A New Image of Passive Voice in Persian Based on the Functional Framework Of Givon

Givón (2001) provides a comprehensive framework for de-transitive voices. He, accordingly, divides them into two groups: primarily semantic and primarily pragmatic. By putting passive voice in the second one, he tries to explain its discourse function and condition of use based on the concept of "relative topicality" and its two criteria of measurement: catephoric persistence and anaphoric distance. Furthermore, he introduces seven contexts in which passive is used. The present study tries to show the extent to which Givón's framework is applicable to Persian data. In addition, this study indicates a strong relationship between passive's discourse function and its seven contexts of use although Givón does not mention anything about that. Finally, some points are clarified regarding Iranian linguist's previous studies on passive.