Abstract
This descriptive study sought to compare and contrast theta roles assigned to the passive voice arguments with special reference to the subject in Arabic and English. The findings of the study showed that both Arabic and English, though they belong to different language families, have close similarities concerning theta roles that could be assigned to the subject of the passive voice. The subject could have various theta roles (theme, patient, experiencer, source, goal, recipient, instrument, beneficiary, or location) in the two languages. The agent theta role could hardly be possible for a passive subject in the two languages. Agentive passive where the agent occurs in a prepositional phrase is more common in English than in Arabic. The study also showed that the recipient is preferably used as a subject of passive sentences with ditransitive verbs in the two languages. On the other hand, there are middle voice constructions in Arabic whose subject has a recipient theta role. The English counterpart for such constructions is passive voice. The study concluded that it is vitally important for Arab EFL learners to know these differences and similarities to help them understand the significance of maintaining the same theta roles of the arguments when they change sentences from active to passive or when they translate from Arabic into English or vice versa.
Highlights
Passive voice is one of the main constructions in Arabic and English languages that enables us to produce sentences where arguments other than the agent are topicalized
The purpose of this paper is to find out the different theta roles that the subject of the passive voice could be assigned in Arabic and English languages
Arabic and English are of different origins, they show remarkable similarities in terms of theta roles that are assigned to the subject of the passive voice
Summary
Passive voice is one of the main constructions in Arabic and English languages that enables us to produce sentences where arguments other than the agent are topicalized. Theta role refers to the semantic relationship that clause or sentence arguments have with the main verb It is the type of the verb (monovalent, divalent or trivalent) that plays a crucial role in determining the number of arguments and the different theta roles that these arguments are assigned in sentences. The purpose of this paper is to find out the different theta roles that the subject of the passive voice could be assigned in Arabic and English languages. It examines the common semantic roles: agent, theme, patient, experiencer, source, goal, recipient, location, beneficiary, and instrument that the arguments in Arabic and English passive constructions fill with special reference to the passive subject that might be assigned various theta roles
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