First published in 1984,
The Passive
surveys a wide range of different constructions, which have all been termed ‘passives’ by linguists, using data from a large number of genetically and typologically diverse languages. Chapter 1 raises questions about the nature of passives and exposes some of the difficulties inherent in the traditional assumptions. Chapter 2 examines the ‘personal passive’ and includes a discussion on the relationship between the passive and transitivity. Chapter 3 to 5 deal with impersonal, periphrastic and reflexive passives, exploring the varied problems raised by each construction and focusing particularly on English and Southeast Asian languages. The two final chapters look at various attempts to explain exceptions to the passive in both semantic and syntactic terms, with an additional section on pragmatics. This book will appeal to all of those involved in the field of comparative linguistics.