Toward A Functional Typology of Agent Defocusing

Toward a functional typology of
agent defocusing*
JOHN MYHILL
Abstract
This paper proposes a preliminary system for categorizing the various

functions served by constructions (e.g. passives) having agents that are
defocused syntactically and/or pragmatically. These are divided into dis-
course functions and semantic functions; the discourse functions consider
the humanness, person, number, and specificity of the agent, while the
semantic functions involve affectedness, agentivity, anteriority, ability, and
responsibility. The primary data are taken from Biblical Hebrew, English,
Javanese, and Chinese, with a smaller amount of data from other languages.
It is shown that there is considerable variation from one language to another
concerning which agents are defocused and which are not; therefore, it
would be premature to attempt to posit general human cognitive structures
accounting for agent defocusing as a general phenomenon, until we have a
better understanding of cross-linguistic variation in the factors controlling
agent defocusing.
Introduction
Constructions involving some sort of agent demotion, most notably,

though not exclusively, passive constructions, have been the object of a
considerable amount of research in a variety of theoretical frameworks
(e.g. Wasow 1977; Givon 1981; Keenan 1985; Shibatani 1985; Comrie
1988; Thompson 1990). A number of such studies have focused upon
describing the various structural properties such constructions may have
(e.g. Wasow 1977; Keenan 1985; Comrie 1988). Others (e.g. Givon 1981;
Shibatani 1985) have similarly discussed the structural properties of such
constructions but have also attempted to relate these to different func-
tional motivations, the most typical of which is some kind of discourse-
motivated defocusing of the agent; however, while such studies have
Linguistics 35 (1997), 799-844 0024-3949/97/0035-0799

© Walter de Gruyter
800 / Myhill
acknowledged the importance of discourse factors, they have not pro-

vided more than a rudimentary and impressionistic framework for
categorizing and analyzing these factors. Studies such as Cooreman et al.
(1984) and Thompson (1990), on the other hand, have focused more
upon describing the discourse motivation for using such constructions,
giving text counts of various sorts that give an objective account of the
general functions of diiferent constructions; however, these studies have
lumped together all instances of a given construction without attempting
to determine how many and which different functions a single structure
may have, so that a structure can only be described as, for example,
generally associated with agents that are low in topicality.
Functionally oriented linguists interested in voice phenomena have,
then, demonstrated that there are functional motivations for these
phenomena, and they have described these motivations in general terms,
but we do not as yet have a really detailed typology of these motivations.
I do not want to exaggerate this point; as will be obvious from the
following discussion, I think there is no question that we know much
more than we did 20 years ago about the different functional motivations
for voice alternations. But I think that a much more detailed understand-
ing of these motivations is possible and necessary, and the present paper
is intended to move in this direction. It will be shown that we can
distinguish between a wide variety of functional circumstances associated
with one type of agent defocusing or another, and that diiferent construc-
tions in various languages differ with regard to the functions they are
associated with. There is no single entirely uniform and universal function
of agent defocusing that is manifested in a parallel way in different
languages; rather, there is a variety of different types of functions that
are similar in a very general way but show important differences that can
result in their being coded in a nonparallel way in different languages.
In order to develop this categorization system, I will analyze and
discuss agent-defocusing constructions in a number of languages, describ-
ing the specific circumstances associated with their use. I will make a
general distinction between discourse and semantic motivations for agent
defocusing (to be discussed in sections 2 and 3 respectively), and under
the general heading of discourse motivation I will distinguish between
different types of agents (e.g. human/nonhuman, specific/nonspecific,
singular/plural), describing the circumstances under which various agent-
defocusing constructions are used with each of these types of agents. For
example, the English passive will be shown to be used in certain circum-
stances with a plural human agent, in certain circumstances with a vague
single human agent, etc. By taking this approach, I am not denying that
these constructions may be described as having more general functions
A typology of agent defocusing 801
that encompass a variety of the specific circumstances for their use, which
I will describe; rather, I am using this approach because it allows for a
more precise description of the various circumstances under which each
construction is used, so that there will be a more solid empirical basis
for any statement intended to generalize these circumstances.
Most of my data will come from Biblical Hebrew (henceforth
"Hebrew," unless otherwise specified), English, and Javanese, with some
data also from Chinese, and a smaller amount of data from some other
languages. The Hebrew data are taken from the book of Genesis, and
for the purposes of comparison with English and Chinese, I will also use
translations of Genesis in these languages (Plaut 1981; Zhang 1979).1
Aside from the translation of Genesis, the English data are taken from
Trudeau (1984), a collection of Doonesbury comics, and the Javanese
data are taken from two short stories (Susilomurti 1979 and Widayat
1979).2 The languages were chosen on the basis of my personal knowledge
and genetic and typological diversity. Genesis and the Javanese short
stories are narratives with dialogue, so that there are both narrative and
dialogue data from Hebrew, English, Javanese, and Chinese (in addition
to Trudeau [1984], which is purely dialogue). It should be kept in mind
that the data sources each represent a particular genre, and it is quite
possible that different genres would show somewhat different usages of
agent-defocusing constructions; however, this topic will have to be left
for future research. Additionally, other languages will doubtless show
other types of motivations for agent defocusing.
Section 1 of this paper will discuss what exactly I will refer to as "agent
defocusing." Section 2 will then discuss discourse motivations for this,
while section 3 will discuss semantic motivations.
1. What is included here as "agent defocusing"?
As my purpose here is functional comparison rather than arguing for a

particular point involving a particular current framework, I include a
wide range of types in my analysis. I include as "agents" the following
types: (1) transitive subjects, (2) NPs with the same thematic role as
transitive subjects in constructions alternating diathetically with transitive
constructions, and (3) semantic agent NPs occurring with intransitive
roots (this type will be exemplified below). "Agents" of types (1) and
(2) are not necessarily semantically agentive (e.g. in Mary saw Joe and Joe
was seen by Mary, I count Mary as an "agent" even though it is not
semantically agentive). "Patients" will be considered to be, correspond-
ingly, (1) direct objects, (2) NPs with the same thematic role as direct
802 /. Myhül
objects in constructions alternating diathetically with transitive construc-

tions (e.g. the subjects of English passives), and (3) the subjects of
intransitive roots when there is an agentive PP in the same clause; they
do not necessarily have any particular semantic role. The most familiar
type of agent-defocusing construction is represented by the English pas-
sive. Whereas in an active transitive construction the agent of the action
has the syntactic role of subject, in a passive construction the agent is
"defocused" by being kept out of the syntactic subject role. However,
although the first thing we may typically think of as being "agent defocus-
ing" is passive constructions, research (e.g. Givon 1981; Shibatani 1985)
has shown that a variety of other types of constructions have to be
considered in establishing a typology, because of their functional and
structural similarities to passive constructions. In this paper, then, I will
aim for inclusivity in my working definition of "agent defocusing," includ-
ing cases in which
1. The construction in question has a diathetic alternation with a
transitive construction. The object of the transitive construction corre-
sponds to the subject of the construction in question, the verb has gone
through some kind of associated morphological process, and the referent
of the subject of the corresponding transitive construction is either (a) not
overtly mentioned, (b) the object of a PP, or (c) incorporated with the
verb. I will include as instances of this type not only those where the
construction is clearly intransitive (e.g. the English passive) but also those
where the transitivity of the construction is not entirely clear (e.g. the
Javanese di- construction [see Myhill 1993 and discussion below]).
2. There is a SEMANTICAL!* AGENTIVE PP (the demoted agent) and a
verb that is intransitive, whether or not this involves a morphological
detransitivization process. This is intended to include cases such as the
Chinese bei construction (which has been traditionally referred to as
"passive" and which I will discuss at length below) where the "passive"
verb is not necessarily derived, though the agent is clearly functionally
defocused. I exclude constructions with semantically nonagentive PPs
from this type (but not types 1 and 3) because I do not want to consider
here cases such as He died of cancer, although in some sense one might
want to consider these as agent defocusing as well.
3. There is no formal syntactic process of demotion, but the subject
is represented with a pronoun or agreement marker that indicates some
type of vague reference, for example, you in a sentence like You (one)
shouldn't say things like that or they in a sentence like They call me
Deadeye (= My name is Deadeye). When such forms are used as the
subject of a transitive verb, the resulting construction has a general
function similar to that of a passive construction; for example, You
shouldn't say things like that is similar to Things like that shouldn't be
said and They call me Deadeye is similar to I'm called Deadeye. Of course,
such forms can also be used in functions other than that of transitive
subject, for example, in If you're happy, your problems seem to take care
of themselves, where the vague you is an intransitive subject and then a
possessive, but in these cases they cannot be said to serve a function like
that of the passive, and so I will not be considering such cases in the
present paper. The functional and in some cases diachronic relationships
between such constructions and passives (e.g. the vague NP can be
reanalyzed as a voice inflection on the verb, subject agreement can switch
to the patient, etc.) have been noted by Shibatani (1985) and Givon
(1988).
I will refer to constructions of types 1 and 2 as being "passivelike," to
sidestep the terminological question of whether each of the constructions
of the types that I will consider here should actually be considered to be
"passive" constructions. There is no theoretical basis upon which I have
determined what to include and what not to include here other than a
general idea of "agent defocusing"; nothing much depends upon specifi-
cally which types are included in this study, as I expect that further
analyses will add other types. I am excluding from my study voice
alternations that have been described as ergative/antipassive or (in the
Philippine languages) actor (agent) focus/goal focus because they do not
appear to be associated with lowered discourse prominence of the agent.
I will be focusing on the following constructions:
1. In English, I will discuss the be passive (That book was written by
Mary) and constructions with vague you (You shouldn't do things like
that) and vague they (They say that all good things must end someday).
2. In Hebrew, I will discuss the passivelike niphal and hophal forms
of the verb, formed by adding certain prefixes, infixes, and suffixes to the
typically triconsonantal root, deriving intransitive verbs related to transi-
tive verbs. I will also discuss the use of 3rd person subject-verb agreement
with a vague referent, parallel to English vague they (although this is
possible with singular agreement in Hebrew as well).
3. In Javanese, I will discuss the form of the verb with the prefix di-.
This alternates with the regular transitive form with the nasal prefix JV-;
there is also a change in word order between these constructions:3
(1) Harta ng-undang jenenge.
H. N-call his-name
AGENT N-VERB PATIENT
'Harta called his name.'
(2) Jenenge di-undang Harta.
his-name DI-call H.
PATIENT DI-VERB AGENT
804 / Myhül
4. In Chinese, I will discuss the "passive" construction with the

preposition/auxiliary bei and the use of the dummy noun ren 'people' in
comparison with regular transitive constructions (Zhang 1986: 6):
(3) (xinniang) yao bei pojia qiaobuqi.
bride future parents-in-law look-down-on
PATIENT BEI AGENT VERB
'The bride will be looked down on by her parents-in-law.'
(The corresponding transitive construction would be pojia yao qiaobuqi
xinniang [agent-future-verb-patient].)
These languages do have a number of other agent-defocusing devices,
for example the get passive, one, someone in English, the passive participle
and pual in Hebrew, the verb with a ke- prefix in Javanese, etc.; however,
these devices were relatively rare in the database used for the present
paper and I have excluded them from consideration here in the interest
of focusing on more common constructions.4 I will also be discussing
agent-defocusing constructions in some other languages more briefly.
I should note that I cannot consider here all possible types of agent-
demoting constructions. As has been pointed out by Shibatani (1985), a
number of languages code agent-demoting functions with constructions
that are also used for reflexives, for example Spanish Aqui se habla
espanol = here refl speaks Spanish 'Spanish is spoken here', where the
agent is vague and English would typically use a passive construction.
Some languages, such as Russian and Polish, have passives that have
been referred to as "impersonal" (Comrie 1977), where the agent is
oblique but the patient has the direct object function, so that there is no
overt subject. It would be appropriate to include such constructions
among the general types I am considering here, but it happens that none
of the languages I am focusing on in this paper suppresses agents in
this way.
I will now turn to describing the various types of motivations for agent
defocusing, discussing discourse motivations first in section 2 before
turning to semantic motivations in section 3.
2. Discourse motivations
Previous research (e.g. Givon 1981, 1988; Shibatani 1985, inter alia) has
shown that agents that are syntactically demoted are characteristically
low in topicality, where topicality is associated with particular text counts
measuring, for example, humanness, pronominal status, definiteness, low
referential distance (RD, recency of mention of a referent), and high
topic persistence (TP, the number of consecutive following clauses in

which a referent is mentioned). See the data in Tables 1 and 2.
Correspondingly, patients that are syntactically promoted in construc-
tions such as passives are characteristically high in topicality; see Tables
3 and 4. This is related to the observation of Keenen (1976) that subjects
are prototypically high in topicality; constructions such as passives can
therefore be seen as serving the function of avoiding having a less topical
agent as the subject and instead having a more topical patient as the
subject, thereby maximizing the topicality of the subject.
Table 1. Voice in English (from Estival and Myhill 1988)
Active Passive Passive %
Pronomial agent 1760 1 0

