Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Study Motivation
The English Voice is one of most lasting concerns of grammar studies.Its complexities in property, function and diachronic development haveattracted enormous attention of grammar writers and linguists, and a largenumber of publications are dedicated to it. It's no boasting that everygrammar has at least one section or chapter dealing with it, for whether indescriptive studies, formal postulations or cognitive interpretations, thoseinterested in it have always spared some efforts to deal with the intriguingissues around it, like, among others, its definition (e.g. Sweet 1891;Jespersen 1924; Quirk et al. 1985; to name just a few), theinterrelationship within English voice system (e.g. Palmer 1988, 1994;Siewierska 1984; Chomsky1957，1981; Croft 1994), its distribution andfunction (e.g. Svartvik 1966，Biber et al. 2000; Dik 1997; Shibatani 1985;Dixon 2005). Though within different theoretical paradigms, these studiesare intended to reveal how the active voice, the passive voice and someother phenomena are related to one another, and how such interrelationsgive rise to meaning patterns within English voice system.The various studies on English voice have contributed considerably tothe continued pursuit in linguistic theory. However, within this field ofstudy exists an apparent disproportion in the work done on English voice.A search of the literature relevant to the present study shows that the bulkof it is biased towards the passive voice, "the marked voice" in English(Joos 1964: 99), and it is perhaps this very markedness that attractsenormous attention to its multiple aspects (e.g. Ding 2002; Hirtle 2007;Qin 2008; Toyota 2008, 2009; Rubin 2009; Wanner 2009; Meints 1999，among others)，and still much has been said about its adjacency to otiierphenomena within the English voice system or across languages (e.g.Collins 1996; Keenan and Dryer 2007; Xiao et al 2006; Alsina 1996;Blevins 2003; Sleeman 2011; Alexiadou 2012). However, these studies,among others, usually take the passive constructions as their study object,so there is very limited knowledge as to how it stands as a grammaticalsubcategory.
…………..
1.2 Study Objectives
The general goal of the present study is to improve the understandingthe cognitive semantics of the English voice category by drawing largelyon the notions such as 'symbolic unit', ‘schema’，'prototype', 'constmal',which points to a cognitive-functional approach, as we will elaborate inSection 1.3. It is also intended to help fill some gaps in the English voicecontinuum now partially under construction in the existing literature. Ourview is that the voice category is best treated under a prototype approachand in the context of the inventory of symbolic units observable from theusage events concerning the English language.The main aims of this dissertation are as follows: 1) to explore thenature of English voice as a grammatical category and characterize theprototypes of English active and passive voices in their semantics, morphosyntax and pragmatics; 2) to explore the prototype effects that theactive and passive voices achieve through extension within the Englishvoice category.
………..
Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Introduction
This review attempts to examine the various treatments of the Englishvoice in the impressive literature of modem linguistics. These include thedescriptions of the voice category, mainly in traditional grammar,cognitive-functional studies, and a generative account in Chomskyanparadigm. Such a survey, we believe, will help to place these tendenciesin a general background which involves the evolution of present-daylinguistics.
………..
2.2 English Voice in Traditional Grammar
In this section we examine the treatment of the English voice intraditional English grammar. We focus on the two aspects of the studiesdevoted to the English category. First, we try to disclose how Englishgrammar evolves the notion of voice and establishes it as a grammaticalcategory; second, we try to reveal how English traditional grammarcharacterizes the gradient structure of English voice. A number of points can be made concerning the status of the voicecategory in the traditional grammar. Firstly, English voice is establishedfirmly as a two-voice category in most traditional grammars (cf. Sweet1900; Jespersen 1924, 1967; Curaie 1931; Kruisinga 1931; Svartvik 1966;Quirk et al.l985; Huddleston and Pullum 2002). The two voicesactiveand passiveare commonly recognized as constituting English voicecategory, though Jespersen (1924, 1967) prefers 'turn' to 'voice'. Somestudies like Joos (1964) describe English voice category in terms ofmarkedness: a verb in the active voice is viewed as unmarked and a verbin the passive voice as marked.
………
Chapter 3 Theoretical Foundation......... 41
3.1 Introduction......... 41
3.2 Prototype Theory......... 42
3.2.1 Major Tenets of Prototype Theory......... 42
3.2.2 Two Readings of Prototype......... 46
3.3 Cognitive Grammar......... 46
3.4 Force Dynamics .........55
3.5 Implications of the Theories Adopted for the Present Study......... 72
3.6 Summary .........77
Chapter 4 Active Voice Prototype......... 79
4.1 Introduction......... 79
4.2 Active Voice Schema......... 80
4.3 Towards Active Voice Prototype......... 83
4.4 Summary .........140
Chapter 5 Passive Voice Prototype......... 143
5.1 Introduction .........143
5.2 Passive Voice Schema......... 144
5.3 Towards Passive Voice Prototype .........147
5.4 Summary .........175
Chapter 6 Extension of English Voice Prototypes
6.1 Introduction
In this chapter, we examine a number of syntactic constructions whichexhibit the extension of English voice prototypes. The sorting of thesesyntactic constructions doesn't mean that we will focus only onmorphosyntactic aspect of prototype extension. Rather, we will look intoone force-dynamic pattern each time, particularly those oth^ patternsthan the basic one which we have adopted for the semantic account ofboth prototypes, and then seek to reveal how the force interactions invarious force-dynamic patterns bring about the variety in linguisticcoding. These constructions include reciprocals, reflexives,供f-passives,etc. As we have already touched on this sub-topic in more than onesection by examining how a self-contained event or force tranmissionprocess can be construed in various ways, and thus produce extendedcoding results, we will not repeat these cases in this chapter, thoughsuch an account would be more focused and comprehensive when donearound one typical event and in one section here.
……..
Conclusion
Working within a synthetic framework based on Prototype Theory,Cognitive Grammar and force dynamic theory, we have approached theEnglish voice by working towards the active voice prototype and thepassive prototype and their extension in various ways. We haveconcentrated on the investigation of the major aspects of voiceprototype~their semantic and morphosyntactic features and also thepragmatic functions.The major finds are summarized as followsFirst, the active voice and the passive voice are two separate Embolicunits, each derived from actual language uses rather than from theconstructive rules and transformation. They do have links as conventionallinguistic units, but their links are rooted primarily in the conceptualcontent that they share.As symbolic units, they have been characterized by two voiceschemas which are believed to represent the abstract commonality witheach category. Members of the two categories all instantiate eachschemas to different degrees.
…………
Reference (omitted)
