Download THE SUBTLE INTERPLAY OF SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS

THE SUBTLE INTERPLAY OF SYNTAX AND
SEMANTICS IN PASSIVE-LIKE CONSTRUCTIONS*
Gina MĂCIUCĂ,
Universitatea „Ştefan cel Mare”, Suceava
The unavailability of a unified typological approach and, above all, of a
consolidated conceptual and analytic framework covering the active-passive
dichotomy practically challenges the legitimacy of any new assumptions
formulated in this area of research.
It is, however, precisely this diversity of approach that prompted me to
inspect more closely three types of passive combinations. The first two
constructions listed below display a different kind of voice chameleonism from that
of chameleon-like passives (cf Măciucă, G., “Chopping the Fuzzy Logic of the
Active ↔ Passive Opposition in English Verbs”, currently in press) – though
passive in form, they are at heart actives or reflexives –, while to the third one,
which perfectly complies with the passive constraints, linguists, oddly enough,
obstinately attach the label ‘pseudo-passives’.
1. The Intransitive Passive
The intransitive passive features a rather infrequent employment of be
‘aiding and abetting’ in the formation of present perfect variants of certain verbs,
e.g.: The guests are gone (cf Greenbaum & Quirk 1990: 37), which are viewed as
marked with respect to the nearly synonymous have- forms (cf. The guests have
gone), since the latter apply to far more verbs than the former. Indeed, in addition
to go – by far the most devoted regular of the pattern – , other change-of-location
verbs such as come, depart, return, or verbs like finish, the semantic description of
which includes the feature [+perfective], have been found to share this particular
idiosyncrasy, e.g. I am come, I am finished, I am returned, Our friend is departed
(cf. DER: 55). More importantly even, recourse to be as a perfect auxiliary is
mainly had when the speaker/writer has in mind a transposition of meaning from
literal to the figurative, as in Our friend is gone/departed (formal)[=has died] (s
also Măciucă 2002: 71-75 for a more detailed discussion of the topic).
Nevertheless, the construction is a marginal one in English.
2. Deponent Verbs or ‘Superficial’1 Passives
Originally used in the Latin grammar of verbs exhibiting exclusively passive
morphology, yet functioning as actives ( e.g. loqui, partiri, uti), the label
‘deponent’ has been gradually extended to denote “any class of verbs in some
language whose morphology is at odds with their syntactic behaviour” (Trask
1993: 78).
Kruisinga was one of the first to look for such idiosyncratic behaviour in
English verbs2. Keeping in line with traditional terminology, he called such passive
forms like be blown up, be drowned, be frozen with a clearly intransitive meaning
‘deponentia’ (1925:123).
The three verbs cited above, however, blatantly defy the definition of a
deponent verb, for, with the semantics remaining virtually unchanged, their
morphology is far from exclusively passive, all of them being rather regulars of
intransitive patterns, as illustrated below:
The flame blew out. (OALDCE : 90)
He drove over a landmine and his jeep blew up [= explode] (CALD : 129).
We’ve got a rubber boat that blows up [= become firm by filling with air]
(LDELC :127).
He drowned in a boating accident (CALD : 385).
Water freezes to ice at a temperature of 0o C. (CALD : 506).
On the other hand, Kruisinga’s statement that the agent (by the wind) is not
mentioned only because already rendered superfluous – by our elocutionary
competence, we make so bold to add – is no more than cold comfort to us. More
precisely, replacing a human agent with one denoting a force of nature is
tantamount to admitting that the subject role (candle) is not able to get into the
state described by the activity on its own, without assistance. Consequently, one
cannot attach to blow out in The candle was blown out (by the wind) the label
‘intransitive’ (cf Dixon 1992: 292, Măciucă 2000a: 20-27).
A more subtle manner of disclaiming responsibility would be substituting in
for the prototypical companion of perjects3, preposition by — the only strategy to
be resorted to when the need of blaming it on somebody or something other than
the grammatical subject arises with basically intransitive verbs exhibiting dual (or
‘split’) transitivity (i.e. they can be used both transitively and intransitively; for
further details on the topic s. Dixon 1992: 286-297 and Măciucă 2000a: 20-40),
e.g. The candle blew out in the wind.
Yet, the undeniable fact remains that the verbs under scrutiny can indeed be
employed in, so to say, ‘superficially’ passive constructions like the following
ones:
He fell overboard and was drowned (OALDCE: 268).
