{"title":"The Passive across Two Registers of Present-Day British English: A Corpus-Based Lexico-Grammatical Perspective","authors":"Markéta Malá, Zuzana Ježková","doi":"10.2478/pjes-2023-0005","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper explores the use of the passive in present-day British English, focusing on its register-specific lexico-grammatical patterns. The interaction of the grammatical structure, lexis, phraseology and register is examined on the basis of two sub-corpora of the British National Corpus 2014 – academic prose and informal conversation. The results have corroborated the findings of previous studies in that the pattern ‘BE / GET V-ed’ is populated by verbal participial forms which create a cline with departicipial adjectives. The communicative needs of registers have been shown to have a decisive impact on the frequency of passive patterns and the specific lexical choices associated with the patterns. In both registers, the ‘BE / GET V-ed’ patterns appear to constitute the core of larger fixed phraseological units, e.g., can’t be bothered to/with, or it should be noted that .","PeriodicalId":402791,"journal":{"name":"Prague Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Prague Journal of English Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.2478/pjes-2023-0005","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract This paper explores the use of the passive in present-day British English, focusing on its register-specific lexico-grammatical patterns. The interaction of the grammatical structure, lexis, phraseology and register is examined on the basis of two sub-corpora of the British National Corpus 2014 – academic prose and informal conversation. The results have corroborated the findings of previous studies in that the pattern ‘BE / GET V-ed’ is populated by verbal participial forms which create a cline with departicipial adjectives. The communicative needs of registers have been shown to have a decisive impact on the frequency of passive patterns and the specific lexical choices associated with the patterns. In both registers, the ‘BE / GET V-ed’ patterns appear to constitute the core of larger fixed phraseological units, e.g., can’t be bothered to/with, or it should be noted that .
摘要本文探讨了现代英国英语中被动语态的使用,重点研究了其特定语域的词汇语法模式。本文以2014年英国国家语料库学术性散文和非正式会话两个子语料库为基础,考察了语法结构、词汇、短语和语域之间的相互作用。结果证实了之前的研究结果,即“BE / GET V-ed”模式由动词分词形式填充,这些分词形式与去分词形容词形成了一个渐变。语域的交际需要对被动模式的频率和与之相关的特定词汇选择有决定性的影响。在这两个语域中,“BE / GET V-ed”模式似乎构成了更大的固定短语单位的核心,例如,can ' t BE bother to/with,或者应该注意到。