LL-L: "Passive" (was "Multilingualism") LOWLANDS-L, 01.NOV.1999 (05) [E]

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From: Ian James Parsley [parsley at highbury.fsnet.co.uk]
Subject:

All,

Hehe - just as I thought you were all far too polite I receive loads of
e-mails pointing me to my mistake! Quite right, too. Well, on the subject of
German and desperately trying to bring it all back into the Lowlands sphere,
I might mention the following.

In German there is an interesting grammatical construction using dummy
subject plus passive, for example "es wird getanzt" (English "there is
dancing"). I was flicking channels the other day and even heard "es wird
gewalkt" with reference to the baseball World Series, a bizarre example I
thought.

I believe a similar construction with "er" exists in Dutch, and I would
imagine also in Low Saxon.

The point is that, to my knowledge, nobody has ever come up with a
satisfactory rule for which verbs can be used in this way and which cannot.
The difference is not merely transitive vs. intransitive. Maybe some
Lowlanders with knowledge of Lowlands languages which have this system might
be able to shed some light on this, or alternatively get some funding to
have a good look at it!

Best,
-------------------------------
Ian James Parsley
http://www.gcty.com/parsleyij
"JOY - Jesus, Others, You"

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From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
Subject: Passive

Hi, Ian!

A case of "You asked for it!", huh!

Ian, the best "rule" description I can come up with for the use of the passive
in sentences of the type you described would be this: "impersonal (at least
implied plural); often describes customary or prescribed activity."

In English I would translate a sentence like _Es wird getanzt_ as "people dance
(as a rule)' or 'there is a dance'.  For example, _Heute abend wird getanzt_
'There is/will be a dance tonight', _Jeden Freitag wird hier getanzt_ 'There's a
dance hier every Friday' (implied custom), or _Hier wird getanzt, nicht
gesoffen!_ 'This is were people dance, not booze!' (implied rule), _Jetzt wird
(es) geschlafen_ 'It's time to go to sleep', 'It's sleepy-bye time', 'Time for
little kids to sleep' (implied rule).

Back to the actual Lowlands ...

Low Saxon has this too, but it does not utilize it to the same extent, and many
of the North Saxon dialects have lost the old _it_ ~ _et_.  You can say,
_Vunavend wardt ('t) hier wardt dansst_ 'There is/will be a dance tonight',
_Hier wardt ('t) dansst, nich sapen!_ 'This is were people dance, not booze!'
However, in more cases you'd not use the passive and make the impersonal a bit
more personal, like in English; e.g., _Hier dansst de Lüüd'_ 'This is where
people dance (customarily)'.  I hardly think you'd say something like *_Nu wardt
('t) slapen_ 'It's time to go to sleep', 'It's sleepy-bye time', 'Time for
little kids to sleep' , but I'm not sure.

Best regards,

Reinhard/Ron

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