Markedness refers to the asymmetric phenomenon in a linguistic category. Unmarked item, compared with marked item,is more natural, more neutral, more fundamental, and has higher using frequency and wider distribution. From the perspective of markedness theory, the study, collecting 86 English passives and 85 Chinese passives(including 35 notional passives and 50 Beisentences), contrastively analyzes the unmarkedness of English and Chinese passives from the aspects of patient animacy, emotional color, and tense through example-illustration and description. The analysis shows that the unmarkedness of English and Chinese passives has different expressions in the three aspects. Inanimate patient has stronger unmarkedness in both English and Chinese passives, for it is more frequently-used than animate patient. According to people's cognition and language using habits, the emotional color of English passives and Chinese notional passives is neutral in most cases, so the neutral emotional color is unmarked.But in Chinese Bei-sentences, negative emotional color has stronger unmarkedness. As for the tense expression, English passives have wider distributions in time span and simpler structure than Chinese passives. Thus, English passives possess stronger unmarkedness in the light of tense. According to the analysis, the study proposes feasible advice for second language acquisition and translation.
