The purpose of this paper is to argue that the conceptual structure of the be-passive construction as in (la) should be represented as in (lb):
(1) a. Bill_j was kicked by John.
b. [Event INCH([State BE([Event KICK([Thing JOHN], [Thing a])], [Place AT([Thing BILL_j] a)])])])]
The conceptual structure (lb) is isomorphic to that of the have- constructions with a passive sense (hereafter "have-passive") such as (2), as proposed in Inoue (1995):
(2) a. John had his savings wiped out.
b. John had his car break down.
The former structure is identical to the latter in that the subject NP is the goal to which Theme X moves, i.e. the place where an event as Theme ends.
Section 1 is devoted to a brief survey of the framework upon which the present study is based. The framework basically follows Jackendoff (1990) without the adoption of the 'Action tier'. Section 2 is made up of three subsections. Section 2.1. discusses what semantic characteristics differentiate the be-passive from the have-passive. Section 2.2. presents arguments for the structure (lb). Section 2.3. deals with a tentative formulation of the structural linking of conceptual structures to their syntactic structures without the 'Action tier' regarding the be and have passive constructions.
It follows from the discussion that if the present analysis is valid, the "affected" sense conveyed by be-passive, have-passive and adverbial on adjunct constructions comes from the common structure: [INCH ([ BE [EVENT], [AT([Y])])])]