Reflexivpassiv im Deutschen und Slowakischen. Ein sprachsystematischer Vergleich der reflexiven Konstruktionen mit passivischer Perspektive
Reflexive passive in German and Slovak. A linguistic comparison of reflexive constructions with passive perspective

Summary/Abstract: The study examines and compares the semantic and morphosyntactic features of the reflexive passive in German and Slovak language. It discusses the grammatical status of reflexive constructions with passive perspective within the language systems. It becomes apparent that reflective marking can be a sign of deagentization in both languages. While the German reflexive passive (e.g. hier wird sich nicht geschämt) is rather a marginal phenomenon, the Slovak reflexive passive („zvratné pasívum“; e.g. tu sa vyrábajú autá) is used as a standard means to express the passive voice. Although there is a similar morphosyntactic form in German called medio-passive (e.g. das Buch liest sich gut), the German equivalent to the Slovak reflexive passive is the dynamic passive („Vorgangspassiv“). E. g. tancovalo sa celú noc translates as es wurde die ganze Nacht getanzt. The author concludes that the reflexivation can drive the perspective of a sentence in the passive direction in different ways. Especially in Slovak, this ranges from modification of intention and semantic roles to full-structured passive voice.

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