[Multilingual Monday] Passiveness

[aadroma]

Today's Multilingual Monday covers the passive voice. It's used in English quite a bit -- "The meal was cooked by my husband; isn't it great?" "I was robbed by two men." "I got fired for looking at porn in the office." Here the focus isn't on the ACTIONS, but the RESULTS -- the meal is done, and that's because of the husband in example one. The

Comments

[dr_tectonic]

One thing about passive voice in English is that it's often used not just to focus on the result, but also to eliminate the actor in doing so. That's why it gets used in political-speak ("Mistakes were made.") when people want to avoid assigning responsibility. And it shows up in scientific writing because it (theoretically) presents a more objective stance for the authors not to use the first-person when describing an experiment, so they end up using passive a lot instead.

[arktos62]

I once used it in an effort to sound officious - concern was expressed...

Unfortunately, what I actually wrote was - express was concerned.

And myself was embarrassed.

[dodgingwndshlds]

OoooooooooooH!

In ASL/English interpreter-ville, this is a hot, fun, geeky topic...Of course, there is no passive construction in ASL, and merely interpreting it into the active voice is often inaccurate... People use passive voice in English for a reason... examples of which have already been named in comments... This is the Kung-Fu in real time interpreting. We analyze the message to identify a passive construction, decide what the intent behind its use is, and then incorporate this meta-message into the target language construction all within a fraction of a second...

And this is why we team interpret, switching off every 15-20 minutes!

[dodgingwndshlds]

Oh.. and.... Reflexives in Spanish are one of my favorite linguistic features.... The use of the passive voice in Spanish often strikes me as so much more transparent than the use of passive voice in English....To my ear, it is like a giant red flag, while in English, it can pass by me unnoticed...

And one interesting little use of it.... Correr means to run, and if you make it reflexive in certain parts of Spain, it means to come as in "Aye!!! Si!!! Si!!! Me corro! Me corro!!.. ahhhhhh!!!! Gracias.. Pasame una toalla, por favor."

[gorkabear]

OMG :)
You would also be surprised how some old expressions also used reflexive uses, like "desayunarse".

[gorkabear]

Just a minor note

[muckefuck]

Se habla español may be passive in meaning, but it's still grammatically active and reflexive. Similarly, sentences with hom and on have the effect of minimising the importance of the agent (which, as dr_tectonic points out, is one of the primary functions of the passive voice), but grammatically these are still active sentences. Another term used for both sorts of constructions is "impersonal", since the agent is depersonalised, either by being replaced with a generic pronoun (on) or left out altogether.

[gorkabear]

Ok, this might be a question of terms and grammar opinions, but they were called in my school books and the ones my students have now as this:

Usos del SE
- Forma reflexiva de tercera persona
- Uso en voz pasiva
- Modo impersonal

I've found an extensive list of the uses of SE here:
http://usuarios.lycos.es/grupozc/ayudaescolar/gramat-se.htm - although they're a mix-match of grammar and significate uses.

To what I just can sing like la Pantoja "Se me enamora el alma, se me enamora..."

[aadroma]

I think all Da's pointing out (and my original point) -- is that there's PHYSICALLY no differentiation between the reflexive and the passive, and the difference can only be made by CONTEXT alone. After all, if you just have "Se cortó", this can be "it was cut" or "he cut himself," and one can't tell outside of knowing the rest of the sentence.

[gorkabear]

I forgot to mention
Do you know that this can stir a lot of giggly comments? Passive = bottom - active = top :)