Reasons for the Correlation of Voice, Tense, and Sentence Function in Reporting Verbs.

The tense, aspect, or voice of verbs in academic writing often seems to be related to degrees of generality or relevance or to signal discourse functions like transition or foregrounding. The Introduction sections of some Ph.D theses were examined to determine the significance of verb form in reporting verbs like find or show. When forms were classified in relation to sentence function some correlation with tense was found. However, there were also correlations between tense and voice (past going with active and perfect with passive) and between these two and sentence form. This can be explained in terms of thematization: selection of a particular noun as subject/theme entails selection of active or passive, and with them apparently past or perfect. The correlations between verb form and sentence function are partly secondary consequences of subject choice which itself derives from considerations of information structure and cohesion. Discussion of topicalization and topic change should be as important in analysis of formal writing as the assignation of meaning to verb forms.