Nominal agent 350 18 5
Human agent 2010 11 1

Nonhuman agent 100 8 8
Definite agent 1930 11 1

Indefinite agent 180 8 4
Table 2. Voice in Chamorro (from Cooreman 1984)
Active ma- passive -in- passive
N 278 20 65
Agent RD 1.53 6.70 7.26
Agent TP 2.45 0.85 0.85
Table 3. Voice in English (from Estival and Myhill 1988)
Active Passive Passive %
lst-2nd person pronoun patient 170 68 29

3rd person pronoun patient 520 68 12
Nominal patient 1250 70 5
Human patient 560 134 19

Nonhuman patient 1380 72 5
Definite patient 1320 183 12

Indefinite patient 620 23 4
806 /. Myhitt
Table 4. Voice in Chamorro (from Cooreman 1984)
Active ma- passive -in- passive
N 278 20 65
Patient RD 10.11 3.00 2.57
Patient TP 0.49 2.30 1.91
However, this only gives a very general picture of the discourse function
of agent demotion; anyone who has done studies producing numbers like
those in Tables 1-4 knows that these measures cannot (and are not
intended to) predict with any certainty in an individual instance whether
a given construction will be used, but rather only to give a general idea
of the function of a construction. Additionally, studies using such counts
have characteristically lumped together all instances of a given structure
and come up with average text-count scores; while this is useful for giving
a picture of the general function of a construction, it does not elucidate
the specific subfunctions the construction can have.
In this section, I will give a more detailed description of the different
discourse functions of agent-demotion constructions, focusing on the
discourse status of the agent and patient (my classification of some factors
as being related to "discourse" and others as being related to "semantics,"
to be discussed in section 3, is for the sake of convenience, and no
theoretical significance should be attached to it). I will separately discuss
clauses with human (section 2.1) and nonhuman (section 2.2) agents;
these generally differ in terms of discourse status because human beings
are more likely to be topical and to recur in the discourse, while nonhu-
man entities are likely to be peripheral to the discourse.
2.1. Human agents
In this section, I will discuss agent demotion in clauses with human

agents. I will distinguish between types of human agents according to
their number, their specificity, and their person. Section 2.1.1 discusses
plural human agents, section 2.1.2 vague singular agents, section 2.1.3
1st and 2nd person singular agents, and section 2.1.4 specific 3rd person
singular agents.
2.1.1. Plural human agents. I will begin by discussing cases where the
agent refers to plural humans. I will include in my discussion tokens
where the agent may literally be singular in a given instance but is thought
of as representing a group of people, for example, tokens such as He was

rubbed out or They rubbed him out (where it is assumed that an organiz-
ation, criminal in this case, was generally behind his demise but it is
entirely possible that a single person was responsible for literally killing
him). To give another example, if I am in a government office following
a certain bureaucratic procedure involving going to several rooms in
turn, I can come into a room and say I was told to come here or They
told me to come here if several people told me to come here or even if
only one person told me, because that person is in some sense acting as
a representative of an organization; I will therefore consider such usages
to have plural human agents even if it is possible that only one person
literally did the action. In this section, I will discuss how plural human
agents can be defocused in a number of different languages.
2.1.1.1. English. In English, there are two common ways of defocusing

plural agents, by using they as the agent or by using a passive construc-
tion. Thus in the example mentioned in the last paragraph it is possible
to say either / was told to come here or They told me to come here. I will
refer to such usages of they as "vague they"; this can be seen as an
unusual usage of they in that it does not have an antecedent, it can refer
to only one person, and it can literally refer to some people in a group
while excluding others — for example, it is possible to say They don't
wear short pants in Mexico and take they to not necessarily mean everyone
in Mexico but rather to exclude certain groups (e.g. children, tourists,
and people who don't mind attracting a lot of attention). In this section,
I will consider various different functions of the English passive and the
construction with plural human agents.
2.1.1.1.1. Organizational grouping. Consider (4)-(6) (Trudeau 1984:

124, 118, 85) (I italicize the usages I am drawing attention to):5
(4) But they said that I hadn't been tortured, that I'd made it all up
... They accused me of coming to this country just to get rich!
(They = immigration officials)
(5) I was hoping his patience would pay off, that on the last game of
the season they'd give him at least one set of downs. (They = the
coaching staff or just the coach)
(6) They assigned me a major flamer. (They = the college bureaucrats
who determine dormitory housing assignments)
In such cases, they is taken to refer to one or more members of an
organization acting as a group; I will refer to such agents as organiz-
ational. It is typically impossible to figure out from the context whether
808 J. Myhill
more than one person was literally involved in the action. For example,
in (6), it is quite possible that the decision whom to assign the speaker
as a roommate was taken by one particular administrator as a representa-
tive of the entire administration, or alternatively perhaps a group of
administrators acted together in this. It must be assumed that they refers
to the entire group of people in whose name the action was done, even
if in a particular case only one person may have literally done the action.
English also allows the passive construction to be used when there is
a group of people functioning organizationally, for example (7)-(8)
(Trudeau 1984: 30,10):
(7) And I have every reason to believe 777 be accepted, (by a medical
school)
(8) Last week, / was even offered the lead bikini walk-on in a "Riptide,"
but I turned it down to work on a project I really care about.
There are a number of factors that control whether they or the passive
construction is used in cases such as (4)-(8). One important factor is
that they is particularly associated with cases where the speaker is express-
ing a negative feeling toward the organization, particularly governments
or other administrators or bosses; this is the case for (4)-(6) above. On
the other hand, the passive is likely to be used when there is no particular
negative feeling toward the organization, as in (7)-(8). However, even
when the speaker is negatively disposed toward the organization, the
passive is used in more formal language, as in (9) and (10) (Trudeau
1984: 58, 56):
(9) The excerpt is just one of the 320 lines that have been expunged
from the widely used high school text, "Adventures in Reading."
(10) Have you been afforded any sustenance since your arrest?
(9) is from a TV program ridiculing censorship; the documentary clearly
has a negative attitude toward the censoring organizations, but because
of the formal context (using, e.g., expunged) the passive is used here
instead of, for example, ... one of the 320 lines that they have expunged
.... The speaker in (10) is a very proper old woman and the addressee
is her assistant, who has been arrested on a trumped-up charge; although
the speaker is quite angry with the police, she is speaking formally
(afforded any sustenance) and therefore uses the passive instead of saying
Have they afforded you any sustenance since your arrest?
Aside from such formal usages, the passive is also used instead of
vague they even when the speaker has a negative attitude toward the
organizational agent if the patient is a person and the usage occurs in
the middle of a passage in which this person is being focused upon and
the speaker particularly wants to have this person as the subject in order
to contribute to a general feeling of empathy with this person, as in (11)
and (12) (Trudeau 1984: 3, 51)
(11) How did it go? Well, let me tell you. First, I missed my train and
I was an hour late. Then my office wasn't ready. Then the recep-
tionist made a major pass at me. Then, to top it off, I was informed
that my first assignment is to prepare a Reagan campaign spot
aimed at black voters.
(12) (from an antiabortion documentary)
Voiceover: Timmy's mother. Wallowing in self-pity, she explains
why Timmy will never see the light of day.
Mother: Look, honey, I'm unemployed, uneducated, and
totally unprepared for responsibility. Why should I be
forced to become a mother under those circumstances,
especially when the kid'll have no father?
In both of these cases, the speaker is clearly taking a negative view of
the organizational agent (the bosses who ordered the campaign spot and
the government that does not allow her to have an abortion), but the
clause in question is in the context of a series of clauses related to the
situation of the patient (the speaker in both cases here), so that things
are being seen from the patient's point of view, and therefore the passive
is used instead of saying, for example, they informed me that ... in (11)
and Why should they force me ... ? in (12).
Aside from cases where there is an organizational agent who is being
viewed negatively, vague they can also be used in cases such as (13) and
(14), with organizational agents when the passive is inappropriate
because the patient is indefinite (sports and stunt pants) (Trudeau 1984:
105, 85):
(13) I wonder why they cover sports other than baseball ... (they —
sportswriters)
(14) Boopsie (watching Miami Vice):
Oh, gosh ... I hope he didn't tear his Beltrami pleated linen
trousers. Here comes Tubbs! He's pulling Sonny out of the
bougainvillea! He's brushing him off ... wow, talk about sus-
pense! And the Beltramis are ... OOO-KAY!
B.D.: Oh, right. I'll bet they use stunt pants, (they = the people
making the show)
2.1.1.1.2. Agents involved in a common physical activity. Vague they

is also used in some cases where the agent refers to a group of people
810 J. Myhill
involved in the same specific physical action, even if they are not being
viewed negatively, as in (15)-(17) (Trudeau 1984: 90, 14, 17):
(15) J.J.: Isn't this space incredible, Mike? We're so lucky to have
found anything near Avenue B! I can't believe I'm finally
about to live and work in my own New York City loft!
It's just so damn romantic — you and I sitting here on a
hardwood floor, sipping wine, dreaming about the future.
Mike: Gazing up at the stars ...
J.J.: I'm sure they'll fix the roof soon, Mike.
(16) (the speaker has just been moved to a hospital)
When they moved me in here yesterday, I just decided it was a real
waste to have it all to myself.
(17) Honey: Guess what? We found a liberal donor.
Duke: What? Already?
Honey: Yes, sir. The body's on its way. Surgery is scheduled
for tonight.
Duke: My God. Are we sure he was a liberal?
Honey: Pretty sure. They pulled him from a Volvo.
However, vague they is not used in all cases of this type in English. One
example of the use of the passive in such a function is (18) (Trudeau
1984: 47):
(18) Alice: Elmont, sweet, calm down and just tell Rick where you
met me.
Elmont: I met her dumpster-diving behind Trader Vic's.
Alice: A magical night. Some of the spare ribs had barely been
touched.6
Vague they is impossible here (TiThey had barely touched some of the
spare ribs). The obvious difference between (18) and (15)-(17) is that in
(18) the agents cannot be said to be doing the action as a unit — they
will fix the roof together in (15), they moved her in together in (16), and
they pulled him out together in (17), but they did not touch the spare
ribs together in (18); this is why it would be peculiar to use vague they
in (18). We will also see some other restrictions on the use of vague they
in this type of situation in section 2.1.1.2, where I discuss this type of
construction in Hebrew and compare it to English.
2.1.1.1.3. Agents in a common location. A related usage may be

referred to as the "locative they" where they refers in a general sense to
people in a particular place, as in (19) and (20) (Trudeau 1984: 15, 53):
(19) They don t always do it well here (in Haiti), but they do it for next
to nothing ... I didn't even know they had rickshaws in Haiti.
(20) In Palm Beach, they think homelessness is caused by bad divorce
lawyers.
There are no tokens of the passive being used in such cases in the database
from Trudeau 1984, but this is a possible use of the passive (Homelessness
is thought ...) in more formal contexts.
2.1.1.1.4. Speech-act verbs. Speech-act verbs such as say and call com-
monly use the passive construction when their agent is people in general,
for example That girl is called Mary, meaning that people in general call
her Mary. It is also possible to use vague they in some cases, for example
(21)-(25) (Trudeau 1984: 50, 49, 93, 148, 149):
(21) But why did they call peace officers "pigs"?
(22) Once upon a time, in a land they spelled "Amerika" ...
(23) They say money can really change people.
(24) They say the dog bays in Chicago.
(25) ... the CIA operative they call "Havoc" ... is scouting locations.
In some of these cases, the use of vague they can be related to the fact
that the patient is indefinite, making the passive less likely (e.g. [21]-[23],
but not [24]-[25]). This usage of vague they is usually stylistically
marked — the usage in (22) is associated with fables, the usage in (23)
and (24) is associated with proverbs, and the usage in (25) is associated
with heroic legends (about e.g. cowboys, superheroes, etc.).
2.1.1.1.5. Epistemological verbs (e.g. know, believe, expect). Consider

