Re: USAGE: 'born'

En réponse à Muke Tever <alrivera@...>:

>
>     John slept.
>
> Now, 'sleep' is intransitive, and doesn't take any objects. But the act
> of
> sleeping has related objects anyway--one sleeps *in or on a place or
> object*,
> for example.  But even if you said "John slept in that bed", 'in that
> bed' isn't
> the object of <slept>, but a modifying phrase.  But <sleep> can be
> passivized.
>
>     That bed of nails was slept in (by John).
>
> ... this is perfectly normal, isn't it?  True, you can't just say *<The
> bed was
> slept.>, but I think that's what I said earlier about there generally
> being more
> information in such a passive.
>
I've read somewhere that different languages could have different scopes for
their passives. For instance, French is extremely restricted, as it can
passivize only direct objects without prepositions (some verbs have mandatory
objects but with preposition, and those cannot passivize that object). Indeed,
Using passive is quite rare in French. When the subject is not known, you use
the pronoun "on" in an active sentence preferably. English is more open, as it
can passivize quite a few roles, the main one being that it can passivize the
benificiary of a ditransitive sentence ("John gave him the book" -> "he was
given the book"), which is a no-no in French. And IIRC, there are languages
which can passivize just any kind of complement (and I'm not talking about
trigger languages whose particular structure doesn't allow to talk about passive
and active voices). I wish I could give examples, but my linguistic knowledge is
just too small for that. But I think the scope of passivazation can be compared
to the scope of relativization: some languages (like French or English) can
relativize just any kind of role, while others may be more restricted, generally
to the subject and object, or even just to the subject. In the same way, some
languages may be able to passivize any kind of role, while others (like French)
are extremely restricted.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr