Marked coding: the passive construction
So far, we have been discussing unmarked clause types. The passive construction is one example of what Langacker calls marked coding. ‘Markedness’ in this sense refers to the extent to which a given construction can be described as ‘typical’ or ‘representative’ of the grammar of a language. It is a widely held view that the active transitive declarative clause represents the unmarked clause type. Indeed, typologists classify languages in terms of word order patterns by looking at the properties of this clause type. For example, English is described as an SVO language because the active transitive declarative clause has subject, verb and object in that order (despite the fact that marked constructions like clefts may reflect a different order). Furthermore, transformational models within generative grammar have always taken the active transitive declarative clause as the ‘underlying’ structure from which other clause types are derived (see Chapter 22).
Of course, the question that arises here concerns how we might define ‘typical’ or ‘representative’ grammatical constructions. Typologists define markedness according to a number of parameters, including distributional potential (Croft 2003). A construction with greater distributional potential is unmarked in comparison with a construction that has a more restricted distributional potential. For example, this definition of markedness can be applied to voice: while most verbs can occur in the active voice, a more restricted set of verbs can occur in the passive voice. Therefore, active voice is unmarked while passive voice is marked. An asymmetry in terms of frequency of use is predicted and statistical corpus studies often form the basis of typological approaches to markedness. Langacker (2002: 226) characterises an unmarked construction as ‘the most natural construal of an event on the basis of its conceptual content’. For example, the active transitive clause views the energy source as the figure, or most prominent participant. Passive clauses, in contrast, represent an alternative or marked construal of a given event. This is motivated by discourse goals: the speaker intends to draw the hearer’s attention to a given participant by making that participant prominent. Compare the examples in (27).
In example (27a) the AGENT is prominent (TR): this clause construes the event from the perspective of what George did. In example (27b), the PATIENT is prominent (TR): this clause construes the event from the perspective of what happened to Lily. The passive clause represents an instance of TR-LM reversal, so that the PATIENT is construed as the TR and realised as the subject of the clause while the AGENT is demoted to background status and realised as a dependent modifier. We return to the details of the passive construction in the next chapter, where we investigate the Cognitive Grammar account of the verb string.