After walking through the snow, my feet were frozen stiff (CALD: 215).
And again, giving credit where it is due, the task of correctly identifying the
passive or active function of such constructions is more often than not fraught with
difficulty. A difficulty accounted for by the fact that these verbs, as well as blow,
exhibit dual transitivity, and compounded by their availability for use in
promotion-to-subject patterns (s. for a minute investigation of the topic Dixon
1992: 322-334 and Măciucă, “Pros and Cons of the English Passive”, section
“Promotion to Subject vs Passivisation”, currently in press).
Given the wide range of morphosyntactic combinations deploying them, on
the one hand, and the notorious tendency of natural languages to dispense with
semantically redundant variants by keeping on the less elaborate of two or more
structures conveying identical or similar meanings, on the other, it follows that the
above-mentioned constructions cannot be viewed as perfect syntactic homonyms,
much rather as differing in terms of their more ‘intimate’ semantics.
In the hope of providing more illuminating detail on the topic at issue, let us
compare the following examples:
(a)
1. The candles blew out (in the wind).
[bona fide intransitive employment]
2. These candles blow out easily.
[promotion to subject]
3. The candles were eventually blown out in the wind.
[superficial passive]
4. The candles were easily blown out by the birthday girl.
[ bona fide passive]
(b)
1. A kitten drowned in the pond.
[bona fide intransitive employment]
2. Kittens drown easily.
[promotion to subject]
3. The kittens fell into the pond and were drowned eventually.
[superficial passive]
4. The kittens were easily drowned by that heartless jerk.
[bona fide passive].
The major semantic difference between (a)2 and (a)3, as well as that
between (b)2 and (b)3 has already been copiously accounted for in previous
research (s. Măciucă, “Promotion to Subject vs Passivisation”): in (a)2 and (b)2 the
success of the activity is attributed to the poor quality of the wax, and the rather
delicate respiratory system of kittens respectively, whereas in (a)3 and (b)3 it is
believed to be more the result of the natural “skills” of the underlying agent, and is
so perceived even if the agentive phrases (by the birthday girl and by that heartless
jerk) are omitted.
As for examples (a)4 and (b)4, they, to my mind, are semantically located
halfway between examples 1 and 3 in their respective sets. In other words,
responsibility for the failure of the candles to keep burning rests partly with the
poor quality of wax, partly with the strength of the wind, while the drowning of
the kittens occurred partly due to their delicate respiratory system and partly due to
some implied external factors such as weather vicissitudes or depth of the pond.
Chopping logic even further, when the grammatical subject includes in its
semantic description the feature [+human], as in He fell overboard and was
drowned cited above, then the responsibility must be viewed, to my mind at least,
as being gradually shifted from an ‘(un)intentional performer’ (e.g. He in He
jumped overboard and drowned and He slipped overboard and drowned; s. fuller
discussion of get as a passive auxiliary in Măciucă, G., “Glimpses of English
Passive Auxiliaries”, currently in press) onto an implied malevolent agent (such as
natural forces or fate itself), and therefore away from the grammatical subject4,
which in the meantime has come to assume the utterly innocent semantic role of
‘affected entity’ (for an in-depth discussion of the topic s. Măciucă 2000 c: 39-55).
A distinct borderline case, if superficially similar to the ones illustrated by
dual-transitivity verbs such as blow out/up, drown and freeze, represents persuade,
a transitive through-and-through, as clearly shown in the example below:
She was not persuaded of the truth of his statement (cf LDELC: 1004).
Though defined by LDELC as “ 2 [(of)] rather fml to cause to believe or
feel certain; CONVINCE” (ib.), this particular meaning of persuade does not allow
the above example to be classed with canonical passives – i.e. dynamic ones –,
much rather with statal passives (cf He has not persuaded her (of the truth of his
statement) => She was not persuaded (of the truth of his statement)).
Let us now consider the following example:
His allergy was so annoying, that he was persuaded to think of an excuse for
not showing up at the meeting.
This time was persuaded can on no account be made to pass muster as a
statal passive, for the only one – if any – to take credit for persuading him to think
of an excuse is his allergy, at best. Indeed, the most appropriate paraphrase for the
superficially passive construction in the sentence above is “he had no choice but
to…”. On the other hand, was persuaded in this second example bears a very close
resemblance to chameleon-like passives, even in terms of syntactico-semantic
description. And, to compound the difficulty of an accurate assessment, the verb
can also engage in promotion-to-subject, as do the dual-transitivity verbs
previously investigated.
