"DISCUSS VOICE AS A NOTION OF MARKEDNESS IN ENGLISH SEMANTICSSemantics is a technical term used to refer to the study of sentence meaning (Palmer, 1981,p.1) Sentences, spoken or written are to convey a given meaning to the audience or listener. In linguistics the notion of markedness is simply the way words are arranged in a sentence togive a certain meaning.A sentence can be written in different ways with the meaningremaining the same that is without breaking grammatical rule(s). The usual way of writing orspeaking a sentence, that is that which is normal and commonly used is known as the unmarked, while the unusual way which is also grammatically correct is known as themarked.Linguistically, sentence markedness depend on the structure of the sentence.They include;voice, there insertion, cleft and non-cleft, thematic fronting and extra positiontransformation.Voice in a sentence is a grammatical category that expresses the semanticfunctions attributed to the referents of a clause. It indicates whether the subject is an actor,patient, orrecipient.(Glossary of linguistic terms, 2004). A Sentence can either be in active or passive form for example; The boy with a blue shirt brought the jug (active)The jug was brought by the boy with a blue shirt (passive)The two sentences have the same meaning only that there is a difference in the structure. Inthe first the boy has been mentioned first, he is the subject while in the second, the jug comesfirst and the boy last, that makes the boy the object and the jug the subject. Normally,sentences are written in active voice, this is referred to as unmarked since the subject whichis the actor takes the first position while the passive voice which is rarely used is marked inthat the subject takes the object position and is the patient. "