On the passive voice, see: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2922 and many, many more articles on that blog.
On adverbs:
http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2013/02/20/being-an-...
and on adverb hunting via software:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004271.h...
and on this app: