The category of voice
Voice is the form of the verb which shows the relation between the action and its subject (субъект), indicating whether the action is performed by the subject or passes on to it. The verbal category of voice shows the direction of the process as regards the participants of the situation reflected in the syntactic construction.
The voice of the English verb is expressed by the opposition of the passive form of the verb to the active form of the verb. The sign, marking the passive form, is the combination of the auxiliary be with the past participle of the conjugated verb. The passive form as the strong member of the opposition expresses reception of the action by the subject of the syntactic construction, i.e. the “passive” subject, denoting the object of the action; the active form as the weak member of the opposition leaves this meaning unspecified, i.e. it expresses “non-passivity”. The category of voice has a much broader representation in the system of the English verb than in the system of the Russian verb, since in English not only transitive, but also intransitive objective verbs including prepositional ones can be used in the passive. Besides, verbs that take not one, but two objects, as a rule, can feature both of them in the position of the passive subject.
e.g. I’ve just been rung up by the police.
Have you ever been told that you’re good looking?
He was said to have been very wild in his youth.
The dress has never been tried on.
Still, not all the verbs capable of taking an object are actually used in the passive. In particular, the passive form is alien to many verbs of the statal subclass, such as have (direct possessive meaning), belong, cost, resemble, fail, misgive, etc. Thus, in accord with their relation to the passive voice, all the verbs can be divided into two large sets: the set of passivized verbs and the set of non-passivized verbs.
Voice distinctions in Modern English find their expression in:
1. Active-Passive – morphological device:
write – is written has written – has been written
is writing – is being written would write -- would be written
wrote – was written
2. Active-Passive use of verbs (to pay, to eat, to read, to sell, etc.) – morphological device:
e.g. These books read with interest.
3. The verb-pattern get + Participle II
e.g. He got wounded.
They got frightened.
4. Verb-patterns: become + Participle II
Rest + Participle II,
sit + Participle II
e.g. He sat amazed at what they had told him.
He stood convicted of treason.
5. Syntactic structures:
V + one another, V + each other
e.g. They offended each other.
prepositional phrases:
under repair, under consideration, out of reach, etc.
e.g. The house is under repair.
The problem is under consideration.
He was out of reach.
6. Nouns: examinee, employee, etc.
7. Adjectives ending in –able and –ible:
e.g. eatable, pardonable, eligible, etc.
8. Phrasal verbs: to win recognition, to find support, to receive criticism, etc.
9. Non-finite forms of the verb:
e.g. He deserves punishing for punishing me.
Here is the book to read.
In the vast majority of cases the choice of the passive construction is due to one of the following reasons:
1. The active subject is unknown or cannot easily be stated
e.g. He was killed in the war.
2. The active subject is self-evident from the context
e.g. His memory of these events was lost beyond recovery.
She had been forbidden to appeal to her mistress.
3. There may be a special reason for not mentioning the active subject (of tact or delicacy); thus the mention of the 1st person is often avoided, in writing more frequently than in speaking.
4. Even if the active subject is indicated the passive turn is preferred if one takes naturally a greater interest in the passive than in the active subject.
e.g. The house was struck by lightning.
5. The passive turn may facilitate the connection of one sentence with another.
e.g. He rose to speak and was listened to with enthusiasm by the great crowd present.