Languages & Linguistics
Passive Voice
Passive voice is a grammatical construction where the subject of a sentence undergoes an action rather than performing it. This often involves using a form of the verb "to be" along with the past participle of the main verb. Passive voice is used to shift the focus of a sentence from the doer of the action to the receiver of the action.
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10 Key excerpts on "Passive Voice"
- Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreicher, Wolfgang Raible, Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreicher, Wolfgang Raible(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
67. The Passive Voice 899 67. The Passive Voice 1. Introduction 2. Morphology of the Passive Voice 3. Syntax of the passive construction 4. Functions of the Passive Voice 5. Derived vs. basic status of the Passive Voice 6. Cross-linguistic distribution of the Passive Voice 7. The passive in relation to some other grammatical phenomena 8. Special abbreviations 9. References 1. Introduction The Passive Voice is one of the most impor-tant types of voice alternations attested across languages. The majority of languages with voice alternations also have the Passive Voice. The definition of the Passive Voice which we will adopt in the present article largely follows Haspelmath (1990: 27). A construction is called passive if: (i) the verbal form used in that construc-tion is morphologically derived in some way from the form used in the un-marked (active) voice construction; and (ii) the actor is either unexpressed or ex-pressed by a non-obligatory oblique phrase with the derived verbal form; and (iii) the subject, if any, is not the actor; (iv) the construction is somehow restricted vis-à-vis the unmarked (active) voice construction in its distribution; and (v) the propositional semantics of the con-struction is identical to that of the un-marked (active) voice; specifically, the number of participants and their roles do not change. (Here and below, we prefer to use the term actor rather than agent; the former com-prises not only agents of action verbs, but also experiences and subjects of mental states denoted by transitive verbs; see Foley & Van Valin 1985 for a similar use of this term.) It is easy to see that the constructions tra-ditionally recognized as passive satisfy this definition; consider the English passive as an example: (1) (a) the active voice The mother washed the child. (b) the Passive Voice The child was washed (by the mother). In (lb) the analytic verbal form was washed is derived from the form used in the active voice (la).
eBook - PDF- Anja Wanner(Author)
- 2009(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Chapter 2 The English passive and linguistic theory 1. Introduction In this chapter, I will give an overview of research on the English passive, with an emphasis on questions that center around the form of the passive, particularly in the generative framework (section 2), and on placing the pas-sive within a larger context of constructions that have no agent subjects (sec-tion 3). Section 4 is a sketch of two of the main functions of the passive, and section 5 presents data from language acquisition that show that children as young as three easily form and understand passives, even those based on non-existing verbs, suggesting that whatever constitutes the process of passivization, it is acquired well before the age of five. 2. The status of the passive in linguistic theory Perhaps no single construction has received more attention throughout the his-tory of generative linguistics. (Baker 1988a: 305) Baker’s statement is certainly true for early generative grammar, which had a strong focus on transformation rules. Which construction would lend it-self more readily to a theory that was all about rearranging syntactic con-stituents? In order for a transformation rule to be applicable, the string on which it operates had to be described. In the case of the passive, that string seems to be an ordinary transitive sentence NP – V – NP, and all the spe-cific information about what happens in a passive – word order change, insertion of an auxiliary, adding a suffix to the verb stem, inserting a by-phrase – had to be put into the passive transformation rule: “Thus, the pas-sive transformation applies to strings of the form NP – Aux – V – NP and has the effect of interchanging the two noun phrases, adding by before the final noun phrase, and adding be + en to Aux ” (Chomsky 1957: 61). The Principles and Parameters approach (Chomsky 1981; Chomsky and Las-nik 1993), however, more or less eliminated construction-specific rules.