(26) and (27) (Trudeau 1984: 42, 45):
(26) But you're a man. You re not expected to think about that stuff.
(27) His final assignment behind him, Deaver is now expected to turn
his attention to soliciting business for his new PR firm.
In such cases, the human agents represent general public opinion or
knowledge. Constructions of this type are characteristic of the passive
forms of supposedly syntactically exceptional verbs, which have been
referred to as "object raising," "exceptional case-marking," "S-bar delet-
ing," etc., in various formal syntactic theories, for example, Mary is
believed to be clever, Mary is known to be clever, etc. English does not
allow vague they to be used in such cases; that is, They believe Mary to
be clever can only mean that a certain known and readily identifiable
group of people believe that Mary is clever, not that there is a general
public belief that Mary is clever.
812 J. My hill
2.1.1.1.6. Restrictions on vague they. Vague they can only be used for
a group of agents when this group definitely excludes both the speaker
and the listener. For example, consider (28) (Trudeau 1984: 15):
(28) Most of the games are fixed, but it's still good fun.
The speaker here is the head of a school and he is talking about the
school's volleyball team. It is not clear whether he himself is one of the
people involved in fixing the games, but it is possible that he is (especially
considering his general character and attitude), and so it would be
inappropriate here to use to say They fix most of the games, which would
definitely exclude the speaker from the set of people fixing the games.
Similarly, consider (29) (Trudeau 1984: 19):
(29) Anyone know how many shots were fired!
Here a policeman is addressing a group of people involved in a shooting
spree in a subway. It is likely that at least some of the addressees actually
fired shots themselves, so that it would not be possible to say here Anyone
know how many shots they fired? ι this would suggest that some group of
people not including any of the listeners fired all the shots.
2.1.1.1.7. Agentive passives. In discussing passive constructions I have
thus far referred only to passives with no overt agent, which in English
constitute the overwhelming majority of passive constructions (Shibatani
1985; Estival and Myhill 1988). However, it is of course also possible in
English to have a passive construction with an overt agent; in the database
from Trudeau (1984) there is only one such passive with a plural human
agent, given in (30) (Trudeau 1984: 53):
(30) Lacey: ... and on Friday I'll be in Palm Beach. I promised your
young man I'd speak to some friends about funding that
new shelter he's so keen on.
Joanie: Oh, Lacey, Rick will be so pleased. The shelter needs all
the support it can get.
Lacey: Well, I'm happy to do it, dear, but I wouldn't get your
hopes too high. In Palm Beach, they think homelessness
is caused by bad divorce lawyers.
In this case, the passive is used rather than the active (bad divorce lawyers
cause homelessness) because the topic of the conversation is homelessness
rather than divorce lawyers, and using the passive makes it possible to
have homelessness as the subject.
2.1.1.2. Hebrew. For many of the functions discussed in 2.1.1.1, agent
defocusing is functionally similar in Hebrew and English. For example,
vague agents of epistemological and speech-act verbs are characteristically

suppressed with a passivelike construction (the niphal, which might also
be considered a middle form) rather than a vague-i/zey construction. In
the Hebrew database, this is particularly common when there is future
time reference; the reason for this is not entirely clear, but I would suggest
that this is because the agents in passivelike constructions are even more
vague than the agents in vague-/Aey constructions, and, other things
being equal, agents of general future actions/events are more vague than
agents of general past actions/events — for general past actions/events,
there must have been SOME specific agents, even if they are being
defocused, while for general future actions/events, there is not even a
specific agent yet. Examples of this are (31)-(32) (Gen. 41: 30-31, 48:
16; the English translations of Genesis are taken from Plaut 1981 and
are therefore idiomatic English rather than a literal translation of the
Hebrew; a literal translation is given in the glosses):7
(31) vnishkax kol-hasava' bPerec micraym...
and-will-be-forgotten all-the-plenty in-the-land-of Egypt
vlo?- yivada* hasava" baParec
and-not will-be-known the-plenty in-the-land
'"(Immediately ahead are seven years of great abundance in all
the land of Egypt. After them will come seven years of famine,)
and the abundance of the land of Egypt will be forgotten. (As the
land is ravaged by famine,) no trace of abundance will be left in
the land (because of the famine thereafter) ...'"
(32) vyikare? vahem shmi vshem Pavotay
and-will-be-called in-them my-name and-name my-fathers
Pavraham vyicxak
Abraham and-Isaac
'"In them may be recalled my name and the names of my fathers
Abraham and Isaac.'"
Myhill and Xing (1994: 275) also found that Hebrew characteristically
uses a particular passive verb form, the hophal, in cases where some
unspecified group of servants does something for the person they work
for, for example Gen. 38: 25, translating 'As she was being brought out'
(by Judah's servants at his command) uses the hophal mucePt, and Gen.
31: 22, translating On the third day, Laban was told' (presumably by his
servants) uses the hophal yugad.
However, aside from these similarities between English and Hebrew
regarding the use of passivelike constructions, there are also some differ-
ences between these languages in this regard. Hebrew shows more tend-
ency to use a 3rd person plural subject agreement marker for agents who
814 /. Myhill
do some particular physical task together, even if they do not represent

some formal organizational group (particularly with past-tense actions,
because the agents of past tense are generally more specific, as discussed
above). This is exemplified in (33) (Gen. 41: 14):
(33) vayishlax par"oh vayikra? ?et-yosef
and-sent Pharaoh and-he-called ACC-Joseph
vayricuhu min-habor ...
and-they-hurried-him from-the-dungeon
Thereupon Pharaoh sent for Joseph, and he was rushed from the
dungeon.'
Here the Hebrew uses a transitive verb form with 3rd person plural
subject-verb agreement (vayricuhu), but the English translation in Plaut
(1981) uses a passive (he was rushed). A similar example is found in Gen.
49: 30-1, where the Hebrew uses transitive constructions with 3rd person
plural subject agreement, literally There they buried Abraham and his
wife Sarah, there they buried Isaac and his wife Rebekah,9 but Plaut (1981)
translates this with passives, as 'there Abraham and his wife Sarah were
buried; there Isaac and his wife Rebekah were buried.' These examples
are generally similar to usages of vague they in English such as (15)-( 17).
However, the use of such a construction in Hebrew appears to be less
restricted than in English, judging from the translations in Plaut (1981);
in such cases vague they seems unnatural in English, for example 'Pharaoh
sent for Joseph and Hthey rushed him from the dungeon' or There T.they
buried Abraham and his wife Sarah, there Tithey buried Isaac and his wife
Rebekah' Let us consider (15)-(17) again (this time including more
context for [16]) (Trudeau 1984: 90, 14, 17):
(34) J.J.: Isn't this space incredible, Mike? We're so lucky to have
found anything near Avenue B! I can't believe I'm finally
about to live and work in my own New York City loft!
It's just so damn romantic — you and I sitting here on a
hardwood floor, sipping wine, dreaming about the future.
Mike: Gazing up at the stars ...
J.J.: I'm sure they'll fix the roof soon, Mike.
(35) (the speaker has just been moved to a hospital)
What do you think of my new digs? Impressive, huh? They give
you three squares a day, your own bathroom, and they even keep
the heat on all night. When they moved me in here yesterday, I
just decided it was a real waste to have it all to myself.
(36) Honey: Guess what? We found a liberal donor.
Duke: What? Already?
Honey: Yes, sir. The body's on its way. Surgery is scheduled
for tonight.
Duke: My God. Are we sure he was a liberal?

Honey: Pretty sure. They pulled him from a Volvo.
If we compare those cases where vague they is used with those where it
is not used, the main difference appears to be that, although we can say
that the 3rd person plural agents are always vague, they are in some
sense even more vague when the passive rather than vague they is not
used. In (34), they refers specifically to the institutional authorities
responsible for fixing the roof, in particular the landlord, whom J.J. and
Mike have met. In (35), there have already been two uses of locative
vague they right before (They give you three squares a day, your own
bathroom, and they even keep the heat on all night), so that we can suppose
that they in When they moved me in here yesterday refers to basically the
same group of people. In (36), the surrounding discourse involves a
group of people involved in organizing the transplant, that is, the we
who have found a donor and the agents who have scheduled the opera-
tion, so that they here, though not anaphoric in the normal sense, at
least refers to some group of people among those involved in the
operation.
On the other hand, in (18), (33), and the example from Gen. 49: 31
translated There Abraham and his wife Sarah were buried, there Isaac
and his wife Rebekah were buried,' the 3rd person plural agent reference
is more vague. In (18), there is no separate mention relating to any of
the people who might have touched the spare ribs. In (33), none of
the people who take Joseph to Pharaoh have any specific identity
and they are not related to any other group of people referred to in the
surrounding discourse. In the burial example, the groups of people
referred to by the two 3rd person plural agreement markers clearly do
not even include the same people. Thus we can suggest that Hebrew
allows 3rd person plural agreement in contexts involving group activities
where the 3rd person plural reference is too vague to allow vague they
in English.
In connection to this, we find in Modern Hebrew constructions such
as (37):
(37) ganvu li ?et-ha-mexonit.
stole (3pl) to-me ACC-the-car
'My car was stolen.' (lit. They stole the car to me.')
This can be uttered out of the blue upon discovering that one's car has
been stolen. This cannot under normal circumstances be idiomatically
translated into English with vague they (They stole my car'), because
there is no concept of they being part of an organization and there is
816 / Myhül
nothing in the surrounding discourse (as there is in [34]-[36]) to make

