Voice (in grammar)

(Grammatical) voice is an inflectional dimension of verbs which signals different ways of distributing the semantic roles over grammatical relations. The prototypical categories are active voice and passive voice, but a few others have been added more recently.

Synonyms

• diathesis
• verbal gender
• valence-changing
• version

Categories

• active voice
• passive voice
• inverse voice
• antipassive voice
• reflexive voice
• reciprocal voice
• causative voice (see morphological causative)

References

• Fox, Barbara & Hopper, Paul (eds.) 1994. Voice: Form and function. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
• Klaiman, M.H. 1991. Grammatical voice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Other languages

French voix German Genus verbi