Stative and Dynamic Passive
In languages such as English, there is often a similarity between passive clauses expressing an action or event, such as:
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- The dog is fed (every day)
and clauses expressing a state, such as:
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- The dog is fed (for now).
In the first sentence the auxiliary is and the past participle fed combine to express the verbal passive voice, while in the second sentence is serves as an ordinary copula and the past participle as an ordinary adjective.
Sentences of the second type are sometimes confused with the passive voice, and in some treatments are considered to be a type of passive – a stative or static passive, in contrast to the dynamic or eventive passive exemplified by the first sentence. The stative type may also be called false passive. Some languages express or can express these meanings in contrasting ways.
Read more about this topic: Passive Voice
Famous quotes containing the words dynamic and/or passive:
“We Americans have the chance to become someday a nation in which all radical stocks and classes can exist in their own selfhoods, but meet on a basis of respect and equality and live together, socially, economically, and politically. We can become a dynamic equilibrium, a harmony of many different elements, in which the whole will be greater than all its parts and greater than any society the world has seen before. It can still happen.”
—Shirley Chisholm (b. 1924)
“...if you are to gain any great amount of good from the world, you must attain a passive condition of mind. ...it is never to be forgotten that it is the rest of the world and not you that holds the great share of the world’s wealth, and that you must allow yourself to be acted upon by the world, if you would become a sharer in the gain of all the ages to your own infinite advantage.”
—Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)