THE EVIDENTIAL POTENTIAL OF GERMAN AND ENGLISH PASSIVE CONSTRUCTIONS IN THE CONTEXT OF INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION: A COMPARATIVE ASPECT

Abstract

The article examines the functional and semantic features of passive constructions in German and English through the prism of the category of evidentiality. It is considered how the elimination of the agent and grammatical transformations of the passive voice contribute to marking the source of information and the degree of responsibility of the speaker for the utterance. The authors analyze how the passive voice contributes to the expression of the source of information and the degree of reliability of the utterance. Special attention is paid to constructions with modal verbs and perceptual verbs in the passive form. It is established that in both languages the passive serves as a tool to remove the author from the statement, introducing the meaning of indirect evidence (reportativeness). Special attention is paid to the role of these constructions in intercultural communication, where the accuracy of pointing to the source of information and distancing oneself from other people’s words are key to preventing communication failures.