Passive and impersonal grammatical constructions in the mentalinguistic aspect

Abstract

The article contains analysis of dependency between morphosyntactic properties of a language and mentality of an ethnos, as well as criticism of the notorious statement that personal constructions and frequent usage of active voice forms testify of activity and initiativity of native speakers of the language, whereas regular application of impersonal constructions and passive voice forms is an indicator of passive life position and fatalism of its native speakers. The author proves that such a correlation does not exist and mentions that at the previous stages of development of linguistics, grammatical facts were explained by the typological properties of languages, but now there is a tendency to look for extralinguistic (ethnopsychological and ethnocultural) reasons for them. The author shows: the trouble with these conclusions and cultural parallels is that they have a weak evidence base. Their justification is based on the fact that in English there are many personal constructions with a subject in the nominative, and this supposedly indicates that Anglo-Saxons are active, responsible, rational and able to control their mental states, unlike those nations in whose languages there are many constructions without the subject in the nominative. The error consists in mixing up the nominative case and the common case and in the belief that the personal subject always expresses the agent. The author refutes this belief and shows a correlation between the structure of the language and the strategies of verbal thinking. The research is based on the English and Russian language material.