Languages & Linguistics
Active Voice
Active voice is a grammatical construction in which the subject of a sentence performs the action expressed by the verb. In other words, the subject is the doer of the action. This is opposed to passive voice, where the subject receives the action.
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3 Key excerpts on "Active Voice"
- Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreicher, Wolfgang Raible, Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreicher, Wolfgang Raible(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
67. The passive voice 899 67. The passive voice 1. Introduction 2. Morphology of the passive voice 3. Syntax of the passive construction 4. Functions of the passive voice 5. Derived vs. basic status of the passive voice 6. Cross-linguistic distribution of the passive voice 7. The passive in relation to some other grammatical phenomena 8. Special abbreviations 9. References 1. Introduction The passive voice is one of the most impor-tant types of voice alternations attested across languages. The majority of languages with voice alternations also have the passive voice. The definition of the passive voice which we will adopt in the present article largely follows Haspelmath (1990: 27). A construction is called passive if: (i) the verbal form used in that construc-tion is morphologically derived in some way from the form used in the un-marked (active) voice construction; and (ii) the actor is either unexpressed or ex-pressed by a non-obligatory oblique phrase with the derived verbal form; and (iii) the subject, if any, is not the actor; (iv) the construction is somehow restricted vis-à-vis the unmarked (active) voice construction in its distribution; and (v) the propositional semantics of the con-struction is identical to that of the un-marked (active) voice; specifically, the number of participants and their roles do not change. (Here and below, we prefer to use the term actor rather than agent; the former com-prises not only agents of action verbs, but also experiences and subjects of mental states denoted by transitive verbs; see Foley & Van Valin 1985 for a similar use of this term.) It is easy to see that the constructions tra-ditionally recognized as passive satisfy this definition; consider the English passive as an example: (1) (a) the Active Voice The mother washed the child. (b) the passive voice The child was washed (by the mother). In (lb) the analytic verbal form was washed is derived from the form used in the Active Voice (la).
- László Dezsö, Imre Gombos, Béla Hollósy, Imre Gombos, Béla Hollósy(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
The distant object is similar in its function to adverbials. The typical word order for active languages depends on the syntactic relations in a sentence. It may be represented by the pattern S—(O')—(O)—V for the active constructions (O' designating the distant object, O— the nearest one) and by the pattern S—(O')—V for inactive constructions. The active verbs instead of distinguishing between active and passive forms have a diathesis of centrifugal and non-centrifugal versions, cf. 'to put— to lie down'. The verb has highly expressed domination of aspectual meaning over temporal ones (Cf. Klimov 1977, 316). In active languages there is a process of strengthening the oppo-sition of subjective and objective principles. The two schematic lines of this process obviously denote the ergativization or the nominativization of the linguistic structures correspondingly. (Klimov 1977, 318). There are no instances of transition from the ergative or the nominative type to the active one. I gave a brief but relatively full characterization of active type because it displays a clear opposition to the nominative type which is our main concern here. For our further analysis it will be relevant to have a closer look at the active, stative and affective verb classes of active languages. Active verbs or the so-called 'verbs of action' denote various actions, motions, events produced by the significata of the active noun class (Klimov 1977,85). Transitivity is not a relevant feature of the active verbs. Stative verbs or the so-called verbs of state (the terms: middle, Basic Sentence Structure 43 neuter verbs are used in American descriptive works) denote state, characteristics or quality mostly connected with the significata of the nouns of inactive class (Klimov 1977, 85).
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Cross-Linguistic Perspectives
- Michel Kefer, Johan van der Auwera, Michel Kefer, Johan van der Auwera(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Towards a typology of voice 1 Ineke Brus 1. Introduction Grammatical voice is a complex phenomenon. Syntactic structures that are considered to be voice options can differ widely in both form and function. Before attempting to set up a typology of any aspect of voice it is therefore vital to define even the most basic notions involved. Furthermore an effort should be made to disentangle, as far as possible, one (or more) of the aspects of the problem of voice from the rest. If this is not at least attempted from the outset, there is a danger that a typology of voice ends up as something as general and unmanageable as a typology of the transitive clause. By wanting too much too soon, in the end all that is left to conclude will be that languages are not uniform and do not lend themselves to uniform analyses (Siewierska 1984: 262). In the last few years studies have appeared on several aspects of grammatical voice, which show that there is much more to voice than our familiar Western European passives would have us suspect. Shibatani (1985) shows the diversity of passive constructions in meaning and structure. He defines a passive prototype in terms of both function and form so that the Western European construction is an example of a prototypical passive, with which constructions found in other languages can have more or fewer properties in common. Foley and Van Valin (1984) propose two functions for the passive, back-grounding and foregrounding, and claim that in some languages a passive construction has one of the two functions, and in others it can have both. Klaiman (1988) introduces the notion of conceptual status, and shows that some languages have voice options based on the parameters control and affected entity that are comprised within this notion. Trying to integrate insights from these studies, I will look at a number of constructions that are all connected with the notion of voice in one way or another.
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