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Peculiar Passives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

Alice Davison
Alice Davison*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois
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Abstract

Passive sentences often have different meanings and communicative intent from the corresponding active sentences. It is proposed that the ‘extra’ attitudinal and modal meanings of passive sentences are derived by Gricean conversational implicature. It is therefore possible to state the relation between active and passive sentences in syntactic terms without reference to meaning. Implicatures are more likely to be associated with passive sentences if the construction is ‘marked’, as measured by the restrictions placed on which NP's may be promoted to subject position, and what other roles the derived subject may have. Conversationally conveyed meanings are based on what appears as topic in subject position.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , March 1980 , pp. 42 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 by Linguistic Society of America

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