The category of voice (категория залога)

The verbal category of voice shows the direction of the process concerning the participants of the situation reflected in the syntactic structure of the sentence (Глагольная категория залога показывает направление процесса касательно участников ситуации отражаемое в синтаксической структуре предложения). Voice is a very specific verbal category. First it does not reflect the actual properties of the process denoted but the speaker’s estimation of it: the speaker chooses witch of the participates of the situation (the agent or the patient) should be presented as the subject (подлежащее) of the syntactic construction. Second, though it is expressed through the morphological forms of the verbs, voice is closely connected with the structural organization of the syntactic construction: the use of passive or active forms of the verb involves the use of the passive or active syntactic constructions. The category of voice is expressed by the opposition of the passive or active forms of the verb. The active form of the verb is the unmarked member of the opposition (нет специальной формы) and the passive is the strong member (маркированный) marked by the combination of the auxiliary verb to be (to get, to become…) and past participle two. It denotes the action received or estate experienced by the referent of the subject of the syntactic construction, for example, The cup was broken by his son. Passive constructions are used when the agent is unknown or irrelevant. For example, He was killed during the war; The cup was broken.

In most cases the active and passive syntactic constructions actually depict the same situation presented differently by the speaker. Thus in many cases active and passive constructions are mutually transformed. For example, His son broke the cup, The cup was broken by his son. But there is a group of verbs (most of them statal) which are not used in the passive in English (to be, have, consist, resemble and others).

The passive is more widely used in English than in Russian. Not only transitive verbs but almost all objective complementive verbs can be passivized. For example, The doctor was sent for. If a transitive verb involves both direct and indirect objects in a syntactic construction sometimes both of them can be used as a subject in the passive construction, for example, John told me a story; A story was told by John; I was told a story.

Лекция 25.11.15

Besides passive and active construction there are also the so call “medial” voice types, their status is problematic: semantically they are neither strictly passive nor active, though the verb used is formally active. There are three medial voice types:

1) Reflexive (возвратный, рефлексивный) the action performed by the referent of the subject is not passed to any outer object but to the referent itself. Thus the subject of the action is the object of the action at the same time. (he dressed quickly – он оделся быстро).

2) Reciprocal construction (взаимные конструкции): the subject denotes the group of doers whose actions are directed towards each other. Again the subject of the action is its object at the same time (they quarreled они ссорятся).

3) Middle construction: the subject combined with the transitive verb is neither the doer of the action nor its immediate object. The action is performed as if it is own occurred (the door opened, the concert began).