Passiv og passiverbarhed på dansk og tysk

Abstract

It is a general and undoubtedly true assumption that the passive has a higher frequency in Danish than in German. One of the reasons for this is that the Danish language allows passivization to a much larger degree than does the German, not least because of its special -s-passive. In both languages passivization depends on the non-identity of the grammatical subject and the semantic case objective; in Danish all verbs with this feature are fundamentally passivizable, in German only when besides that they involve an element of controllability. This fact reflects special historical circumstances, developed from reflexive constructions as a substitute for the crumbling medium, the -s-passive in its inmost essence does not demand an agent and was therefore originally attached only to non-agentive verbs. On the other hand the complex passive (the blive-/werden-passive) seems originally to have been used only in connection with agentive verbs; the German language did not develop a new passive after the disappearance of the medium and consequently only verbs, the contents of which can at least be controlled by the subject, were absorbed in the periphrastic passive.