ABSTRACT
Periphrastic or analytic passive constructions are characteristic of Indo-European languages. They are also found in the Dravidian, Hamito-Semitic, Sino-Tibetan and South American Indian languages. In the vast majority of languages the periphrastic passive is constructed by the addition of a form of the verb to be (e.g. English, Spanish, Polish, Finnish, Lithuanian, Baluchi, Urdu, Quechua) or become (e.g. German, Swedish, Latvian, Kupia, Kolami, Hindi, Nez Perce). In a few of the Indo-Aryan languages (e.g. Bengali, Hindi, Gujarati, Maithil, Ossetian) as well as in Italian and Gaelic the passive can be formed with the verb to go. In such diverse languages as Welsh, English and Tzeltal the verb receive/get is employed in this capacity. The South-East Asian languages; Vietnamese, Thai, Cambodian and Burmese and the Dravidian Tamil and Kannada form passive clauses with a verb meaning to suffer/to undergo. Come appears in the Kurdish Kashmiri, Maithil and Italian passive. Even the verb to eat may be used in this sense with a limited number of verbs in Sinhalese and Dhangar-Kurux.
