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The first sentence is an example of the canonical English passive as described above. However the second case is distinct; such sentences are not passive voice, because the participle is being used adjectivally; [ 12 ] Such constructs are sometimes called "false passives" or stative passives (rarely called statal , static , or resultative ...
In the first sentence, the combination of the auxiliary verb "is" and the past participle "fed" is a regular example of the construction of the passive voice in English. In the second sentence, "is" can however be interpreted as an ordinary copula and the past participle as an adjective .
Passive marker is excluded in notional passive because the sentence relies on the hearer's common sense or their knowledge of the world. Thus, this passive voice is expressed implicitly. Furthermore, notional passive sentences can be representing either positive or negative meanings. Here is an example of notional passive:
—Passive sentence identifies a book as an object in the starting sentence. b. I was given a book.—Passive sentence identifies me as an object in the starting sentence. The second criterion is also a reliable criterion for analytic languages such as English, since the relatively strict word order of English usually positions the object after ...
In the following example from Dutch, the verb is unergative, describing a voluntary action, and can be made passive: Er wordt hier veel geskied. "A lot of skiing is done here." (lit. "it is skied much here") But a sentence with an unaccusative verb, such as "The concert lasted a long time", cannot be made passive.
Thus in this example, the ergative is promoted to the absolutive, and the agent (i.e., him), which was formerly marked by the absolutive, is deleted to form the antipassive voice (or is marked in a different way, in the same way that in the English passive voice can still be specified as the agent of the action using by him in I was hugged by ...
The passive voice in English may appear to be in the OVS order, but that is not an accurate description. In an active voice sentence like Sam ate the oranges, the grammatical subject, Sam, is the agent and is acting on the patient, the oranges, which are the object of the verb, ate.
The nominative case marks the subject of a verb. When the verb is active, the nominative is the person or thing doing the action ; when the verb is passive, the nominative is the person or thing receiving the action. The boy saw her. She was seen by the boy.