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The use of the "traditional passive" form of the Japanese verb indicates to a native speaker that the subject of the verb was involuntarily subjected to something unpleasant. When combined with the causative form (passive causative), it is felt that the subject of the sentence was "caused to" take an action and is therefore not responsible for the act nor its outcome. These meanings must be expressed in English by adding whole clauses or phrases. It was hypothesized that the availability of these constructions in Japanese would cause native speakers to interpret interpersonal events by using these passive verb forms while speakers of English would not. In a translation study, the original and the translated versions of 20 Japanese and 21 English short stories were compared. It was found that the English-speaking translators tended to disregard the connotative meaning of the traditional passive while Japanese translators tended to read such meanings into the English original. A perception study was based on cartoons of interpersonal conflict situations to test whether Japanese subjects would tend to attribute responsibility for the negative outcome to others rather than themselves. In this test the overall difference between Japanese and Americans was significant at the .001 level in the predicted direction. In related tests, however, Americans who had studied Japanese used the traditional passive about as much as did native speakers. (JK)

1Boy Crusoe

By Allan Eric

Also published as" A Yankee Crusoe" . A 15 year old hard working and studious farm boy finds the lure of adventure on the seas as a merchant seaman more than he can resist. This is his story. " I was born in a little town in the State of Maine, near the close of the Civil War. My boyhood life did not differ materially from that of the average farmer's son in the remote country districts of New England--except, perhaps, that I read more and thought more. Hard work on the rugged soil, two terms each year in the little yellow country schoolhouse, a day's fishing now and then filled the early years of my life full to over-flowing. " What he gets is enough excitement and adventure to overflow his wildest dreams. How he experiences disaster and uses his wits and knowledge to overcome every problem makes for a great read. - Summary by Phil Chenevert