Voice: voice
| Values: | Act | Pass | Mid |
Voice in Modern Greek is a feature of verbs that highlights the role of a certain participant in an event; the highlighted participant is related to the syntactic subject of the verb. So, the active voice relates the “doer” with the subject and the passive voice relates the “affected” with the subject. However, these are strong tendencies only.
All Modern Greek finite verb forms, the infinitive and the participles are tagged for Voice.
Act: active voice
The subject of the verb is the doer or the controller of the event (agent), the object is affected or controlled (patient).
Examples
- Ο Όμηρος έγραψε την Οδύσσεια. “Homer wrote the Odyssey.” (Homer is the doer/controller of the writing event and surfaces as the subject of the active verb. Odyssey is created, therefore it is affected by the writing event and surfaces as the object of the active verb.)
Pass: passive voice
The subject of the verb is affected by the event (patient). The doer (agent) is either unexpressed or is introduced with the preposition από.
Examples
- Η Οδύσσεια γράφτηκε από τον Όμηρο. “Odyssey was written by Homer” (Homer is the doer/controller of the writing event and surfaces as the complemnt of the preposition από that is selected by the passive verb. Odyssey is created, therefore affected by the writing event and surfaces as the subject of the passive verb.)
Mid: middle voice
The subject of the verb denotes both the doer and the entity affected by the event (patient).
Examples
- Ο Γιάννης ξυρίζεται. “Yannis is shaving himself” (The entity denoted by “Yannis” is both the doer/controller of the shaving event and the entity affected by the event. “Yannis” surfaces as the subject of the verb.)
Voice in other languages: [abq] [am] [arr] [az] [bej] [bg] [bor] [ceb] [cs] [ctn] [el] [eme] [en] [fi] [fr] [gn] [gub] [ha] [hu] [hy] [jaa] [ka] [ky] [myu] [naq] [pay] [ps] [qpm] [qtd] [quc] [ru] [sv] [tl] [tpn] [tr] [tt] [u] [uk] [urb] [urj] [xcl] [xmf]