eBook - PDFCognitive Approaches to Pedagogical Grammar
A Volume in Honour of René Dirven
- Sabine De Knop, Teun De Rycker, Sabine De Knop, Teun De Rycker(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
For this reason “much of the L2 instruction associated with the Passive Voice includes the derivation of passive structures from active” (Hinkel 2002b: 233). The discussion of passive is often limited to the notion of voice and topicaliza-tion, without taking into account the degree of agency that gives rise to a whole family of perspective-taking devices. Learners and their teachers are offered step-by-step instruction on changing an active into a passive sen-tence (Master 1996; Steer and Carlisi 1998). The notion of a set of rules is considered essential for pedagogical grammar (Odlin 1994), but as Hinkel (2002a: 196) points out, “pedagogical grammar rules are frequently sim-plistic and do not account for the large number of cases or examples that learners come across in real life.” Often, the important element of sys-tematicity that exists in the motivated use of the passive or active voice in connected discourse has not been appropriately understood or presented to learners in a comprehensible way. In view of these facts, perhaps it should not surprise us that L2 learners are not able to master and flexibly use the passive structure along with the full range of other perspective-taking de-vices in the target language. 3. The present study 3.1. Objectives The current study examined the range of linguistic devices used by Chinese EFL learners and native speakers of English to encode and express the The use of passives and alternatives in English 393 specific perspectives they choose to communicate in the process of con-structing a coherent story on the basis of a wordless picture story book (Berman and Slobin 1994). The wordless picture book, Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer 1969) consists of 24 pictures portraying a series of compli-cated events involving the two main protagonists (a boy and his dog). They are on their way to search for the boy’s runaway pet frog. There are also four secondary characters (a ground squirrel, an owl, some bees, and a deer).
eBook - PDFTypology of Verbal Categories
Papers Presented to Vladimir Nedjalkov on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday
- Leonid Kulikov, Heinz Vater, Leonid Kulikov, Heinz Vater(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter(Publisher)
The prevalence of personal passives over impersonal passives and the instability 120 Masayoshi Shibatani of the middle voice system are considered to be a reflection of the following principle, which appears to be an eminently plausible functional principle of language. (6) Principle of Maximization of Contrast Maximize the contrast in grammatical meaning as much as possible. 3. Voice domain In section 2, we referred to the traditional views of voice citing Kruisinga (1925). The tradi-tional understandings of voice appear correct on three accounts; namely in that 1) they con-sider voice to represent a meaning relationship between the grammatical subject and the action denoted by the verb, 2) that they refer to the category of grammatical subject, and 3) they refer to action. We have already discussed the first point in the preceding section. Reference to the grammatical subject in the discussion of the active-passive opposition predicts that this opposi-tion typically obtains in those languages in which the category of grammatical subject is firmly established, this category embracing the agent of a transitive clause and the sole argument of an intransitive clause (see Dixon 1979). Indeed, in those languages, e.g. ergative-type lan-guages and Philippine languages, where the category of grammatical subject is not clearly es-tablished, the active-passive opposition usually does not obtain. Finally, reference to action in the traditional understandings of the active-passive opposition is an important one, as it has direct relevance to the task of defining the domain in which voice contrast obtains. Unfortunately, the traditional approaches did not take this reference to action quite seri-ously, resorting, instead, to the notion of syntactic transitivity in defining the voice domain. This mistake was inherited by the transformational grammar, which, in a formal manner, re-quired the structure to have a direct object for it to undergo the passive transformation.
- Jorunn Hetland, Valéria Molnár, Jorunn Hetland, Valéria Molnár(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter(Publisher)
Pi. pronoun/generic person noun —» generic subject constr. desubjective passive Within the Germanic languages, two of the paths suggested by Haspelmath are represented, the one with the combination of an inactive auxiliary and a past participle developing into the periphrastic passive (58i), and the one with a reflexive pronoun developing into the syn-thetic passive (58iii). Relating these alternatives of passive evolution to our model, it is clear that Germanic has used the INACTIVE forms of the active voice as a source for pas-sive formation, i.e. the stative/resultative and the medium. The other direction of the deve-lopment of the passive, i.e. using the ACTIVE of the active voice as a source (Haspelmath's last alternative (58iv)) is absent in Germanic. This pattern, however, is found in Finnish, where the generic subject construction has developed into an actional passive construction (example cited from Andersen 1991): (59) Auto oste-taan. car (nom) buy (Indef) 'The car is being bought' or literally One bought the car.' Most of the Germanic languages, however, have actional passive constructions, as dis-cussed above, but with a different historical origin. The actional passive in German and Scandinavian is a result of a further expansion either of the periphrastic passive (German, Icelandic, Norwegian and Danish), or of the synthetic i-passive (Swedish). Concerning the distribution of the synthetic and periphrastic passive alternatives in the historical development of the Germanic languages, it is interesting to note that during the Proto-Indoeuropean period the synthetic type, the so-called mediopassive, was the only existing passive construction. At that time, the form was used for expressing both the medium and the passive, as is also indicated by the name. This original mediopassive con-struction was prominent in Gothic and sporadically found in the written sources of Old High German.
