Abstract
It is usually assumed that English has two aspects, the perfect and the progressive. I would like to suggest, however, that there are in English not two but three aspects – the perfect, the progressive and the passive.The most common description of the (actional) passive is one which derives sentences containing be+ past participle from an underlying transitive active structure. In a description of this kind there are several defects of a theoretical nature which reveal themselves in three main areas. The first problem area is the set of verbs which are apparently transitive but which nevertheless do not passivize, for example in English have, suit, resemble, in German haben ‘have’, überkommen ‘come over’, erfordern ‘require’ (see Steube & Walther, 1972: 20–22).
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Subject
Linguistics and Language,Philosophy,Language and Linguistics
Reference11 articles.
1. On the Compositional Nature of the Aspects
2. Gelhaus , Hermann & Latzel S. (1974). Studien zum Tempusgebrauch im Deutschen. Mannheim.
Cited by
12 articles.
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