voice (Q15719)

VoiceProperty is the class of properties that concern the grammatical encoding of the relationship between the verb and the nominals in a subject-predicate configuration. It selects a grammatically prominent syntactic constituent--subject--from the underlying semantic functions. In accusative language, the basic strategy is to select an agent as a subject [Shibatani 1988, 3]. It can be said that all voice systems mark the affectedness/nonaffectedness of sentential subjects [Klaiman 1988, 30]. Voice is also known as diathesis [Klaiman 1991,323].