Garbo

In the general context of generative syntactic theory, it has been assumed that a passive sentence like "John was shot" is immediately derivable from "John was shot by someone" and ultimately from "Someone shot John" with the vague subject of the active form usually represented as someone or somebody. Evidence is given in the form of triads of passive sentences with reconstructed active forms that not only does someone/somebody not suffice for all such cases, but that in some (but not all) cases, forms like they, people, and even everyone/everybody can arguably be included among those which are deleted as agentive phrases once a sentence containing them as subjects is passivized. This is seen as an indication that at least the agent deletion portion of the passivization process must be re-evaluated, and perhaps passivization as a whole. AA