Editing Passive voice (section)

==Defining "passive"==
In the field of [[linguistics]], the term ''passive'' is applied to a wide range of grammatical structures. Linguists therefore find it difficult to define the term in a way that makes sense across all [[human language]]s. The canonical passive in European languages has the following properties:
# The subject is not an [[agent (grammar)|agent]].
# There is a change in: [[word order]]; or in nominal morphology—the form of the nouns in the sentence.
# There is specific verbal morphology—a particular form of the verb indicates passive voice.
The problem arises with non-European languages. Many constructions in these languages share at least one property with the canonical European passive, but not all. While it seems justified to call these constructions ''passive'' when comparing them to European languages' passive constructions, as a whole the passives of the world's languages do not share a single common feature.<ref name=Siewierska/>{{rp|255}}

[[R. M. W. Dixon]] has defined four criteria for determining whether a construction is a passive:<ref name=Ergativity>{{Cite book |last=Dixon |first=R.M.W. |year=1994 |title=Ergativity |url=https://archive.org/details/ergativitycambri00dixo |url-access=limited |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |page=[https://archive.org/details/ergativitycambri00dixo/page/n167 146]}}</ref>
# It applies to [[Underlying representation|underlying]] transitive clauses and forms a [[Morphological derivation|derived]] intransitive.
# The entity that is the [[patient (grammar)|patient]] or the [[object (grammar)|object]] of the transitive verb in the underlying representation (indicated as ''O'' in linguistic terminology) becomes the core argument of the clause (indicated as ''S'', since the core argument is the [[subject (grammar)|subject]] of an intransitive).
# The agent in the underlying representation (indicated as ''A'') becomes a [[chômeur]], a noun in the periphery that is not a core argument. It is marked by a [[Grammatical case|non-core case]] or becomes part of an [[adpositional phrase]], etc. This can be omitted, but there is always the option of including it.
# There is some explicit [[Markedness|marking]] of the construction.
Dixon acknowledges that this excludes some constructions labeled as ''passive'' by some linguists.<ref name=Ergativity/>