eBook - PDF- Irina Nikolaeva, Maria Tolskaya(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Voice constructions that violate at least one of these conditions will be called indirect. The following indirect voice constructions will be addressed here: Passive, Agentless Passive, Causative, Decausative, and Reciprocal. In each of them the verb is characterized by a special morphological marking that encodes the corresponding indirect voice. Obviously, different indirect voices cannot co-occur with each other and with the direct voice within one clause. The only exception is the Causative, which co-occurs with another indirect voice. This is because the Causative is the only indirect voice that increases the verbal valence. Below we cite the examples that show the Causative co-occurring with the Agentless Passive. On the passivization of causative constructions see 16.1.4.4. 572 Valence-changing operations ( 1138) fi 'ata-wa diga-wan-a-sa. boy-ACC eat-CAUS-0-PP.PAS 'The boy is fed.' 16.1.1. Passive The Passive is only allowed for transitive verbs. As was mentioned in 15.2.1.2, mostly direct objects are passivized in Udihe, on possible exceptions see 15.1.1.3. Several passive verbs do not have a non-passive equivalent (8.2.1.5.2). The meaning of the Passive in Udihe is actional. Compared to certain other languages that have the Passive, the Udihe Passive is used rather rarely. Some functions which cross-linguistically are typical of the Passive are fulfilled by the Agentless Passive construction (16.1.2). The only use of the Personal Passive is for the topic-promoting of the patient argument, although other strategies are available for this as well (see Chapter 24). De-emphasizing the agent, which is universally known to be another function of the Passive, is a function of the Agentless Passive in Udihe (16.1.2). In the Passive construction the agent participant does not correspond to the grammatical relation of the subject. The passive agent is marked by the Dative and bears the grammatical relation of adjunct.
eBook - PDF- Dieter Kastovsky(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
The first step consisted in the form ' be + present participle', cf. (70) whyles a commodye of Plautus is playinge (More, Utopia; quot. MEG IV.208) The next stage was reached at the end of the eighteenth century, when the combination of the progressive aspect and Passive Voice became possible, cf. (71) A fellow whose uttermost upper grinder is being torn out by the roots by a mutton-fisted barber (1795; quot. Visser 1973: §2158) Whether the last step in the development of the English verb phrase, the combination of a modal, a perfective, a progressive, and a passive aux-iliary in front of a verb, has already been accomplished or not is a matter of dispute. The authors of A grammar of contemporary English describe this structural pattern as uncommon but grammatical; it is illustrated by the example (72) They might have been being examined (Quirk et al. 1972: §3.13) We need not go into details here. In our context it is only relevant to note that the Aave-passive with its special connotation has a rival in the gei-passive, and as an exclusively dynamic passive it has an additional rival in the neutral 6e-passive when this is marked as dynamic by the auxiliary of the progressive aspect. The existence of competing construc-tions is perhaps also the reason why the Aave-passive has largely gone unnoticed so far, and has not received the attention it deserves. Notes 1. In the verb phrase, the difference between the two voice categories is that the passive adds a form of the auxiliary be and the past participle ... of the main verb. 230 Lilo Moessner At the clause level, passivisation involves rearrangement of two clause elements and one addition, (a) The active subject becomes the passive agent, (b) the active object becomes the passive subject, and (c) the preposition by is introduced before the agent. (Quirk et al. 1972: §12.2). 2. What was the object ... in the active sentence is made into the subject, and what was the subject in the active sentence is expressed ...
eBook - PDF- Igor Mel'cuk, David Beck(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
A similar, although by no means identical, phenomenon is found in Japanese. A verb can have the passive form if and only if 1) semantically, the verb is dynamic – i.e., it denotes an event (= an action or a process) and 4. Calculus of possible voices in bi-valent verbs 211 2) the SSynt-Subject of the passive denotes a person affected by the event. If both these conditions are met, the Japanese passive can be formed (by the suf-fix -( r ) are ): – first, from a transitive verb (30a) and from some intransitive verbs having as their second actant a noun in the dative (30b); – second, from an intransitive verb accompanied by a circumstantial, such that this circumstantial becomes the passive’s Subject (30c) – just like the English examples in (29b). (30) a. Minoru + ga Yooko + o koros + i + Ø + ta SUBJ ACC kill Them.El ACT PAST ( Minoru killed Yoko ) . vs. Yooko + ga Minoru + ni koros + are + ta SUBJ DAT kill PASS PAST ( Yoko was killed by Minoru ) . b. Minoru + ga Yooko + ni soodans + i + Ø + ta SUBJ DAT consult Them.El ACT PAST ( Minoru consulted Yoko ) . [The verb SOODANSURU ( [to] consult ) is intransitive and takes the Consultee in the dative.] vs. Yooko + ga Minoru + ni soodans + are + ta SUBJ DAT consult PASS PAST lit . ( Yoko was consulted by Minoru ) . c. Eigakan + de kawaii ko + ga movie.theater LOC pretty girl SUBJ Minoru + no tonari + ni suwat + Ø + ta GEN close DAT sit.down ACT PAST ( In the movie theater, a pretty girl sat down at Minoru’s side ) . vs. Eigakan + de Minoru + ga kawaii ko + ni tonari + ni suwar + are + ta , lit. ( In the movie theater, Minoru was-sat-down at-the-side by a pretty girl ) .
