User talk:Cnilep/Archive/22 April 2012

Passives
Hi Chad,

I took a look at the section you'd pointed out in the Passive article. I think the problem there is that the terminology is wrong. It seems to have both dynamic and stative and dynamic and static and I don't think either of these are generally applied to these two types of 'passivity?'. There have been a few decent papers written about there being these two types of passive (possibly and more as well) but from my understanding there's been little more than a "hey guys, have you noticed this?" discussion on them thus far. In fact, even listing GET as a vocal auxiliary in English is contentious at this point (although it seems that objection to that is finally waning). The section is a good one to have because there is grounds for argument that 'the grass is mowed' and 'the grass gets mowed' have very different implications but there is also room for debate as 'the grass got mowed' and 'the grass was mowed' could be said to mean exactly the same thing. I think part of the problem with analyses of constructions like these (and especially by lay-linguists here on WP) is that in many languages a single lexeme can represent multiple functional roles. This is particularly evident within English and its use of present and past participles in both their verbal functions (and also in the case of the present participle as infinitive and also as being identical to the modern gerund) and use as adjectives and also in English's wide range of auxiliaries with some verbs being used as both vectors (main verbs) but also as 2, 3, or even many more auxiliaries, each with identical form yet different semantic and syntactic properties (take HAVE and MAKE for instance).

One of the most common things I see among linguists who don't focus on English but whose native language is English or who use English in examples and analyses is that they lack awareness of these multiple possibilities for the same form and that they mistake one form for another and consider it something it's not (and thus analyze it as such). I see this most often in debates over passive voice.

'The grass is mowed' and 'the grass was mowed' would be identical semantically to 'the grass gets mowed' and 'the grass got mowed' if 'mowed' is in fact a past participle in the first two examples (making all four sentences passive voice). If however, 'mowed' is an adjective in the former two, then it puts both of those utterances in active voice and means that the two sets of examples have very different connotations (for instance, the lack of implicit operator in the 'is/was' ones).

I have been in all sorts of debates in which this sentence was the topic (or rather whether it's in active or passive voice). "The pigs were made to drink spoiled milk."

I would guess that there exists a 90% consensus among most people including linguists that that sentence is passive voice. However, it can only be seen to be passive voice if the word 'to' is conveniently ignored. If you use the rule of equivalence of forms (that information conveyed in one form of an utterance must be identically conveyed in any equivalent form of that utterance when one or more verbal attributes are changed such as aspect, tense, polarity, voice, etc. -- in other words what's in a question must be in the answer, what's in a negative must be in an affirmative, and what's in a passive must be in its active form), then you have to account for all bits of that sentence including the 'to'. TO only occurs in English before some true infinitives (and here I mean functional infinitives as in a verb held out of syntax and not just a verb occurring in that to-infintive form structurally) and as the form of the subordinate of certain modal auxiliaries (where their subordinates take the to-inifinitive form but are in fact not functionally infinitives). HAVE, WANT, BE+GOING all subordinate the following verb to this 'to-form'.

In fact, almost every instance of to+verb in English that you see on a daily basis is in fact this modal auxiliary + subordinate vector formation. In the pig sentence above, BE+MADE (with made being an adjective from the past participle form in just the same way we have the modal auxiliaries BE+ABOUT, BE+WILLING, BE+SAD) is a modal auxiliary expressing a causative mood, with 'to drink' being its subordinate (and thus drink being the main verb of the utterance).

The sentence at first glance looks like an ideal passive (Subject 'the pigs' + vocal aux BE 'were' + verb in past participle 'made') but the whole pattern is ruined by the 'to drink' part that follows. There is no way to convert this sentence over to active voice. In fact all of this shows that this sentence is active voice with (Subject 'the pigs' + modal auxiliary also carrying agreement and tense 'were made' + vector 'to drink' + direct object 'spoiled milk'.

This sort of confusion between forms is I think the root of some of the debate in that passive article and some of the reason that this topic hasn't gotten a lot of writing published on it is because many of those debated 'different' passives are in fact not passives at all. Either way, as to that section as it is now, those stative and dynamic terms are generally reserved for aktionsart and not applied over to discussions of voice and I think their use as is would lead to confusion over whether there are two types of passive discussed or discussing passive in two types of sentence. Not good either way.

Cheers

DrewDrew.ward (talk) 23:07, 25 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Drew. I've been too busy to look at the article recently, but I'll keep this in mind if/when I get back to it. Cnilep (talk) 01:07, 26 March 2012 (UTC)