Humans hardwired to use the passive voice

Tue Apr 1 12:59:19 UTC 2014

What's special about March 31?

:-)

Geoffrey S. Nathan
Faculty Liaison, C&IT
and Professor, Linguistics Program
http://blogs.wayne.edu/proftech/
+1 (313) 577-1259 (C&IT)

Nobody at Wayne State will EVER ask you for your password. Never send it to anyone in an email, no matter how authentic the email looks.

----- Original Message -----

> From: "Arnold Zwicky" <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Sent: Tuesday, April 1, 2014 7:11:19 AM
> Subject: Re: Humans hardwired to use the passive voice

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject: Re: Humans hardwired to use the passive voice
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

> note the date.

> On Mar 31, 2014, at 8:35 PM, "Baron, Dennis E" <debaron at ILLINOIS.EDU>
> wrote:

> > There's a new post on the Web of Language:
> >
> > Humans hardwired to use the passive voice
> >
> >
> > The human brain is hardwired to prefer the passive voice. A
> > definite predil=
> > ection for passive constructions has been found by a team of
> > neuroscientist=
> > s led by Elaine Bao Weiss and W. Strang-Ng, postdoctoral
> > researchers at Cor=
> > nell University=92s Neurosyntax Imaging Laboratory.
> >
> > =93This was totally unexpected,=94 Bao Weiss said of the findings.
> > =93Gener=
> > ations of writers have been advised to prefer the active to the
> > passive, bu=
> > t that=92s not how the brain works.=94

> arnold

> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org