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This paper examines English passive construction. It is argued that purely syntactic approaches should fail the correct analysis of passive sentences.
In order to analyze the passive sentences correctly, we must consider various discourse-pragmatic factors. That is, the grammaticality of the passive sentences depends on discourse-pragmatic factors such as contextual factors, transitivity, thematicity. Therefore, we conclude that the reason a speaker uses the passive sentence is that he intends to make an NP(or object) the theme in discourse.