Igor Mel’čuk
Papers of BAS, Humanities and Social Sciences
Vol. 2, No 1-2, 2015
HISTORY, LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE,
CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGYINFLECTIONAL CATEGORY OF VOICE
Igor Mel’čuk
Abstract: The category of voice has been in the focus of attention of linguists for several decades now. This is quite understandable: the “active ~ passive” correlation as trivial as it might seem, touches on many aspects of modern linguistics: on semantics and syntax, on communicative organization of texts, on pragmatics, on lexicography, etc. The goal of the present article is to introduce some clarity into the discussion: to propose rigorous definitions of the notion of ‘voice’ as an inflectional category and those of particular voices. The main thrust of it is thus metalinguistic: it pursues the goal of developing a logical system of linguistic notions and the corresponding terminology.
Key words: The Meaning-Text theory, Inflectional categories, Voice, Grammemes of voice, Active voice, Passive voice, Middle voice