6
votes
Accepted
Why is the passive voice more prevalent in English than in other Indo-European languages?
I am not sure whether your initial assumption is statistically correct, but let us take it as a working hypothesis. French and German (to mention only these) very commonly use "on" and "man" with an ...
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5
votes
Why isn't this sentence in a passive form?
There's a common feature in English known as the "ergative construction", "middle construction", or "labile construction", though it's not quite the same as an actual ergative case (as found in Basque)...
- 64k
5
votes
Why is the passive voice more prevalent in English than in other Indo-European languages?
It is a matter of linguistic pragmatics. A typical statement has a topic, also known as theme or given (what is being talked about) and a comment or rheme (the new information about the topic). In ...
- 586
4
votes
Passive: illusion or fact?
I think he is using 'passive' to mean 'the passive transformation', probably because this was the most common meaning of 'passive' at the time. He's arguing that we can generate and interpret passive ...
- 3,431
4
votes
Accepted
What is the subject of a passive sentence?
The former object becomes the new subject. That is clear -- the new subject has all the properties one could reasonably associate with a subject. Number agreement with the verb and subject raising ...
- 12.4k
4
votes
Accepted
Suppletion of Spanish "matar" (to kill) by "morir" (to die) in the passive
The paper Fue muerto: Suppletion in Spanish Analytic Passives (p.96-112) analyses this very question.
The authors come to the conclusion that it is indeed suppletion:
We claim that there are three ...
- 3,102
4
votes
Accepted
Why is there not passive imperative?
This is a fairly common gap for languages to have, though it's not universal. (Ancient Greek, for example, has regular imperatives in the active, middle, and passive voices.) So it's not surprising ...
- 64k
4
votes
Accepted
How do we parse the sentence, "I have never seen a fish get cooked like that"?
In this sentence, "get," just like "be" in other passive sentences, is the passivizer. That is, the active form of "I have never seen a fish get cooked like that" is (just like the active form of "I ...
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4
votes
Is the active vs passive voice distinction, a property of the verb or sentence itself?
Of the classical linguistic categories, English does not have paradigmatic representations of Voice, Mood, or Aspect for verbs, nor Case or Gender for nouns. It has two paradigmatic tenses, present ...
- 10k
4
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Can someone share with me an article that studies the decline of by-phrases in the passive?
This thesis studies the history of passives and as part of the study looks at the instance of by-phrases, in the journal American journal of botany, grouping articles into three historical clusters – ...
- 82k
3
votes
Accepted
Are there languages with free argument order that lack a passive voice? If not, why not?
I'm not sure I fully understand what you are asking but I can offer some examples of argument structure which may provide some context to it.
Hindustani (Hindi/Urdu), which is often analyzed as an “...
3
votes
criteria to distinguish resultative from stative participles?
After Embick (2004), you could take a look at this paper by Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou, whose title is "Structuring participles", downloadable at www.lingref.com/cpp/wccfl/26/paper1653.pdf
After ...
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3
votes
Accepted
Is there a language which uses 'passive voice' more often than 'active' one?
You clarified in a comment on another answer:
What I meant by more occurencs is the degree of tolerance in the usage. English, French, German allow freely verbs to passivize (with very few ...
- 64k
2
votes
In German, doesn't using 'von' for agents of passive sentences result in ambiguity?
Like with any overloaded preposition it is possible to construct examples which are ambiguous, especially out of context.
And it is trivially easy to construct examples which are grammatically ...
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2
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What methods do languages use to re-introduce the subject of a passive construction?
In French, par ('by') and de ('from/of') can be used depending on the verb. In Late Archaic Chinese, the more common passive construction that includes the agent was jian + main verb + yu + agent. The ...
- 3,431
2
votes
Why is the need+concealed passive gerund construction unavailable with polyadic gerunds?
This is not a great explanation, and it's conjectural, but here goes.
We know that in the evolution of grammatical systems, new constructions are introduced only gradually, beginning with simpler ...
- 12.4k
2
votes
Why is the passive voice more prevalent in English than in other Indo-European languages?
Frequent use of the passive in English is not a breach of any "recommended" proportion. Rather, it is a function of register, i.e. it depends on the formality of the situation and the ...
- 186
2
votes
Why isn't this sentence in a passive form?
The word "sells" here in the English language of today has a different meaning from "is sold", and Draconis' answer does not apply here (even if it may have historically ...
- 183
2
votes
Passive Constructions
A ditransitive verb is a verb with two objects, which are a Theme and a Goal. For example, in Alex gave Andy the book, Andy is the Goal and the book is the Theme. In English, such verbs have two ...
- 3,768
1
vote
Difference between PRO and OP
I'll try to answer your question although I'm blind to Chinese clause structure. But notice that you wrote PRO in your question. PRO is quite different from pro. Let's consider this sentence:
(1) ...
- 1,068
1
vote
Derivation of Passive according to Principles and Parameters (Jaeggli)
Consider this pair:
(1) John ate an apple.
(2) An apple was eaten (by John).
In (1), the voice is active. Active voices in English have the argument structure of {Agent, V+Theme/patient etc.}. So, ...
- 1,068
1
vote
Derivation of Passive according to Principles and Parameters (Jaeggli)
Are you familiar with case theory and theta theory from GB? Basically the idea is that theta roles and case are always assigned in particular configurations. For instance, the complement of a verb ...
- 194
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vote
Origin of -s verbs in Norwegian and Swedish
Well, my guess is that it comes from the -sk ending in Old Norse (modern Icelandic -st ending).
As found in the famous Vǫlospá verses:
Brœðr munu BERJASK (Modern Icelandic: Bræður munu BERJAST),
...
- 1,426
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Is there a language which uses 'passive voice' more often than 'active' one?
Passive is not a universal feature of human languages. Indo-European languages have always had passive constructions, of one sort or another. It's used to allow different kinds of noun phrases to ...
- 10k
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