The category of voice.

The verbal category of voice shows the direction of the process as regards the participants of the situation 
reflected in the syntactic construction. 
Wrote – was written 
Meaning – direction of the action, whether the action is represented as issuing from its subject or as experienced by 
its object. 
He wrote this letter yesterday. – This letter was written yesterday. 
But The bells rang and The fabric washes easily. Is it the active voice? Why do we have the sentences They rang 
the bells and She washed the fabric. These are causative constructions. 
Middle voice. Greek had the middle voice, the same is in Semitic languages. The weak point – there is no distinct 
set of forms. 
Prof.Barkhudarov considers the middle meaning to be part of the active voice meaning. If it were part of the 
passive voice meaning it would be possible to use the by-phrase: dThe bells rang by John; dThe fabric washed by the 
girl. 
Reflexive voice: He hurt himself. Meaning – the action is concentrated on one and the same person. Form – verb + 
reflexive pronoun. But reflexive pronouns can be omitted and the meaning of reflexivity remains: He shaved and 
dressed. Prof. Ilyish: He hurt himself and the child. Besides: He makes toys – He makes mistakes. And not always 
reflexive pronouns can be omitted: He found himself in a dark room. 
Reciprocal voice: They met each other at the station. Meaning – mutuality of the action. The subject is often plural. 
Form – verb + reciprocal pronoun. But They met at the station. 
Conclusion: if we insist on external being obligatory to form a voice (certainly in combination with meaning), we 
should refer all the cases mentioned previously to the active voice (non-passive): He opened the door. The door 
opened. The book reads well. He shaved. They kissed. So, it’s a poly-functional form. Passive voice: be+en. 2 controversial problems: 
1). The form – get and become (He got wounded in the war. He became surprised). - the verbs get and become 
retain to some extent their lexical meaning; - though Passive is a dependent form (Active is the basic one and Passive 
is a mere transform) there isn’t full correspondence between Active and Passive: e.g. The boy resembles his father. 
The hat suits you. – I am surprised. He was killed in the war. The radio was invented by Popov (theme-rheme). 
Passive constructions: 
 Direct Passive (The letter was written yesterday) 
 Indirect Passive (I was given a very interesting book) 
 Prepositional Passive (The doctor was sent for) · Phraseological Passive (Care should be taken not to confuse 
these words) 
 Adverbial Passive (The house has not been lived in for many years) 
2). Passive constructions and compound nominal predicates: The floor was washed only yesterday. – The floor is 
washed. Action :: result. How to treat the 2 case? Either as Statal Passive (simple verbal predicate) or a phrase 
(compound nominal predicate). The presence of the by-phrase, the continuous form of the verb, non-terminative 
verbs, the presence of modal verbs, the use of adverbials indicate passive constructions. e.g. The is closed. The shop 
is closed at 7. 
2 The secondary sentence parts: attribute, object, adverbial modifier. 
The Object 
The complexity of the object as a sentence member makes difficult to work out an adequate approach to describing 
this phenomenon. Different classifications of objects have been proposed both by Russian and foreign scholars. The 
most common ones are as follows: 
1. Objects are divided into direct, indirect and prepositional. 
This classification is far from perfect since the principle it is based on is not consistent. Direct and indirect objects 
are singled out on the basis of the contents while prepositional objects are differentiated based on the formal feature 
(presence of preposition). Besides, indirect and prepositional objects can overlap. 
2. Objects are grouped into prepositional and non-prepositional. 
The drawback of this classification is that the underlying principle is not specific uniquely to objects. 
3. Prof. Pocheptsov singles out the following types of objects: 
- Object object (дополнение объекта) is a sentence member dependent on the verb, adjective or a word of the 
category of state that denotes an object of action or of quality. It can be prepositional or non-prepositional. 
- Addressee object (дополнение адресата) denotes a person or an object to which some action performed by the 
subject (if the verb is in the Active Voice) is directed. 
e.g. I called her. 
prepositional: I sent a letter to her. 
non-prepositional: I sent her a letter. 
- Subject object (дополнение субъекта) is used with a verb in Passive and denotes the doer of the action 
expressed by the verb. It is always prepositional – by/with N 
The Adverbial modifier 
It is a secondary part of the sentence modifying a part of the sentence expressed by a verb, a verbal noun, an 
adjective, or an adverb, and serving to characterise an action or a property as to its quality or intensity, or to indicate 
the way an action is done, the time, place, cause, purpose, or condition, with which the action or the manifestation of 
the quality is connected. 
Adverbial modifier is characterized by mostly free distribution. It can be a constituent of any sentence. It can be a 
component of a structural scheme of a sentence only when used with verbs of adverbial directivity. According to their 
meaning, adverbial modifiers are subdivided into adverbial modifiers of: 
place and direction; time; frequency; degree; manner; attending circumstances; description; purpose; cause; 
 comparison consequence; concession 
 condition; exception. 
The Attribute 
Attribute is a dependent element of a nominative phrase that denotes an attributive quality of an object expressed by 
a noun. It is a secondary part of the sentence modifying a part of the sentence expressed by a noun, a substantival 
pronoun, a cardinal numeral, and any substantivised word, and characterizing the thing named by these words as to its 
quality or property. 
According to the position relative to the head word, attributes can be prepositive and postpositive. The position of 
an attribute with respect to its head word depends partly on the morphological peculiarities of the attribute itself, and 
partly on stylistic factors. 
Apposition has been often regarded as a special kind of attribute, and sometimes as a secondary part of a sentence 
distinct from an attribute. Apposition is a word or phrase referring to a part of the sentence expressed by a noun, and explaining and specifying its meaning by giving it another name. Appositions are usually expressed by nouns. 
The major problem concerning the secondary sentence parts is caused by the fact that characteristic features of each 
of the three types are not clearly defined, therefore describing a given word or phrase as an object or an attribute in 
some cases, or describing it as an object or an adverbial modifier, in others, often proves to be a matter of personal 
opinion or predilection. 
There are some elements of the sentence which are neither its main parts, nor any of the usual secondary ones. They 
are the direct address and the parenthesis. 
3 Analyze the sentences.