THE PRAGMATIC DIMENSION OF VOICE AND NON-FINITE VERB FORMS IN SPANISH LEGISLATIVE DISCOURSE

Abstract

Abstract

The article offers a pragmalinguistic and syntactic analysis of grammatical voice and non-finite verb forms (infinitive, gerund, and participle) in Spanish legislative discourse. Viewing legislative texts as a highly formalized channel of state-citizen communication, the study examines how morphological and syntactic choices influence the perspectival organization and communicative orientation of legal norms. The empirical base consists of a representative corpus of key Spanish legal documents, including the Spanish Constitution (1978), the Civil Code, the Criminal Code, Organic Laws and various Royal Decrees. This allows the identification of structural patterns across constitutional, civil, criminal, and administrative sub-genres. The primary focus of this investigation is the linguistic and structural realization of the addresser’s institutional identity, which is manifested through two pairs of core pragmatic categories: objectification/subjectification and categoricalness/ non-categoricalness. The study addresses the fundamental pragmatic necessity of legislative texts to present information in an objective, depersonalized, and generalized manner, reflecting the nature of the state as a collective author. Through a combination of qualitative, structural-semantic, and text- statistical analysis, the paper examines how the strategic choice between active and passive verbal perspectives alters the cognitive-pragmatic focus of a legal utterance, drawing the addressee’s attention to the legal action itself rather than its specific human participants. Special attention is paid to the functional distribution of passive constructions in the text, highlighting that pronominal passive constructions (se pasiva) and participial passive structures appear with the highest frequency in the corpus, whereas resultative passive forms with the auxiliary verb estar occupy a limited peripheral position (approximately 5% of analyzed instances). The article demonstrates how placing these passive forms in the sentence-initial position highlights the pragmatic weight of definitions, prohibitions, and legal sanctions. Furthermore, the paper investigates the complex interplay within verbal periphrases, particularly those combining modal verbs like poder and haber de with non-finite extensions. The analysis reveals that the frequent deployment of the modal verb poder in the future indicative tense (prosimple) functions as a primary stylistic tool to achieve “hidden categoricalness” – a pragmatic effect that conveys strict legal obligation and binding force while softening the direct tone of an authoritative command. Additionally, the research evaluates the pragmatic utility of conjunct and absolute non-finite clauses (infinitive and gerundial phrases), showing that they serve as mobile syntactic substitutes for cumbersome subordinate clauses. By compressing circumstantial meanings of time, purpose, and condition, these non-finite tools establish a highly condensed, legally precise, and structurally conservative discourse. Ultimately, the article illustrates that the combination of passive voice, modal periphrases, and non-finite structures creates a multilayered pragmatic framework that ensures unambiguous interpretation while maintaining textual economy. The findings of this study offer valuable insights for text linguists, pragmalinguistics experts, legal scholars, professional translators, and legislative drafters seeking to optimize the communicative effectiveness of statutory language.