1,135 research outputs found

    Pseudo-Passives as Adjectival Passives

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    A note on non-canonical passives : the case of the get-passive

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    In many languages, a passive-like meaning may be obtained through a noncanonical passive construction. The get passive (1b) in English, the se faire passive (2b) in French and the kriegen passive (3b) in German represent typical manifestations. This squib focuses on the behavior of the get-passive in English and discusses a number of restrictions associated with it as well as the status of get

    A constructional analysis of English un-participle constructions

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    The present paper reports on an investigation into an English un-participle pattern that is called unpassive, or is described as an adjectival passive. The main characteristic of the pattern is an (adjectival) past participle prefixed by un-, which is used as a predicative complement to a verb. Besides the different terms used for the pattern, there is also some indeterminacy with respect to its particular form. All of the descriptions focus on the verb BE, but mention is also made of GO and REMAIN. That is, the specifications of the pattern’s formal side differ to some extent. To provide information on this issue and to get hold of potential (verb-related) differences in the pattern’s function, we conducted an empirical analysis from a usage-based construction grammar perspective. Our focus is on the form-function interplay of the pattern in order to gain information about its constructional status and its exact formal and semantic make-up. The database selected for this study is the BNC, from which all occurrences of ‘verb plus un-participle’ were extracted. The data were submitted to collexeme and covarying collexeme analyses to identify the spectrum of meanings/functions associated with these forms, and distinctive collexeme analyses were carried out to see whether the un-participles found pattern differently with the individual verbs. The results indicate that, on closer examination, the un-participle construction does not represent a homogeneous category, but must be seen as a schematic template of related, though different, usage events that may have expanded analogously from a prototype construction. On the basis of our analyses and informed by findings from developmental studies, we suggest that the related constructions form a network

    PASSIVE VOICE IN POLITICAL NEWSPAPER ARTICLES

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    The passive voice is a very challenging part of English grammar. The aim of this paper is to examine the function, frequency and structure of the passive voice in written language production. The study is carried out on a sample of twenty newspaper articles dealing with the US presidential campaign; ten articles are taken from the New York Times and ten articles from USA Today published in February and March 2016. The analysis of the articles from both newspapers includes the language of journalists and politicians. Furthermore, this paper provides a theoretical review of the passive voice according to traditional view of grammar, but it also outlines features of the passive voice within the framework of Cognitive Grammar. The findings have shown that the passive is commonly used in political newspaper articles and that it is not always possible to determine with certainty the function of the passive voice in short passive structures, be it that the agent is omitted because it is unknown, unimportant or obvious or whether the action is more important than the agent. Therefore, another aim of this paper is to investigate if some of the uncertainties regarding the functions of the passive voice can be tackled and explained better within the theoretical framework of Cognitive Grammar since it offers an interesting alternative to traditional grammatical analysis. In this way, the paper can contribute to the further study of this challenging linguistic field and provide incentive for similar studies comprising more examples from political or some other discourse.&nbsp

    Processing unambiguous verbal passives in German

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    Passivization played a central role in shaping both linguistic theory and psycholinguistic approaches to sentence processing, language acquisition and impairment. We present the results of two experiments that simultaneously test online processing (self-paced reading) and offline comprehension (through comprehension questions) of passives in German while also manipulating the event structure of the predicates used. In contrast to English, German passives are unambiguously verbal, allowing for the study of passivization independent of a confound in the degree of interpretive ambiguity (verbal/adjectival). In English, this ambiguity interacts with event structure, with passives of stative predicates naturally receiving an adjectival interpretation. In a recent study, Paolazzi et al. (2015, 2016) showed that in contrast to the mainstream theoretical perspective, passive sentences are not inherently harder to process than actives. Complexity of passivization in English is tied to the aspectual class of the verbal predicate passivized: With eventive predicates, passives are read faster (as hinted at in previous literature) and generate no comprehension difficulties (in contrast to previous findings with mixed predicates). Complexity effects with passivization, in turn, are only found with stative predicates. The asymmetry is claimed to stem from the temporary adjectival/verbal ambiguity of stative passives in English. We predict that the observed difficulty with English stative passives disappears in German, given that in this language the passive construction under investigation is unambiguously verbal. The results support this prediction: Both offline and online there was no difficulty with passivization, under either eventive or stative predicates. In fact, passives and their rich morphology eased parsing across both types of predicates

    Passive voice in children's literature

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    The current study explores the frequency and types of passive voice constructions found in children’s literature as compared to child directed speech (CDS). Research studies indicate that children learn to understand and produce passive voice relatively late in the language acquisition process, which some researchers attribute to the scarcity of passive voice in CDS. This study expands current knowledge of passive voice input by adding another source, children’s literature, because several studies have demonstrated that children’s books may serve as enriched sources of input for academic language. Analyses of data indicate that the amount of passive voice and the types of passive voice found in children’s literature and child directed speech are not significantly different, contradicting the idea that books contain more academic language than CDS. Further research is necessary in order to fully understand why children acquire passive voice in the late stages of language acquisition

    Kiowa verb incorporation and types of mediating relations

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    Aspects of Passives in Capeverdean (Santiago’s variety)

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    The present dissertation intends to study passives in Capeverdean. I argue that Capeverdean have eventive passives with specific morphology, postverbal morphemes, -du and -da, which affix to the verb to form passives and interact with the TMA morphemes available in the language in the same way as in the active voice. I also show that Capeverdean only allows short passives. However, this study demonstrates that the by-phrase, although not expressed phonologically, is implicit and can be tracked through instrumentals and Agent-oriented adverbs. In order to account for this specific property of Capeverdean passives, I assume the existence of a Voice head which introduces the external argument in all finite sentences in Capeverdean, except in unaccusatives, following proposals from Marantz (1984), Kratzer (1996), Sailor & Ahn (2010), Pratas (2014). I also assume that this Voice head is subject to a Doubly Filled Comp Filter, similar to what is proposed in Koopman (1997), which determines that either heads or specifiers can be overt, never both. In the case of passives, I propose that external argument is in Spec,Voice and the passive morphology is lexicalized in Voice0 and that while Spec,Voice is silent, Voice0 is not. This configuration can be explained if it is assumed, following Costa & Martins (2004), that in Capeverdean passives Voice0 is a strong functional head, thus requiring visibility at PF. This restriction, combined with the Doubly Filled Comp filter, imposes that Spec,Voice is silent
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