Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2017

This chapter discusses the relationship between the two passive constructions in Romanian ( se -passive and be -passive) in a twofold comparison: old Romanian vs present-day Romanian, and standard vs substandard present-day Romanian. Stipulating the distinction ‘syntactic passive’ vs ‘pragmatic passive’, I argue that the evolution of the two competing structures illustrates a typical case of convergence and I invoke the situation in present-day subdialectal Romanian as an additional proof. In ol