Pseudopassive

Consider the English pseudo-passive in (4). (4) This bed has not been slept in for many years

Consider now the pseudo-passive, Er werd gefloten "There was whistling." Here, just as in the true passive, the morphology asserts high participant not focussed.

A kind of ‘pseudo-passive’ construction is possible, though, with intransitive verbs having a prepositional phrase complement.

The magnitude of the current density within the region is, of course, too high to be regarded as passive in the conventional sense, and we coin the term "pseudopassive" to describe it.

Some patients who look passive-aggressive are still pseudopassive-aggressive because though they are difficult, covertly hostile people [...] they are suffering from another emotional disorder.