Pseudo-passive

STUB

Pseudo-passive is a term which is used for the passive of prepositional verbs. Prepositional verbs are intransitive verbs followed by a prepositional phrase which permits Preposition Stranding. This means that the passive construction can treat the NP complement of the preposition as a kind of direct object and promote it to subject. Compare the following examples from English:

(i)	Someone has slept in my bed
	My bed has been slept in (by someone)
(ii)	Someone is pointing at me
	I don't like being pointed at
(iii)	Many people are sleeping in London
      * London is being slept in (by many people)

Links

Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics

References

• Spencer, A. 1991. Morphological Theory, Blackwell, Oxford.