The analysis of passives

Abstract

In current transformational theory, the active–passive relation is not accounted for by the Passive transformation. Furthermore, transformational accounts of passive sentences run into serious problems with respect to the derivation of truncated passives. It is demonstrated here that the active–passive relation can be captured in the lexicon without a Passive transformation, and that such a solution does not involve the problems created by a transformational account. An interpretive rule for handling the synonymy of actives and passives—necessary whether or not passives are transformationally derived—is proposed. Lastly, it is shown how passives may be directly generated by the phrase-structure rules; this analysis is not susceptible to the criticisms given by Chomsky 1957 for a phrase-structure account of passives.