the referent of they less vague, for example a knowledge of the identity
of one of the criminals, a partial identification with some type of organiza-
tionally or locatively defined group, or a preceding clause suggesting
some sort of reference to the agents (it would be possible to say, for
example, The car's been broken into. They've taken the radio, with the
zero agent in the first clause making the criminals specific enough to be
referred to with they in the second clause).8 Other than such cases, They
stole my car would be possible only in certain contexts, for example if
one has developed such a paranoid idea about a given community that
one simply assumes that there is some kind of locally omnipresent crimi-
nal organization that is responsible for such things; however, this specifi-
cally involves creating a suitable context where the more restrictive
requirements for the use of English vague they are met, while in Hebrew
the requirements for using vague 3rd person plural verb agreement are
much less strict and do not require or suggest such special contexts.
Turning now to the agents of speech-act verbs, Hebrew again shows a
stronger preference than English for using active forms.9 In Biblical
Hebrew, this is associated with 3rd person singular agreement, and so I
will postpone discussion of this until section 2.1.2.2 (see example [48]).
In Modern Hebrew, it is common to identify someone with a vague 3rd
person plural agent, for example korPim lo Pohad, lit. '(3rd person plural
subject agreement) call him Ohad' = 'his name is Ohad', which is not
stylistically marked as it is in English (see [25] and discussion in 2.1.1.1.4).
2.1.1.3. Chinese. Chinese uses the dummy ren 'people' in many cases
where English or Hebrew would use a passive or vague they. For example
(31) is translated into Chinese as (38) (Genesis 41: 30-31, Zhang 1979):
(38) ren wangji chongqian you guo de fengnian. jihuang
people forget before have once abundant-year famine
yanzong de shi ren zai ye jibuqi chongqian
severe make people no-longer also not-remember before
you guo de fengnian.
have once abundant-year
'"(Immediately ahead are seven years of great abundance in all
the land of Egypt. After them will come seven years of famine,)
and the abundance of the land of Egypt will be forgotten. (As the
land is ravaged by famine,) no trace of abundance will be left in
the land (because of the famine thereafter) ..."'
Rather than using a passivelike construction as in English and Biblical
Hebrew, Chinese uses the dummy ren 'people' twice, and this is a charac-
teristic difference between the languages (see Myhill and Xing 1994:
167-169). Similarly, (39) is the Chinese translation of (33) (Gen. 41: 14,
Zhang 1979):
(39) wang pai ren zhao yuese lai. tarnen lianmang dai
Pharaoh send person call Joseph come they in-a-hurry bring
ta chu yu.
him out-of prison
Thereupon Pharaoh sent for Joseph, and he was rushed from the
dungeon.'
Here the Hebrew uses vague 3rd person subject agreement (see [33])
while English uses a passive; the Chinese translation, on the other hand,
uses the dummy ren to introduce the people in the preceding clause so
that they can then be referred to with anaphoric tarnen 'they'.
2.1.1.4. Javanese. Javanese shows the opposite type of preference from

Hebrew, using a passivelike form even where English would use a vague
they. Consider (40) (Widayat 1979: 129):
(40) Ora suwe maneh olehe adus wis rampung Ian wis
not long then bathe already finish and already
salin panganggo wutuh paringane bu Santa. Bareng
change clothes intact thing-given mother S. when
wis adus Ian dandan, jebule biyunging bayi mau isih
already bathe and dress turn-out mother baby that still
enom. Banjur dikon lungguh ing kursi, jagongan karo pak
young then asked sit on chair attended with father
Santa sakaliyan.
S. and-his-wife
'Not long after, she [the baby's mother] had finished bathing and
had changed into the new clothes she got from Mrs. Santa. When
she had bathed and dressed, it turned out that the baby's mother
was still young. Then they asked her to sit on a chair, and with
Mr. and Mrs. Santa (=they) next to her.'
It is not clear who asked the mother to sit in a chair, Mr. Santa,
Mrs. Santa, or both of them. However, because the two of them are the
only other people on the scene and because they can be assumed to be
essentially acting as a unit in this case, the normal English translation
here is with vague they. On the other hand, Javanese uses an alternative
voice construction here, with the di- form of the verb that allows the
agent to be omitted (similar in this respect to the English passive); this
is a typical usage of the Javanese di- construction (see Myhill 1993).
818 /. Myhill
In this section (2.1.1), I have discussed agent defocusing with plural

human agents. In the following sections, I will turn to considering agent
defocusing with singular human agents, beginning with vague singular
human agents in section 2.1.2.
2.1.2. Vague singular human agents. Languages typically use certain

constructions to represent single agents, which refer to one (and only
one) person when it does not matter exactly who that person is. In such
cases, the agent cannot be represented with a normal referential NP, so
it must be either syntactically defocused with a passivelike construction
or represented with a nonreferential NP. In this section, I will discuss
different examples of this from a number of different languages.
2.1.2.1. English. Consider (41) (Trudeau 1984: 11):

(41) Joanie, to really understand suffering, you have to experience it
first-hand.
Here you refers to one person, but it does not matter exactly who that
person is; I consider you to be vague here because it does not refer to
the listener, as it does in its literal meaning. It would also be possible to
use one, somebody, or someone instead of you in this function; however,
these words were very rare in this role in Trudeau (1984), so I will not
discuss their usage here.10 One difference between the functions of vague
you and the passive is that vague you is never used for single past actions
whereas the passive with a single human agent is usually used with a
single past action; this is because vague-^ow agents are even more vague
and general than passive agents, and agents of past actions are generally
higher in specificity (see discussion in 2.1.1.2). Thus for example in a
construction such as Mr. Royce didn't have an ID, so he was detained
(Trudeau 1984: 55; a police official is explaining why Mr. Royce was
arrested), it is impossible to use vague you (so you detained him). In
relation to this, vague you can only be used when the agent can be any
person (1st, 2nd, or 3rd) and there is no restriction in the context in
terms of which of these could be the agent; on the other hand, the passive
is used when there is some restriction judging from the context on whether
the agent is 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person. Consider for example (42) and (43)
(Trudeau 1984: 9, 4):
(42) From what I'm told, you're one of the hot new talents in town.
(43) // mil be restored to him only in times of national emergency,
(from a TV news show; it is the manhood of Vice-President Bush,
which is being placed in a blind trust)
In both of these cases, it is clear that the agent must be 3rd person and
cannot be 1st person or 2nd person, and so in both of these cases you is
impossible with the vague meaning (*From what you tell me, *you will
restore it to him; these sentences are of course possible with specific you).
Similarly, it is possible to make a threat or warning by saying If he
doesn't watch out, he's going to be killed, where the agent might be 1st or
3rd person, but not 2nd person, but the same idea cannot be expressed
with vague you, so that you're going to kill him could only mean literally
you; in the same way, it is possible to ask a mob kingpin Is he going to
be killed?, where the agent might be 2nd or 3rd person, but not 1st
person, and again vague you is impossible here, so that in Are you going
to kill him?, you can only be taken as specific you.
Compare, on the other hand, usages of vague you such as (41), (44),
and (45) (Trudeau 1984: 11, 70, 10):
(44) You even mention the word "culture" to him and his eyes glaze over.
(45) It begins with "Q," and you do it in the shallow end of a pool.
These cases do not refer to past actions and for each case, the agent can
be either 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person — to really understand suffering, I/you/he
have/has to experience it first-hand, I/you/'s/he even mention/s the word
"culture" to him and his eyes glaze over, It begins with Q and I/you/he/she
doles it in the shallow end of a pool. For all of these, the passive is actually
possible (it has to be experienced first-hand, the word "culture" is even
mentioned to him, it's done in the shallow end of a pool), but in fact in
the passive database in Trudeau 1984 there is not a single passive con-
struction of this type — when the agent can be any person, vague you is
always used in this situation. It should be noted, however, that vague
you is clearly an informal usage, and a more formal database would
undoubtedly have some passives in such contexts.
There is only one example of an agentive passive with a singular
nonspecific human agent in the passive database in Trudeau (1984: 42):
(46) Rick (writing): ... and as I shake talcum on his tummy, I marvel
at what a miracle he still is, what a miracle. All
the work seems worth it today.
Joanie: Rick, you know what would happen if your jour-
nal were written by a woman! Nothing.
Rick is a reporter who has been assigned to write a story on his experience
as a (semi-) involved father; Joanie is his wife and the mother of their
child. The passive is used here rather than the active (if a woman wrote
your journal) because the continuing topic here is Rick's journal, and by
using the passive, this can be put in subject position.
820 /. Myhill
Many languages have some type of nonreferential NP used to refer to

vague singular human agents, for example Hopi hak, German man,
French on, etc. While these may be said to be similar to English you in
a very general sense (referring to vague singular human agents), detailed
analyses would be necessary to determine exactly how these forms are
similar in their functions and how they are different.
2.1.2.2. Hebrew. Hebrew makes use of an active verb form with 3rd
person singular subject-verb agreement and no overt subject, in clauses
with past-tense meaning, in many cases where English would use a passive
(the fact that this distinctive Hebrew usage appears to be limited to past-
tense usages is probably related to the general higher specificity of past-
tense agents — if an action has already taken place, SOMEONE must have
done it [see discussion in 2.1.1.2]). Consider (47) and (48) (Gen. 41:
10-14, 31: 47-48; note again that the English translations are taken from
Flaut [1981] and represent idiomatic English rather than a literal rendition
of the Hebrew; a more literal translation of the Hebrew is given in
the glosses):
(47) ?oti heshiv "al-kani v?oto talah.
me he-returned to-my-place and-him he-hanged
'"(Once Pharaoh was angry with his servants, and placed me in
custody of the house of the chief steward, together with the chief
baker. We had dreams the same night, he and I, each of us a
dream with a meaning of its own. A Hebrew youth was there with
us, a servant of the chief steward, and when we told him our
dreams, he interpreted them for us, telling each the meaning of his
dream. And as he interpreted for us, so it came to pass:) / was
restored to my post, and the other was hanged."
(48) vayikra?-lo lavan ygar sahaduta? vya'akov kara? lo
and-called-to-it Laban and-Jacob called to-it
gal'ed. vayoPmer lavan hagal hazeh 'ed beyni
and-said Laban the-mound this witness between-me
uveynxa hayom al-ken kara?-shmo gal'ed.
and-between-you today thus he-called-its-name
'Laban named it Yegar-sahadutha, but Jacob named it Gal-ed.
And Laban declared "This mound [gal] is a witness [*ed] between
me and you today." That is why it was named Gal-ed.'
The Hebrew in (47) has a 3rd person singular masculine subject
agreement marker with no independent subject. If Pharaoh is taken as
the intended subject here, this is a bizarre anaphoric reference, being
separated from the last reference to Pharaoh by eight clauses and refer-
ences to three different masculine singular referents (the chief steward,

the chief baker, and the Hebrew youth). If Pharaoh is not the intended
subject, then it is not clear who is; this might be considered to be
something like a "vague he" parallel to the English vague they. The
English translation in Plaut (1981) avoids this problem by simply using
a passive, but the Hebrew does not. Similarly, in the Hebrew in (48), the
last clause has a 3rd person singular masculine subject agreement marker
with no independent subject. The most recent masculine singular reference
is to Laban, but Laban cannot be the subject of the clause because he
gave the place a different name. If Jacob as taken as the subject of the
last clause in (48), the anaphoric reference is again peculiar because the
reference to Laban intervenes between this clause and the most recent
reference to Jacob. So again this might be taken as something like a
"vague he" Another such example is from Gen. 24: 32 and is translated
in Plaut 1981 as '("Come in, blessed of Yahweh ...," he (Laban) said
(to the man)...So the man entered the house,) and the camels were
unloaded. The camels were given water and food'; the Hebrew uses yfatax
'he unloaded' andyiten 'he gave', transitive verbs with 3rd person singular
subject-verb agreement, but the subject here cannot be the man, who is
the most recently mentioned 3rd person singular male, because obviously
he did not bring the camels into the house. Again the English translation
here uses passives but the Hebrew uses two active transitive constructions
with 3rd person masculine singular subject-verb agreement markers.
It is not clear how to interpret Hebrew constructions of this type. One
possible interpretation of this is that the agent of the action is a single
unknown person, so that appropriate translations would be, for example,
'someone restored me to my post,' 'someone named it Gal-ed,' and
'someone brought in his camels'; note that this would be different from
the English vague you, which is never used for single past events of this
type. Another possibility is that the agent is essentially a single member
of a group of people, so that this usage would be similar to that discussed
in section 2.1.1 J.I, except that this would be "vague he" instead of vague
they. A third possibility is that the agent is simply vague with no idea of
number or of whether or not the agent is part of a group; this would be
functionally (though not structurally) similar to using the passive in
English. A final possibility is that the agent in fact does refer to a specific
person, but the antecedence relationship is different from what would be
found in English, in that it can go back quite a few clauses and skip over
a number of potential antecedents of the same person and number; in
that case, this usage should not properly be included as a type of agent
demotion at all. However this is accounted for, though, the situation is
822 J. Myhill
different from that in English, where the agentless passive is used as a

