ENGLISH CATEGORY PASSIVE STRUCTURES IN SYNCHRONY AND DIACHRONY

Abstract

The problem of passive voice in the English language has attracted the attention of linguists over a long period of time. The object of the study is the units of different levels of the language used to convey the meaning of passivity in the English language. The purpose of the work is to structure the functional-semantic field of passivity in the English language, to study passive constructions in historical retrospective throughout the New English period, and also to identify the functions of the liability in texts of various types of discourse. Various aspects of this category are well studied, however, many points remain the subject of scientific discussion. The difficulty of disclosing the meaning of a liability is the heterogeneity of its semantics because the understanding of which it is necessary to take into account various language levels. Linguistic means of various levels, expressing one meaning, are connected by certain relations, due to which functional-semantic fields are formed. So, an analysis of the frequency of using categorical means of expressing passivity in the early New English language showed that, the direct passive construction is the most commonly used means, accounting for 87.3% of the total number of examples of categorical means of passivity. As can be seen from the chart, direct passive constructions predominate numerically, accounting for 79% of the total number of categorical means of expressing passivity in English in the late XIXth– early XXth centuries, i.e. direct passive structures are still the most frequent, but their number has decreased due to an increase in the number of other types. It must be emphasized that in the early New English language there are categorical passive constructions of all types, this indicates the already formed passive constructions in the indicated period. In addition, the dynamics of changes in time periods confirms the increase in the frequency of use of passive structures by the late XIXth – early XXth centuries. In English literature of the late XXth – early XXIst centuries, on the contrary, there is a pronounced and quite clearly realizing tendency to a decrease in the share of liability in the verb system. Also, the obtained data are presented in the chart (it must be recalled that the indicated numerical data is the ratio of the number of examples to the number of pages analyzed). The results obtained allow us to talk about the changes that have occurred in the system of categorical means of expressing passivity.