The Construal of Events: Passives in American Sign Language

The possibility of a passive construction existing in ASL has been alluded to from time to time in the literature on ASL grammar, but discussion is infrequent, and the usual conclusion is that a passive does not, in fact, exist. We contend, however, that a particular configuration of ASL grammatical features surrounding an otherwise transitive verb qualifies as a fully passive construction, and that these passives are more frequent in ASL discourse than may have been realized. This discussion continues and expands upon an earlier proposal in which we identify grammatical and functional characteristics of passive constructions in ASL discourse (Janzen, O'Dea, and Shaffer 2000).