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

SYNTAX: AGREEMENT

1. Agreement is a morpho-syntactic procedure by which certain elements in the sentences are supposed to show the same categories. Agreement is to be found at two levels:

– among phrases within the sentence (sentence agreement), or

– among words within the phrase (phrase agreement).

In Syntax, agreement is represented as follows:

– Subject agreement: the subject must agree in number (and gender in some languages) with the predicate.

– Object agreement: the subject must agree in number with the predicate.

– Gender agreement: adjectives and determiners must agree in gender with the nouns, i.e., the head of the phrase.

– Number agreement: adjectives and determiners must agree in gender with nouns, i.e., the head of the phrase.

2. Agreement in English is quite reduced and just applies to number. Sentence agreement is reduced to Subject-Predicate agreement, only in present tenses (simple present, present continuous or present perfect), when the third person singular takes –s as an ending: he sings, he is singing, he has sung.

Phrase agreement is also quite reduced and just involves demonstratives, since articles and possessives undergo no inflection at all: this book vs. these books.

3. Agreement in Catalan is much more complex than in English.

3.1. Sentence agreement involves mainly number:

a) Subject-Predicate agreement

la casa groga	the yellow house
el dies estiuencs	the summer days

b) Subject-Predicate-Attribute agreement

la casa és bonica	the house is beautiful
les cases són boniques	the houses are beautiful

c) Object-Predicate agreement in middle voice (see Voice):

Es venen cases	Houses for sale
Es diuen coses molt estranyes últimament	Very weird things are being said lately

3.2. Sentence agreement involves also gender when past participles are present, but only under two circumstances, i.e.:

3.2.1. In relative clauses in transitive constructions:

la casa[fem/sg] que has comprada[fem/sg m’agrada	I like the house you’ve bought
els llibres[masc/pl]  que m’has mostrats[masc/pl]  són increïbles	The books you’ve shown me are amazing

3.2.2. In emphatic constructions (i.e., as the object becomes a focus), when the object is moved leftwards:

les teves sabates[fem/pl] no les he vistes[fem/sg]	Actually, I haven’t seen your shoes
aquests llibres[masc/pl],  no me’ls havies mostrats[masc/pl]	You hadn’t shown me these books, had you?

Observe that in the former cases, there is in fact a double agreement. While the participle agrees in gender and number with a noun, the conjugated verb agrees with the subject:

(a) la paret	ton germà	l’ha	pintada	la paret
focus	[subject agreement]		[object agreement]

> Your brother did paint the wall

3.3. Phrase agreement in Catalan is to be found exclusively within Noun Phrases. It involves both gender and number, being the head (à the noun) the main word, which imposes its own categories of gender and number to the rest of the items within the phrase:

aquelles	amigues	teves	tan maques
[+gender agreement]
[+number agreement]

> Those nice friends of yours.

WORD CLASS: ADJECTIVES. GENERALITIES

1. Adjectives share a great deal of features with nouns, such as inflection. Actually all the endings used for both gender inflection and number inflection are also to be found in adjectives. However, adjectives have one more kind of inflection: comparison, which is a category adjectives also share with adverbs.

2. Adjectives may work as nouns in most cases. As a matter of fact, certain words may be either. Adjectives working as nouns are preceded by determiners. Their equivalence with English may vary, since English adjectives do not work as nouns as a rule, except in a few cases when they do not take plural endings:

els morts no es queixen	dead (people) do not complain
tots els malalts de tifus són a una secció especial de l’hospital	all typhus patients are placed in a special section of the hospital
m’agrada la blanca	I like the white one

Adjectives working as nouns are obviously predicative ones

3. As in most Romance languages, attributively-used adjectives are normally placed after nouns (post-nominal position):

la casa groga	the yellow house
el dies estiuencs	the summer days

However, adjectives may be placed before nouns in certain cases:

a) A few adjectives show different meanings when placed before or after the noun:

un públic gran	a large (amount of) audience
un gran públic	a great audience

un regal petit	a small present
un petit regal	a little present

b) Some adjectives take an emphatic value when place before the noun

ens queda un llarg camí	we still have a long way ahead
és una estupenda idea	it’s a great idea

c) Pre-nominal position may have stylistic goals, so that certain uses would be acceptable in literary language but not in the colloquial speech.

era un ric home (literary)	he was a rich man
era un home ric (normal speech)

4. Adjectives agree in gender and number with the noun they depend on (see agreement):

el noi petit	the little boy
els nois petits	the little boys
la noia petita	the little girl
les noies petites	the little girls

5. Catalan knows feminine forms for such adjectives like fort > forta (=strong) or verd > verda (=green), unlike Portuguese, Spanish or Italian.