The passive voice in written and spoken Scandinavian
The passive voice in written and spoken Scandinavian
The passive voice in written and spoken Scandinavian
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Sc<strong>and</strong><strong>in</strong>avian <strong>passive</strong> <strong>voice</strong>, as this criterion would exclude the impersonal <strong>passive</strong><br />
constructions (i.e. constructions with <strong>in</strong>transitive verbs). 2<br />
2.1 Two <strong>passive</strong> construction—morphological <strong>and</strong> periphrastic<br />
<strong>The</strong> three Sc<strong>and</strong><strong>in</strong>avian languages have two basic ways of form<strong>in</strong>g the <strong>passive</strong> <strong>voice</strong>:<br />
a morphological <strong>and</strong> a periphrastic. Both of these constructions are, as will be<br />
discussed later, productive, <strong>and</strong> can be used <strong>in</strong> various contexts.<br />
<strong>The</strong> morphological form is constructed by add<strong>in</strong>g the suffix –s (or its variants)<br />
to the verbal stem. 3 <strong>The</strong> verb may be <strong>in</strong>flected for tense. In example (1a–c), a simple<br />
sentence with a morphological <strong>passive</strong> <strong>in</strong> present tense is given <strong>in</strong> Danish (DK),<br />
Norwegian (N) <strong>and</strong> Swedish (S).<br />
(1) (a) Facebook bruges (af mange mennesker) over hele verden. DK<br />
facebook use-S by many people over all world<br />
(b) Facebook brukes (av mange mennesker) over hele verden. N<br />
facebook use-S by many people over all world<br />
(c) Facebook används (av många människor) över hela världen. S<br />
facebook use-S by many people over all world<br />
‘Facebook is used by many people all over the world.’<br />
<strong>The</strong> examples <strong>in</strong>dicate the constructional similarities of the morphological <strong>passive</strong> <strong>in</strong><br />
the three languages. In all of them an s-suffix is added to the verb. An explicit agent<br />
phrase (with the preposition af/av, ‘by’) is, as stated above, not required <strong>and</strong> is<br />
generally omitted.<br />
<strong>The</strong> second option—called the periphrastic <strong>passive</strong>—is constructed by an<br />
auxiliary verb followed by the perfect participle of a ma<strong>in</strong> verb. <strong>The</strong>re are two<br />
auxiliary verbs—blive (DK)/bli (N & S), ‘become’, <strong>and</strong> være (DK & N)/vara (S), ‘be’—<br />
that are used to construct periphrastic <strong>passive</strong>s. In some studies, a few special<br />
constructions with the verb få, ‘get’, followed by the perfect participle are also<br />
treated as a <strong>passive</strong> or <strong>passive</strong>-like construction (Diderichsen 1962, Ryen 1990,<br />
2 For a longer discussion of the notion of demotion <strong>and</strong> the <strong>passive</strong> <strong>voice</strong>, see Sundman (1987) <strong>and</strong><br />
Solstad & Lyngfelt (2006).<br />
3 In the Sc<strong>and</strong><strong>in</strong>avian literature, this form is called the s-<strong>passive</strong>, which will also be used <strong>in</strong> this article.<br />
4
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