In:Changing Structures: Studies in constructions and complementation
Edited by Mark Kaunisto, Mikko Höglund and Paul Rickman
[Studies in Language Companion Series 195] 2018
► pp. 31–54
Passive permissives
Being let and allowed
Published online: 22 May 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.195.03ega
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.195.03ega
The ‘let NP bare infinitive’ construction differs from other common permissive constructions, such as ‘allow NP to-infinitive’ and ‘permit NP to-infinitive’ in being exceedingly rare in the passive. That is, while somebody may well be ‘allowed to do’ something, they are very seldom ‘let do’ something. Even more seldom are they ‘let to do’ something. This chapter explores possible reasons for the rarity of both of these passive let constructions, which are contrasted with passive allow constructions. It is argued that the difference in distribution between the constructions with the two matrix verbs is related to two factors. The first is a difference in the sorts of force dynamic relations which they typically encode. The second is related to the difference in semantics between the two infinitive forms. The argument is supported by corpus data from both British and American English.
Keywords: permissives, causatives, force dynamics, enablement
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Constructions with active matrix verbs
- 3.Constructions with passive matrix verbs
- 4.Passive let in COCA
- 5.Passive let in COHA
- 6.Summary and conclusion
Acknowledgements Notes References
References (15)
Primary sources
The Corpus of Contemporary American English. < [URL]> (June 2016).
The Corpus of Historical American English. < [URL]> (June 2016).
Secondary sources
Carter, Ronald & McCarthy, Michael. 2006. Cambridge Grammar of English: A Comprehensive Guide: Spoken and Written English Grammar and Use. Cambridge: CUP.
Egan, Thomas. 2003. Distance and Direction: A Usage-based Study of Infinitive and -ing Complement Clauses in English [Acta Humaniora nr. 170]. Oslo: Unipub Forlag.
. 2008. Non-finite Complementation: A Usage-based Study of Infinitive and -ing Clauses in English. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
. 2009. Why are there so few let passives? In The Passive in Germanic Languages, Marc Fryd (ed.). Special issue of GAGL: Groninger Arbeiten zur Germanistischen Linguistik. < [URL]>
Kemmer, Suzanne & Verhagen, Arie. 1994. The grammar of causatives and the conceptual structure of events. Cognitive Linguistics 5(1): 115–156.
Langacker, Ronald. 1990. Concept, Image, and Symbol: The Cognitive Basis of Grammar. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Rudanko, Juhani. 2014. A new angle on infinitival and of -ing complements of afraid, with evidence from the TIME Corpus. In Corpus Interrogation and Grammatical Patterns [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 63], Kristin Davidse, Caroline Gentens, Lobke Ghesquière & Lieven Vandelanotte (eds), 223–238. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.