The Verb: The Category of Voice.
The category of voice is the system of two-member opposemes (loves — is loved, loving — being loved, to love — to be loved, has loved — has, been loved, etc.) which show whether the action is represented as issuing from its subject (the active voice) or as experienced by its object (the passive voice).
Voice is one of those categories which show the close connection between language and speech. A voice opposeme is a unit of the language system, but the essential difference between its members is in their combinability in speech. The 'active voice' member has obligatory connections with subject words and optional ones with object words. The 'passive voice' member, on the contrary, forms obligatory combinations with object words and optional ones with subject words.
Cf. He loves (her).
She is loved (by him).
I want John to read (the letter).
I want the letter to be read (by John).
The category of voice also shows the links between morphology and syntax. Being a morphological category, voice often manifests syntactical relations. The voice opposites of finites indicate whether the subject of the sentence denotes the doer or the recipient of the action.
Cf. She asked ... and She was asked.
One of the most difficult problems connected with the category of voice is the problem of pariticiple II, the most essential part of all 'passive voice' grammemes. The fact is that participle II has a 'passive' meaning not only when used with the word-morpheme be, but also when used alone. Thus, participle I writing seems to have two 'passive' opposites: being written and written.
Participle II has also a 'perfect' meaning, not only when used with the word-morpheme have (have written, having written) but when employed alone, too. Thus, the participle fading seems to have two 'perfect' opposites, having faded and faded.
E. g. The train moved ... — setting East — going — going – gone! Here gone is used as the 'perfect' opposite of going.
Owing to the combination of the two meanings ('passive' and /perfect') written cannot be regarded as the 'passive' opposite of writing which has no 'perfect' meaning. As we know, the members of an opposeme distinguish only the particular meanings of the category they represent. Consequently, the meanings of participle II are not grammatical meanings. They are not lexical either, since they do not belong to the stem of the lexeme. So research is needed to establish the nature of these meanings.
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The 'perfect' meaning of participle II is felt in terminative verbs, and the 'passive' meaning in objective verbs.
Opinions differ as to the voice system of Modern English. Though most linguists, apparently, recognize only two voices in Modern English — the active voice and the passive voice, some speak also of the reflexive voice (or neuter-reflexive) expressed with the help of the semantically weakened self-pronouns, as in He cut himself while shaving.
Besides the three voices mentioned above, B. A. Ilyish finds two more voices in Modern English — 'the reciprocal' voice expressed with the help of each other, one another and 'the neuter' ('middle') voice as seen in The door opened, The words formed in his head, etc.
These theories do not carry much conviction:
1. In cases like He washed himself it is not the verb that is reflexive but the pronoun himself used as a direct object.
2. Washed and himself are words belonging to different lexemes. They have different lexical and grammatical meanings.
3. If we regard washed himself as an analytical word, it is necessary to admit that the verb has the categories of gender (washed himself — washed herself), person — non-person (washed himself — washed itself), that the categories of number and person are expressed twice in the word washes himself, etc.
4. Similar objections can be raised against regarding washed each other, washed one another as analytical forms of the reciprocal voice. The difference between 'each other' and 'one another' would become a grammatical category of the verb. .
5. A number of verbs express the 'reflexive' and 'reciprocal' meanings without the corresponding pronouns.
E. g. He always washes in cold water. Kiss and be friends.
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