A corpus analysis of two by-passives in Japanese from the viewpoint of information structure

•The two by-passives tend to be utilized in order to maintain the topic continuity by promoting the logical object to the grammatical subject.•The ni-passive is pertinent to global topic whereas the niyotte-passive is relevant to local topic. There are two types of by-passives in Japanese: ni-passive and niyotte-passive. In order to investigate the functional similarities and dissimilarities between them, a corpus analysis was performed in terms of anaphoric and cataphoric co-referencing under the framework of Givón. In consequence, it has been revealed that both the ni-passive and the niyotte-passive are selected in order to maintain topic continuity by promoting the topical logical object to the grammatical subject. Yet, it is also demonstrated that the ni-passive correlates with global topic while the niyotte-passive is pertinent to local topic.