Impersonal (definition)
From Scottish Gaelic Grammar Wiki
Revision as of 22:07, 13 November 2009 by AndrewCarnie (talk | contribs)
An 'impersonal' is a voice that expresses a situation where there is no specified agent semantic/thematic role. They are roughly equivalent to the passives of Intransitive verbs, although passives have the additional property that they highlight the theme/object. This latter property is not true of impersonals. Impersonals are not typically found in English, but a similar meaning can be expressed with sentences such as "There was dancing". In Gaelic there is a special verb form used for expressing the impersonal (sometimes inaccurately called the passive).
