Stative and Dynamic Passive
In languages such as English, there is often a similarity between passive clauses expressing an action or event, such as:
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- The dog is fed (every day)
and clauses expressing a state, such as:
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- The dog is fed (for now).
In the first sentence the auxiliary is and the past participle fed combine to express the verbal passive voice, while in the second sentence is serves as an ordinary copula and the past participle as an ordinary adjective.
Sentences of the second type are sometimes confused with the passive voice, and in some treatments are considered to be a type of passive – a stative or static passive, in contrast to the dynamic or eventive passive exemplified by the first sentence. The stative type may also be called false passive. Some languages express or can express these meanings in contrasting ways.
Read more about this topic: Passive Voice
Famous quotes containing the words dynamic and/or passive:
“Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)
“We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice—that is, until we have stopped saying “It got lost,” and say, “I lost it.””
—Sydney J. Harris (b. 1917)