PASSBY BY-passives

Xiao B29 Bohmann 41 child of PASS_ALL

Definition

Passive voice constructions with BE auxiliary where the agent is expressed with “by”.

Parent

PASS_ALL

Detection Rules

Verb with auxpass dependent. BY-passive if “by” + NP agent phrase follows. Requires post-filter to confirm presence of “by” agent.

semgrex{pos:/VB.*/}=verb >auxpass {lemma:be}

Requires: lemma, pos, dep

pybiber

Auxpass token with “by” at position +2 or +3. Both patterns require the token immediately before “by” NOT to be a period (pos=”.”), avoiding false positives where sentence-initial “By” appears after “was gone.” or similar. pybiber’s case-sensitive comparison achieves the same effect accidentally.

at_2 
cql[dep="auxpass"] [pos!="."] [word="by"]
at_3 
cql[dep="auxpass"] [] [pos!="."] [word="by"]
combine: at_2 | at_3

Requires: word, pos, dep

Normalization

Per finite_verbs

Examples

The letter was written by Gandalf.

The ring was found by Bilbo.

He was praised by the king.

Sources

  • biber_1988 — Biber, Douglas (1988) : Variation across Speech and Writing
  • pybiber — Brown, David West & Reinhart, Alex (2026) : pybiber — Python package for linguistic feature extraction and Multi-Dimensional Analysis
  • xiao_2009 — Xiao, Richard (2009) : Multidimensional analysis and the study of world Englishes
  • bohmann_2019 — Bohmann, Axel (2019) : Variation in English Worldwide: Varieties and Genres in a Quantitative Perspective

Notes

D5 loading .41. Distinguished from agentless passives (PASS) by the overt agent. BY-passives retain the agent but shift topic/focus.

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