9.) Verbal categories of voice and mood.

The verbal category of voice shows the direction of the process as regards the participants of the situation reflected in the syntactic structure of the sentence.

The category of voice is expressed by the opposition of the passive and active forms of the verb; the active form of the verb is the unmarked, weak member of the opposition, and the passive is the strong member marked by the combination of the auxiliary verb to be (or the verbs to get, to become in colloquial speech) and participle II of the notional verb. It denotes the action received or a state experienced by the referent of the subject of the syntactic construction; in other words, the syntactic subject of the sentence denotes the patient, the receiver of the action in the situation described, while the syntactic object, if any, denotes the doer, or the agent of the action, e.g.: The cup was broken by his daughter. Passive constructions are used when the agent is unknown or irrelevant, e.g.: He was killed during the war; The cup has been broken.

There is a small group of verbs, most of them statal, which are not used in the passive in English: to be, to have, to belong, to cost, to resemble, to consist, and some other.

Besides passive and active constructions, there are also the so-called “medial” voice types, whose status is problematic: semantically, they are neither strictly passive nor active, though the verb used is formally active. There are three “medial” voice types distinguished in English: “reflexive”, “reciprocal”, and “middle”. In reflexive constructions the action performed by the referent of the subject is not passed to any outer object, but to the referent itself, i.e. the subject of the action is the object of the action at the same time, e.g.: He dressed quickly. This meaning can be rendered explicitly by the reflexive “-self” pronouns, e.g.: He dressed himself; He washed himself; etc. In reciprocal constructions the subject denotes a group of doers whose actions are directed towards each other; again, the subject of the action is its object at the same time, e.g.: They struggled; They quarreled; etc. This meaning can be rendered explicitly with the help of the reciprocal pronouns one another, each other, with one another, e.g.: They quarreled with each other. In middle constructions the subject combined with the otherwise transitive verb is neither the doer of the action nor its immediate object, the action is as if of its own accord, e.g.: The door opened; The concert began; The book reads easily; The book sells like hot cakes.

There is a problem of distinction between the homonymous use of participle II with the link verb to be in a compound nominal predicate and participle II with the auxiliary verb to be as a passive voice form, e.g.: She is upset; The letter is written. The two cases can be distinguished on the basis of the categorial and functional properties of the participle: if processual passivity is meant (the participle denotes the action produced), the construction is passive; if the participle turns into an adjective (is adjectivized) and is used to describe the subject, it is a sentence with a compound nominal predicate.

MOOD

The category of mood expresses the character of connections between the process denoted by the verb and actual reality, in other words, it shows whether the action is real or unreal. This category is realized through the opposition of the direct (indicative) mood forms of the verb and the oblique mood forms: the indicative mood shows that the process is real; the oblique mood shows that the process is unreal, imaginary (possible or impossible, desired).

All the oblique mood types may be terminologically united as subjunctive; and then several types of the subjunctive can be distinguished according to the form of expression and the various shades of unreality expressed.

♦ subjunctive I, expresses various attitudes of the speaker: desire, consideration (supposition, suggestion, hypothesis), inducement (recommendation, request, command, order), etc. The form of subjunctive I is homonymous with the bare infinitive: no morpheme –s is added in the 3d person singular, and the verb to be is used in the form “be” in all persons and numbers, Whatever your mother say, I won’t give up.

In traditional grammar, besides the direct and oblique moods, the so-called imperative mood is distinguished, as in Open the door!; Keep quiet, please. But that there is basically no difference between what is traditionally called the imperative and subjunctive I: the form is homonymous with the bare infinitive in both cases.

♦ Subjunctive II in form is homonymous with the past tense forms of the verbs in the indicative mood, except for the verb to be, which in all persons and numbers is used in the form were. Subjunctive II is used mostly in the subordinate clauses of complex sentences with causal-conditional(причинно-условные) relations, such as the clauses of unreal condition, ex.If I were you…; of concession: Even if she tried, (she wouldn’t manage it); of unreal comparison:…as if she tried very hard…; of urgency: (It’s high time) she tried to change the situation; of unreal wish: (I wish) she tried harder; If only she tried! So, the generalized meaning of subjunctive II can be defined as that of unreal condition.

♦ subjunctive III . The form of the verb which denotes the corresponding consequence of an unreal condition in the principal part of the causal-conditional sentences is homonymous with the analytical future in the past tense forms of verbs in the indicative mood, e.g.: (If she tried), she would manage it; Without you she wouldn’t manage it; (Even if she tried), she wouldn’t manage it. This type of the oblique mood is called, in traditional grammar, the “conditional”.