Reflexes in the paradigm of the voice category of Old Germanic languages.
Abstract
The proposed article is devoted to the study of reflexes within the paradigm of the voice category in Old Germanic languages from diachronic and typological perspectives. The focus is placed on morphosyntactic and semantic means of verbalizing the active and passive voices, as well as intermediate meanings that arise from the interaction of grammatical and lexical markers. The paper analyzes the specific features of mediopassive, reflexive, inertive, and conditionally passive constructions in Gothic, Old Icelandic, Old English, and Old High German. Particular attention is paid to the role of reflexive pronouns, copular verbs, participles, verbal inflections, and verbal proto-forms as key indicators of the formation of the voice category in Old Germanic languages, as well as to the mechanisms of semantic shift from active structures to reflexive and passive-like ones. The study employs comparative-historical, structural-semantic, and functional-pragmatic methods, which makes it possible to identify common Indo-European features and specifically Germanic innovations in the process of the formation of the voice category. The article substantiates the thesis of the polyfunctionality of reflexes, which in Old Germanic languages serve as a means of grammaticalization of mediopassive and voice-transitional meanings. The obtained results deepen the understanding of the evolution of the verbal system of Germanic languages and may be used in further research on historical grammar, the typology of the voice category, and the reconstruction of the Proto-Germanic language system. The author also examines the relationship between the voice category and the valency characteristics of the verb, as well as the syntactic organization of utterances in Old Germanic texts. It is shown that reflexes play an important role in modeling subject–object relations and contribute to the neutralization of the agent or its semantic impersonalization. The influence of textual genre and discursive context on the choice of voice forms is outlined. The conclusion is drawn that the prerequisites for the development of analytic passive structures were gradually formed at later stages of the evolution of Germanic languages.
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