SYNTAX: VERBAL VOICE OR DIATHESIS

1. In Catalan, like in most Romance languages, there are three voices (or diatheses): active, middle and passive. The active voice is unmarked and the preferred one in Catalan.

2. The passive voice has a much more reduced use if compared with English, since it is rather formal and remains almost reduced to very formal speech, mainly written. The process to build up a passive sentence is simple:

subject	verb		object	adjunct
Les autoritats	construeixen		autopistes	sense criteri
subject	diathetizer	verb	(agent)	adjunct
Les autopistes	són	construïdes	[per les autoritats]	sense criteri

>> The authorities build highways with no criteria

>> Highways are built with no criteria

The diathetizer is the element that allows the transformation of an active construction into a passive one.

3. There are two subtypes of middle voice: impersonal and ergative.

3.1. The first one, the impersonal middle voice, refers to constructions where no original subject can be retrieved (thus, there is no agent, no doer). Unlike passive constructions, impersonal middle voice constructions can also be used intransitively. The usual English equivalence of these sentences is a passive statement.

3.1.1. As for their structure, the diathetizer is the clitic se. The process can be described as follows:

subject	verb		object	adjunct
Les autoritats	construeixen		autopistes	sense criteri
(–––)	diathetizer	verb	object	adjunct
	es	construeixen	autopistes	sense criteri

>> Highways are built up with no criteria

3.1.2. From a syntactic point of view, the original object does not become a subject, as it occurs in passive constructions, but it keeps on being an object. The matter of object agreement is quite interesting, since it is not mentioned by traditional grammar handbooks.

These are examples of object agreement with the verb [ObjAgr] (see Agreement)

ací es construeix una autopista	a new highway is being build up here
ací es construeixen molts pisos	new flats are being built up here

The syntactic proof that we are dealing with objects and not with subjects is that clitic en may substitute both phrases in the previous examples:

>> se’n construeix una ací

>> se’n construeixen ací

3.1.3. When dealing with intransitive constructions, there is no Object Agreement; therefore the verb is always to be found in singular, whose English equivalent would show an almost semantic empty subject:

es treballa molt ací	people work hard around here
al Mediterrani es viu molt bé	people live fine by the Mediterranean

3.2. Ergative middle voice refers to a process by which the object (experiencer), becomes the subject. Unlike passive voices, the original subject has another semantic nature and syntactically the construction process is much more similar to impersonal middle voice constructions. Ergative constructions have in common with passive ones that the starting construction from which the transformation is carried out must be transitive. Besides, English ergative constructions show two different structures, either with no diathetizer or with get + participle. The transformation process can be described as follows:

(–––)	verb		object	adjunct
	trenca		la cadira	fàcilment
subject	diathetizer	verb	object	adjunct
la cadira	es	trenca	la cadira	fàcilment

>> The chair breaks easily