Category of Voice. Passive

In OE the finite verb had no category of Voice.

The analytical passive forms developed from OE verb phrases con­sisting of OE beon (NE be) and weorthan ('become') and Part. II of tran­sitive verbs.

But in the 14^th c weorthan died out and passive with 1 aux verb be. In ME beon plus Past Part, developed into an analytical form. Now it could express not only a state but also an action.

ME Passive constructions included a variety of prepositions — from, mid, with, of, by — two were selected and generalised: by and with. Thus in ME the Pass, forms were regularly contrasted to the active forms throughout the paradigm, both formally and semantically. Therefore we can say that the verb had acquired a new grammatical category — the category of Voice.

In Early NE the Pass. Voice continued to grow and to extend its application.

The wide use of various pass, constructions in the 16th and 19th c. testifies to the high productivity of the Pass. Voice At the same time the Pass. Voice continued to spread to new parts of the verb paradigm: the Gerund and the Continuous forms

Perfect Forms.

Like other analytical forms of the verb, the Perf. forms have developed from OE verb phrases. The main source of the Perf. form was the OE "possessive" construc­tion, consisting of the verb habban (NE have), a direct object and Part.2

The participle, like other attributes, agreed with the noun-object in Number, Gender and Case. And inflexions were used to show this agreement. But then the word order became fixed and Part2 was no longer separated from have by an object and inflexions were lost.

Originally the verb kabban was used only with participles of transi­tive verbs; then it came to be used with other verbs.

The other source of the Perl, forms was the OE phrase consisting of the link-verb beon and Part. 11 of intransitive verbs. Beon was used with intransitive verbs and habban with transitive. But in NE the aux verb to be began to disappear from perfrct forms and was replaced by have.

The Perf forms were synonymous with Past simple for many centuries.

Continuous Forms (NE). Category of Aspect

The development of Aspect is linked up with the growth of the Continuous forms. In the OE verb system there was no category of Aspect/ The Cont forms are the peculiarity of English among other Gmc lang.

be+Part 1. Isolated traces of such combination occurred in OE They denoted a quality, or a lasting state, characterising the person or thing indicated by the subject of the. sentence but they were not popular until NE period.

be + Participle 1 = be + on/in + Gerund (indicated a process of limited duration) In the I5th and 16th c. be plus Part. I was often con­fused with a synonymous phrase — be plus the preposition on (or its reduced form a) plus gerund. By that time the Pres. Part, and the verbal noun had lost their formal differences: the Part. I was built with the help of ing and the verbal noun had the word-building suffix -ing, Achasing the deer (=on chasing)

Only in the 19^th c Wordsworth introduced cont forms into literature. In the I8th c. that the Cont. forms acquired a specific meaning of their own; to use modern definitions, that of incomplete concrete process of limited duration. Only at that stage the Cont. and non-Cont. made up a new grammatical category — Aspect.