Become with Passive Voice

[Mark Mandel]

On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 12:32 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> Ah, the tricky part is whether the past participle of the verb (as in
> "tired" or "interested") is necessarily itself a verb form (as these
> are not). Â If not, "became interested/tired" are instances of become
> + "passive voice"; if so, not. Â Note that the good cases with
> "become" all allow modification of the participle with "very" where
> the semantics permits, which is (always?) impossible with verbal
> passives, as well as blocking true agentive by-phrases.

Well, to use examples that you just gave upthread:

 The squid became (*very) unfrozen/unthawed/thawed.
 The knot became (*very) untied/unloosened/loose/loosened.

m a m

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