA Preliminary Investigation of the Adversity Reading in Archaic WEI PassivesJun-Yu Zhang, Pei-Jung KuoProblem statement: It is well-known that modern Chinese imposes such a requirement on the subject in the BEI passive, but in fact it does not hold tightly in Modern Chinese. Only 50-75% of passives have the adversity reading on the subject. Approach: One approach to explain this phenomenon is to adopt the view of grammaticalization and trace the semantic change … …Journal of Social Sciences, Vol. 8, Issue 3 · 8 Aug 2012 · 7,594 accessesView PDFCite