Abstract
Middle English allows new passive types not found in Old English: personal passives of former dative-governing verbs, prepositional passives and indirect object passives. We seek to show that these innovations are not due to changes in the Passive rule, which has always related a direct object to a subject, but to the creation in ME of new classes of direct object, which automatically come within the scope of Passive. It is proposed that this may be a paradigm of syntactic change within the framework of relational grammar. It is further suggested that relational grammar needs to distinguish between lexical and transformational rules, and that current versions of autonomous syntax make crucial appeal to grammatical relations and are therefore closer to relational grammar than their proponents believe. © 1980.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 101-114 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Lingua |
| Volume | 51 |
| Issue number | 2-3 |
| Publication status | Published - Jun 1980 |