7 - The passive voice

Summary

Introduction

This chapter focuses on passive and passive-like constructions, the central be-passive (1), the get-passive (2) and ‘middles’ or ‘mediopassive constructions’ (3):

1. (1) The book was sold.

2. (2) The book got sold.

3. (3) The book sold (well).

Another construction related to the be-passive is the passival, i.e. the active progressive use of a verb with passive meaning, as in Thelonius Monk's ruminative ‘Alone in San Francisco’ is playing softly in the background [BNC FBM 710]. The passival, however, is only a marginal construction in contemporary English, limited to a few verbs (like do, play, ship, show) and used slightly more frequently in AmE than in BrE (cf. Hundt 2004b). It is briefly discussed in connection with the progressive passive in the previous chapter.

The passive is a gradient and prototypically structured category (cf. Svartvik 1966; Granger 1983: 106f.; Quirk et al. 1985: 167–71; Shibatani 1985: 821). This applies to be + Ved constructions on the one hand, but also on the other hand to the whole domain of ‘passive voice’ in English. In the following, we will very briefly define prototypical be-, get- and mediopassives, touching on a series of syntactic and semantic properties that have been discussed in more detail (and often controversially) elsewhere. References to these discussions are given in the frequent footnotes in this section.