The crux of the matter, to be sure, is that the meaning of the persuadecombination in the above sentences is not active, therefore the verb does not
qualify as a deponent.
3. Pseudo-Passives
A ‘pseudo-passive’5 is a label applied to “a passive construction in which the
verb is intransitive and the subject is underlyingly the object of a preposition: This
bed was slept in by George Washington; Me begonias have been trampled on by
the children; The eradication of disease has been dreamt about for centuries”
(Trask 1993: 224). The only intransitives permitting pseudo-passivisation, Trask
maintains (op. cit., p 291), are ‘unergatives’6. Other intransitives (such as
‘unaccusatives’7) do not allow passivisation, hence the unacceptability of sentences
such as :*Mexico was vanished in by Ambrose Bierce, * This bed was died in by
George Washington (cf op. cit., p 292).
To my mind, one would be well-advised to discriminate between the rather
dissimilar types which the above-cited examples illustrate, to wit: between This
bed was slept in by George Washington and My begonias have been trampled on
by the children on the one hand, and The eradication of disease has been dreamt
about for centuries on the other.
The main discriminating factor is the degree of cohesiveness between verb
and preposition within the prepositional group. Thus, if the degree is so high that
without the preposition the verb is either rendered meaningless or takes on a
different meaning, then facing us is a bona fide prepositional verb. Unfortunately,
none of the three verbs in question can be viewed as such, cf: I slept late on Sunday
morning, He argues that the Congress and President Clinton trampled the
constitutional rights of legal immigrants in the new welfare reform law, Do you
dream at night? (CALD: 1205, CALD: 1379 and LDELC: 397 respectively).
Prototypical prepositional verbs are those taking ‘inherent’ prepositions (cf
Dixon 1992: 13), i.e. prepositions which are not chosen on a strictly semantic basis
but are automatically selected by the verb8, and therefore regarded as a mere
appendage to it (e.g. decide on, hope for, refer to, suffer from9).
In stark contrast thereto, sleep can combine with a fairly wide range of
prepositions, e.g. sleep at s.o.’s place, sleep between mum and dad (of a child),
sleep on the couch, sleep under a car (of a cat).
Under normal semantico-pragmatic circumstances, the nouns in the
prepositional group at s.o.’s place, between mum and dad, on the couch, under a
car are best viewed as unavailable for assuming a subject position in a passive
transform. If, however, as Dixon puts it, “A peripheral NP, marked by a
preposition, […] refers to something that is the most significant element in an
activity” (1992: 316), then it can without difficulty be passivised on, with the
preposition stranded, as illustrated by This bed was slept in by George Washington
above (with a major focus on George Washington, and the implicit addition: by no
less a person than George Washington!), or by My bed has been slept in! (as
uttered by Sleepy – one of the seven dwarfs in Snow White –, in complete
bafflement, when finding his tidy bedclothes ruffled).
Still, two major syntactic criteria must be complied with, in order for a
peripheral noun phrase to lay legitimate claim to the function of passive subject:
there must be no direct object present, and, more importantly even, the
prepositional noun phrase must not be alternatively codable as direct object (cf
Dixon, op. cit., p.317). Thus, while a sentence like This spoon has been eaten with
is perfectly acceptable, *This spoon has been eaten beans with is not given the
green light into educated English. Likewise, This sheet has been torn, but not *This
sheet has been torn at (cf Dixon, op.cit., p.318).
There is, nevertheless, one notable exception, Dixon maintains, to the latter
syntactic restriction: when the noun phrase has animate reference, as in Mary was
shot at, “since only animate are affected by being shot at” (ib.).10
To the syntactic criteria discussed above, Dixon adds three further
semantico-pragmatic ‘mitigating’ factors:
(1) The referent of the noun phrase “has been (or may be) affected to
its detriment, by the activity”, e.g. That window shouldn’t be leant against (it
might break), My new hat has been sat on (cf Dixon 1992: 319);
(2) A particular feature of some object “was involved in a certain
activity with a particularly important subject” (cf op. cit., p.320), e.g. The
palace was once lived in by Louis XV;
(3) The noun phrase is discourse topic “and is brought into passive
subject slot for this reason”, e.g. Those stairs were built by John, then they
were run up by Mary and promptly collapsed11 (ib.).
