Traditionally, the function of passivization is only explained from the perspective of the focusing and defocusing of grammatical arguments. On the basis of this viewpoint, the paper has studied the function of passivization from a new perspec- tive: property description. English and Chinese peculiar passives have some syntactic and semantic similarities. They both do not obey the usual syntactic conditions that hold for ordinary eventive passives. And they depict the subject' s characteristic property or long-lasting state. The reading of property depends on an abstract operation mechanism: the suppression of event arguments. The Ev-suppression results in the transformation from stage-level event to individual-level state. The transformation can be properly explained by the establishment of the topic-comment predication. On the establishment of the predication, English and Chinese peculiar passives have both similarities and differences.%摘要：英汉特殊被动句的句法和语义有某些相通之处。句法上，均可以违背被动化所特有的句法条件，而语义均倾向于表述主语的某种特征或持久性状态。特征读取取决于一种抽象的运作机制：事件论元抑制。事件抑制把舞台层面事件转变为个体层面状态，这种意义转变需要通过建立话题一述题这一述谓关系来解释。英汉特殊被动句在这种述谓关系的建立机制方面既有共性又有差异。
展开▼
