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The passive Summary

The passive Summary. phonological form/shape of the passive in English (the data): be + V- ed The guest was murdered by the chef problem: subject is patient. Voice analysis. a. The chef murdered the guest. b. The guest was murdered by the chef.

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The passive Summary

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  1. The passiveSummary • phonological form/shape of the passive in English (the data): • be + V-ed • The guest was murdered by the chef • problem: subject is patient

  2. Voice analysis • a. The chef murdered the guest. b. The guest was murdered by the chef. • the passive ‘derives from’ an ‘underlying’ ‘active’ • active and passive are synonymous (except for theme/rheme) • explains why subject is patient – started out as object • all and only transitive verbs form a passive • but:

  3. Non-passivizable transitive verbs Quirk et al. 1985:162: (3) They have a nice house. (4) He lacks confidence. (5) The auditorium holds 5000 people. • Sometimes called ‘middle’ verbs

  4. Aims of analysis • meaning of be + V-ed • syntax: combinable with which verbs or sentences? • form: what grammatical construction does it represent? (How is it to be parsed?)

  5. Voice analysis • Form: passive derived from activeactive and passive are ‘voices’ of the verb • Meaning: passive is cognitively synonymous with activeHalliday: motivation for passive is to make the patient unmarked theme • Syntax: all and only transitive verbs are passivizable(exceptions are listed individually)

  6. Criticism of voice analysis: contradictions, anomalies,flaws • meaning of be + V-ed? • five formal differences – synonymous?!? • agentive by-phrase • 4/5 without agent – contradicts derivation from active, where agent/subject is obligatory • statal passive: • The door was closedactional passive (action, no state) • The door was closedstatal passive (state, no action) • how can this be?

  7. adjectival properties – why? • odd passives, and passivizability a property of sentences, not verbs • passive participle also in perfect • non-passivizable transitive verbs

  8. Aspect analysis be + V-ed • (Grammatical) Form: aspect of type Auxiliary + Participle, like the perfect and the progressive • Meaning: new state (on subject) as result of preceding actionchange of state(hence subject is patient) • Syntax: determined by lexical aspect of verb and compositional aspect of sentence (as with perfect and progressive in English): atelic verbs and sentences are not passivizable (because they are inherently unable to express a resultant state)

  9. The guest was murdered by the chef. analysed as an aspect: • the guest: subject taken from lexicon, as with perfect and progressive in English • was: aspectual auxiliary, like have in perfect and be in progressive • murdered: aspectual participle, like the homonymous perfect participle and like the present participle • by the chef: ordinary prepositional phrase (PP); by means ‘agent’; optional, like many PPs • was murdered means ‘action + state’ (hence subject is patient)

  10. Arguments in support of aspect analysis

  11. Transitive non-passivizable verbs • if passive is Auxiliary + Participle aspect we can expect restrictions vis-à-vis lexical (and compositional) aspect • the c sentences in 7-9 below cannot be interpreted as resultative perfects: (7) a. They have a nice house. b. *A nice house is had by them. c. They have had a nice house. (8) a. He lacks confidence. b. *Confidence is lacked by him. c. He has lacked confidence. (9) a. The auditorium holds 5000 people. b. *5000 people are held by the auditorium. c. The auditorium has held 5000 people.

  12. why the correlation? • because the passive and the perfect are very close in meaning: (actional) passive: action + state resultative perfect: action + result • passive is behaving syntactically like the perfect, i.e. like an aspect • atelic (as for resultative perfect) • must be end-point potentially present to become the end-state of ‘action + state’

  13. 2/3 correlation • counterexamples explained by individual lexical semantics (see Beedham 1981, 1982) • the perfect-passive correlation is formal-syntactic proof that the passive is an aspect • any questions?

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