passive construction
collocation in Englishmeaningsofpassiveandconstruction
These words are often used together. Click on the links below to explore the meanings. Or,see other collocations withconstruction.
passive
adjective
uk/ˈpæs.ɪv/us/ˈpæs.ɪv/
languagespecialized
The passive form of a verb is being used when the grammatical subject is the person or thing that experiences the effect of an action, rather than the person or thing that causes ...
See more atpassive
construction
noun
uk/kənˈstrʌk.ʃən/us/kənˈstrʌk.ʃən/
the work of building or making something, especially buildings, ...
See more atconstruction
(Definition ofpassiveandconstructionfrom theCambridge English Dictionary© Cambridge University Press)
Examplesofpassive construction
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.
Example 11f is considered an acceptablepassiveconstruction, with redundant specification of the patient.
From theCambridge English Corpus
First, he presents many arguments for treating dative passive as a genuinepassiveconstruction.
From theCambridge English Corpus
This time, however, the verbs were embedded in an impersonalpassiveconstruction(see (28) and (29) above).
From theCambridge English Corpus
Chapters 5 and 6 are both concerned with thepassiveconstruction.
From theCambridge English Corpus
When apassiveconstructionwas attempted, the agent almost never appeared in sentence-initial position.
From theCambridge English Corpus
These expressions are simply sanctioned by thepassiveconstructionbased upon the 'surface forms'.
From theCambridge English Corpus
The authors do acknowledge that the nominativeagenthood contingency is not absolute, as verbs like receive and thepassiveconstructionwith non-agentive subjects show.
From theCambridge English Corpus
The nonspecified agent of apassiveconstructionis also recognized as a covert expression of the speaker's proposition.
From theCambridge English Corpus
This factor had the same levels as in the first subexperiment, but the verbs appeared in the impersonalpassiveconstruction.
From theCambridge English Corpus
The second aim of experiment 2 is to investigate the acceptability of the impersonalpassiveconstructionfor the verbs in the refined classification.
From theCambridge English Corpus
This resembles apassiveconstructionwith the added incorporation of the affected body part.
From theCambridge English Corpus
Instead, thepassiveconstructioncan be considered an epiphenomenon derived by some grammatical process(es), such as movement or application of lexical rules or correspondence mappings.
From theCambridge English Corpus
Kaufmann (1995) also argues that the same verb can be more acceptable in the impersonalpassiveconstructionif the subject is human and agentive.
From theCambridge English Corpus
We are assuming that while thepassiveconstructionwas still not fully acquired, the object-dislocated structure was already fully acquired and hence was available to the participants.
From theCambridge English Corpus
This latter doublepassiveconstructionis criticized as questionable both grammatically and stylistically.
From
Wikipedia
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.
Want to learn more?
Go to the definition ofpassive
Go to the definition ofconstruction
See other collocations withconstruction