translation in each of these cases.
2.1.2.3. Chinese. Chinese also shows a tendency to avoid passive con-
structions in such cases as I have noted in the preceding section, but in
a different way from Hebrew, namely by specifically naming the agent.
Thus (47) is translated in Zhang 1979 as bixia hutfele wode zhiwei ...,
literally Tharaoh (bixia) restored my position ...' and the passage from
Gen. 24: 32 referred to above is translated into Chinese as laban xiexia
bei shangde huowo ..., literally 'Laban unloaded the baggage on the
camels' backs ...' This of course involves taking a guess as to who the
agent in fact is, which is avoided in the Hebrew by using the 3rd person
singular subject agreement marker and in English by using the passive.
2.1.3. 1st and 2nd person agents. In some cases, 1st and 2nd person
agents are left out in order to avoid directly implicating them in the
actions. Consider (49) and (50) (Trudeau 1984: 48, 20):
(49) You want to be arrested or not?
(50) I just want to be left alone.
In (49), the speaker is a policemen and the listener is a demonstrator,
while in (50) the speaker is a person who has just supposedly committed
a heroic deed and the listener is a reporter who is asking him about this.
The alternative constructions, mentioning the agent, would be something
like Do you want me to arrest you or not? and I just want you to leave me
alone\ avoiding overt mention of the agent in such cases makes the
conflict less direct. The same type of function is illustrated in (51)
(Trudeau 1984: 68):
(51) I'm beginning to think my whole life in this town has been wasted
on some stupid fantasy ...
The speaker here is a professional football player whose career has been
a failure but who has refused to retire and try something else. Here there
is no conflict but the speaker is still motivated to avoid a construction
more directly implicating himself (I've wasted my whole life in this town).
The passive can also be used to avoid implicating anyone in particular
when it is not clear exactly who the agent is, as in (52) and (53) (Trudeau
1984: 15, 19):
(52) Most of the games are fixed, but it's still good fun.
(53) Anyone know how many shots were fired!
In these cases (which I have already discussed in section 2.1.1.1.6), it is
possible but not definite that the speaker (in [52]) or the listener (in [53])
is included among the agents of the action; using the passive rather than
the active (We fix most of the games, Anyone know how many shots you
fired?) avoids direct and explicit implication of the speech-act
participants.
In the textual examples I have found in Trudeau (1984) of passives
with 1st or 2nd person agents, the discourse motivation is always some-
thing related to avoiding responsibility or confrontation. It is possible to
use a passive to avoid directly implicating a 3rd person agent, for example
saying Smith was executed rather than The state executed Smith to avoid
direct mention of the state. In such cases, however, because 3rd person
agents are in any case lower in topicality and relatively likely to be
demoted with a passive construction for this reason, it is generally difficult
to say for sure that the motivation for using a passive construction is
deflecting responsibility; on the other hand, for cases such as (49) and
(50) it is clear that the passive serves this function.
Languages differ with regard to how much use they make of this type
of agent suppression. Myhill and Xing (1994) show that Chinese uses it
much less than do Hebrew and English. For example, when Joseph,
disguised as an Egyptian official, tells his brothers how he will determine
whether or not they are telling the truth, the Hebrew suppresses the agent
with a passivelike construction (bzot tibaxenu 'By this you will be tested')
as does the English translation 'By this you shall be put to the test' (Flaut
1981), but the Chinese translation (Zhang 1979) has wo yao shiyishi
nimen Ί will test you', overtly mentioning the agent; Myhill and Xing
(1984: 267-269) show that this is a consistent difference between Chinese
on the one hand and Hebrew and English on the other.
Shibatani (1985) notes that a number of languages show a functional
overlap between passive constructions and honorification, and this may
be attributed to the same type of motivation in that direct and explicit
reference to an honored agent can be avoided. Thus for example an
imperative can be made more formal in Indonesian by using the passive-
like di- construction, for example diambil bukunya = pass-take book
'(please) take the book'.
2.1.4. Specific 3rd person human singular agent. When the agent is a
single specific human being, not acting on behalf of some organization,
and excluding cases where the agent is suppressed for purposes of discre-
tion (see section 2.1.3) and verbs with reflexive meaning (to be discussed
in section 3.6), the passive appears to be rare in English. In fact, there
are no tokens of agentless passives of this type at all in the passive
database of Trudeau (1984). There are two examples of agentive passives
like this, (54) and (55) (Trudeau 1984: 55, 17):11
824 /. Myhill
(54) Policeman: His bail's been set at $500, ma'am.

Lacey: You will accept a personal check, won't you?
Policeman: I'm sorry, ma'am, we can only take cash.
Lacey: How about collateral, then? I'll leave this diamond
brooch with you until I can have the cash wired.
Policeman: Uh ... ma'am, I don't think that's acceptable as ...
Lacey: Acceptable? Dear man, this brooch was given to my
mother by the Duchess of Kent.
(55) I'd like to welcome the members of the press to the Baby Doc
College of Physicians. I'm President Duke, and I'll be your press
liaison during tonight's surgery. I'll be sending in periodic bulletins
direct from the operating theatre. Until then, please enjoy our
Haitian hospitality, tequila, and nuts. Light, suggestive banter will
be served up by your lovely and willing hostess, Honey.
(54) is similar to other agentive passives we have seen ([30] and [46]);
the brooch is the continuing topic of conversation and the passive is used
to make it the subject. However, (55) is functionally different, as light,
suggestive banter cannot be said to be the continuing topic of conver-
sation. My database does not contain other examples closely parallel to
this one, so we can only speculate on the function of the agentive passive
here until a number of functionally similar examples are found and a
general pattern appears. Although light, suggestive banter is an indefinite
expression, it might be argued that in this context the speaker is acting
as if there is some kind of presupposition that there will be some type of
light, suggestive banter, so that the NP referring to this can serve as the
subject, while the existence of someone named Honey cannot be presup-
posed. The use of the passive here makes this clause a kind of presentative
construction (Hetzron 1975), with Honey being presented, parallel, for
example, to a guide talking about a painting saying, And on the right of
the king is his son Charles', it can be presupposed that there is someone
to the right of the king but not necessarily that the king has a son named
Charles or that he appears in this painting, and here the subject is put
after the verb to present it much as the agent is put after the verb in the
agentive passive in (55) to present it.
The passive, then, is not normally used in English with specific 3rd
person singular human agents (excluding those cases mentioned at the
beginning of this section). In the rare cases where the passive is used in
such cases in English (e.g. [54]-[55]), the agent must represent someone
who was not on the scene before. There are, however, two types of
exceptions to this, although these types do not occur in the database
from Trudeau (1984). One of these is the passive with an out-of-focus
agent (Myhill 1993), where the language user takes the viewpoint of a
particular character, what that character sees, hears, or is thinking about,
and from this character's viewpoint the agent is out of the picture at the
moment, although the agent may generally be important in the discourse.
This function is discussed in Myhill (1993) and exemplified in the
following example from Javanese and its English translation (Susilomurti
1979: 194):
(56) "Bade tindak pundi, ning?" pitakon jejerane maneh.
PUT go where miss question neighbor again
"Jokja. Panjenegan?" wangsulane ngiras mbalekake pitakonan.
J. you answer also return question
"Sami, ning. Kula Ngadiwinatan."
same miss I N.
Deweke njur mbenakake lungguhe, karepe ora gelem
she then adjust sitting intention not want
diganggu maneh.
disturbed more
"Taksih sekolah menapa sampun ngasta?"
still school or already work
'Oh... sekolah," wangsulane cekak njur nyawang menjaba.
school answer short then look outside
Nanging sedela maneh deweke kaget jalaran jenenge
but moment more she surprised because name
diundang ceta banget.
called clear very
"Mardikani!" tembunge si bakul jarit...
M. word seamstress
'"Where are you going, miss?" her neighbor asked. "Jokja. And
you?" she answered, returning the question. "The same, miss. I'm
going to Ngadiwinatan." The young woman readjusted her sitting
position, not wanting to be bothered any more. "Are you still going
to school or have you started working?" (her neighbor asked.)
"Oh ... I'm going to school!" she answered briefly, then looked
outside. But a moment later, she was surprised because her name
was called very clearly. "Mardikani!" said her neighbor.'
The agent of 'be bothered' and 'was called' is a specific human being,
namely the young woman's neighbor, but because the narrator is taking
the perspective of the young woman and the young woman is attempting
to ignore her neighbor, the neighbor can be said to be out-of-focus here,
so that the passive is used even though the agent is a specific human
being who is on the scene in the narrative in general.
826 /. Myhill
There are no out-of-focus agent passives in the database in Trudeau

(1984), presumably because it is made up almost entirely of dialogues,
while the out-of-focus agent is particularly associated with narrative
passages. However, as can be seen from the English translation of (56),
it is possible to use the passive in English to defocus a specific human
agent who is temporarily out of focus though generally important to the
story line.
The other situation in English where a specific single person who is
important to the discourse in general can be the agent of a passive is
when it represents the focus of new information (Kuno 1973). For
example, in answer to the question Who made the salad? it is possible to
answer // was made by Bill (although I think that this would usually not
be the most idiomatic answer) even if Bill has been prominent in the
preceding discourse; this is because the rest of the information in the
clause is maximally topical, having been mentioned in the immediately
preceding question, so that even if Bill has been mentioned fairly recently
he is still considerably lower in topicality than the rest of the information
in the clause. There were no examples of passives of this type in any of
the databases used in the present paper.
Thus we can identify a number of circumstances under which the
passive is possible in English with specific 3rd person singular human
agents:
1. when the agent was not on the scene before, as in (54) and (55);
2. when the agent was on the scene before but is now "out-of-focus,"
because the narrative is taking the perspective of a character who is not
paying attention to the agent;
3. when the agent was on the scene before but represents the focus
of new information;
4. when the agent is suppressed for purposes of discretion (much
more common with 1st and 2nd person agents);
5. in some constructions with reflexive meaning (to be discussed in
section 3.6).
However, in other languages, we find that there are other circumstances
under which passivelike constructions can be used with specific 3rd person
singular human agents, and I will discuss these in this section.
2.1.4.1. Javanese. The Javanese di- construction can be used for

specific 3rd person singular human agents in cases where this is not
possible in English, as in (57) (Widayat 1979: 129):
(57) "Pak, coba bayi iku bopongen disik. Dak-jupukne
father try baby that take-in-arms first I-get
mangan." Bayi banjur ditampani pak Santa. Bu Santa

food baby then take father S. mother S.
banjur mlebu kamar dahar perlu njupukake pangan.
then enter room eat to get food
'"Dad, take the baby, I'll get her some food" (said Mrs. Santa).
Mr. Santa then took the baby. Mrs. Santa went into the dining
room to get food.'
In such constructions, mention of the agent is redundant and its identity
could be inferred from the surrounding discourse even if it were not
mentioned explicitly; the agent is also a major character who has been
mentioned repeatedly in the discourse. However, at the moment the di-
construction is used with this function, the intention of the author is that
another character should be seen as central. The central character
throughout (57) is Mrs. Santa. Even when Mr. Santa serves as agent
when he takes the baby, he is secondary to Mrs. Santa, and this is shown
by the fact that he is defocused with the di- construction (the baby is
sleeping and practically functions as an inanimate object at this point in
the story and so cannot be the central character here). There is no
idiomatic way to represent this discourse function in English. The English
translation with the active ('Mr. Santa then took the baby') switches
attention to Mr. Santa, which is explicitly not the sense of the Javanese.
An English translation with a passive (The baby was then taken [by
Mr. Santa]') would be entirely unidiomatic, because the English passive
is not allowed in such cases, with specific 3rd person singular human
agents who are major characters (setting aside those exceptional cases
discussed in the preceding section). Usages of the di- construction such
as (57) are quite common in Javanese, accounting for 7/44 (16%) of the
di- constructions in the database used in Myhill (1993), and in each case
the corresponding English passive is not idiomatic.
It is even possible in Javanese for a specific central character to be an
agent for two consecutive clauses while still focusing primary attention
on someone else; this is done by using the di- construction with a preverbal
agent, as in (58) (Widayat 1979: 129):
(58) "Iki lo, yu, isih ana sega setitik. Coba nggonen lemek,
this older-sister still is rice a-little try place seat-pad
bokmanawa kena kanggo kakuwatan."
maybe can for strength
"Inggih, den."
ok ma'am
Sawise si biyung mau mangan, dening bu Santa banjur
after mother that eat by mother S. then
828 / Myhill
didawuhi adus Ian diparingi salin.

