§2.2 Differences between active and passive clauses^241

[6] ACTIVE VOICE

a. Everyone saw the accident.

11 a. His colleagues dislike him.

PASSIVE VOICE

b. The accident was seen by everyone.

b. He is disliked by his colleagues.

Seeing and disliking aren't actions, but the syntactic relation between the members
of these pairs is the same as that between [1 ib] and [lia], so they can be classified as
active and passive pairs.

2.2 Differences between active and passive clauses

Examples like [lia], and the [b] examples in [6], illustrate the most
straightforward kind of passive clause. We 'll look first at how they differ from their
active counterparts, and then extend the account to cover other passive constructions.
Structural diagrams for the examples in [6i] are shown in [7]. The syntactic
differences are summarised in [8]:

[7] a. Clause

�

Subject: Predicate:

NP VP

D

predi�ect:

V NP

I�

everyone saw the accident

b. Clause

�

Subject: Predicate:

NP VP

�

Predicator: Comp:

V Clause

I

Predicate:

VP

�

Predicator: Internalised Comp:

PP

�

Head: Comp:

Prep NP

I �

seen by everyone

[8] The subject of the active (everyone) appears in the passive as complement of
the preposition by in a pp fu nctioning as complement.
ii The direct object of the active appears as subject of the passive.
iii The passive has auxiliary be carrying the tense inflection and taking as
complement a subjectJess non-finite clause with a head (seen) in past
participle form.
We use the term internalised complement to label the function of by everyone, I
because when we replace an active clause by its corresponding passive, the active

I It is more usually referred to as the agent, but we're avoiding that term because it is also in widespread

use as the name of a semantic role, equivalent to 'actor'. As we just argued in discussing [6], the com­

plement of by very often does not have that semantic role.