Grammatical Voice Research Paper

Predicates can be characterized by the number of arguments they take; a one-place predicate is intransitive, a predicate with two arguments is transitive. The ability of a predicate to subcategorize for semantic arguments does not necessarily mean that all these arguments are overtly expressed by NPs; some arguments may be omitted and some arguments may be understood (implicit) but never expressed.

In terms of semantic arguments, the description of grammatical voices relies crucially on the recognition of two types of core arguments of a predicate, agent (logical subject) and theme (logical object). An agent is a participant that has some or all of the following properties: it exists independently of the event named by the predicate, can cause a change of state in another participant, is capable of movement, is volitional and capable of intention (Gruber 1965, Fillmore 1968, Dowty 1991). A theme is a participant that has some or all of the following properties: it may not exist independently of the event, undergoes a change of state in the event, is causally affected by an agent.

Turning now to the grammatical functions subject and object, these functions can be manifested in all or some of the following formal properties: case-marking, linear position in a sentence, agreement, and ability to determine the form and/or linear position of other constituents (for example, the form of reflexives).

Based on how agent and theme are mapped into grammatical functions, linguistic theory recognizes the following main voices: active, passive, middle, and antipassive.

In the active voice, agent is mapped into the syntactic subject of a clause, while theme is mapped into the syntactic object, as in the English example (1).

(1)        Invisible God [agent, subject]

created a visible world [theme, direct object]

In the passive voice, agent is mapped into an oblique phrase or adjunct, whereas theme may be mapped into the syntactic subject, as in (2).

(2)        The visible world [theme, subject]

was created by invisible God [agent, adjunct]

In the middle voice, the event denoted by the predicate is construed as developing without external causation; the main participant is both the source and the recipient (beneficiary) of the event. Thus, the main argument of the middle voice is construed as combining features of agent and theme. The contrast between the middle voice and the passive voice can be illustrated by the English (3) and (4); in (3), the ability to wash well is perceived as the property of cotton, and no external agent is permitted:

(3)       Cotton [theme, subject]

washes well (*by consumers)

(4)        Cotton [theme, subject]

is washed (well) (by consumers)

In the antipassive voice, agent is mapped into subject and theme is mapped into an adjunct. Although English does not have a regular antipassive, the contrast between (5) and (6) is illustrative of the contrast between the active voice (theme = direct object) and antipassive (theme= adjunct):

(5)        The soldiers [agent, subject]

shot the pirates [theme, object]

(6)        The soldiers [agent, subject]

shot at the pirates [theme, adjunct]

Alternations in grammatical voice that operate on the same argument structure consistently show information-structural differences. The major distinction in information structure is between topic (‘what the utterance is about’) and focus (the constituent that, given a well-formed question-answer pair, is the part of the answer that corresponds to the wh-word in the question). Topic-focus differences can be used to motivate the choice of one voice over another. It is erroneous however, to think that each and every language has voice alternations; for a given argument structure, some languages have just one way of mapping arguments to grammatical functions.

2. Active Voice

A verb in the active is often unmarked for any morphological indication of voice; however, this is not a universal characteristic. A number of languages, for instance, many Austronesian languages, mark active voice on the verb with a special morpheme. For example, in Malagasy, a significant number of verbs form the active by prefixation on the verb stem (7a); for some of these verbs, the passive form is morphologically simplex (7b) (Keenan and Polinsky 1998):

(7a) sasa‘wash’ (root)—manasa ‘wash’ (active, present)

(7b) hita ‘see’ (passive)—mihita ‘see’ (active, present)

A common active voice structure is the one where the agent or most agent-like argument of the predicate is subject, while the theme, if there is one, is direct object. Agent appears in the subject case which, depending on a particular language, could be nominative, as in (8a, b), (11), absolutive (9a), ergative (9b), or dative (10). If the verb is transitive and has a theme argument, the case marking of this argument is typically that of direct object (accusative in an accusative language, absolutive in an ergative language); however, theme objects of some verbs can also be marked by a special case, inherent to a given verb, e.g., as in Russian (11).

(8) Latin

(a) rex decessit

king._NOMINATIVE died

(b) rex omnes

king. _NOMINATIVE (all

copias castrıs educit

troops). _ACCUSATIVE of.camp led

‘The king led all the troops out of the camp.’

(9) Chukchii

(a) tl a wiri-g i

mother._ABSOLUTIVE descend-_AORIST:3sg

‘The mother came down.’

(b) tl a-ta m c kw n

mother-_ERGATIVE shirt-_ABSOLUTIVE

t ni-nin

sew-_AQRIST:3_SG3_SG

‘The mother sewed the shirt.’

(10) Hindi

mujh-e tum-se pyaar hε

I-_DAYIVE you-_INSTRUMENTALlove _AUXILARY

‘I love you.’

(11) Russian

Korol upra ljaet

king. _NOMINATIVE rules

stran-oj

country-_INSTRUMENTAL

‘The king rules the country.’

The determination of grammatical functions associated with agent and theme depends on language-internal factors and cannot be done on the basis of isolated examples from a given language.

If the verb in the active voice is intransitive, its single argument may correspond to either topic or focus; focused subjects of intransitives often serve to introduce new information. In a transitive active sentence, the subject agent argument is more typically associated with topic than the object theme, as shown by a number of text counts (Mallinson and Blake 1981). However, this information-structural preference can be overridden by a number of contextual factors, and an argument other than agent or even an adjunct can be construed as topic.

3. Passive Voice

Natural languages use passives extensively and show a wide range of variation in the expression of passives. The variation can be captured by the following parameters: (a) difference in overt marking between the active and the passive predicate; (b) expression of the subject of the passive; (c) accessibility of arguments to passivization; (d) expression of the passive agent.

In terms of the encoding of the predicate in the passive construction, passives can be morphological (synthetic) or periphrastic (analytical). In English, the formation of the passive always requires an auxiliary (‘be’ or ‘get,’ with slight semantic differences depending on the choice of the auxiliary), thus the passive is periphrastic. In some languages, passives are always formed morphologically, for example, in Swahili, where the passive is marked by the suffix -w-(12b):

(12) Swahili

(a) Juma a-li-vunj-a dirisha

Juma he-_PAST-break-_ASPECT window

‘Juma broke the window.’

(b) dirisha li-li-vunj-w-a (na Juma)

windowit-_PAST-break-_PASSIVE–_ASPECT by Juma

‘The window was broken (by Juma)’

Although it is common for passives to be morphologically more complex than actives, this is not always the case; in a number of Austronesian languages, morphological passives are simpler than actives, for instance, for subsets of verbs in Toba Batak, Indonesian, or Malagasy; it is also possible for both active and passive to be formed by affixation from a verbal root (stem), as in Malagasy.

Some languages combine morphological and periphrastic passives, depending on the verb categories. For instance, in Latin or Russian, imperfective verbs form morphological passives, and perfectives use periphrastic passives (Latin capio ‘take’ (active), capitur ‘is taken’ (passive imperfect), captus est ‘was/has been taken’ (passive perfect). In addition to passives proper, some languages use the so-called reflexive passive, in which the active form of the verb combines with a reflexive clitic such as Romance se, si, German sich, Slavic –sja. Finally, some languages do not use any verb marking to distinguish active and passive predicates; for example, in Acehnese and in Mandarin, the only overt marking of the passive construction comes from the marking of the agent phrase and, optionally, from word order (Perlmutter and Postal 1983).

In terms of argument expression, the mapping of agent into an adjunct is the necessary and sufficient characteristic of passive. It is therefore possible that agent is ‘demoted’ to an adjunct and the subject position is filled by an ‘expletive’ (‘dummy’)—a meaningless element similar to the English ‘it’ in ‘It rains’ or ‘there’ in ‘There was a riot.’ Passives whose subject is an expletive are known as impersonal passives. Impersonal passives can be formed from intransitive verbs, (13b), or transitive verbs (14b). In the latter case, theme remains in the object position, and the subject of the sentence is expressed by an expletive; in languages where pronominal subjects are typically deleted, the expletive of an impersonal passive is a 3-person null pronoun ( pro), whose presence is signaled by the agreement features on the verb (14b).

