Impersonal passive voice
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The impersonal passive voice is a verb voice that decreases the valency of an intransitive verb (which has valency one) to zero.
The impersonal passive deletes the subject of an intransitive verb. In place of the verb's subject, the construction instead may include a syntactic placeholder, also called a dummy. This placeholder has neither thematic nor referential content. (A similar example is the word "there" in the English phrase "There are three books.")
The deleted argument can be reintroduced as an oblique argument or complement.
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[edit] Relation to Unergative Verbs
In most languages that allow impersonal passives, only unergative verbs may undergo impersonal passivization. Unaccusative verbs may not. The ability to undergo this transformation is a frequently used test to distinguish unergative and unaccusative verbs. In Turkish, for example, the verb çalışmak "to work" is unergative and may therefore be passivized:
- Burada çalış-ıl-ır.
- here work-PASS-PRESENT
- "Here it is worked."
The verb ölmek "to die", however, is unaccusative and may not be passivized:
- *Burada öl-ün-ür.
- here die-PASS-PRESENT
- "Here it is died."
[edit] Examples from German
German has an impersonal passive voice, as shown in the examples below:
Active Voice:
- Die Kinder schlafen.
- the children-NOM sleep
- "The children sleep."
Impersonal Passive Voice:
- Es wird geschlafen.
- DUMMY is slept
- (Literally) "It is slept."
In the latter example, the subject (Die Kinder, "the children") has been deleted, and in is place is the dummy es, loosely translated as "it".
The subject can be reintroduced using the preposition von, "by":
- Es wird von den Kindern geschlafen.
- DUMMY is by the children-DAT slept
- (Literally) "It is slept by the children."
The sentence can also be constructed without an overt subject by placing an adverbial in the first position:
- Heute wird geschlafen. Dort wird geschlafen.
- today is slept. there is slept.
- (Literally) "Today is slept. There is slept"
- "Someone is sleeping today. Someone is sleeping there."
[edit] Examples from Venetian
Also Venetian (Vèneto) has the Impersonal passive voice, similarly to German. The verb parlar "to speak" is intransitive and takes an indirect object marked by a "to" or by co "with": although there is no direct object to be promoted to subject, the verb can be passivized.
- Xe stà parlà co Marco?
- has DUMMY been spoken to Mark? = has someone spoken to Mark?
- (Literally) "Is been spoken to Mark?"
- Xe stà parlà de ti
- has DUMMY been spoken about you = someone spoke about you
- (Literally) "Is been spoken about you"
Likewise, the verb tełefonar "to phone / to ring up" takes a dative indirect object in Venetian (marked by a "to"), still it is often used in the impersonal passive:
- Xe stà tełefonà a Marco?
- has DUMMY been phoned Mark? = has someone rung up Mark?
- (Literally) "Is been phoned to Mark?"
Differently from German, the subject can be introduced only with the active voice:
- Gavìo parlà co Marco?
- have you spoken to Mark?
- (Literally) "Have-you (pl.) spoken to Mark?"
