Skip to main content
Presented to you through Paradigm Publishing Services

John Benjamins Publishing Company

Visit our Partner Page See all our books
Chapter
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Chapter 2. Impersonal passives in English and Norwegian

Abstract

This chapter investigates passive constructions with an expletive subject, labelled as impersonal passives. The English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus (ENPC) provides material for comparison across both constructions and languages. The extracted dataset shows a higher frequency of impersonal passives in Norwegian, chiefly due to two patterns that English does not have, i.e. passives with intransitive verbs and transitive verbs which retain their postverbal complement in the passive. The study considers the communicative functions of the constructions, the process types of the passivized verbs, the expression of agency, and the thematic structure of clauses with impersonal passives, finding both differences and similarities. Translations between the languages are, however, most often non-congruent, even with extraposition and parentheticals, which exist in both languages.

Abstract

This chapter investigates passive constructions with an expletive subject, labelled as impersonal passives. The English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus (ENPC) provides material for comparison across both constructions and languages. The extracted dataset shows a higher frequency of impersonal passives in Norwegian, chiefly due to two patterns that English does not have, i.e. passives with intransitive verbs and transitive verbs which retain their postverbal complement in the passive. The study considers the communicative functions of the constructions, the process types of the passivized verbs, the expression of agency, and the thematic structure of clauses with impersonal passives, finding both differences and similarities. Translations between the languages are, however, most often non-congruent, even with extraposition and parentheticals, which exist in both languages.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. General acknowledgments vii
  4. Introduction. Reconnecting form and meaning 1
  5. Section 1. Information structure
  6. Chapter 1. On the use of there -clefts with zero subject relativizer 17
  7. Chapter 2. Impersonal passives in English and Norwegian 45
  8. Chapter 3. Atopicality as the unmarked logical structure in Scottish Gaelic 71
  9. Section 2. Usage-based approaches to grammar and the lexicon
  10. Chapter 4. On the rise of a marker of disaffiliation from Others’ discourse 99
  11. Chapter 5. Towards a radically usage-based account of constructional attrition 123
  12. Chapter 6. The compound pronouns someone / somebody and everyone / everybody in present-day spoken English 145
  13. Section 3. Theoretical issues in functional linguistics
  14. Chapter 7. Iconicity in spatial deixis 185
  15. Chapter 8. A cognitive-functional approach to watch as a verb of perception 209
  16. Chapter 9. Zero-marking or nothing to mark? 237
  17. Chapter 10. Enation and agnation in multi-level models 267
  18. Author index 299
  19. Language index 301
  20. Subject index 303
Reconnecting Form and Meaning
This chapter is in the book Reconnecting Form and Meaning
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.230.02has

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. General acknowledgments vii
  4. Introduction. Reconnecting form and meaning 1
  5. Section 1. Information structure
  6. Chapter 1. On the use of there -clefts with zero subject relativizer 17
  7. Chapter 2. Impersonal passives in English and Norwegian 45
  8. Chapter 3. Atopicality as the unmarked logical structure in Scottish Gaelic 71
  9. Section 2. Usage-based approaches to grammar and the lexicon
  10. Chapter 4. On the rise of a marker of disaffiliation from Others’ discourse 99
  11. Chapter 5. Towards a radically usage-based account of constructional attrition 123
  12. Chapter 6. The compound pronouns someone / somebody and everyone / everybody in present-day spoken English 145
  13. Section 3. Theoretical issues in functional linguistics
  14. Chapter 7. Iconicity in spatial deixis 185
  15. Chapter 8. A cognitive-functional approach to watch as a verb of perception 209
  16. Chapter 9. Zero-marking or nothing to mark? 237
  17. Chapter 10. Enation and agnation in multi-level models 267
  18. Author index 299
  19. Language index 301
  20. Subject index 303
Downloaded on 23.4.2026 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1075/slcs.230.02has/html?lang=en
Scroll to top button