One Step at a Time: Representational Overlap Between Active Voice, Be-passive, and Get-passive Forms in English
The active voice and passive voice are complementary sentence forms that are available when describing a transitive event. In English, the latter has two variants: be-passive and get-passive. Numerous attempts have been made in the literature to represent the syntactic and semantic differences betwe...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Ubiquity Press
2018-06-01
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| Series: | Journal of Cognition |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.journalofcognition.org/articles/36 |
| _version_ | 1818129947851489280 |
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| author | Dominic Thompson Fernanda Ferreira Christoph Scheepers |
| author_facet | Dominic Thompson Fernanda Ferreira Christoph Scheepers |
| author_sort | Dominic Thompson |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The active voice and passive voice are complementary sentence forms that are available when describing a transitive event. In English, the latter has two variants: be-passive and get-passive. Numerous attempts have been made in the literature to represent the syntactic and semantic differences between these forms, while maintaining their shared features, yet theoretical accounts still differ. At the same time, empirical studies into structural choice have frequently investigated the use of passive voice versus active voice, while the distinction between get- versus be-passive has not received much attention. Here we investigate the degree of similarity between the three transitive variants (be-passive, get-passive, active voice), providing experimental evidence of their mental representations in relation to each other. We describe three experiments in which participants gave acceptability or naturalness ratings for sentences formed with either be-passive or get-passive, and containing one of several adjunct types. Participants were also free to provide an alternative way to phrase each, enabling us to consider whether there are differences in accessing alternatives. We observed overwhelming preferences for changing get-passives into be-passives, and for changing be-passives into active voice, but none for changing get-passives directly into active voice (despite active voice being the most preferred variant). This preference for changing get-passive into be-passive was observed even when a change into active voice was further facilitated by the availability of a ‘ready-made’ agent. These patterns of change are consistent with partial representational overlap along two dimensions described by Thompson et al. (2013): Patient Prominence and Patient Importance. Our findings also contribute to discussions of passive structure by revealing the relative closeness of the mental representations of these forms. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-11T07:57:15Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-7762422bac3e4c39864f2a248bfe005d |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2514-4820 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-11T07:57:15Z |
| publishDate | 2018-06-01 |
| publisher | Ubiquity Press |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Journal of Cognition |
| spelling | doaj.art-7762422bac3e4c39864f2a248bfe005d2022-12-22T01:15:13ZengUbiquity PressJournal of Cognition2514-48202018-06-011110.5334/joc.3637One Step at a Time: Representational Overlap Between Active Voice, Be-passive, and Get-passive Forms in EnglishDominic Thompson0Fernanda Ferreira1Christoph Scheepers2School of English, University of Nottingham, NottinghamDepartment of Psychology, University of California, Davis, CAInstitute of Neuroscience and Psychology, University of Glasgow, GlasgowThe active voice and passive voice are complementary sentence forms that are available when describing a transitive event. In English, the latter has two variants: be-passive and get-passive. Numerous attempts have been made in the literature to represent the syntactic and semantic differences between these forms, while maintaining their shared features, yet theoretical accounts still differ. At the same time, empirical studies into structural choice have frequently investigated the use of passive voice versus active voice, while the distinction between get- versus be-passive has not received much attention. Here we investigate the degree of similarity between the three transitive variants (be-passive, get-passive, active voice), providing experimental evidence of their mental representations in relation to each other. We describe three experiments in which participants gave acceptability or naturalness ratings for sentences formed with either be-passive or get-passive, and containing one of several adjunct types. Participants were also free to provide an alternative way to phrase each, enabling us to consider whether there are differences in accessing alternatives. We observed overwhelming preferences for changing get-passives into be-passives, and for changing be-passives into active voice, but none for changing get-passives directly into active voice (despite active voice being the most preferred variant). This preference for changing get-passive into be-passive was observed even when a change into active voice was further facilitated by the availability of a ‘ready-made’ agent. These patterns of change are consistent with partial representational overlap along two dimensions described by Thompson et al. (2013): Patient Prominence and Patient Importance. Our findings also contribute to discussions of passive structure by revealing the relative closeness of the mental representations of these forms.https://www.journalofcognition.org/articles/36sentence processinglanguage productionlanguage comprehensionmental representationpassivessyntax |
| spellingShingle | Dominic Thompson Fernanda Ferreira Christoph Scheepers One Step at a Time: Representational Overlap Between Active Voice, Be-passive, and Get-passive Forms in English Journal of Cognition sentence processing language production language comprehension mental representation passives syntax |
| title | One Step at a Time: Representational Overlap Between Active Voice, Be-passive, and Get-passive Forms in English |
| title_full | One Step at a Time: Representational Overlap Between Active Voice, Be-passive, and Get-passive Forms in English |
| title_fullStr | One Step at a Time: Representational Overlap Between Active Voice, Be-passive, and Get-passive Forms in English |
| title_full_unstemmed | One Step at a Time: Representational Overlap Between Active Voice, Be-passive, and Get-passive Forms in English |
| title_short | One Step at a Time: Representational Overlap Between Active Voice, Be-passive, and Get-passive Forms in English |
| title_sort | one step at a time representational overlap between active voice be passive and get passive forms in english |
| topic | sentence processing language production language comprehension mental representation passives syntax |
| url | https://www.journalofcognition.org/articles/36 |
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