The Analysis of Semantic Constraints on Active-Passive Constructions in the Teaching-Learning of English as a Second Language

For more than a decade, many studies have emphasized a transformational rule for active passive construction that an object becomes a subject in passive voice with little attention paid to an extent to which the universal grammar and the semantic roles of subject and object constrain the kinds of second language active-passive forms which are possible but not acceptable in English second language learning contexts. This structural approach for active-passive constructions poses significant syntactic and semantic problems for English language learners. Therefore, this qualitative study analysed the corpus of active-passive constructions to determine the semantic constraints learners violate in constructing passive voice. Content analysis was used as a method of data collection through which faulty passive structures were identified from First-year English language learners’ scripts. The findings revealed learners’ difficulties on active-passive construction in relation objects which bear the following semantic roles: locative role, measurement and value, objects functioning as adjectives. These findings imply that the students lack adequate knowledge of both grammar and pragmatics which could enable them to construct and use the English passive sentence appropriately. This could be attributed to rule-based teaching. Therefore, this paper encourages teachers and lecturers to concern themselves with not only the extent to which universal grammar may be available to second language learners, but also the extent to which universal grammar constrain the kinds of possible constructions second language learners can come up with. The paper also recommends the adoption of net-work-based teaching from the point of three perspectives: structural, cognitive and socio-cognitive perspectives as the three complement one another to account for semantic constraints in the teaching –learning of active-passive constructions