tell bathe and give change-of-clothes
'"Here, there's still a little rice left. Just sit here (and eat), maybe
it'll make you stronger." 'Okay, ma'am." After the mother had
eaten, Mrs. Santa told her to bathe and gave her a change of
clothes.'
Here the mother is the central character, and the main focus of attention
is on what she does and what happens to her. She is maintained as the
central character even when Mrs. Santa is the agent of two consecutive
clauses, because Mrs. Santa is defocused by being the agent of two di-
constructions. There is again no way to idiomatically convey this in
English; using the active ('Mrs. Santa told her to bathe and gave her a
change of clothes') switches attention to Mrs. Santa and away from the
mother, and using passives ('she was told to bathe and given a change
of clothes') is not appropriate because the agent Mrs. Santa is a main
character in the story and has been mentioned many times before.
2.1.4.2. Shuswap. The Salishan language Shuswap uses its passive
construction to maintain the same referent as the subject of consecutive
clauses, even if the agent is a major character. This is illustrated in (59)
and (60), taken from consecutive parts of a narrative in Kuipers (1974:
92):
(59) m-cuntmds t-?uq°ys "the?e k-ck°exw9S?"
he-was-told-by-him REL-his-brother where did-you-get-it-at
'(Fox met Coyote, he [Fox] was eating skimmings.) He (Fox) was
told by his brother [= Coyote] "Where did you get that?'" (Fox
said "Oh, you can find that in the well over there.")'
(60) m-q°ilntm3s t-?uq°ys.
he-was-deceived-by-him REL-his-brother
'(Coyote went, peeped over, there were the skimmings, lying on
the bottom. But it was really the reflection of the moon that was
visible there. He jumped and plunged in. He thought it was skim-
mings.) He had been fooled by his brother [= Fox].'
This appears to be similar in a general sense to the use of the Javanese
di- construction exemplified in (57) and (58), in that both demote a
character who is at the moment secondary in importance, though in
general this character is one of the central participants in the story line,
so that the agentive passive in English would not be idiomatic here. A
more detailed study would be necessary to determine exactly how the
Shuswap passive is functionally similar to the Javanese di- construction
and how it is different.
2.1.4.3. Chinese. Chinese uses the passive bei construction even with
pronominal agents, if the patient has particular discourse prominence in
the immediate context, as in (61) (Chen 1983: 321 ):12
(61) Lu Wenting shi zenme bei ta tiaoshang de ne?
(name) was how by him choose part part
'(He believed that, in order to make the hospital the best, it was
necessary to start by selecting the most promising resident doctor.)
How had he chosen Lu WentingT (lit. 'how had Lu Wenting been
chosen by him?')
This is an example of the "out-of-focus" function discussed in connection
with (56), in that the passage in (61) takes the viewpoint of a particular
character, the person who is staffing the hospital ('he believed that...'),
and this person's thoughts are, at the moment, focused upon 'the most
promising resident doctor', namely Lu Wenting. Because of this context,
it is appropriate to make Lu Wenting the subject of the bei construction,
while the person staffing the hospital is in the background and represented
as the object of the bei phrase, albeit a pronominal one (to). This is in a
general sense similar to the use of the English passive in the English
translation of (56), where the agent of the passive is out-of-focus.
However, in Chinese this use of the bei construction is possible based
purely upon the discourse status of the patient, as it is possible even with
pronominal agents, as in (61), while in English the passive cannot be
used in cases where the out-of-focus agent is pronominal. This is a general
difference between Chinese and English, as discussed in Xing (1993).
2.2. Nonhuman agents
As we have seen in Table 1, when the agent is not human, the English
passive construction is much higher in frequency. This has traditionally
been attributed to the lower topicality of nonhuman referents, along with
the idea that subjects are prototypically high in topicality (Keenan 1976);
if the agent is low in topicality, this would make it more likely to be
demoted from the subject role through passivization. For the same reason,
as was shown in Table 3, the passive is also more likely if the patient is
human. The combination of nonhuman agent and human patient particu-
larly favors the use of the passive — the passive is used 16 out of 22
times under these circumstances in the database in Trudeau (1984), and
16 of the 22 passives with nonhuman agents also have human patients.
The use of the passive with nonhuman agents and human patients is
exemplified in (62)-(64) (Trudeau 1984: 74, 53, 9):
830 /. Myhill
(62) Marcia: In fact, last Friday I made my last official pass at a

married man.
Mike: Oh, yeah? Who was that?
Marcia: It was you, you jerk.
Mike: I was the last? Oh, hey, I'm very flattered.
(63) Lacey: ... and on Friday I'll be in Palm Beach. I promised your
young man I'd speak to some friends about funding
that new shelter he's so keen on.
Joanie: Oh, Lacey, Rick will be so pleased.
(64) I think my listeners would be intrigued to hear all about the new
Hollywood.
It should be noted that these passives can be argued to be adjectival, as
opposed to the passives I have discussed to this point in this paper, which
have been verbal (Wasow 1977); there is a very strong statistical pattern
of adjectival passives having nonhuman agents and verbal passives having
human agents (although there are occasional exceptions to this pattern
that we will see, in particular "spontaneous" passives [e.g. (67)], which
are verbal but have nonhuman agents, and "reflexive" passives [e.g.
(80)-(83)], which, in my database at least, appear to be adjectival but have
human agents). In (62)-(64), the passive verb represents an emotional/
intellectual process (flattered, pleased, intrigued). Such usages of the
English passive with emotion verbs constitute a high proportion of the
English passives with nonhuman agents and human patients (11/16 in
the passive database in Trudeau 1984). In such cases, by using the
passive, the clause emphasizes the central role of the person referred to by
the patient as opposed to the thing that causes the emotional reaction;
in such cases, using active constructions would be quite awkward (llthat
I was the last married man you made a pass at flatters me, lithe fact that
you re meeting with someone to talk about the problems of the homeless
will please Rick, Tlhearing about the new Hollywood would intrigue my
listeners).
Although there is a clear statistical tendency for nonhuman agents and
human patients to favor the use of passive constructions, it is not human-
ness itself that is important but topicality in the surrounding discourse.
For example, consider (65) (Trudeau 1984: 11):
(65) Rick: So where are the best grates, Alice?
Alice: Well, the safest is #1, Ricky. It's right in front of the DC
police headquarters. It's dry heat, too, not steam.
Rick: Steam heat's a problem?
Alice: You kidding? It'll soak you through in two minutes.
Here the active construction is used (it'll soak you) even with a nonhuman
agent and a human patient, because the nonhuman agent (steam heat)
was mentioned immediately before and is therefore high in topicality.
(66) shows a somewhat more complex example (Trudeau 1984: 55):
(66) Consuela: I'm dreadfully sorry, dear. Your Mr. Royce didn't
have an ID, so he was detained.
Lacey: You mean, arrested? For what? For being an undocu-
mented black man?
Consuela: Ordinarily, dear, it's a good system. In fact, our
employees all love it. // gives them a sense of security,
of belonging. The cards make them feel like members
of our big Palm Beach family.
The use of the active in It gives them a sense of security, in spite of the
fact that the referent of it is nonhuman while the referent of them is
human, can be accounted for by saying that although the agent it is
nonhuman, it is highly topical, as it is referred to with a pronoun here
and in the preceding two clauses, so that it is not demoted with the
passive. In The cards make them feel like members of our big Palm Beach
family, on the other hand, the nonhuman agent (the cards) is referred to
with a noun, while the human patient (them) is referred to with a pronoun,
so it might seem at first that the patient should be more topical and the
passive should be used. However, the real focus of the conversation here
is the cards and the system associated with them, with the employees and
their reaction only being important in that they are associated with the
cards and the system; therefore, even when the cards are referred to with
a noun and the employees are referred to with a pronoun, the cards are
central to the discourse and so the passive is not used.
In spite of such exceptions as (65) and (66), where nonhuman agents
are highly topical and so the passive is not used, it should be emphasized
that this is not a normal situation; usually nonhuman entities are not of
high topicality in a discourse, and so nonhuman agents are likely to be
demoted through the use of a passive construction, especially if the
patient is human.
Although it is typically the case that the patients in passive construc-
tions are relatively high in topicality, there are also cases where the
"agent" of a passivelike construction is so nontopical and obscure that
it is defocused even when the patient is not very topical. This is particu-
larly characteristic of what Shibatani (1985) refers to as the "spon-
taneous" usage of the passive, exemplified in (67) from Hebrew (Genesis
8: 1-2):
832 /. Afyhill
(67) vayisaxru ma'yenot thorn vaParubot

and-were-stopped fountains-of deep and-the-windows-of
hashamayim vayikale? hageshem.
the-heavens and-was-restrained the-rain
'(God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the cattle that
were with him in the ark, and God caused a wind to blow across
the earth, and the waters subsided.) The fountains of the deep and
the floodgates of the sky were stopped up, and the rain from the sky
was held back'
This is a characteristic use of the Hebrew niphal conjugation. The English
translation here uses passives ('were stopped up' and 'was held back'),
and this reflects the idea that we can suppose that something or someone
stopped up the fountains and floodgates and held back the rain, but this
something or someone is sufficiently vague and indirectly involved that
it is represented as being in the background even though the patients in
these clauses are not particularly topical. Essentially, as noted by
Shibatani, the actions are represented as happening spontaneously, with-
out an agent, so that the event must be represented as passive regardless
of the topicality of the patient. Some languages (e.g. Spanish) use reflexive
rather than passive constructions in such cases.
We have seen a variety of motivations for using passive constructions
based upon the discourse properties of the agent and patient. In the
following section, I will turn to considering other motivations for using
passives.
3. Semantic motivations
In this section, I will consider how semantic factors can influence whether
or not a passivelike construction is used in a given case, independent of
the discourse status of the agent and patient, whose influence I have
discussed in section 2. Although such constructions can be said to syntac-
tically defocus the agent, this is not based upon the discourse status of
the agent itself, and so we cannot really consider these usages to represent
FUNCTIONAL agent defocusing.
3.1. Ability/possibility
Indonesian has a passive construction that involves adding the verbal

prefix ter- to a transitive root, and one of the functions of this construction
is to represent ability or possibility (Oetomo et al. 1984: 380):
(68) Jumlahnya banyak sekali. Tidak terhitung.

