Abstract
The purpose of this article is to show that passivization can be better accounted for when the phenomenon of transitivity, on which it is based, is defined on semantic grounds. The notion of transfer from the subject to the object through the verb, which corresponds to the main semantic component of transitivity, is what makes passivization possible, not necessarily the presence of an object complement of the verb in the active. It appears that the notion of object, which is the main syntactic parameter on which the notion of transitivity is founded, covers very different situations and cannot serve as a reliable tool to describe the phenomenon of passivization. It is only when the transitivity notion is envisaged through a semantic angle that passivization can be accounted for in more homogeneous terms.
Highlights
As the examples below show, these verbs permit passivization in one of their senses, when the subject of the active is agentive or partly agentive, i.e. when they refer to a process and/or when they cease to be reciprocal: 1. John has a book. *a book is had
Huddleston and Pullum (2002, p. 247) (Note 6) sustain that « If a core complement NP of an active clause can be converted into the subject of a related passive, it is an object. » This corresponds to what they call « the passive test »
The object of an active clause prototypically corresponds to the subject of a related passive : Pat overlooked the error. [O]
Summary
Huddleston and Pullum (2002, p. 247) (Note 6) sustain that « If a core complement NP of an active clause can be converted into the subject of a related passive, it is an object. » This corresponds to what they call « the passive test ». 247) (Note 6) sustain that « If a core complement NP of an active clause can be converted into the subject of a related passive, it is an object. The object of an active clause prototypically corresponds to the subject of a related passive : Pat overlooked the error. This glass corresponds to the subject of the passive, but « it is functioning as complement of a preposition, not as object of drink » : He has drunk out of this glass. This glass has been drunk out of. There are two kinds of definitions of transitivity: formal definitions, mainly based on syntactic grounds, and other definitions based on semantics, and more on the meaning of the term « transitive » and the manifold situations that it covers
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