Category passive state of the verb in English - Курсовая работа

Filmor and cognitive linguistics that focus on the ways the deep semantic syntactic structures are represented by means of formal syntactic units of the English language. Passive is used in a clause whose subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb. Quirk C.R. presents the passive voice as almost a variant of the active voice: “Changing from the active to the passive involves rearrangement of two clause elements, and an addition an agent by-phrase.” From the author’s point of view, the passive voice is best understood on an overall level as a structural transformation of a string in the active voice. [18, p.159] Marianne Celce-Murcia and Diane Larsen-Freeman, however, present the passive as more of an independent entity, a specific set of structures having a particular set of meanings and functions. The following is definition a typical one: “Voice is a grammatical category which makes it possible to view the action of sentence in two ways without change in the fact reported” [3, 801]Bylygina, Quirk R.S. state that the grammatical category is a union of the grammatical form and grammatical meaning reflected in a morphological paradigm. For instance, the feature [number] has the exponents [singular] and [plural]. The members of one category are mutually exclusive; a noun cannot be marked for singular and plural at the same time, nor can a verb be marked for present and past at the same time. For example, in English, the grammatical number of a noun such as "bird" in: The bird is singing. This theory analyzes the surface syntactic structure of sentences by studying the combination of deep cases (i.e. semantic roles) - Agent, Object, Benefactor, Location or Instrument - which are required by a specific verb ., Plugyan V.Y. and others state that english verbs have two “voices”-active and passive. A writer employs the passive voice when the subject is the recipient (the patient or direct object) of the action performed by the verb. From the verbs demanding one direct object, the special form of a passive representing a combination of an auxiliary verb to get with a participle II can be formed. Verbs that are so used include: get killed, get stuck, get hurt, get burned, get shot, get arrested, get paid, get cheapened, get hit, get ushered out, get blown off, get run over, get beat up, get fixed up, get squeezed, get caught, get sucked into. Among the claims that have been made about how the get-passive is more restricted than the be-passive are the following: - Register: The get-passive is far more common in spoken than in written English [7, 17], bur even in conversational English, the get-passive is much rarer than the be-passive J.Biber [7, p.476].Bylygina, Quirk R.S. state that the passives described so far have all been eventive (or dynamic) passives. I was bored (=I felt bored), I was depressed (=I felt depressed), I was exausted (=I felt exausted), I was interested (=I felt interested), I was tired (=I felt tired), I was relieved (=I felt relieved), I was satisfied (=I felt satisfied), I was shocked (=I felt shocked). But examples are found where the preposition does not have its normal locative sense: The bed had been slept in, Her hat had been sat on; for the passive to be acceptable in such cases, the process must be one that affects in some significant way the referent of the subject. Thus Her hat had been sat on is more likely than The stone bench had been sat on, for sitting on a hat is likely to put it out of shape, whereas sitting on a stone bench will not normally have any effect on it - through one could not of course say that the latter violates any grammatical rule, and indeed if one adds a plainly acceptability is improved: the plainly indicates that there was some visible effect produced by sitting on the bench. There is a lot of / much work that she must / has to / has got to do; There is no work that she must / has to / has got to do; What must I / do I have to / have I got to do with smth / smb?; What must I / do I have to / have I got to do with him / myself / this?.Ever since 1968 when Charles Fillmore, the originator of the modern school of Case grammar, [10] put forward his case grammar theory, the semantic notion of Agent has been, among other notions, always central to the theory of linguistics and the theory of Case grammar. The most serious problem of all in case grammar is the indeterminacy and divergence of opinion over which nominal arguments are to be considered as Agents in particular propositions. In “Case for Case”, Charles Fillmore [10] proposes a grammatical theory which focuses on an association of semantic and syntactic relations among sentence components. According to S.Langendoen [14 ] for someone or something to be an Agent, it must be capable of acting on its own volition, and since inanimate physical objects or abstracts ideas normally cannot do so, it is generally odd to use a nominal expression which refers to an inanimate object or abstract

Introduction

1. Chapter I Grammatical categories. The category of activity and passivity

1.1 Grammatical categories

1.2 The category of activity and passivity.

1.3 Peculiarities of using sentences with the verb in the passive voice. Ways of expressing the passive voice.

2. Chapter II The passive constructions

2.1 Stative passive

2.2 The implicit agent in English passives

2.3 Agentless passives

Summury

Bibliography