Voice: voice
| Values: | Act | Cau | Mid | Pass | Rcp |
Voice is a feature of verbs that helps to map the traditional syntactic functions, such as subject and object, to semantic roles, such as agent and patient. See also the related feature subcategorization.
Act: active voice
Prototypically, the subject of the verb is the doer of the action (agent), the object is affected by the action (patient).
By default, the finite and non-finite forms of verbs are labeled Voice=Act, except for the cases when they are labeled Voice=Pass, Voice=Mid or Voice=Cau (see below).
Examples
- Նա ջարդեց բաժակը “He broke the cup”,
- Նա կորցրեց գիրքը “He lost the book” (but, Գիրքը կորավ .
Mid“The book was lost.Mid”), - Նա հանգցրեց լույսը “He turned the light off” (but, Լույսը հանգավ .
Mid“The light was off.Mid”).
Pass: passive voice
The subject of the verb is affected by the action (patient). The doer (agent) is either a non-obligatory oblique phrase of the verb or not overtly expressed.
The finite and non-finite forms of verbs are labeled Voice=Pass in the passive constructions. In this case, the verbs are marked with passive infixe -վ- (for exeptions see below).
Examples
- Առաջարկությունը մերժվեց (մասնակիցների կողմից) “The suggestion was denied (by the participants)”,
- Նա արհամարվում է ժողովրդից “He is despised by the people”,
- Անտառը ծածկված է ձյունով “The forest is covered by snow”.
Mid: middle voice
Between active and passive. Needed also for the reflexive, traditionally called medio-passiv (for reciprocal verbs see below); in this case, the verbs are marked with passiv infix -վ- (but the lemma is tagged as non-reflexive). A reflexive voice will be distinguished in future.
Note, that there is a not large set of middle voice verbs marked with passive infix -վ- (so-called passivizied middle verbs). These forms are morphologically very close to the passive, do not have morphologically related non-marked counterparts and are tagged Voice=Mid. If there is a morphologically related non-marked counterpart, than the two verbs are represented by different lemmas (e.g. վերաբերվել .Mid “treat, be about”, but վերաբերել .Act “refer to”).
Examples
- Նա վախենում է մթից “He is afraid of darkness”,
- Նա արագ լվացվեց, հագնվեց “He washed, dressed quickly (lit: he washed himself, he dressed himself)”,
- Մենք հարձակվեցինք թշնամու վրա “We attacked the enemy”,
- Ամիսներ անց բոլորն էլ հաշտվեցին այդ մտքի հետ “After several months everybody stood thought of it”.
Cau: causative voice
Note, that in Armenian this is a feature of verbs. In causative constructions the subject is the entity “causing” the action. It is generally translated into English as ‘cause/make/have/let/allow’ someone to perform action described by the main verb.
The causative is expressed by the infix -ցն-. It is quite productive and can be used also for transitivisation of intransitive (middle voice) verbs. They will have Voice=Act, not Voice=Cau (e.g. կորցնել, հանգցնել).
Note, that the auxiliary տալ (in various tenses and moods) is accombined with infinitve of the content verb to construct the causative voice. Only the auxiliary will have Voice=Cau. There will be also voice information at the infinitive.
Examples
- Մայրը քնեցրեց որդուն “The mather put her son to sleep”,
- Սովորեցնում էր նրան լեզու “He tought her a foreign language”,
- Այդ բոլորը պատերազմ էր հիշեցնում նրան “All these things reminded him a war”,
- Ո՞ր քամին հանգցրեց նրանց սերը “Which wind extinguished.
Cautheir love (lit: made the love to extinguish)”, - վազել.
Midտալ.Cau“to make somebody run”, - վազեցնել.
Cauտալ.Cau“lit: to make someone make someone run”, - հասկանալ.
Actտալ .Cau“lit: to make somebody understand”, - հասկացնել .
Cau“lit: to make somebody understand”, - հասկացնել.
Cauտալ .Cau“lit: to make someone make someone understand”.
Rcp: reciprocal voice
A reciprocal verb describes an event in which two agents (or groups of agents) perform the same action upon each other.
The reciprocal is expressed by the passiv infix -վ- however, the verb roots that can become reciprocal is limited.
Examples
- Նրանք գրկախառնվեցին “They hugged each other”.
Voice in other languages: [abq] [am] [arr] [bej] [bg] [bor] [ceb] [cs] [el] [eme] [en] [fi] [fr] [gn] [gub] [ha] [hu] [hy] [jaa] [ka] [ky] [myu] [pay] [qpm] [qtd] [quc] [ru] [sv] [tl] [tpn] [tr] [tt] [u] [uk] [urb] [urj] [xcl]