what voices

Országok listájaHungaryMiskolci EgyetemBölcsészettudományi KarAnglisztikaLeíró NyelvtanJegyzetekwhat voices

Active and passive voice



Transitive verbs involve two entities — one that performs the action (the agent/actor/ /performer) and one that is affected by the action (patient/recipient).

In English the person or thing you want to talk about (theme/topic) is usually put first as the subject of the clause. So, when you want to talk about someone or something that is the performer of an action, you make them the subject of the verb and you use an active structure. The other person or thing is made the object of the verb (rheme/comment). However, you may want to focus on the person or thing affected by an action, which would be the object (patient) of an active form of the verb. In that case, you make that person or thing the subject of a passive structure.


(1) i Jack and John went on a safari. John shot a tiger.
ii Jack shot a swine and a tiger was shot by John.

(2) i Many arrows did not hit the target.
ii The target was not hit by many arrows.


The unmarked member of the pair, (i), is said to be in the active voice, the marked one, (ii), in the passive voice. These names are based on the role of the subject-referent in clauses expressing an action: it will standardly be the actor, or active participant, in the unmarked version, and the patient, or passive participant, in the marked version. Thus in (1), John is the actor, the tiger the patient, with John subject in the active (i), the tiger subject in the passive (ii). This distribution of roles provides the criterion for naming the classes, not for determining the classification of a given clause. The clauses in (3) do not express actions but they are still classified as respectively active and passive because they exhibit the same structural relation as the pair in (1):


(3) i Everyone should know the answer.
ii The answer should be known by everyone.


(4) i
semantic agent (performer) action semantic patient
Dr Black treats Mr White.
syntactic subject verb phrase syntactic direct object

(4) ii
semantic patient verb phrase semantic agent
Mr White is treated by an otorhinolaryngologist.
syntactic subject verb phrase agentive adverbial (Biber et al. 1999:778)
oblique object (Trask 1999:299)

Voice, as a general linguistic term, is applied to systems yielding such variation in the semantic role associated with the subject, normally where there is, as here, concomitant variation in the form of VP; it is applied both to the clause system and to the VP system.

The structural relation between (i) and (ii) in the above pairs lends itself to description by means of our informal concept of transformation. Taking the unmarked term as basic, we can derive the passive via the following operations:


(a) Change the object of the active into the subject of the passive.

(b) Change the subject of the active into the agent of the passive, which involves adding the preposition by.

(c) Add be in the final auxiliary position in the VP — and adjust the verbal inflections so that they conform to the rules of conjugation.
The verb get is used as a linking verb in such sentences:
You might get hurt if you stand there.
Mind the camera doesn't get broken.
My dad got killed in a car crash.
I knew I would get shouted at if I were late home.
My dress got caught on a nail.



There are three special cases of restrictions:

(a) Where an object is obligatorily reflexive, passivisation is impossible.

Ed perjured himself.
The topic lends itself well to seminar discussion.

(b) We cannot usually passivise clauses including verbs like become, elude, escape, flee, get, hate, have, last, let, like, race, suit, want:

Ed liked/wanted/hated Liz to accompany them.

But be careful with this structure:

Ed expected Liz to accompany them. (( Liz was expected to accompany them.
Ed believed Liz to be right. (( Liz was believed to be right.

(c) Where a verb has a sense in which it is logically ‘symmetrical’, passivisation is unlikely or excluded, for example marry, resemble, equal:

Ed marries Liz. (( Liz marries Ed. [In the sentence Liz is married to Ed the word married is an adjective!]
Kim resembled his cousin, Kate. (( Kate resembled her cousin, Kim.


The use of passive structures can be extended to

(a) ditransitive verbs:

(1) i Ed gave Liz the money.
ii Liz was given the money by Ed.
iii The money was given (to) Liz by Ed.

(2) i The embassy denied seven of the actors visas.
ii Seven of the actors were denied visas.
iii Visas were denied seven of the actors.

(b) phrasal/prepositional verbs like deal with, rely on, depend on, account for, approve of:

The problem has been dealt with at the congress.
She was entirely relied on.

(c) group-verbs (multi-word verb constructions) such as lose sight of, take care of, find fault with, catch hold of, take note of:

He had been taken advantage of by the boss.
The boat was lost sight of in the dense fog.
Interestingly, these second visits were never successful, and the back-up lists were then had recourse to by interviewers.

(d) agentless passives:

Five soldiers have been killed in action. (Who or what has killed them?)
The road is being blocked completely. (I have been stuck in a traffic jam for half an hour! What can have happened?)





Sources

Biber, Douglas et al. Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Harlow : Longman : [Pearson Education Limited], 1999. xxviii, 1204 p. : ill. ; 24.8 cm ISBN 0-582-23725-4

Ganshina, M. and Vasilevkaya, N. English grammar. 7th, revised ed. Moscow : Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954. 471, [1] p. ; 22.7 cm ISBN ---

Huddleston, Rodney. Introduction to the grammar of English. Reprinted. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1993, ©1984. xv, 483 p. : ill. ; 22.6 cm (Cambridge textbooks in linguistics, ISSN ---)
ISBN 0-521-29704-4

Sinclair, John (ed.-in-chief). Collins Cobuild English grammar. Reprinted. London ; Glasgow : Collins Publishers : the University of Birmingham, 1990. xxv, 486 p. ; 23.3 cm ISBN 0-00-370257-x

Trask, R. L. A dictionary of grammatical terms and linguistics. Reprinted. London ; New York : Routledge, 1999. xv, 335 p. : ill. ; 21.7 cm ISBN 0-435-08628-0









PAGE 


PAGE 1

Hasonló témájú dokumentumok

Hozzászólások

11 15 bizonytalanság és játékelmélet0001 2005 2008 tavasz 2008/2009-1 alapvizsga állattan anglia atom bce kik bűnperek cserépedény definíciók elmélet eu fa fogaskerék fogyasztás föld hőtan integrálás jogképesség kibernetika lemez marketing2 matrix minimum kérdések mri növény növényélettan oktatói kiadott anyag órai előadás orvosi kémia őstörténet pápai politikatudomány puska radács reneszánsz román speech sounds szamitogep szervezes talajtan tanulás ter.védelem tóth ügyvitel vizsga kérdések vörösmarty