Symmetric verbs and constraints on passivization: An English-German comparison

Abstract

Constraints on passivization have mainly been formulated in terms of semantic properties of verbs and their arguments. Comparative data from English and German suggest that at least in some areas of the lexicon other factors are at work as well. Different uses of the English verb meet have been investigated with respect to their occurrence in the active and passive diatheses. It turns out that there are striking differences between these uses, for some (near) categorical and for others in terms of frequency. A comparison to their German counterparts, each realized as a formally distinct lexeme and each conforming to the general frequency distribution of actives and passives in German, reveals that semantic and pragmatic motivations cannot sufficiently account for the distribution in English. I propose that verb senses and voice values are associated in such a way that semantic ambiguities are minimized.