A Cognitive Study Of English Passive Voice From The Perspective Of Prototype Theory

The study about English passive voice has been an explosion since the1980s. Manylinguists have made studies on English passive voice from different perspectives, includingtraditional approach, transformational-generative grammar, systemic-functional grammar andcognitive approach. Having reviewed the previous studies, the thesis aims at studying theprototypical and non-prototypical members of English passive voice within the framework ofprototype theory.The author chooses the most representative examples of each English passiveconstruction from various English grammar book respectively and then classifies andannotates the typical passives of each member of English passive category. Within theframework of the prototype theory, the study aims at exploring the features of the prototypepassives and the non-prototype passives and the relations between them from the syntax andsemantics by qualitative analysis. In view of the similarities and dissimilarities between them,categorization and prototype effects are cited to explain the similarities and dissimilarities.This study has found out that the agentless and the agentive passives can be ascribed tothe prototype passive, the past participle in the prototypical members mainly focuses on thepatient’s final state of the event, and at the same time they include the process thatcorresponding to all states of the whole event. Then, we proceed to study other Englishpassive constructions, including the pseudo passive, the semi-passive, the get-passive andEnglish middle construction, which ascribed to the non-prototypical members.The linking verb “be” presents a state in the pseudo passive, the past participle in thisconstruction does not emphasize the occurrence of the action but only shows the final state ofthe patient which influenced by a change. In addition, the semi-passive is called “the mixedstructure” by Granger. Differing from the prototype passive, the past participle in theconstruction not only denotes the verbal characteristics but also the adjectival characteristics.Furthermore, without mentioned the external factors, the get-passive constructionconstrues the causative event into the spontaneous event, at the same time, its semantic center is not the event itself either. As a special language structure, though the English middleconstruction presents an active form, its subject is also the patient of the event, which conveysa passive meaning, the agent of the action is implied or just replaced by for-phrase.The paper mainly discusses the semantic and syntactic features of the prototype passivesand the non-prototype passives as well as the similarities and dissimilarities between them,which provides a theoretical basis for this special language phenomenon, and makes anaccurate explanation to various English passive constructions and the respective significanceof them. To some extent, this study verifies the close relationship between the prototypetheory and English passive voice.