Voice Systems and the Syntax/Morphology Interface

The topic of this paper is the manner in which syntactic voice alternations (and syntactic configurations more generally) relate to voice morphology, and the implications of this for theories of voice and theories of morphology/syntax interactions. I argue based on the voice system of Modern Greek for three primary points: first, that treatments taking voice morphology as corresponding to a syntactic argument of the verb (see references below) will not work for voice systems like Greek; second, that voice morphology in Greek must be analyzed as related to a morphological feature which is added post-syntactically in specific syntactic configurations; and, third, that this analysis has consequences for the study of syntax/morphology interactions more generally. These points and their implications are discussed within the context of the theory of Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz (1993) and related work.) In order to establish these points certain sets of theoretical background assumptions must be highlighted; in the following paragraphs I review the major points of this discussion and provide an overview of previous theoretical treatments.