eBook - PDF- Wolfgang U. Dressler, Martin Prinzhorn, John R. Rennison, Wolfgang U. Dressler, Martin Prinzhorn, John R. Rennison(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Here, the typical Bantu 3PL-subject pre-fix a-of the active form has been reinterpreted as the passive marker; the object marker, which appears in the active form only when the Direct Object is fronted (for topicalization purposes), has become - in the pas-sive — a subject marker. Cf.: (17) a. Aana a +mono Nzua children 3PL.Subj see John 'The children saw John.' Aana a +mno meme children 3PL.Subj see I 'The children saw me.' b. Nzua, aana a +mu +mono John children 3PL.Subj 3SG.Obj see 'John, the children saw him'. Meme aana a +ngi +mono I children 3PL.Subj lSG.Obj see 'Me, the children saw me.' c. Nzua a +mu +mono (kwa meme Iaana) John PASS 3SG.Subj see by I /children 'John was-seen by me/by the children.' Meme a +ngi +mono (kwa Nzua!aana) I PASS lSG.Subj see by John/children Ί was-seen by John/by the children.' 152 Igor Mel'cuk As can be seen from these examples, in Kimbundu the final result of this development is different from that in Maasai: here, a full passive has emerged, with the Direct Object being promoted to the Grammatical Subject, and the Grammatical Subject being demoted to an Agent Com-plement. Appendix A calculus of grammatical voices Let it be emphasized that all formulations that follow are of necessity very concise and no additional explanations can be supplied. This Appen-dix develops ideas put forth in Mel'cuk - Xolodovic 1970 and Mel'cuk 1974: 138-139; see also Mel'cuk 1988: 186, 1993a, and 1994: 135-155. Diathesis The diathesis of a lexical unit L is the correspondence between its Semantic Actants and its Deep-Syntactic Actants. Thus, the Russian verb pricesyvat' '[to] comb someone's hair' has the following (approximate) lexicographic definition: X pricesyvaet Y-α, lit. 'X is-combing Υ' = 'X causes Y's hair to become straight by causing a comb to move through Y's hair.' The corresponding diathesis is X Y I II Basic Diathesis The basic diathesis of a lexical unit L is the lexicographic diathesis of L, i.
- Kleanthes K. Grohmann(Author)
- 2009(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
How to become passive Berit Gehrke and Nino Grillo In this paper, we propose that movement of a stative subevent of a structur-ally complex event to a discourse-related position at the edge of the verb phrase is the fundamental characteristics of passive constructions. This as-sumption is supported not only by the semantics of passives but also by the fact that it provides a natural account of many of their syntactic properties some of which are left unaccounted for in previous approaches. More gen-erally we give a principled explanation, based on the availability of a con-sequent state reading, of why some predicates do not form good passives. Psycholinguistic data provide further arguments to support our hypothesis. 1. Introduction Since early works in generative syntax (see Chomsky 1957) passivisation has been analysed as an operation on argument structure. Such analyses single out the most typical property of this construction, namely the inver-sion in the mapping of argument type and syntactic relation in actives and passives. The internal argument (the understood object) appears in the (syn-tactic) subject position, whereas the logical subject is demoted and (option-ally) surfaces in a by -phrase. In this paper, we will defend a di ff erent perspective on passives. It places the complex structure of events at the centre of this transformation and takes it to be responsible for determining not only core properties of passive formation but also its availability in general. This change in per-spective allows us to distinguish predicates that can form good passives from those that cannot. In particular, we argue that passivisation is an op-eration on event structure, more precisely a secondary predication referring to a transition into a consequent (result or inchoative) state.
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