1367260110.5528Understanding Syntax

22Understanding syntax1.3.2 Promotion and demotion processesThe syntactic variations in Section 1.3.1 involved simply reordering the elements of asentence. But syntactic changes can have much more radical results than this. Section1.1, in the discussion of Indonesian, introduced the idea of promotion processes –making a word or phrase more prominent in the sentence. There are also demotionprocesses, which make part of the sentence less prominent. Here I give a preliminaryintroduction to another construction involving promotion and demotion – thepassive – in English and Japanese (more in Chapter 7).The passive is illustrated in bold type in (41) and (42), and is an extremelycommon construction in both spoken and written English.(41) The women and boys with crates converged on the boats and their catch wascounted out by the market boss.(From Travels in Mauritania, Peter Hudson. Flamingo, 1990)(42) His normal work was filing girls’ teeth to points, although pointed gnasherswere considered a bit old‐fashioned by the girls here.(From Travels with Pegasus, Christina Dodwell.Sceptre, Hodder & Stoughton, 1989)Compare these passive constructions with the sentences in (43) and (44), which aretheir counterparts in meaning, but are both active constructions:(43) The market boss counted out their catch.(44) The girls here considered pointed gnashers a bit old-fashioned.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Before reading further, please try to figure out what properties differentiate the activefrom the passive constructions. Use the correct technical terms where you knowthem. Start by deciding on the grammatical role of the phrases in bold type in (43)and (44), and see what role these same phrases have in the passive constructions.What purposes do the two different construction types seem to serve? Can youdescribe any additional grammatical features?