The parameter
Valency is the number of arguments a verb requires. Voice is the set of operations that change which argument occupies subject position, or how many arguments there are. A passive demotes the agent and promotes the patient; a causative adds an argument; an antipassive demotes the patient; a middle collapses the acting and the affected participant into one.
The parameter is real rather than terminological because these operations are built into the verb in some languages and assembled from separate words in others. Turkish and Japanese form causatives with a suffix; English needs a second verb and therefore a second clause. Turkish, Russian and Modern Greek mark the passive on the stem; English and German build it from an auxiliary and a participle. What is a derivational step on one side is a construction on the other.
The five values are not exclusive and not evenly available: many languages have several, some none. The impersonal deserves separate mention, because it is not simply an agentless passive. German and Dutch form impersonal passives from intransitive verbs, which have no patient to promote, so the clause has no subject at all. English has nothing of that shape.
How languages vary
- Passive: English, German, Dutch, Turkish, Russian, Polish, Swahili, Japanese. Marked periphrastically or by a verbal affix.
- Impersonal: German, Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Finnish. Subjectless or indefinite-subject forms, including French on and Spanish impersonal se.
- Antipassive: ergative languages of Australia, Mesoamerica and the Caucasus, and absent from the languages a European translator normally handles.
- Causative morphology: Turkish, Japanese, Korean, Finnish, Swahili, Georgian.
- Middle voice: Ancient and Modern Greek, Icelandic, and functionally the reflexive passives of Romance and Slavic.
Siewierska's WALS chapter 107 samples 373 languages and finds 162 with a passive against 211 without: common, but far from universal. Polinsky's chapter 108 samples 194 and finds 146 with no antipassive, 30 with an oblique complement and 18 with an implicit patient. Song's chapter 111 samples 310 and finds 254 with a morphological causative only, 24 with both morphological and compound types, 9 with a compound type only and 23 with neither. Morphological causation is the ordinary case; the English two-verb pattern is the marked one.
Consequences for translation
Passive frequency is a target norm and it differs sharply. The agentless passive is the default register of administrative and legal prose in Turkish, German and much of Slavic, while English drafting guidance pushes toward the active. Following that guidance is a voice change, and in most registers it is legitimate.
One case is different, and the rule is short. Converting an agentless passive to an active clause supplies an agent the source withheld, and in legal and administrative drafting that omission is frequently deliberate. A statute that fixes a duty without naming who discharges it, a decision that states an outcome without naming the office that reached it: in each the missing agent is the drafting. The translator cannot know whether the silence is evasion, deliberate allocation or ignorance, and the reader of the target is entitled to the same uncertainty as the reader of the source. Where the agent is named elsewhere in the document an active clause is available, and the named agent is the only one that may be used. Where identification requires an inference, keep the passive, or reach for a nominalization before promoting any participant. The technique record on voice change states the same rule.
Two further points bear on production. Morphological causatives compress: one Turkish or Japanese verb corresponds to an English clause with a second verb and often a second subject, so the clause is restructured and the target grows. Passive counts are a measurable style feature that revisers check. A house style that sets a target for them should carve out binding text, because a blanket instruction to reduce the passive is an instruction to invent agents.
Examples
TR>EN
- Source: Karar 5 Mayıs tarihinde alınmıştır.
- Target: The decision was taken on 5 May.
- Comment: The Turkish passive names nobody. "The board took the decision on 5 May" reads better and states what the source declined to state. Only the passive preserves the silence.
DE>EN
- Source: Hier wird nicht geraucht.
- Target: No smoking here.
- Comment: An impersonal passive formed from an intransitive verb: no subject, and no candidate for one. English has nothing of this shape, so the clause is rebuilt around a nominalization. "We do not smoke here" would attribute the prohibition to someone.
TR>EN
- Source: Sözleşmeyi imzalattı.
- Target: He had the contract signed.
- Comment: Causation is a suffix inside the Turkish verb. English needs a causative verb and a complement, so one word becomes a clause. Note what neither version says: who signed.
References
- Siewierska, A. (2013). "Passive Constructions." In M. S. Dryer & M. Haspelmath (eds), The World Atlas of Language Structures Online, chapter 107. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
- Polinsky, M. (2013). "Antipassive Constructions." In WALS Online, chapter 108.
- Song, J. J. (2013). "Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions." In WALS Online, chapter 111.
- Dixon, R. M. W. & Aikhenvald, A. Y. (eds) (2000). Changing Valency: Case Studies in Transitivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Shibatani, M. (ed.) (1988). Passive and Voice. Typological Studies in Language 16. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Comrie, B. (1989). Language Universals and Linguistic Typology, 2nd edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.