The Passive Voice

 
 
 
 

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………..3

CHAPTER I. THE PASSIVE VOICE AS THE GRAMMATICAL CATEGORY OF THE VERB…………………………………………………………………..5

1. Verbal Categories of Voice…………………………………………5
1. General outline of the Active and the Passive Voice in English…………………………………………………………………5
2. Semantic and lexical differences……………………………..5
2. The General Characteristic of the Passive Voice in English……….7
1. The formation of the Passive Voice………………………….7
2. Different kinds of passives……………………………………9
3. The interaction of the passive voice with modals and perfect tenses……………………………………………………………………9
4. The usage of the Passive Voice………………………………10
5. Stative passives……………………………………………..13

CHAPTER II. THE PECULIARITIES OF THE USE OF THE PASSIVE VOICE IN THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE…………………………………………..15

CONCLUSIONS…………………………………………………………………22

LIST OF USED LITERATURE…………………………………………………24 
 
 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

       The theme of our course paper is the Passive Voice. It deals with the general characteristic of the Passive Voice and its usage. The practical part of the paper is based on the material of the scientific literature. 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.

       As the Passive Voice is of the great use more in the scientific literature than in the fiction, and more in written than colloquial language, it is very important to learn more about peculiarities of its usage. That’s why the topic that had been chosen presents certain theoretical difficulties. Though the analysis of the Passive Voice in English as a grammatical category has found their reflections in many linguists’ works, none of them contain exhaustive information about the peculiarities of its functioning in particular cases. 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 study of theoretical grammar resources relating to the study of the Passive Voice is the theoretical importance of the research. That’s why the purpose of our course work is to clarify peculiarities of the usage of the Passive Voice. The tasks that have been put for achieving the aim are the following:

• to study general characteristics of the Passive Voice;
• to give a description of the formation of the Passive Voice;
• To describe the usage of the Passive Voice.

       The object of our course paper is functioning of the Passive Voice in the English language.

       The subject of our work is the peculiarities of the usage of the Passive Voice and its functions in the sentence.

       The material used for our course paper comprises a lot of examples of the usage of the Passive Voice taken from the scientific literature.

       The structure of the course work contains the introduction, theoretical chapter I, practical chapter II, conclusions and the list of used literature.

       The introduction of the work shows the actuality of the problem of the usage of the Passive Voice. The object and the subject of our course paper are clarified. The purpose and the main tasks for achieving the aim of the work are pointed out. The structure of the course paper is described.

       The chapter I presents general information about the formation of the Passive Voice and its usage.

       The chapter II gives the examples of the use of the Passive Voice selected from the scientific literature.

       The conclusions sum up the information given in the course paper.

       The list of used literature enumerates the sources used in the course paper. 

 

CHAPTER I. THE PASSIVE VOICE AS THE GRAMMATICAL CATEGORY OF THE VERB

1. Verbal Categories of Voice
1. General Outline of the Active and the Passive Voice in English

       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. As a result, Voice is connected with the sentence structure more than other verbal categories. There are two voices in English:

• 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. James sent me a letter.

• The Passive Voice that shows that the subject is acted upon, that it is the recipient of the action.

E.g. A letter was sent to me by James.

       The opposition is based on the direction of an action. According to the traditional approach to Voice, verbal forms, among other peculiarities, indicate relations between an action and its subject, i.e. Active Voice is used to denote actions directed from the person or thing expressed by subject, whereas Passive Voice forms show that an action is directed towards the subject [1; 123].

       Some scientists distinguish more voices in the English language. 

2. Semantic and lexical differences

       An issue of importance concerns the semantic differences that exist between the active and the passive voice. 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. (i.e., any two languages per person)

       Two languages are spoken by everyone in the room. (i.e., two specific languages that everybody speaks)

       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. (i.e., There are many books that are read by very few people.)

       Second, there are active voice sentences with surface structure objects that do not have a passive equivalent since the verbs are not truly transitive, e.g.:

       Mike has a car. - *A car is had by Mike.

       Roger weighs 200 pounds. - *200 pounds was weighed by Roger.

       Likewise, there are passive sentences in English that have no Active Voice variant, e.g.:

       Mehdi was born in Tehran. - *Someone bore Mehdi in Tehran.

       It is rumored that he will get the job. - *Someone rumors that he will get the job.

       With certain verbs and in certain situations either the Active or the Passive Voice must be used exclusively [5; 224-225]. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

2. The General Characteristic of the Passive Voice in English

       The English passive is a problem for non-English speakers, mainly with regard to usage. Even though students can easily learn to form the passive, they have problems learning when to use it. There are several reasons for this. A few languages don’t even have a passive voice. Most languages, however, have a passive that is more limited than the English one. Such languages will use word order, impersonal constructions, or other devices to express the equivalent of an English passive sentence. Only a few languages have a more generalized passive than English. For most English learners the passive will occur more frequently in English than in their native language and there will be a wider variety of passive sentence types in English than in their own language [5; 221].   

1. The formation of the Passive Voice

       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      +   V_ed/V₃

       Are 

        E.g. We are invited. (Present Indefinite Passive)

        Was

                                    + V_ed/V₃

       Were 

       E.g. You were invited. (Past Indefinite Passive)

        Shall

                                         + be V_ed/V₃

       Will 

       E.g. She will be invited. (Future Indefinite Passive)

       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

                                            + been V_ed/V₃

       Has 

        E.g. I have been invited. (Present Perfect Passive)

                          Had been V_ed/V₃ 

       E.g. They had been invited. (Past Perfect Passive)

        Shall

                                                   + have been V_ed/V₃

       Will 

       E.g. He will have been invited. (Future Perfect Passive)

       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 V_ed/V₃

       Are

       E.g. We are being invited. (Present Continuous Passive)

        Was

                                             + being V_ed/V₃

       Were 

       E.g. You were being invited. (Past Continuous Passive) [3; 111-112].

       The Future Continuous, the Present Perfect Continuous, the Past Perfect Continuous and the Future Perfect Continuous don’t have the appropriate forms in the Passive Voice [4; 226].

       The uses of tenses in the Active and in the Passive Voice are the same [3; 113]. 

2. Different kinds of passives

       There are 4 formally distinct kinds of passive sentences in English:

• Simple passives with “to be”:

e.g., Mary was hit by John.

        Grapes are grown in that valley.

• Simple passives with “to get”:

e.g., Barry got invited to the party.

        John got hurt in the accident.

• Complex passives with “to be”:

e.g., It is rumored that he will get the job.

        John is thought to be intelligent.

        That he will get the job has been decided.

• Complex passives with “to have”:

e.g., Hal had his car stolen last weekend.

        Alice had her purse snatched while shopping downtown [5; 226]. 

3. The interaction of the passive voice with modals and perfect tenses

       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, “to have” must also be used.

e.g., Mr. John must/should/might/… have been/be elected mayor.

3. Making suggestions – In order to express a suggestion the conditional modals are used; also, “to have” is used to express hindsight, i.e., suggestions about things that were unfulfilled in the past.

e.g., More hospitals could/should be built. (= could be fulfilled in the future)

       More hospitals could/should have been built. (= was not fulfilled in the past)

       Studies are needed to determine which modals in which of their specific usages co-occur most often with the passive as opposed to the active voice. Also, it is important to note that the meaning of the modals in some so-called active-passive counterparts do not seem truly equivalent, e.g.:

       People say that Dan is a fool. = It is said that Dan is a fool.

       People may say that Dan is a fool. ≠  It may be said that Dan is a fool [5; 227-228]. 

4. The Usage of the Passive Voice

       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]: