Pros and Cons of the English Voice

Abstract

The present contribution is intended to offer a few glimpses of the English Voice, with a major focus in the first section on the mediopassive and the various labels attached to it (Dixon, 1992; Trask, 1993). Section Two takes the reader to coreferentiality and the vexed problem of English reflexives. It is as late as Section Three that the English Passive finally looms as large as ever. Here three issues are being addressed: the distinct functions of the passive participle – identical in structure to the perfect participle; the role of agent by-phrases, which have been lately promoted from peripheral constituents to active participants in verb complementation; semanticopragmatic conditions accounting for ellipsis of the agent in passive constructions. The final section features the grammatical device ‘ promotion to subject’ as a semantic rival of the canonical passive, while charting their main diverging contextually-based trends.

Cuvinte-cheie: diateză, reflexiv, structură, constituent, verb, elipsă, construcţie

REZUMAT

În articol, autoarea abordează unele aspecte ale diatezei verbelor din limba engleză. În cercetare, dânsa porneşte de la valorile gramaticale şi stilistice ale mediopasivului în această limbă, ca, mai apoi, să analizeze coreferenţialitatea şi pronumele reflexive din ea. Doar în partea a treia a articolului, autoarea cercetează diateza pasivă a verbelor englezeşti prin abordarea (1) funcţiilor distinctive ale participiului pasiv, care este identic ca structură cu participiul perfect, adică participiul trecut II; (2) complementului de agent, conceput ca complement central şi nu doar periferic în limba engleză; (3) condiţiilor semantico-pragmatice care justifică omiterea agentului în construcţiile pasive din această limbă.

LANGUAGES OF PUBLICATION

English (main text and corpus); German, Spanish, Italian, and Romanian (corpus)

UDC: 811.111`367.625

REFERENCES

Dixon, R.M.W. (1992). A New Approach to English Grammar, on Semantic Principles. Clarendon Press.

Hatcher, A. G. (1949). To Get/Be Invited. Modern Language Notes, 64, 433-446.

Măciucă, G. (2000). Glimpses of English Syntax. Editura Universităţii din Suceava.

Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., Svartvik, J. (1972). A Grammar of Contemporary English. Longman.

Stein, G. (1979). Studies in the Function of the Passive. Gunter Narr Verlag.

Svartvik, J. (1966). On Voice in the English Verb. Mouton.

Trask, R. L. (1993). A Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in Linguistics. Routledge.

Trask, R. L. (2007). Language and Linguistics.The Key Concepts. Routledge.

Received: March 7, 2011 | Reviewed: March 19, 2011 | Accepted for publication: March 22, 2011 

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