He never says a word unless he feels he’s being threatened in someway. (Why did we use the passive progressive (is being threatened) and not the passive (is threatened) in the conditional clause?
passive progressive
Every language has its own syntax. Syntax is like the traffic rules of the language if you were to liken a language to a city and a road map. The traffic rules of standard English dictate that the passive progressive tense is what you use in a sentence like this.
However, I would imagine that Creole and Pidgin Englishes and Ogden's Basic English are more likely to use the passive tense in an equivalent sentence because they are all simplified versions of the language and follow different syntax .
An example of how a Creole English might say the same sentence ("He neva say won word suppose some fella threaten him somehow", even though there are many Creole Englishes and other possibilities too.
However, I would imagine that Creole and Pidgin Englishes and Ogden's Basic English are more likely to use the passive tense in an equivalent sentence because they are all simplified versions of the language and follow different syntax .
An example of how a Creole English might say the same sentence ("He neva say won word suppose some fella threaten him somehow", even though there are many Creole Englishes and other possibilities too.
Part of this is because in English, actions that are *semantically* in the present are expressed with the present progressive, *not* with the simple present, which would instead indicate timelessness, habitualness, potentialness, or, if provided with a time adverb or phrase, futureness; this is not affected by whether the voice is active, passive, or middle/reflexive/reciprocal, so hence one would still use progressive aspect if the voice is already passive.