Contrastive research in English and Spanish passive based on the corpus

The analysis that was accomplished in this thesis concerning a contrative comparison of the passive frequency in English and Spanish languages was supposed to confirm several hypotheses stated in the introduction. The hypotheses were about the agent of the passive constructions, its frequency and obligation of it being expressed according to the style of the text. Thanks to the analysis it was discovered that the agent is often unexpressed in neither of the styles - scientific or novelistic. If the agent is explicitly expressed it is often due to the practical reasons; otherwise the possibilty not to express it explicitly - one of the main advantages that the passive voice offers - is used abunadantly. Nevertheless, the texts representing the novelistic style are evidently using more instances of the reflexive type of the passive. Mainly, when the agent is not relevant or unknown. In the scientific texts, there is a great tendency towards using a personal pronoun or a general noun and the verb in active voice. The problem connected with this practice is the narrow number of possibilities and therefore lack of elegance in the text. The reasons for using the influence of the functional sentence perspective are also different according to the style of the text. The sentence dynamics and the order in which the..