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- Title
The Frequency of the Passive in Indian English.
- Authors
Kawale, Rohit S.
- Abstract
The frequency of the passive in English has attracted the attention of many grammarians. Most analyses of the passive in English are based on Svartvik's study (1966) of the same. He finds out the frequency of the passive in various registers in his analysis and one of his main findings is the centrality of the agentless passive type in English. After applying his model to data collected from the two corpora of Indian English, it is found that the overall frequency of the passive in Indian English is almost the same as in British English. It is also found that the agentless passive type is the central passive type in Indian English, too. Another finding is that the frequency of the passive depends more on the formality scale and less on the medium (spoken or written). More formal types of register contain more passive clauses.
- Subjects
INDIA; PASSIVE voice in the English language; ENGLISH clauses; ENGLISH language -- Voice; SPOKEN English; WRITTEN English
- Publication
Language in India, 2009, Vol 9, Issue 8, p4
- ISSN
1930-2940
- Publication type
Article