A Morphological Account of the Emergence of Prepositional Passives

This article is to explain the reason for the emergence of prepositional (P-) passive in Middle English. The reasons for the advent of P-passive have been widely and variously studied, e.g., syntactically/structurally, morphologically, semantically, and/or functionally. In this article the morphological factors are re-examined and interpreted from a different angle, i.e., functionally. The analysis is morphological because it will be argued that the emergence of P-passive is due to the weakening of English morphological endings. It is argued here that P-passive, or more generally, P-stranding possibility is mainly due to the weakened morphological adhesiveness between P and its object. The adhesive power between the two elements was loosened because P s power to govern its object was weakened. If P cannot govern its object as strongly as before, then it cannot hold its object just beside it. The weakly governing P cannot prevent its object from being separated from and leaving it any more. This resulted in the advent of P-passive.