Passive Clauses Research Articles

On subject assignment in Serbo-Croatian within the framework of functional grammar

This paper discusses the analysis of Subject assignment in Serbo-Croatian in Dik (1980) and Dik and Gvozdanović (1981). It is argued that the conclusion that Subject function is not relevant to the grammar of Serbo-Croatian is not tenable. It is also argued that Functional Grammar cannot account for the relationship between active and passive clauses in Serbo-Croatian since it recognizes only one level of syntactic representation. A constraint is proposed which makes the rule of Subject assignment in passive clauses sensitive to an initial assignment of Object to a non-Agent term; alternatively, Functional Grammar should be abandoned in favour of a theory which recognizes syntactic functions at more than one level.

Children's Sensitivity to Stylistic Features in Literature

This study investigated children's sensitivity to two kinds of stylistic features in literature: 'poetic' features (rhyme, metre and similes) and'syntactic' features (active vs passive voice, subject/predicate order, and clause structure). To investigate children's abilities to perceive these features, we presented children in grades 3, 5 and 7 with target excerpts adapted from children's stories. Children were asked to choose between a stylistically consistent and a stylistically contrasting continuation. In order to determine whether children would favour stylistic consistency over content, we pitted appealing content 'mis-cues' against stylistic consistency in half of the perception items. To investigate children's abilities to produce stylistic features, we presented another group of children with the same targets and asked them to make up a line or two that might come next. We examined children's productions to determine whether the style of the target was maintained in the continuation. The findings indicate that children in the age range studied are fairly insensitive to stylistic features of stories, and that they focus instead on content. However, children revealed a greater sensitivity to poetic than to syntactic features. Surprisingly, children who noticed the presence of the stylistic features did not always choose the continuation that was stylistically consistent. These findings indicate that sensitivity to various aspects of literary style, and sensitivity to stylistic coherence, are not fully developed until after junior high school age.

Instructional procedures for teaching reversible passive voice and clause constructions to three mildly handicapped children

Abstract Previous behavioural research in the language domain has been largely concerned with the effects of consequent events on the comprehension and production of relatively simple language forms. The present study investigated the application of systematic instructional procedures in simplifying complex sentence forms (reversible passives and clause constructions). A multiple baseline was employed to assess treatment effects across three subjects. The conditions were screening, baseline, prepassage and passage training, and passage training only. In addition, two maintenance measures were taken. The findings indicate that applied behavioural analysis focusing on antecedent events of comprehension training can teach subjects to comprehend reversible passive and clause constructions.