General outline of Active and Passive Voice in English. Semantic and lexical differences. The General Characteristic of the Passive Voice in English. The formation of the Passive Voice. The interaction of the passive voice with modals and perfect tenses.
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It is very important for English learners to know the general characteristic of the Passive Voice since they must realize that the Passive Voice is often applied in the English language. Our course paper is directed to enrich the knowledge about the specific character and peculiarities of the usage of the Passive Voice in modern English. We, English learners, need to know more about the Passive Voice; in particular we need more information about when and why it is used. The tasks that have been put for achieving the aim are the following: ь to study general characteristics of the Passive Voice; The object of our course paper is functioning of the Passive Voice in the English language.The verbal category of Voice is an expression of relationship between an action and its subject and object. In other words, as a grammatical category, Voice shows the relation between the action and its subject, namely, it indicates whether the action is performed by the subject or passes on to it. There are two voices in English: ь The Active Voice, that shows that the action is performed by its subject, i.e. that the subject is the doer of the action. e.g.First of all, passive and active sentences may sometimes differ in meaning - e. g. as Chomsky (1965) and Lakoff (1968) have pointed out, the active and passive sentences in the following two pairs are not completely synonymous. According to Chomsky: Everyone in the room speaks two languages. According to Lakoff: Few people read many books. (i.e., There are few people in this world who read lots of books.) Many books are read by few people.Even though students can easily learn to form the passive, they have problems learning when to use it. Most languages, however, have a passive that is more limited than the English one.The Passive Voice is formed by means of the auxiliary verb to be in the required form and Participle II of the notional verb. The Present, Past and Future Indefinite Passive are formed by means of Present, Past and Future Indefinite of the auxiliary verb to be and Participle II of the notional verb. am is Ved/V3 are e.g. The Present, Past and Future Perfect Passive are formed by means of the Present, Past and Future Perfect of the auxiliary verb to be and Participle II of the notional verb. have (Present Perfect Passive) had been Ved/V3 e.g. The Present Continuous and the Past Continuous Passive are formed by means of the Present Continuous and the Past Continuous of the auxiliary verb to be and Participle II of the notional verb. am is being Ved/V3 are e.g.There are 4 formally distinct kinds of passive sentences in English: ь Simple passives with ТАЬТО ВЕТАЭ: e.g., Mary was hit by John. John got hurt in the accident. ь Complex passives with ТАЬТО ВЕТАЭ: e.g., It is rumored that he will get the job.Modal auxiliaries frequently co-occur with the passive voice in at least 3 distinct uses: 1) Possibility/ability - Can and could are used with the passive to express possibility or ability in the present and past, respectively. e.g., The star can/could be seen from the balcony. 2) Logical (predictive/deductive) use - The logical modals can be used with the passive voice to express present deductions or future predictions; when these deductions or predictions refer to past time, ТАЬТО HAVEТАЭ must also be used. e.g., Mr. John must/should/might/ТАЖ have been/be elected mayor. 3) Making suggestions - In order to express a suggestion the conditional modals are used; also, ТАЬТО HAVEТАЭ is used to express hindsight, i.e., suggestions about things that were unfulfilled in the past. e.g., More hospitals could/should be built.Pioneering studies by Huddleston (1971), Shintani (1979), and others provide us with some guidelines concerning when to use the passive. Raw frequency data, for example, indicate that the English passive is by far most frequent in scientific writing and that it is least frequent in conversation. Other discourse types can be placed along the frequency continuum [5; 228]: The Passive Voice is always used in the following constructions: o It is/was said ТНАТТАЖ o It is/was known ТНАТТАЖ o It is/was believed ТНАТТАЖ o It is/was expected ТНАТТАЖ o It is/was reported ТНАТТАЖ o It is/was understood ТНАТТАЖ o It is/was considered ТНАТТАЖ e.g. With the combination of words to be born the predicate is always used in the Past Simple Passive Voice [4; 238-239]. e.g. The following guidelines, which are culled from many sources as well as from our own observations, may be of use in the absence of a complete and definitive usage study: The passive is often used: 1.Most of the guidelines above describe usages of the Passive that express actions or processes: grown killed to be given made beaten Even though the verb to locate appears in both sentences, two different meanings are being expressed. The first sentence is a stative passive without an agent and without an active voice counterpart; it gives the reader or listener the location of the wells. The second sen
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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I. THE PASSIVE VOICE AS THE GRAMMATICAL CATEGORY OF THE VERB
1.1 Verbal Categories of Voice
1.1.1 General outline of the Active and the Passive Voice in English
1.1.2 Semantic and lexical differences
1.2 The General Characteristic of the Passive Voice in English
1.2.1 The formation of the Passive Voice
1.2.2 Different kinds of passives
1.2.3 The interaction of the passive voice with modals and perfect tenses
1.2.4 The usage of the Passive Voice
1.2.5 Stative passives
CHAPTER II. THE PECULIARITIES OF THE USE OF THE PASSIVE VOICE IN THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE