Passive constructions in Persian: a new perspective

This paper explores passivization in Persian, the most important intraclausal process in simple sentences. Based on Role and Reference Grammar formulation for passivization, it is demonstrated that Persian has two distinct types of passive constructions.The first type involves both Privileged Syntactic Argument Modulation and Argument Modulation called basic passive in this analysis. The second type which involves just argument modulation is labeled as impersonal passive. This construction occurs as a subjectless sentence with a 3rd person plural agreement marker on the verb. However, this paper argues the assumption proposed by some scholars that there is a detransitivized passive type in Persian. Providing significant pieces of evidence, it shows that the detransitivized counterparts of transitive sentences cannot be regarded as passive, as this process is a lexical phenomenon in nature and a verb class alternation.