Empathy and the use of passive sentences in Japanese : compared with English

Kuno (1978) has proposed some general principles concerning "empathy." They are Surface Structure Empathy Hierarchy, Speech Act Empathy Hierarchy, Topic Empathy Hierarchy and others. The empathy relationships of passive sentences are different from those of active sentences in terms of Surface Structure Empathy Hierarchy. We have compared the use of passive sentences in Japanese with that in English, using The Widening Gyre written by Robert B. Parker and its translated version. To summarize, passive sentences in Japanese are used in ordr that the conflict between the empathy hierachies is avoided, and those in English are used when the agent can not be mentioned. It seems that the difference of the use of passive sentences between English and Japanese comes from the fact that English is sentence-oriented language and Japanese is discourse-oriented language.departmental bulletin pape