THE INFLUENCE OF TRANSLATION ON THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE JAPANESE PASSIVE CONSTRUCTION

The most important subclasses of Japanese passive sentences from a syn tactic and functional point of view are the ni-passive and the niyotte -passive. While the ni-passive is a construction which is indigenous t o the Japanese language, the niyotte-passive is a new construction tha t arose through the influence of European languages. Niyotte-passive s entences happened to come into the Japanese language when the translat ion word niyotte, expressing means and way, was assigned to Dutch door -a marker of path, means and way and of the agent in a passive sentenc e-in tl-le literal translation of Modern Dutch texts. Although the app earance of the niyotte-passive had historical reasons, the form has co me to be widely used because it was, structurally and functionally, in the position of filling up a gap in the system of the Japanese langua ge. Structurally it shifts the agent to an adjunct position without ch anging the roles of the arguments of a transitive construction, and fu nctionally it describes an activity of a human being or human beings f rom a completely neutral standpoint.