Research Findings and Implications

SUBTYPES OF PASSIVE VOICE CONSTRUCTIONS

A small body of research exists that examines deaf children’s acquisition of passive constructions that use the verb to be with a past participle. Three salient studies are presented here. For the purpose of understanding deaf children’s acquisition of the passive voice, it is useful to divide passive constructions into three subtypes.

A "reversible passive" is a passive construction in which the subject can be exchanged with the agent in the by-phrase and still leave a correct logical sentence, albeit with the opposite meaning. Note the following example.

If the subject and the agent in the by-phrase were reversed like this, “The computer hacker was tricked by the detectives,” the sentence would still make logical sense. Most reversible passive constructions contain animate nouns in both the subject position and in the by-phrase.

A "nonreversible passive" is a passive construction in which the subject cannot be exchanged with the agent in the by-phrase and still leave a correct logical sentence. For example,

If this sentence were expressed as “A young hacker was destroyed by the whole mainframe system,” it would never make sense; hence, it is nonreversible.

An "agentless passive" is a passive construction that does not include the agent by-phrase, such as in the following two sentences:

The agentless passive is, of course, the most common of the three subtypes.

Summary of Subtypes of Passive Voice Constructions