Even when all these criteria are felicitously met, some inherent-preposition
verbs will still defy passivisation (s. Măciucă, G., section “The Out-and-Out
Defiers” in “English Verbs Which Defy Passivisation”, currently in press). Belong
to, for instance, is one of the out-and-out defiers, for, “if a speaker wishes to focus
on the Owner, putting it in subject slot, he will use own or have, rather than a
passive of belong to” (Dixon 1992: 308).
Resuming our discussion of the verbs in the examples cited by Trask, in
terms of cohesion between verb and preposition, trample and dream can be said to
hold a midway position between inherent-preposition verbs and jacks-of-all-trades
like sleep. More precisely, they, too, can stand on their own semantically, but when
having to resort to a prepositional assistant, they are usually construed with one or
two at most, e.g. dream of/about, trample on.
As regards the difficult decision of assigning such verbs to the transitive or
intransitive category, and as many times before, Dixon (1992: 13) argues his way
out of the dilemma most impeccably: since noun phrases following inherentpreposition verbs like decide on, hope for, refer to, rely on behave like a direct
object (i.e. they assume the function of passive subject), these verbs can be safely
viewed as transitive verbs.
With other verbs, though, there are no neat solutions to this problem. For
instance, what is one to make of wonder in That decision by the Vice-Chancellor
has been wondered at in every committee room of the university? It can be
construed, Dixon claims (1992: 135), both as an inherent-preposition verb and as
an intransitive verb taking a peripheral noun phrase. Supporting the transitive
analysis is the passive transform with the prepositional NP at subject. In
corroboration of the intransitive alternative, on the other hand, one can adduce the
fact that the prepositional NP can be freely omitted in other contexts.
Of the two, I wholeheartedly favour the former, for, even if other contexts
make it possible for the ‘preposition +NP’ string to be dispensed with altogether, in
this particular one they are obviously there, as large as life, and making a huge
difference at that. The fact that the preposition can be freely omitted merely attests
to its noninherent nature. A further proof showing that semantics is always there
for syntax to fall back on points to the role of ‘(highly) affected entity’ assumed in
the passive transform by the prepositional NP at subject, which role is
prototypically attached to direct objects in the active version.
Obiter dictum, the ambivalence at issue is fully reflected in the active
counterparts of such passive transforms. More precisely, prepositional NPs like at
that decision, on my begonias, about the eradication, in this bed can be
alternatively viewed as Prepositional Object – since they take on the function of
passive subject – , Predicator Complement (functional perspective) or Prepositional
Completive (relational perspective) – when promoted to central or valency
constituents and indispensable companions of an intransitive verb – or Adjunct –
when demoted to the status of peripheral constituents and optional companions of
an intransitive verb (for a fuller discussion of the topic see Măciucă 2000b: 20-53
and Măciucă 2000c: 62-74, 86-103, 108-113).
As already intimated above, I tend to advocate the first view, which, in
addition, I take the liberty of applying to phrasal-prepositional verbs and multiword idiomatic combinations ending in a preposition, e.g. He ran up against
difficulties, I simply lost track of time. By way of conclusion, a final word of
dissent: all other things being equal, I see absolutely no reason why such
prepositional verbs should be discriminated against, and their passive transforms
with the prepositional NP at subject labelled ‘pseudo-passives’, when both their
genuinely passive behaviour, and their proven transitive status entitle them to a
bona fide passive interpretation.
Since the passive invites more detailed discussion, and it is crystal-clear that
we could never even dream of exhausting so vast a topic in such a short space as
devoted by the present contribution to this area of research, the grammatical
category at issue will make the subject of a forthcoming study per se.
NOTES
The present research is part of an ongoing project, “Lexico-Morphological Idiosyncrasies of
Romanian as Compared with European Romance and Germanic Languages. Similarities and
Contrasts”, sponsored by the Romanian National Council for Scientific Research in Academic
Education.
1 I am more than willing to take both the blame and the credit – if any – for this label I took the liberty
to coin.
2 Cf. “when a passive verb that has no retained object is used without an adjunct, or the manner or
time of the action, it is often equivalent in meaning to an intransitive verb: The candle was
blown out. Here the agent is not mentioned as it would be superfluous to add by the wind
[…]” (1925: 123).
3 An alternative label for agent by-phrases; for further details on the topic s. Măciucă 2000a: 35-6.
4 Cf. also He narrowly (=only just) escaped being drowned. (LDELC: 439). Since no preliminary or
subsequent co-text can be relied on in such dictionary illustrations to make it conspicuous,
omission of an implied perfect (e.g. by the villain) must, of necessity, be ruled out.
5 Some linguists (cf Downing & Locke 1992: 124) prefer to apply this label to promotion-to-subject
constructions.
6 These are intransitive verbs or predicates whose subject is an agent Noun Phrase (NP) or an actor
NP. Typical unergatives: dance, jump, reside, run, sing, dream, receive, sleep (cf Trask 1993:
291-2).
7 These are intransitive verbs or predicates whose subject NP is not an agent or not an actor, or, in
some conceptions, whose surface subject is an underlying (direct) object. Typical
unaccusatives: be red, be small, die, exist, explode, fall down, melt, vanish (cf Trask 1993:
290).
8 In case-languages like German this is called ‘Rektion’.
9 Such English verbs are relics from West Germanic, hence close relatives of German
‘Rektionsverben’.
*
10
In his logic-chopping scholarly analysis, Dixon opposes semantically Mary was shot (suggesting
that the projectile hit her) to Mary was shot at (implying that the bullet or arrow missed her)
and comments as follows: “In the second sentence the Target is not physically affected but
she is likely to be mentally disturbed by the incident – she will have had a scare, and may
realise that she is at risk of a further attack” (1992: 318).
11 On its own, Dixon claims, Those stairs were run up by Mary would be much less acceptable.
MAJOR REFERENCES
Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, Singapore, Cambridge University
Press, 2006. (CALD)
Davison, A., “Peculiar Passives”, in Language 56, pp. 42-66, 1980. (Davison
1980)
Dixon, R.M.W., A New Approach to English Grammar, on Semantic Principles,
Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992. (Dixon 1992)
Downing, A., and P. Locke., A University Course in English Grammar, UK,
Prentice Hall International Ltd., 1992. (Downing & Locke 1992)
Greenbaum, S., and R. Quirk, A Student’s Grammar of the English Language, UK,
Longman Group Ltd., 1991. (Greenbaum & Quirk)
Hornby, A. S., Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1992. (OALDCE)
Keenan, E. L., ‘Passive in the world’s languages’, in T. Shopen (ed.) Language
Typology and Syntactic Description, pp. 243-81, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1985. (Keenan 1985)
Kruisinga, E., A Handbook of Present-Day English, Utrecht, Kemink & Zon, 1922.
(Kruisinga 1922)
Leviţchi, L., Bantaş, A., Nicolescu, A., Dicţionar englez-român, Bucureşti, Editura
Academiei, 1974. (DER)
***
Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture, UK, Pearson Education
Ltd., 2003. (LDELC)
Măciucă, G., Glimpses of the English Verb Group, Suceava, Editura Universităţii
Suceava, 2000. ( Măciucă 2000a)
Măciucă, G., Verb Complementation in English, Suceava, Editura Universităţii
Suceava, 2000. (Măciucă 2000b)
Măciucă, G., Glimpses of English Syntax, Suceava, Editura Universităţii Suceava,
2000. (Măciucă 2000c)
Măciucă, G., Aspecte contrastive de semantică, stilistică şi sintaxă a verbului în
limbile engleză, germană şi română, Suceava: Editura Universităţii Suceava,
2002. (Măciucă 2002)
Rice, S., ‘Towards a transitive prototype: evidence for some atypical English
passives’, in Papers from the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics
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***
Trask, R. L., Language and Linguistics.The Key Concepts, London, Routledge,
2007. (Trask 2007)
ABSTRACT
Discrepancy of opinions on the issue at stake is most probably due to the fact
that analyses of such cases are cast in terms of different, sometimes even opposite,
sets of typological parameters, i.e. either theoretically or pragmatically based ones.
After a brief survey of ‘intransitive passives’, the author of the present
contribution goes with a fine tooth-comb through ‘superficial’ passives, in the
middle section, and the so-called ‘pseudo-passives’, in the final one.
A more thorough investigation, which the author conducts, of the semantic
roles that can be attached to perjects, shows the syntactic valency of dualtransitivity verbs like blow or drown ranging over a fairly wide spectrum, from
bona fide intransitives to bona fide passives.
As for ‘pseudo-passives’, where the main discriminating factor is degree of
cohesiveness between verb and preposition, the corroborating evidence amassed
induces the author to view them not as merely resembling passives but rather as
genuine representatives thereof.
Key words: voice chameleonism, superficial passives, semantico-pragmatic
constraints