备受

Ok. What's the deal with this？ I've seen this for a long time and always found it a little odd. Let's get into that.

From the test:

大规模 “自行车革命” 引发的环保生活方式备受___

correct answer being 关注。

The reason why this feels weird is how it comes into english and there we see why the chinese grammar here is weird (to an english speaker.)

Translation：

The environmental lifestyle that the large scale 'biking revolution'' has brought about is receiving a lot of attention.

Translation back into chinese:

自行车革命所引发的环保生活方式(在）受到很多关注。

Issues.

1. When 受 is used with some verbs it creates a pseudo adjective, e.g. (受欢迎）. Here it is modified with 很 and is not the same as 受到欢迎。 Mainly because no one says this, at least not directly, and mainly because 受到 is going to take 像名词性的东西。 This is an english speaker's take, but what 受到 takes, although it may be a 'verb', it sure as hell doesn't feel that way.

他很受欢迎。 and 他受到欢迎. Don't feel the same at all, even if we factor in for the 很。

2. 备 used in this sense does not appear anywhere else in the chinese language, it modifies 受 in this way and no other word, phrase, etc。 Due to this, it doesn't feel like other modifiers you are used to "太，很，etc"。

3. 备受 is really used only in fixed use with a small number of verbs, such as 关注. You simply learn to know these.

so, when you see 备受 you should think "has recieved a lot of ____"

4. Other things that make this feel weird. passive in chinese always feels weird, and especially when you're dealing with a passive that not only doesn't use 被 (or one of it's relatives), but uses a totally unrelated 备。

5. you cannot really omit the 备。 you can't let 受 sit there alone and you can't use a 很 to replace it. You can replace the whole thing with a 收到xx（很多，不少，etc) verb, but that is a lot of work.

6. word's that modify verbs that are placed directly before them can often be very weird. We avoid this in cases like 很受欢迎 by mentally making 受欢迎 an adjective. But we are totally fucked when we have cases like 多亏. 亏 here is a verb, meaning (fortunately). But, like 备受, this use gets weird because english takes one look at this construction and cringes.

I think part of the problem stems from 备受关注 and other 4 character phrases seem like they should be split evenly between two verbs, and while some dictionaries classify 备受 as a verb (and others simply don't have it) like 多亏 it's really verb that got a modifier attached to it and 'maybe' became a verb on its own.

Dictionaries try to rememdy this confusion by translating 备 as "to the utmost" and 备受 as 'to have had plenty of' (nciku). While I understand what they're getting at and why they translated it like this, so you can replace 备 with the translation to get it, this leads to some ugly and awkward english than only makes you wonder how the hell you're are going to make that translation less ugly and how you are going to use the word in chinese.

My dict:

备受虐待　be much abused

I mean seriously, where in english will this ever appear? He suffered a great deal of abuse, he was abused alot, he was greatly abused (slightly different), are all resonable utterances in english; be much abused, is not. Really, any "be much" doesn't quite compute in my head.

Anyway, I've got my head wrapped around this thing now, but it really doesn't feel like 口语 at all to me, which I don't like. By 口语 I mean anything I can imagine ever saying, ever.

I think we're done here. I'd love to get into 多亏, but maybe another time, or maybe another post on this closely related phenomenon.