their-number many very not ter-count
There is a huge number of them. You (one) cant count them'
It should be noted that there is some similarity between the Indonesian
construction exemplified in (68) and English constructions such as This
door opens easily or This bread cuts easily (Jespersen 1927). In both cases,
the patient has a syntactic role like that of a subject, the verb is syntacti-
cally intransitive but related to a transitive verb, and there is a meaning
of ability or possibility. These constructions are different in that the
Indonesian construction involves a morphological change to the verb
from the transitive form (prefixing ter-) while the English construction
does not.
3.2. Agentivity
The same Indonesian construction exemplified in (68) can, given an

appropriate context, also be interpreted as meaning that the agent did
the action accidentally, as exemplified in (69) (Oetomo et al. 1984: 380):
(69) Aduh, surat yang kautaruh di dalam buku Tono itu terbawa
gosh letter that you-put inside book T. that ter-take
oleh Tono dengan bukunya, karena dia tidak tahu itu ada
by T. with his-book because he not know that is
di situ.
in there
'Gosh, Tono took the letter that you had put in his book when he
took the book because he didn't know it was there.'
The agent in such cases is quite high in topicality, and so an agentive
passive in a language like English is impossible.
3.3. Anteriority
In Hawaiian, a passive or a construction with a root intransitive and an

agentive phrase is particularly associated with actions that have just been
reported as taking place. An example of this is (70) (Elbert 1959: 37):
(70) A ike na kaikuaana o Kawelo, i ka hina ana o ke kanaka
when see the brothers of K. that fall the man
ikaika i ko laua kaikaina ...
strong by they brother
'When the brothers of Kawelo saw that their brother had thrown
the strongman ...' (lit. '... that the strongman had fallen by their
brother').
834 /. Myhill
Immediately before (70) it is reported that Kawelo throws down the

strongman, and when this is repeated, the construction with an oblique
agent is used. Another example of this is (71) (Elbert 1959: 13):
(71) 'Make no ia oukou hoa ίαΓ
dead by you companion
'You've killed your companion? (lit. 'Your companion is dead
by you!')
Right before (71), the listeners, a group of sharks, kill one of their own,
having been tricked by the speaker, and when this is referred back to in
(71) the agent is demoted. In cases like (70) and (71) the English agent
passive is impossible, depending as it does upon having an agent that is
low in topicality. On the other hand, the use of the Hawaiian agent-
demoting construction illustrated in (70) and (71) is determined by
having immediate anterior aspect, referring to an action that has just
been mentioned, and so it can be used regardless of the topicality of the
agent (see discussion in Myhill 1984: 166-172).
3.4. Patient responsibility
Just as languages differ with regard to the effect of the agentivity of the
agent upon the use of a passive construction (see 3.2), they also differ
with regard to the effect of the responsibility of the patient. As we have
seen, Hebrew has a verbal conjugation, the niphal, that has as one of its
functions forming a passive construction. Myhill and Xing (1994: 269-70)
show that the niphal is particularly associated with cases where the
patient is responsible for the action; on the other hand, when the one
affected by the action is in no way responsible for it, an active intransitive
is used even in cases where English would use a passive. So, for example,
consider (72)-(74) (Gen. 7: 23, 34: 30, 19: 15):
(72) vayishaPer ?ax noax vaPasher ?ito bateva
and-left only Noah and-those with-him on-the-ark
Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.'
(73) vnishmadti ?ani uveyti
and-destroyed I and-my-house
'"(my men are few in number, so that if they unite against me and
attack me,) I and my house will be destroyed'"
(74) pen-tisafe ba'avon ha'ir
lest-you-will-be-swept in-the-iniquity-of the-city
'"(Up, take your wife and your two remaining daughters,) lest
you be swept away because of the iniquity of the city.'"
In each of these cases, the action represented by the niphal is at least

partially the responsibility of the subject; in (72), Noah is saved because
of his righteousness, in (73), the speaker and his family may be destroyed
because two of the speaker's sons have gone on a killing spree, and in
(74), Lot and his family will be swept away if they do not flee the city.
On the other hand, the niphal is not normally used for actions the subject
has no control over, particularly involuntary emotions; for example,
Jacob says that if his youngest son were to be killed he would be shaxolti
'bereaved', a nonpassive intransitive (Gen. 43: 14), and when he hears
that his brother is coming after him with 400 men, possibly to kill him,
he is yira? 'frightened,' another nonpassive intransitive (Gen. 32: 8).
English uses passive constructions in such cases regardless of the degree
of responsibility of the patient. In the English translations of these
examples, it is supposed that there is something concrete or abstract that
leaves Noah, destroys Jacob's family, sweeps Lot away, bereaves Jacob,
and frightens Jacob, but this thing is low enough in importance to the
discourse at the time that it is not mentioned at all. The same is true of
the cases in Hebrew where the one affected by the action is in some way
responsible for it. It is not true, however, for the Hebrew tokens where
the one affected by the action is not responsible for it; these are conceptu-
alized as being essentially internal developments, without even an implied
reference to some external factors that are not mentioned overtly.
Another type of effect of patient responsibility is shown in the Navajo
voice system, which I will follow Thompson (1990) in characterizing as
involving a "direct" verb having the prefix yi- alternating with an
"inverse" verb having the prefix hi-. According to the analysis of
Witherspoon (1977), the yi- ("direct") construction suggests that it is the
agent who has greater control of the action, while the bi- ("inverse")
construction suggests that it is the patient who has greater control. Thus
consider (75)-(78) (I translate the "direct" construction as an active and
the "inverse" construction as a passive to convey the idea that there is
some structural difference, but this difference does not really correspond
to the active-passive distinction in English) (Klaiman 1988: 51-52):
(75) at'eed to yodlää'
girl water yi-drank
'The girl drank the water.'
(76) *to at'eed bodlää'
water girl bi-drank
'The water was drunk by the girl.'
(77) *awee'chi'i dine yi-ztal
baby man yi-kicked
The baby kicked the man.'
836 / Myh l
(78) dine awee'chi'i bi-ztal

man baby bi-kicked
The man was kicked by the baby.'
Witherspoon states that Navajo speakers find sentences such as (76) and
(77) to be not ungrammatical but semantically absurd, because they
suggest that water can control whether it is drunk and that a baby can
control kicking a man; it would only be correct to use the yi- construction
in (75), since the girl is the one controlling her drinking the water, and
the hi- construction in (78), since, in the Navajo view, it must be the
man who is responsible for the action since he has inherently greater
control of the situation and hence must have allowed himself to be kicked
by the baby. This use of the "inverse" bi- construction therefore appears
in a general sense to be similar to the use of the Hebrew niphal in cases
such as (72)-(74) in that it is associated particularly with responsibility
for the event on the part of the one affected by it; there is, however, a
difference between these constructions in that for the bi- construction
there is a nonresponsible agent mentioned, while for the niphal there is
no agent mentioned (see also Klaiman 1988: 56-62, where Klaiman
argues that the use of the Korean "passive" construction with -hi- resem-
bles the Navajo bi- construction in being associated with patients who
are seen as controlling whether the event takes place).
3.5. Patient affectedness
In some languages, affectedness is an important parameter distinguishing

whether passivelike constructions are used. In Chinese, the passivelike
bei construction is used with patients that are strongly affected by an
action, regardless of the topicality of the agent and patient. Consider for
example (79) from Chinese (Shi 1960: 45; quoted in Xing 1993: 124):
(79) zheng yingzhe Zheng Tu na si, bei sajia sanquan
asp. walk-toward name det. guy pass. Isg. three-blows
da si le.
hit die asp.
e
(I) was walking toward that guy Zheng Tu, and / beat him to
death' (lit. Ήβ was beaten to death by me').
The patient Zheng Tu is very strongly affected by the action here, and
so the passive construction with bei is used even though the agent is 1st
person and very high in topicality; because of the high topicality of the
agent the passive is impossible here in English no matter how strongly
affected the patient is. This is a general pattern differentiating Chinese
from English and Hebrew. For example, in Gen. 34: 5 the English
translation in Flaut (1981) has 'he (Shechem) had defiled his (Jacob's)
daughter,' and the Hebrew original has a similar transitive construction
(time? Pet-dina vito), but the Chinese translation in Zhang (1979) uses a
passive (nüer bei jianwu '[his] daughter had been raped'). It should be
noted that there are circumstances where Chinese uses an active construc-
tion while Hebrew and English use passives, as discussed in sections
2.1.1.3 and 2.1.3, so that the use of the passive bei construction in cases
such as (79) cannot be attributed to this construction being generally
more frequent than the Hebrew and English passives; rather, this usage
must be attributed specifically to the association of the bei construction
with strongly affected patients, regardless of the topicality of the agent.
Klaiman (1988) reports that affectedness also controls the use of voice
in the Classical Indo-European languages:
... it seems apt to think of Indo-European voice as fundamentally a device for

marking a sentential verb according to whether its Subject is or is not an affected
entity, i.e., whether it is or is not the principal locus of the effects of the sententially
denoted action (1988: 36).
This is based upon the use of the Classical Greek and Sanskrit middle
construction for intransitive clauses where the subject is "affected," for
example Classical Greek lou-omai wash-MIDDLE-lsg wash myself
(1988: 32). Jagger (1988) similarly argues that, in Hausa, "the semantic
property common to grade 7 clauses (involving a certain verb form) can
be characterized in terms of 'subject-offectedness* — the surface subject
is affected by the verbalized (grade 7) action" (1988: 388). This appears
to be somewhat different from the function of the Chinese bei construction
exemplified by (79), however, in that the Indo-European middle and
Hausa grade 7 form are said to be associated with "affected subjects" —
"passivelike" intransitives are distinguished from "non-passivelike"
intransitives in that the former have affected subjects while the latter do
not — while the Chinese bei construction is associated with "strongly
affected patients" — its alternation with the transitive construction is
controlled in many cases by how strongly affected the patient is.
3.6. Reflexive meaning
The relationship between passive and reflexive constructions has been

noted by a number of researchers (e.g. Shibatani 1985; Croft et al. 1987;
Kemmer 1988); the languages focused upon in this paper make relatively
little use of reflexive constructions, so I will only make a few brief
838 J. Myhill
comments here in this regard. When the agent of an action is the same
as its patient, languages can either use a transitive construction, expressing
the patient as a reflexive, or suppress the agent and make the patient
into the subject with a passive construction. It should be noted that in
the latter case we cannot be absolutely sure whether the agent really is
the same as the patient, as the agent is not mentioned explicitly; however,
if we assume that the agent and the patient are in fact the same in such
passives, then we can say that they have reflexive meaning. The passive
database from Trudeau (1984) has four passive constructions of this type
(Trudeau 1984: 2, 4, 6, 6):
(80) They're all moved into the new offices at the World Trade Center.
(81) He's dressed in jeans and an open shirt.
(82) And guess who's finally registered this year!
(83) / was registered this time.
In the unmarked case, we can assume that they moved themselves in
(80), he dressed himself in (81), and he registered himself in (82) and
(83) (although it is in theory possible than these actions were done by
some nonreflexive agent).13 On the other hand, it is also often possible
to use reflexive objects in such cases (e.g. he dressed himself'); the accept-
ability of the passive and reflexive object constructions depends upon the
language, the verb, and the context. With only four tokens in the English
database, it is not clear exactly what motivates the choice of the passive
rather than the reflexive construction in cases such as (80)-(83), but it
appears that the passive in such cases emphasizes the resulting state,
while the transitive reflexive construction would put more emphasis upon
the action; related to the Stative meaning of (80)-(83), it is worth noting
in this connection that all four of these passives might be argued to be
adjectival rather than verbal in the sense of Wasow (1977), whereas the
overwhelming majority of passives with human agents are clearly verbal.
As with other functions discussed in this paper, languages differ with
regard to how much they use passive constructions with reflexive function.
Hebrew, for example, makes much less use of reflexive constructions even
than English, in fact almost none, instead using the passivelike niphal
form of the verb to convey reflexive meaning, for example nigPal to mean
'he redeemed himself and nimkar to mean 'he sold himself (Lambdin
1971: 177). Spanish, on the other hand, shows the reverse preference and
would use reflexive constructions with se in many contexts where English
would use passives; for example, the Velazquez dictionary (Velazquez
1973) translates vestirse as 'to be covered, to be clothed' and registrarse
as cto be registered or matriculated'.
4. Conclusion
The present study has admittedly been limited in scope, analyzing a

