Category passive state of the verb in English

The category of activity and passivity. Basic Grammatical categories. Peculiarities of using sentences with the verb in the passive voice. Ways of expressing the passive voice. The passive constructions. The implicit agent in English passives.
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МІНІСТЕРСТВО ОСВІТИ ТА НАУКИ УКРАЇНИ

Дніпропетровський національний університет залізничного транспорту

ім. акад. В. Лазаряна

Факультет гуманітарної освіти та роботи з іноземними студентами

Кафедра філології та переклад

КУРСОВА РОБОТА

Категорія пасивного стану дієслова в англійській мові

Виконавець: Керівник:

студент групи 1051 доц. Білан Н. І.

Симонова А.І.

Дніпропетровськ

2014

Table of contents

Introduction

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

Introduction

The topicality of our investigation is predetermined by the need to study the category of passivity in the light of the modern linguistic theories as: “The case grammar “ by Ch. 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. [27, p. 74 ]

The object of our investigation is the mechanism of expressing the category of passivity in English language.

The grammatical category of activity-passivity has been studied by such outstanding linguists as Ch. Fillmore , Yu.S. Stepanov, N.D. Arutyunova, Bondarko A.V. , Plugyan V.Y. ,, S.B. Chafe, C.R. Quirk, Bylygina T.V. , Close R.A. and many others as it is a language universal. [27, p. 74 ; 1, p.268; 9, p. 352; 28, p. 118-136 ; 3, p. 320 ; 24, 252; 29, p. 27-84; 24, p. 432]

The term voice, as a linguistic category, indicates the relationship between the subject of a sentence and its verb. In English, there are two voices--active and passive.

Passive voice is a grammatical voice common to many of the world's languages. Passive is used in a clause whose subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb. That is, the subject undergoes an action or has its state changed.

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. Throughout their treatment of the passive the authors of The Grammar Book place emphasis on the passive's independence by paying particular attention to its functions and meanings and how these differ from those of the active voice. [8 , p. 15]

The concept of voice is defined in many grammar books and dictionaries. 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]

According to Asher R.E., “linguists use the term voice in a number of senses” and “the broadest definition of voice encompassing a wide range of grammatical constructions that are commonly thought to be quite distinct from those related by the active- passive alternation”. In this view, the term voices in general and the passive voice in particular do exist in all languages. [28, 118-136]

Linguists have given an extensive attention to the phenomenon of passivization. According to Quirk C.R. , Cheyf U. L. it is a universal linguistic phenomenon since it is found in all languages. It is obligatory in some languages such as Japanese, optional in others like English. [3, p. 320 ; 24, 252]

The passive voice is a grammatical construction (specifically, a "voice"). The noun or noun phrase that would be the object of an active sentence (such as Our troops defeated the enemy) appears as the subject of a sentence with passive voice (e.g. The enemy was defeated by our troops).

The subject of a sentence or clause featuring the passive voice denotes the recipient of the action (the patient) rather than the performer (the agent). The passive voice in English is formed periphrastically: the usual form uses the auxiliary verb to be (or to get) together with the past participle of the main verb.

For example, Caesar was stabbed by Brutus uses the passive voice. The subject denotes the person (Caesar) affected by the action of the verb. The agent is expressed here with the phrase by Brutus, but this can be omitted. The equivalent sentence in the active voice is Brutus stabbed Caesar, in which the subject denotes the doer, or agent, Brutus. A sentence featuring the passive voice is sometimes called a passive sentence, and a verb phrase in passive voice is sometimes called a passive verb.

English allows a number of passive constructions which are not possible in many of the other languages with similar passive formation. These include promotion of an indirect object to subject (as in Tom was given a bag) and promotion of the complement of a preposition (as in Sue was operated on, leaving a stranded preposition).

Use of the English passive varies with speech style and field. Some publications' style sheets discourage use of the passive voice, while others encourage it. Although some purveyors of usage advice, including George Orwell and William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White , discourage use of the passive in English, its usefulness is generally recognized, particularly in cases where the patient is more important than the agent, but also in some cases where it is desired to emphasize the agent. [18, p.313; 11, p.220]

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

1.1 Grammatical categories

R.A. Close, A.V. Bondarko, T.V. Bylygina, Quirk R.S. state that the grammatical category is a union of the grammatical form and grammatical meaning reflected in a morphological paradigm. Grammatical categories can have one or more exponents. 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. Exponents of grammatical categories are often expressed in the same position or 'slot' (prefix, suffix, etc.). Some examples of this are the Latin cases, which are all suffixal: rosa, rosae, rosae, rosam, rosa. ("rose" in nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative). [28, p. 118-136 ; 3, p. 320 ; 24, 252; 29, p. 27-84; 24, p. 432]

For example, in English, the grammatical number of a noun such as "bird" in: The bird is singing. The bird-s are singing, is either singular or plural, which is expressed overtly by the absence or presence of the suffix -s. Furthermore, the grammatical number is reflected in verb agreement, where the singular number triggers "Is", and the plural number "are".

Grammatical categories of the English language: Aspect, Case, Degrees of Comparison, Mood, Number, Person, Tense, Voice.

Study of the notional categories is related to the necessity within comparative typological operations to rely on certain logical backgrounds.

The term « notional categories» emerged due for typological heterogeneity of external means of expression for separate notions lying in their basis. The given term is closely connected with the names of Otto Jespersen and Ivan L Meshchani-nov. According to O. Jespersen the notional categories are outer language general categories, «not dependent on more or less casual facts of existing languages. These categories are universal as they apply to all languages, though they are seldom expressed in these languages m a clear and unambiguous way... The task of a grammarian is to understand in every particular case the ratio existing between the notional and syntactic categories»

Ch. Fillmore states that case Grammar is a system of linguistic analysis, focused on the link between the valence of a verb and the grammatical context it requires, created by the American linguist Charles J. Fillmore in (1968), in the context of Transformational Grammar. 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. For instance, the verb "give" in English requires an Agent (A) and Object (O), and a Beneficiary (B); e.g. "Jones (A) gave money (O) to the school (B). [26, p. 243]

According to Ch. Fillmore, each verb selects a certain number of deep cases which form its case frame. Thus, a case frame describes important aspects of semantic valency, of verbs, adjectives and nouns...