Talk:Impersonal passive voice

Not only German, but Danish, Norvegian and Swedish have the exact same construction.

Anticausative verbs
Should we add a section about anticausative verbs in Romance languages? For example, "se habla español", literally "Spanish speaks itself", could mean either "they speak Spanish" (where "they" is a non-specific group) or "Spanish is spoken". I had taken a small stab at it, but I removed it mostly because I'm not sure "impersonal passive" is a good description for it... - furrykef (Talk at me) 12:00, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Bad style
Isn't use of passive voice considered bad style in most cases if it can be avoided? I am pretty sure this is true in at least German and English. Maybe the article should mention something to this effect. Also I was curious, would the scope of this article include other common passive formations other than the generic ones that work with every verb? For example in English at least, certain verbs don't require an explicit subject: "It rains." This doesn't follow the standard passive construction in English. The Article also makes a brief, slightly ambiguous reference to statements such as "There are books." Is that considered under the umbrella of this article? If so, we could include the equivalent formation in other languages, like in German "Es gibt Bücher." for which a literal translation would be "It gives books." I am something of a hobby linguist, but I am lacking when it comes to specific terminology and the like.--Shadowdrak 17:14, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Some of the Turkish verbs do undergo passivization
Nakipoglu-Demiralp, M. (2001). The referential Properties of the implicit arguments of impersonal passive constructions, chapter The verb in Turkish. J. Benjamins Pub. Co. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aeural (talk • contribs) 01:57, 27 October 2008 (UTC) Lewis, Geoffrey L. (1967). Turkish grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press--Aeural (talk) 02:01, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Moreover, the Turkish language examples are wrong. "Burada olunur. Here it is (AORIST) died." is a grammatical sentence. --Aeural (talk) 02:00, 27 October 2008 (UTC) "Bu ask icin olunur" is a descent example for native speakers.--Aeural (talk) 02:04, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

"Es wird von den Kindern geschlafen."
As a native German speaker I can say that the example "Es wird von den Kindern geschlafen." is certainly wrong. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.117.247.206 (talk) 15:56, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

I support this as a native speaker. The other German constructions are doubtful. The only passive construction I know with "schlafen" is "Jetzt wird aber geschlafen!" (= "Schlaft!"), but even this is an idiom. Actually I think this article could be deleted. Most of it is included in Voice_(grammar). O.fasching.logic.at (talk) 21:28, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

I just came across this article and "Es wird von den Kindern geschlafen." definitely seems ungrammatical to me as a native speaker. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.72.96.156 (talk) 08:50, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

An author like Peter Handke would definitely write a phrase like

• Es wurde viel gelacht, gespielt, gelaufen, gestolpert, hingefallen, geweint, wieder aufgestanden und wieder gelacht!

Even the verbs ‘stolpern’ and ‘(hin)fallen’ which are unaccusative and not unergative can be put to impersonal passive here, in contrast to what is stated ‘impossible’ above... Mramosch (talk) 13:50, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I would like to redirect Pseudo-passive and Pseudopassivization to Impersonal passive voice instead of the current redirect to English passive voice.

There is a short discussion about this on Talk:Pseudo-passive. This term seems to be used more as a synonym to Impersonal passive voice rather than the way it's used on English passive voice.

References in favor of this include these: I have not looked at the reference cited on the current page yet.

Perhaps it would be better to create a disambiguation page. Joeystanley (talk) 19:20, 30 April 2014 (UTC)


 * What you are proposing is not a merge, but a repurposing of the two redirects. Since the terms seem to have at least two meanings, neither being obviously primary, a disambiguation page might be the best solution. W. P. Uzer (talk) 07:04, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

alive
Section Test of unergative verbs has a pair of contrasting examples sets that should be parallel but were not: the first had four lines and the second had five, the last of which was directly opposite to the other four in meaning:


 * In Turkish, for example, the verb çalışmak "to work" is unergative and may therefore be passivized:


 * Burada çalış-ıl-ır.
 * here work-PASS-PRESENT
 * Here it is worked.
 * 'Here people work.'


 * The verb ölmek "to die", however, is unaccusative and may not be passivized:


 * * Burada öl-ün-ür.
 * here die-PASS-PRESENT
 * Here it is died.
 * 'Here people die.'
 * Here it is alive.

I have deleted "Here it is alive."

Example wrong?
After making and writing up the change described above, I saw 's comment above, which asserts that that example is wrong. I don't know Turkish and am not qualified to judge that claim, but in any case the sentence I deleted was opposite in meaning to the rest of the example and certainly didn't belong there.

--Thnidu (talk) 01:08, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

About Venetian in contrast to German...
The author of this sub-chapter states: "Differently from German, the subject can be introduced only with the active voice:"

This implies that German can do this in the passive voice. However there is no example given, neither here nor in the sub-chapter about German.

This all being about impersonal voices, why should there be a subject introduced anyways? Mramosch (talk) 13:40, 12 July 2019 (UTC)