The category of Voice

There are two main approaches to this category. According to the 1^st the voice expresses the relations between the doer & the action (G.Gurme, H.Boutsma, Варкударов). According to another viewpoint, the category of voice expresses the relation between the subject & the object of the action (Гордон). Voice is the form of the verb, which shows whether the subject and the object affected by the predicate. In English the most obvious opposition is that between active and passive voices. In this opposition the passive voice is treated as the marked member of opposition because in all its forms it has the auxiliary “to be” while in the active voice there is no special indicator. The passive voice is represented by 8 tense and aspect forms. E.g. Indefinite passive: present – is helped; past - was helped; future – will be helped. Perfect Passive: present – has been helped; past – had been helped; future – will have been helped. Continuous Passive: present – is being helped; past - was being helped. In the majority of Indo-European languages only transitive verbs can be used in the passive voice. In English these possibilities are wider. Here not only the verbs taken a direct object, but also the verbs taking an indirect or prepositional object can also be used in the passive voice. Correspondingly there can be derived 3 types of passive constructions in English: (1) the direct passive. In this case the direct object to an active verb becomes the subject of the passive construction. E.g. The mother helped the boy -... was helped by...; (2) indirect object/ It can be derived from the verb which can govern to non-prepositional objects in the active voice: to give, to ask, to send, to pay, to teach. E.g. I asked him a question. The object denoting the addressee is an indirect object/ In English it can become the subject of a passive construction – he was asked a question. (3) the prepositional passive construction. The subject of the passive construction is represented by the former prepositional object to an active verb. E.g. The boys laughed at him → He was laughed at by the boys. In the prepositional passive there are 3 essential parts: subj. –predicate – prep-n. While translating into Russian we should start with the preposition. Thus we may conclude that in Eng. it is not a transitivity of a verb but its ability to take any kind of object is of the primary importance while deriving passive constructions. The combination “to be + Participle II” on Eng. can express 2 kinds of grammatical meaning: 1) its passive action performed upon a certain thing or action; 2) it can express physical or psychic state of a person. E.g. He is wounded. – 1)the combination represents the simple predicate; 2) it represents the compound nominal predicate.

The Reflective Voice (RV)

Its status in Eng. is disputable. The opponents say that a reflective voice used after the transitive verb should be treated as its direct object. In order to this viewpoint they give examples of the foll-ing kind: She washed herself and the child.

The supporters of the RV put forward the foll-ing arguments in favor of this voice: 1)it has a peculiar gr.-l meaning. If the active voices show that the action is performed upon the object the passive voice shows that it is performed upon the subject, then the RV shows that the action is concentrated on the doer himself. Ex. I wash myself. (В русском языке частица «ся», в Др. Русс. «себя»); 2)not in all cases the reflexive pronoun can be treated as an object to the verb. Ex. She (subject) stretched the bracket (object) on the grass.→ She stretched herself (форма залога)on the grass; 3) there is a special paradigm of the RV,- Verb + myself/yourself/ himself/herself...The paradigm is a set of forms united by one and the same grammatical meaning. Taking into consideration these argument we may accept the idea of 3 voices in Eng.: the active, passive, reflexive.

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