Passive constructions

Certain demonstrations (cf. Table 1) were designed to test two pre-conditions for generating passives: (1) where an entity which has just functioned as an Actor now is perceived as the Object of action (e.g., #4, THE BALL IS ROLLING SLOWLY ON THE TABLE, followed by #5, THE MAN PUTS THE BALL ON A PLATE); (2) where an entity of high interest (e.g., novelty) happens to function as the Object in a perceived event (e.g., the sudden introduction of very large orange ball in #11 producing A BIG ORANGE BALL IS HIT BY A BLACK BALL). However, these manipulations had only slight effects,¹ and will not be detailed further.

¹ Fortunately we have a paper by Huttenlocher, Eisenberg and Strauss (1968) which does demonstrate situational determinants of passives; however, their work involves the converse of our conditions, Simply Acting Out rather than Simply Describing.