20. The category of aspect. Aspect & manner of action. Neutralization of continuous forms

The category of aspect is system of binary, privative oppositions like works-is working, worked-was working, to work-to be working shows the character of the action whether the action is taking its progress, development or it is simply stated, its nature being unspecified, non-continuous. The theory propagating the manner of action, this approach is based on exclusively semantic principles → types of manner: 1. terminate manner representing the action as a whole. He went to town. 2. Ingressive manner pointing to the beginning of the action. They began to work. 3. effective manner showing the conclusion of the action. They ceased speaking. 4. durative manner presenting an action as continuous. He is walking along the street. Wheat grows in Canada.5.iterate manner showing repetition. Each night the old man would walk to town./The phenomenon of neutralization of continuous forms-continuous forms aren’t used where they are supposed to be used, i9nstead of it we use Present Simple-stative verbs:1.verbs of relations-belong, contain, date, refer, have, posses, want, wish, desire.2. verbs of mental activities & feelings-see, hear, like, detest.3.link verbs-be, taste, look, smell, happen, prove.4.point action group denoting momentary instantaneous action at a given moment stressing its temporality transient character, often occur with verbs of sense perception.

21. The category of voice. Morphologo-syntactic nature of the voice category. Number and kinds of voices in me. The problem of reflexive, reciprocal and middle voices

The category of voice is the system of binary/privative oppositions (love-is loved, loving-being loved, to love-to be loved) which shows whether the action is represented as issuing from the subjects (Active V.) or experienced by its object (Passive V.). |The category of voice shows close links between morphology & syntax. Being a morphological category, voice often manifests syntactic relations. |The voice opposites of the finite verbs indicate whether the subject of the sentence denotes the doer (agent) of the action or its recipient. |There is a tradit. point of view that there are 3 types of passive constructions depending on the initial active sentences: 1) direct passive (I wrote a letter – The letter was written by me); 2) indirect passive (I was shown the way to the village); 3) prepositional passive (If you put on this hat, you will be laughed at). |They depend on the kind of objects. Besides this tradit. classification there is a view of Ilysh and Kaushanskaya. They single out so-called (neuter-)reflexive voice, middle voice and reciprocal voice. |Neuter-reflexive shows that the action expressed by the predicate passes on to the subject (V+reflex.pronoun: myself, yourself but they’re semantically weakened): He cut himself while shaving. |Middle v. is represented by such structures which look like active but have passive meaning (the book sells well – active in form, passive in meaning). |Reciprocal v. is formed with each other & one another (They greeted each other). Some authors argue because: 1) in such sentences as he washed himself the pronoun may be viewed as direct object; 2) the words “washed” & “himself” belong to different lexical and grammatical meanings; 3) if we regard the form “wash himself” as analytical one it’s necessary to admit that the verb in English has the category of gender which doesn’t really exist; 4) the same meaning may be conveyed without pronoun himself.