number of constructions in a few languages. I have not considered a
number of types of agent defocusing because they do not figure promi-
nently in the languages I have looked at, in particular reflexive construc-
tions such as are found in Spanish and Russian. I also have not considered
ergative constructions, because they are not typically associated with
functional agent defocusing; however, as argued in Estival and Myhill
(1988), it is common for ergative constructions to develop from passive
constructions, and it seems reasonable to suppose (as Estival and Myhill
argue) that the specific type of function of an ergative construction will
be related to the specific type of function of the passive construction it
has developed from, so that the typology proposed in the present paper
will ultimately be related to the study of the function of ergative-anti-
passive alternations.
There is unquestionably considerable stylistic variation regarding the
use of the different agent-defocusing constructions, at least in English.
From my own knowledge of English, it is obvious that the passive
construction is more associated with formal language usage, and research
such as Swales (1990) has found it to be associated with particular genres
such as academic (particularly scientific) writing, while vague they and
vague you are associated with informal usage; I have only made a few
observations in this regard in the current paper, but this is clearly a
matter that must be analyzed systematically. I have paid relatively little
attention to these stylistic factors in the present paper because I have
chosen to focus more upon cross-linguistic comparison, but it is clear
that an adequate typology of agent defocusing will have to take stylistic
variation into account.
We have seen that agent-defocusing constructions in different languages
have a variety of functions, involving factors related to both discourse
and semantics. Thus, although we can as a preliminary step refer to a
general function of "agent defocusing" that is manifested in a variety of
ways in the languages of the world, it is necessary in order to advance
our understanding of this phenomenon to distinguish between different
types of agent defocusing, not only structurally, as has been done in
work such as Shibatani (1985), but also functionally, as I have done in
the present paper. There is nothing resembling cross-linguistic uniformity
in the associations between functions and types of agent defocusing,
although there are some general patterns. Thus any attempt to directly
relate a uniform and universal agent-defocusing function to a general
human cognitive structure would be misguided; such a cognitive structure
840 /. Myhül
cannot alone account for the use of, say, the English passive, because if
this were the case then agent-defocusing constructions in other languages
should have exactly the same functional properties as the English passive,
and I have shown that this is clearly not the case. Rather, to account for
the distribution of a given agent-defocusing construction in a given
language it will be necessary to refer to language-specific factors; for
example,
1. Structural properties of the construction — perhaps the broader
functional distribution of vague 3rd person plural subjects in Hebrew as
opposed to English is related to the fact that Hebrew uses verb agreement
while English uses an independent pronoun.
2. Diachronie properties — perhaps the distribution of the Javanese
di- construction is related to the fact that it appears to have developed
from the cliticization of a pronoun rather than from a participle (see
Myhill 1993).
3. The total inventory of agent-defocusing constructions in the
language — the comparatively narrow functional role of the Hebrew
passive constructions is obviously correlated with the comparatively
broad role of vague 3rd person transitive subjects in this language.
4. Cultural factors — it is possible to suppose that in some cultures
there is more tendency to deemphasize one's responsibility for something
happening by using an agent-defocusing construction (although of course
any such account would have to be supported by a variety of concurring
types of evidence regarding responsibility-taking in different cultures, as
circular language-culture accounts are all too common and tempting).
Of course, given how little detailed data we now have on the functions
of different agent-defocusing constructions, any such explanations of why
a given construction in a given language has the specific type of agent-
defocusing construction it has will remain highly speculative until con-
siderably more cross-linguistic data are gathered and analyzed.
In closing, I would like to compare the approach of the present paper
with that of earlier functional-typological work on this topic, such as
Shibatani (1985) and Givon (1988). The approach of such earlier work
was to demonstrate the functional motivation for the use of passive
constructions and to show how passives are similar to other constructions
in terms of coding and function; for example, Shibatani shows how a
variety of languages use reflexive and honorific constructions with func-
tions like those of passive constructions, and Givon, discussing Ute,
argues that a syntactically promotional passive in this language has
developed into a perfect/anterior marker, while an impersonal construc-
tion has moved into the functional domain of the older passive, although
its patient has not yet acquired subject-coding properties. What such
studies have in common is their concern with explaining structural

patterns by using analysis of function. The value of this approach is
clear, but it provides relatively little detailed analysis of function itself.
The present paper, on the other hand, has taken the description of
function as its primary goal, so that there has been relatively little
attention paid to the structural properties of the constructions in question.
Ultimately, of course, we would hope that the structure and the function
can be systematically related, and in fact my speculative remarks in the
conclusion here have suggested some possibilities in this regard; however,
I think that we can only expect this when our knowledge of the functions
of different constructions is much more extensive, and this will only be
possible if there is a good deal more attention paid to analysis of function
itself, as opposed to referring to function basically as a way to account
for structural phenomena.
Received 8 January 1997 University of Haifa

Revised version received
16 June 1997
Notes
* Correspondence address: English Department, University of Haifa, Mt. Carmel, Haifa

31905, Israel.
1. The Chinese data are reported in Myhill and Xing (1994); they were originally
translated and interpreted by my coauthor, Zhiqun Xing.
2. I used all of the tokens of vague they in Trudeau (1984) (27 tokens), all of the passives
in the first 75 pages (73 tokens), and all of the tokens of vague you in the first 150 pages
(26 tokens). I used different-sized sections of Trudeau (1984) in gathering the different
constructions because of the different frequencies of these constructions; this does not
affect my analysis, which does not depend upon relative frequencies.
3. The Javanese di· construction can also be used in temporally sequenced clauses with
relatively topical patients, in a function referred to in Myhill (1993) as "anaphoric
agent-continuous patient." Here it appears that this usage does not have the function
of agent defocusing, as the agent is very high in topicality (e.g. having an average
referential distance of 1.12), and so I will not consider this function of the di· construc-
tion in the present paper.
4. Javanese has another passivelike construction involving prefixing ke- to the verb,
associated particularly with agents that are not semantically agentive; this appears to
be restricted to situations where the other languages considered here would also use a
passivelike construction, and so there is not much to say about its usage in the context
of the present paper.
5. Trudeau does not have printed page numbers, and I have added these myself, number-
ing only those pages with comics.
842 /. Myhill
6. Note that the passive is used in (18) even though the patient is indefinite (some of the
spare ribs). This is very rare; I suspect that it is related to the presence of some, but this
matter should be investigated further.
7. For the sake of simplicity, I am transliterating the Hebrew examples with a relatively
conservative Israeli Hebrew pronunciation, using c for tsadi, r for resh,' for ayin, and
? for alef; k represents both the koof and the stop version of kaf, χ represents both the
chet and the fricative version of kaf, and ν represents both the vav and the fricative
version of bet.
8. This example was brought to my attention by an anonymous reviewer.
9. This difference appears to be restricted to past and present contexts; in future contexts,
Hebrew is also likely to use a passive construction with speech-act verbs, as in (32) (see
discussion in Myhill and Xing 1994).
10. The agent can also be defocused by using an infinitive construction (To really under-
stand suffering, it's necessary to experience it first-hand), or with a nominalization (To
really understand suffering, first-hand experience is necessary); these types of agent
defocusing were very rare in Trudeau (1984).
11. Aside from (54) and (55), there is another token that might be considered a passive:
Honey, I'm disappointed in you (Trudeau 1984: 32), which might be considered to be
the passive of the transitive construction You disappoint me, although passive agents
are not normally associated with the preposition in.
12. I thank Zhiqun Xing for pointing out this example to me.
13. It should be noted that this is different from the Spanish construction exemplified by
Aqui se habla espanol = here refl speaks Spanish 'Spanish is spoken here', where a
reflexive construction is used because the agent is vague; on the other hand, in cases
such as (80)-(83) the situation is the reverse: a passive construction is used because the
agent is reflexive.
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Toward a functional typology of

This paper proposes a preliminary system for categorizing the various

Constructions involving some sort of agent demotion, most notably,

Linguistics 35 (1997), 799-844 0024-3949/97/0035-0799

acknowledged the importance of discourse factors, they have not pro-

1. What is included here as "agent defocusing"?

As my purpose here is functional comparison rather than arguing for a

objects in constructions alternating diathetically with transitive construc-

4. In Chinese, I will discuss the "passive" construction with the

topic persistence (TP, the number of consecutive following clauses in

Table 1. Voice in English (from Estival and Myhill 1988)

Active Passive Passive %

Pronomial agent 1760 1 0

Human agent 2010 11 1

Definite agent 1930 11 1

Table 2. Voice in Chamorro (from Cooreman 1984)

Active ma- passive -in- passive

Table 3. Voice in English (from Estival and Myhill 1988)

Active Passive Passive %

lst-2nd person pronoun patient 170 68 29

Human patient 560 134 19

Definite patient 1320 183 12

Table 4. Voice in Chamorro (from Cooreman 1984)

Active ma- passive -in- passive

2.1. Human agents

In this section, I will discuss agent demotion in clauses with human

of as representing a group of people, for example, tokens such as He was

2.1.1.1. English. In English, there are two common ways of defocusing

2.1.1.1.1. Organizational grouping. Consider (4)-(6) (Trudeau 1984:

2.1.1.1.2. Agents involved in a common physical activity. Vague they

2.1.1.1.3. Agents in a common location. A related usage may be

2.1.1.1.5. Epistemological verbs (e.g. know, believe, expect). Consider

vague agents of epistemological and speech-act verbs are characteristically

do some particular physical task together, even if they do not represent

Duke: My God. Are we sure he was a liberal?

nothing in the surrounding discourse (as there is in [34]-[36]) to make

2.1.1.4. Javanese. Javanese shows the opposite type of preference from

In this section (2.1.1), I have discussed agent defocusing with plural

2.1.2. Vague singular human agents. Languages typically use certain

2.1.2.1. English. Consider (41) (Trudeau 1984: 11):

Many languages have some type of nonreferential NP used to refer to

ences to three different masculine singular referents (the chief steward,

different from that in English, where the agentless passive is used as a

(54) Policeman: His bail's been set at $500, ma'am.

There are no out-of-focus agent passives in the database in Trudeau

2.1.4.1. Javanese. The Javanese di- construction can be used for

mangan." Bayi banjur ditampani pak Santa. Bu Santa

didawuhi adus Ian diparingi salin.

2.2. Nonhuman agents

(62) Marcia: In fact, last Friday I made my last official pass at a

(67) vayisaxru ma'yenot thorn vaParubot

Indonesian has a passive construction that involves adding the verbal

(68) Jumlahnya banyak sekali. Tidak terhitung.

The same Indonesian construction exemplified in (68) can, given an

In Hawaiian, a passive or a construction with a root intransitive and an

Immediately before (70) it is reported that Kawelo throws down the

3.4. Patient responsibility

In each of these cases, the action represented by the niphal is at least