The grammatical category of voice in the history of English

Voice is a category that describes the relationship of verb arguments to one another. English distinguishes between active and passive voice and uses a periphrastic construction (be + past participle) to realize the passive. In a passive construction, the direct object becomes the subject of the verb while the former subject is either omitted or moved into an adverbial:

John likes pie (active voice)

Pie is liked by John (passive voice)

The object of the active becoming the subject of the passive. The active voice indicates that the subject of the verb acts. The passive voice indicates that the subject of verb is acted upon.

Active Voice

The predicate comes after the subject

Sara Helps Nadia

In this sentence, the form of verb shows that person denoted by the subject does something.

Passive Voice

The predicates comes before the subject as

Nadia is helped by Sara.

In this sentence the form of the verb shows that something is done to the person denoted by the subject.

In OE the finite verb had no category of voice.

The analytical passive forms developed from OE verb phrases consisting of OE bēon (NE be) and weorðan (become) and Part.II of transitive verbs.

OE bēon was used as a link-verb with a predicative expressed by Part.II to denote a state resulting from a preveous action, while the construction with OE weorðan “become” indicated the transition into the state expressed by the Part. The Part. in OE agreed with the subject in number and gender.

In ME ben + Past Part. developed into an analytical form. Now it could express not only a state but also an action.

The new passive forms had a regular means of indicating the doer of the action or the instrument with the help of which it was performed.

Late ME saw the appearance of new types of passive constructions. Passive forms began to be built from intransitive verbs associated with different kinds of objects. The passive voice continued to spread to new parts the verb paradigm: the gerund and the continuous forms.

The perfect forms have developed from OE verb phrases.

The main source of the perf. form was the OE “possessive” construction, consisting of the verb habban (NE have), a direct object and Part.II of a transitive verb, which served as an attribute to the object.

The Part. agreed with the noun-object in numver, gender, case.

Originally the verb habban was used only with Participles of transitive verbs; than it came to be used with verbs taking genitival, datival and prepositional objects and even with intransitive verbs, which shows that it was developing into a kind of auxiliary.

Towards ME the two verb phrases turned into analytical forms and made up a single set of forms termed “perfect”. The Participles had lost their forms of agreement with the noun. The Part. usually stood close to the verb have and was followed by the object which referred now to the analytical form as a whole – instead of being governed by have.

In the perf.form from the auxiliary have had lost the meaning of possession and was used with all kinds of verbs, without restrictions.

By the age of the Literary Renaissance the perf.forms had spread to all the parts of the verb system, so that ultimately the category of time correlation became the most universal of verbal categories.