Category of Voice
The category of voice occupies a peculiar place in the system of verbal categories because it reflects the direction of the process as regards the participants in the situation denoted by a syntactic construction. The form of the verb may show whether the agent expressed by the subject is the doer of the action or the recipient of the action. The objective relations between the action and the subject or object of the action find their expression in language as the grammatical category of voice. Therefore, the category of voice reflects the objective relations between the action itself and the subject or object of the action.
The category of voice is realized through the opposition active and passive voice.
The active form has the meaning of “non-passivity”. It indicates that the action is directed from the subject or issues from the subject, thus the subject denotes the doer (agent) of the action.
The passive form expresses the reception of the action by the subject of the syntactic construction. It indicates that the action is directed towards the subject. Here the subject expresses a person or non-person who or which is the receiver of the action. It does not act, but is acted upon and therefore affected by the action of the verb.
In comparison with Russian, the category of voice in English has a much broader representation as not only transitive but also intransitive objective verbs can be used in the passive voice. Another peculiarity of voice distinctions of English verbs consists in the fact that active forms often convey passive meanings.
The realization of the voice category is restricted because of the implicit grammatical meaning of transitivity/intransitivity. In accordance with this meaning, all English verbs should fall into transitive and intransitive. However, the classification turns out to be more complex and comprises six groups:
Verbs used only transitively: to mark, to raise;
Verbs with the main transitive meaning: to see, to make, to build;
Verbs of intransitive meaning and secondary transitive meaning. A lot of intransitive verbs may develop a secondary transitive meaning: They laughed me into agreement; He danced the girl out of the room;
Verbs of a double nature, neither of the meanings are the leading one, the verbs can be used both transitively and intransitively: to drive home - to drive a car;
Verbs that are never used in the Passive Voice: to seem, to become;
Verbs that realize their passive meaning only in special contexts: to live, to sleep, to sit, to walk, to jump.
There exist a big problem in connection with the voice identification in English is the problem of “medial” voices, i.e. the functioning of the voice forms in other than the passive or active meanings. Some scholars admit the existence of Middle, Reflexive and Reciprocal voices (Fig. 65).
Fig. 65
The verbal meaning of the action performed by the subject upon itself is classed as “reflexive” (the subject is both the agent and the recipient of the action at the same time). It is always possible to use a reflexive pronoun in this case.
The verbal meaning of the action performed by the subjects in the subject group on one another is called “reciprocal”. It is always possible to use a reciprocal pronoun here.
When the verbs primarily transitive develop an intransitive middle meaning they are used in the so called “Middle Voice”.
However, it should be noted that all these meanings are not expressed morphologically.