Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-npj9w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-09T08:06:48.705Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Language change and the passive voice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

Frank Parker
Frank Parker*
Affiliation:
Purdue University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Indo-European verbs inflected in the middle voice have taken on passive meaning; explanations for this have been proposed, but each presents difficulties. Here an alternative paradigm of language change is set forth to explain the process. This paradigm is, among other things, dependent on the fact that more than one structural description may be assigned to a given sentence. If the hearer assigns a different structural description to a sentence than the speaker does, and if a rule based on this ‘deviant’ structural description spreads, then the language exhibits change. Under certain circumstances, then, agentless OV constructions may be mis-assigned the constituent structure of a passive SV construction—where the object of the active, transitive sentence is interpreted as the subject of its passive, intransitive counterpart.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , June 1976 , pp. 449 - 460
Copyright
Copyright © 1976 by Linguistic Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Friedrich, Johannes. 1960. Hethitisches Elementarbuch I. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.Google Scholar
Gonda, Jan. 1966. A concise elementary grammar of the Sanskrit language, trans. by G. B. Ford. University, AL: University of Alabama Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenberg, Joseph. 1966. Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. Universals of language, ed. by Greenberg, J., 2nd ed., 73–113. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Halle, Morris. 1962. Phonology in generative grammar. Word 18. 54–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keenan, Edward L. 1975. Some universals of passive in relational grammar. Papers from the 11th Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic Society, 340–52.Google Scholar
King, Robert. 1969. Historical linguistics and generative grammar. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Lehmann, Winfred P. 1973. A structural principle of language and its implications. Lg. 49. 47–66.Google Scholar
Lehmann, Winfred P. 1974. Proto-Indo-European syntax. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Parker, Frank. 1975. Inflectional endings on Old English past participles. Linguistics 162. 5–14.Google Scholar
Postal, Paul M. 1971. Cross-over phenomena. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Smyth, Herbert W. 1963. Greek grammar, revised by G. Messing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Speyer, J. S. 1886. Sanskrit syntax. Leiden: Brill. [Reprinted, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1973.]Google Scholar
Staal, J. F. 1967. Word order in Sanskrit and universal grammar. Dordrecht: Reidel.10.1007/978-94-010-9947-9CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth. 1972. The history of English syntax. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Valfells, Sigridur. 1970. Middle voice in Icelandic. The Nordic languages and modern linguistics, ed. by Benediktsson, H., 551–71. Reykjavík: Vísndafélag Íslendinga.Google Scholar
Wheelock, F. M. 1963. Latin. New York: Barnes & Noble.Google Scholar
Whitney, W. D. 1889. Sanskrit grammar. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar