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The passive in English, German and Russian1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Christopher Beedham
Christopher Beedham
Affiliation:
Department of Modern Languages, Language Studies Unit, University of Aston in Birmingham
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Extract

It is usually assumed that English has two aspects, the perfect and the progressive. I would like to suggest, however, that there are in English not two but three aspects – the perfect, the progressive and the passive.

The most common description of the (actional) passive is one which derives sentences containing be+ past participle from an underlying transitive active structure. In a description of this kind there are several defects of a theoretical nature which reveal themselves in three main areas. The first problem area is the set of verbs which are apparently transitive but which nevertheless do not passivize, for example in English have, suit, resemble, in German haben ‘have’, überkommen ‘come over’, erfordern ‘require’ (see Steube & Walther, 1972: 20–22).

Type
Notes and Discussion
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , September 1981 , pp. 319 - 327
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

REFERENCES

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