REFERENTIAL PROPERTIES OF THE GRAMMATICAL SUBJECT IN STATEMENTS IN THE PASSIVE VOICE IN GERMAN (BASED ON NEWSPAPER TEXTS)

Abstract

The paper aims to identify the referential properties of the grammatical subject in statements in the form of the passive voice in German. The hypothesis of the study is that the patient in the function of the grammatical subject exhibits a high degree of determinancy. Descriptive and contextual methods, as well as component analysis, were used to process 200_examples selected from the DWDS newspaper corpus and the online newspaper Berliner Zeitung. The results show that the grammatical subject in passive sentences is characterized by a high degree of determinancy. It is manifested in the predominant usage of the definite article. If the patient being the grammatical subject was used with an indefinite or article, additional determiners, such as numerals, attributes and adverbial specifiers, were used in the utterances to restrict the extensional meaning of the corresponding referential subject. These results prove the syntactic and morphological status of the the passive voice in German and its direct relationship with the information structure of the sentence.