The passive voice in written and spoken Scandinavian

aspect (Hovdhaugen 1977: 24). The agent phrase is seldom overt in these
constructions, and even if the addition of an agent would be grammatical in most
cases, it is often considered unnatural, as shown in the following example (ibid.):
(7) Det ble dvelt lenge ( ? av dem) ved det problemet.
it became dwelt-PART long time by them on this the.problem
‘People were considering the problem for a long time.’
The Swedish impersonal passive also presupposes human action, but the perceived
agent cannot be expressed overtly through an av-phrase (Teleman et al. 1999 Vol. IV:
363, Engdahl 2006: 38f). Moreover, the Swedish impersonal construction is only
productive with the morphological form, whereas the periphrastic construction is
highly restricted in this function (Engdahl 2006: 38f). Only some special
constructions, as shown in example (8), are found. These constructions are
characterised, as pointed out by Engdahl (ibid.), by a negative and/or quantitative
phrase, such as e.g. ingenting, ‘nothing’, and inte mycket, ‘not much’, in (8a, b):
(8) (a) Det blev ingenting gjort. (Engdahl (2006: 39))
it became nothing done
‘We got nothing done.’
(b) Det blev inte mycket sagt. (Engdahl (2006: 39))
it became not much said
‘Not much was said.’
Besides the restrictions related to impersonal passive constructions, there exists at
least one more limitation related to the Swedish periphrastic (bli) passive. It is
pointed out that these constructions tend to have animate subjects in Swedish
(Teleman et al. 1999 Vol. IV: 390, Engdahl 2006: 31). The animacy aspect
constitutes, however, only part of the explanation. More important is that the subject
in periphrastic passive constructions tends to have some control over or effect on the
situation described (Sundman 1983, Engdahl 2006: 32f). To have control or effect on
an event obviously presupposes an animate subject.
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