French pronominal passive as a secondary predication construction

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The French pronominal passive has often been observed to exhibit some differences from English middle constructions. In our previous studies, we pointed out that from a semantic interpretation viewpoint, the French pronominal passive does not constitute a homogeneous class but rather is divided into two groups. The first group expresses the modality of possibility and demonstrates characteristics similar to those of English middle constructions. On the other hand, the second group shows the modality of necessity and has no English counterpart. In the present study, we introduce yet another group which, when compared with the second group, equally expresses the modality of necessity but shows syntactic and semantic differences. The characteristics of the three groups as well as their similarities and differences are analysed in this study.