13 German

(a) Alle Kinder tanzen

all children dance

(b) Es wird ( on allen Kindern)

it is by all children

getanzt

danced._PERF._PARTICIPLE

‘There is dancing (as performed by all children).’

(14) Lithuanian

(a) cia lankutojai klausosi

here visitors._NOMINATIVE listen

muzikos

music._ACCUSATIVE

‘Visitors listen to music here.’

(b) cia pro lankutoju klauso-ma-si

here visitors._GENITIVE listen-_PASSIVE-3

muzikos

music._ACCUSATIVE

‘There occurs listening to the music by visitors

here.’

In a personal passive, the subject position is occupied by a meaningful argument (as in English). In some languages, arguments other than direct object can also become subject of the passive. In some dialects of English, passivization is equally possible for both objects of the verbs ‘give’ or ‘send’:

(15a) The doctor gave the child new medicine

(15b) New medicine was given the child (by the doctor)

(15c) The child was given new medicine (by the doctor)

In Kinyarwanda (Bantu), any prepositionless object can become subject of a passive (Kimenyi 1988, p. 365), thus:

(16a) umugore areerekeesha ımashiıni abaana woman is showing machine children amashusho

pictures

‘The woman is showing pictures to the

children with a machine.’ (Active)

(16b) amashusho are erekeeshwa ımashiıni abaana

pictures are being shown machine children

(n’umugore)

by woman

‘Pictures are shown to the children with

machine (by the woman).’ (Theme passive)

(16c) abaana bareerekeeshwa ımashiıni amashusho

children are being shown machine pictures

(n’umugore)

by woman

‘The children are shown pictures with a

machine (by the woman).’ (Goal passive)

(16d) ımashiıni ireerekeeshwa abaana amashusho

machine is being shown children pictures

(n’umugore)

by woman

‘The machine is being used to show pictures

to the children (by the woman).’ (Instrument

passive)

In languages that allow the passivization of multiple arguments, the accessibility to passivization is determined by the following principle: if a lower (more oblique) object can be passivized, then all objects higher than it should be able to passivize as well. This predicts that there should be no languages where a passive as in (16d) is possible whereas passives as in (16b, c) are ungrammatical.

In terms of the expressions of the agent, no language seems to require that the passive agent be expressed; however, there are languages where an overt byphrase in the passive is ungrammatical (Arabic, Latvian, Seri).

There are several functional motivations for the use of passives, and although they do not need to co-occur within a single language, these motivations are cross linguistically consistent. In terms of information structure, passive allows a speaker to indicate that theme, not agent is the main topic of an utterance. Concomitantly, passive may serve to indicate that the passive agent is focus or part of focus. Syntactically, passive is needed if a language has rules that operate only on subjects; in such a case, passive is a ‘way-station’ for an argument that needs to be made accessible to a given rule. For example, English uses passive in embedded infinitival clauses to put theme in the position of the silent subject argument of the infinitive (PRO), as in (17b), where John is subjected to the interview:

(17a) We persuaded John_i [ PRO_i to interview the lawyer]

(17b) We persuaded John_i [ PRO_i to be interviewed by the lawyer]

Passive may differ from active in pragmatic connotation, for example, politeness or indirectness. Such pragmatic differences are often invoked as the main reason for the prevalence of passives in certain narrative styles and in requests (passive imperatives) in Austronesian languages. A recurrent interpretive difference between the active and the passive is in that the passive emphasizes the change of state incurred by the referent of the theme. Because of this semantics of change of state and the attendant semantics of the resultant state, passive constructions are more common in the past and perfect; the coalescence of passive and perfect in the history of Indo-European languages is well documented (Benveniste 1960, Kuryłowicz 1964).

