The So-Called Japanese Passive.

The principal claim of this paper is that the Japanese passive consists of two different constructions, each derived from a distinct deep structure and each having associated with it a distinct set of syntactic and semantic properties. One of these constructions, the "adversative passive," implies that the grammatical subject of the sentence is adversely affected by the action expressed by the verb. The other construction is as neutral in meaning as the English passive and is referred to here as the "pure passive." Previous treatments of the passive (Bloch, Martin, and Jorden) are discussed briefly and it is concluded that the analysis offered in this paper comes the closest to an accurate description of the syntactic and semantic facts. It is also felt that the adversative passive may be a traditional Japanese construction while the pure passive is a relatively new innovation in Japanese due to the influence of translation from Western language into Japanese. (See also AL 001 564.) (JD)