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The development of the full passive*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Dianne Horgan
Dianne Horgan
Affiliation:
Indiana University
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Abstract

Spontaneous full passives and related constructions from 234 children aged 2; 0 to 13; 11 and elicited passives from 262 college students were analysed. Full passives were classified as REVERSIBLE (The dog was chased by the girl), INSTRUMENTAL NON-REVERSIBLE (The lamp was broken by (or with) the ball), or AGENTIVE NON-REVERSIBLE (The lamp was broken by the girl). The Agentive non-reversible did not appear until after age 9; and until age 11 no child produced both Reversible and Non-reversible passives. All the children used the passive in a semantically restricted way (but not in the same way). The possible developmental course of the full passive was traced for children who initially used only Reversible passives versus those who initially used only Instrumental non-reversible passives.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , February 1978 , pp. 65 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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Footnotes

[*]

A version of this paper was presented at the First Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, 1 October 1976. The data from the youngest children are from part of my doctoral dissertation, Horgan (1975). I am grateful to Terry Horgan, Wilbur Hass, John Lawler, Klaus Riegel, Michael Maratsos, and John Miyamoto for comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I am deeply indebted to Wilbur Hass for providing me access to the data on older children referred to below. Address for correspondence: Department of Educational Psychology, Indiana University, 2805 East Tenth Street, Bloomington, Indiana 47401, U.S.A.

References

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