Linguistic theories differ in terms of whether the alternation between voices should be accounted for in syntax, in the lexicon or in both modules; for a good overview of grammatical approaches to passive, see Spencer (1991, Chap. 7).

4. Middle Voice

The description of the middle voice, based on the Greek grammatical tradition, is that of an event initiated within by the main participant and having a principle effect on the same participant. For example, in Sanskrit:

(18) Sanskrit

(a) so namati dandam

he._NOMINATIVE bends._ACTIVE stick._ACCUSATIVE

‘He bends a stick.’

(b) dandah namate

stick._NOMINATIVE bend._MIDDLE

‘The stick bends.’

A common extension of that meaning is that the volitional and sentient main participant is acting in his own interests. For example in Sanskrit:

(19) Sanskrit

(a) so katam karoti

he._NOMINATIVE mat._ACCUSATIVE makes._ACTIVE

‘He makes a mat.’

(b) so katam kurute

he._NOMINATIVE mat._ACCUSATIVE makes._MIDDLE

‘He makes a mat for himself.’

The middle voice typically appears in clauses referring to body actions, grooming, speech acts, cognition, emotive events, and meteorological or spontaneous events (Kemmer 1993). Since middles often refer to properties, not events, verbs in the middle voice commonly have a stative meaning, but this is not a necessary characterization of the middle voice. Crosslinguistically, middle voice often coincides or partially overlaps with the passive (hence such terms as mediopassive, e.g., in the history of Indo-European languages), as well as with the reflexive and reciprocal. This conflation can be explained by the commonality of semantics—in the middle, reflexive, and reciprocal, the same participant is perceived as both the cause (source) of an event and as its recipient, thus as agent and theme.

5. Antipassive Voice

The antipassive voice is less common than the passive; in those languages where it is found, variation is observed in the following ways: (a) the marking of the antipassive voice on the verb; (b) the encoding of the subject (in contrast with the subject of the active); and (c) the expression of the theme.

The verb marking, as in the other voices, can be analytical or synthetic. Analytical antipassives (formed with an auxiliary verb) are found in some languages of the Caucasus, for instance in Lak (20b); synthetic antipassives appear to be more common, for example, (21b) (in (21a), where the verb is active, it agrees with both ergative subject and absolutive object; in (21b), the verb in the antipassive form agrees only with the absolutive subject):

(20) Lak

(a) ga-nal u rcru

he-_ERGATIVE children._ABSOLUTIVE

bu cun-n-i

carry-_AQRIST-3_SG

‘He has carried the children.’

(b) ga (u rcru)

1. _ABSOLUTIVE children. _ABSOLUTIVE

buclej ur

carrying is.3_SG

‘He is carrying children; he is doing the

carrying.’

(21) Chukchi

(a) tl a-ta m c kw n

mother-_ERGATIVE shirt- _ABSOLUTIVE

 t ni-nin

sew- _ERGATIVE:3_SG:3_SG

‘The mother sewed the shirt.’

(b) tl a (m c kw k)

mother. _ABSOLUTIVE shirt._LOCATIVE

ine-nni-g i

_ANTIPASSIVE-sew-_AQR3_SG

‘The mother sewed (at the shirt).’

As the contrast between (21a) and (21b) shows, in an ergative language, the subject in the active and the subject in the antipassive may appear in different cases; however, this is not a necessary condition on the antipassive, and ergative languages are attested where the subject of the antipassive remains in the ergative case (Australian languages Djaru, Walbiri, Kuniyanti). The theme in the antipassive construction is syntactically optional, thus it is an adjunct. It can be expressed by any of the oblique cases or adpositional phrases available in a given language (for example, in Chukchi, it can appear in the dative, locative, or instrumental case), and it can be freely omitted. However, as (20b) shows, in some languages the case marking of the theme does not have to change; what is crucial though is that the theme be an adjunct syntactically, which may be manifested though ‘behavioral’ properties of an NP, not case marking. Finally, in some languages, antipassives require that the theme not be expressed (for example, in Tzotzil), in ‘mirror image’ to the non-expression of the passive agent in passives of some languages.

