Abstract
This study examines the functional verbs of the passive voice. Functional verbs of the passive voice do not seem to have the same function, but considered to have their unique characteristics. Therefore, I try to clarify the difference in characteristics of functional verbs by investigating their descriptions in dictionaries and the corpus. I first investigate the characteristics of functional verbs by conceptual consideration, then I perform quantitative consideration based on the result. In the quantitative consideration, three following viewpoints were useful; distribution of the functional verbs from the appearance field, noun part of the functional verb, and combination of the nominative and the active subject. By the above-mentioned consideration, the difference in characteristics of functional verbs such as the passive type, the characteristic of the noun part, the writing style and the sentiment polarity became clear.