The sources of functional motivation of the antipassive are similar to the sources observed for the passive. Syntactically, the antipassive is used when a language has rules that refer to absolutives. For example, in Chukchi only absolutive arguments are accessible to relativization, thus, when an ergative subject has to be relativized, the antipassive is used as a ‘way-station’ for relativization:

(22) Chukchi

(a) tl a-ta m c kw n

mother-_ERGATIVE shirt- _ABSOLUTIVE

 t ni-nin

sew-_AQRIST:3_SG:3_SG

‘The mother sewed the shirt.’

(b) *[m c kw n t ni-l n] tl a

shirt- _ABSOLUTIVE sew-_PARTICIPLE mother

(c) [m c kw k ine-nni-l n]

shirt-_{LOCATIVE ANTIPASSIVE}-sew-_PARTICIPLE

 tl a

mother

‘the mother that sewed the shirt’

Interpretive differences between the active and the antipassive construction derive from the presence of an affected participant (theme) in the former and its absence in the latter. A common inference in the antipassive construction is that the theme is not affected or affected just partially. Since the theme participant does not even have to be specified, the event denoted by the antipassive predicate is often construed as generic or habitual, taking scope over a set of possible objects. This in turn explains why the antipassive is more commonly found in the imperfective aspect and in non-past tenses which do not limit an event or limit it indefinitely. In terms of information structure, the antipassive shares with the active that agent is the most likely topic; unlike the active construction, the antipassive makes it more likely that sentential focus takes scope over the predicate and adjunct (if any) or just the adjunct.

Unlike passive, antipassive is less common across languages, and even in those languages that have an antipassive, it is often considered to be a lexical, not a syntactic process, because of its restricted productivity. A syntactic account of the antipassive has been offered by Baker (1988) in terms of incorporation: the object position in the antipassive construction is occupied by an NP which is morphologically realized as a bound affix (including null allomorphs), and this affix incorporated into the verb stem.

6. Phenomena Related To Voice

A number of phenomena overlap with voice or are encoded by some of the same markers as are used for

marking voice, in particular the passive. These phenomena include reflexives (predicates whose two main arguments have the same referent, acting upon itself), reciprocals (predicates whose two main arguments refer to participants acting upon each other), inchoatives or anticausatives (intransitive counterparts of ‘cause X to P’, as in the English burn, melt) which receive the same marking as regular or reflexive passives (for example, in Romance languages). Inchoatives are sometimes assimilated to middle voice forms. Discussions of impersonal passives sometimes include active impersonal passives to these constructions is problematic.

(23) French

on discipline ces enfants

‘One disciplines these children.’

The active-passive alternation is sometimes extended to include the so-called inverse systems attested mainly in Native American languages. In an inverse system, there are two constructions differeing in whether Agent or Theme is higher on the hieararchy Human > Animate > Inanimate (or such similar hierarchy). If Agent outranks Theme on the hierarchy pertinent to a given language, the direct form of the verb is used (24a); if Agent is lower, the inverse form is used (24b).

(24) Navaho

(a) hastin łıı yi-z-tal

man horse 3_SG+ _DIRECT-3_SG-kicked

‘The man kicked the horse.’

(b) hastin łıı yi-z-tal

man horse 3_SG+ _INVERSE-3_SG-kicked

‘The horse kicked the man.’

Aside from the presence of an actual alternation, there is no structural similarity between a voice system and an inverse system.

Early descriptions of ergative case-marking systems (see (9) above) assimilated the ergative to the passive. Although historically some ergative systems can be shown to go back to passives (e.g., in Indo-Iranian or Polynesian languages), synchronically the ergative construction is active, not passive.

Finally, most languages have classes of verbs whose morphology is indicative of one voice but whose syntactic behaviour does not support the morphological appearance. Such verbs are typically described as deponent verbs, a name rooted in the Latin grammatical tradition where the term was applied to verbs with passive morphology (vox passiva) which functioned as active verbs (vis activa), for example, loquor ‘speak’, where the inflection -or is that of 1 person singular passive.

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