1

Introduction

The focus of the present thesis is the passive voice, perceived from a semantico-

syntactic point of view. My primary aim is to explore the use and functions of the

passive voice in English, examining the reasons which motivate an author to prefer the

passive form to the active one. Secondary interest is devoted to the function and the use

of the passive voice in Czech. As research material I have chosen the short stories by

the American writer O. Henry and their Czech translations by Stanislav Klíma. The

reasons why I have chosen the genre of a short story are that it is noted for the unity of

time, place and action. I believe that due to this fact, the results of my research will give

higher evidence of the use of the passive voice since the basis for comparison is unified

and compact contrary to, for example, a novel. For the same reason of evidence, I

explore just the translations of one translator, since everyone has his/her personal style

and different way of thinking and understanding of original text.

I am interested in the issue of information packaging, especially in the different

ways of expressing one and the same reality in the two languages: when both active and

passive versions are formally permitted, what factors favour the choice of one over

other? The passive voice is a phenomenon which is involved both in English and in

Czech but in unlike extent. As far as I know, the passive voice is a favourite means of

expression in English whereas in Czech its usage is not so popular. In view of this fact, I

suppose that the results will work this way.

The thesis is divided into two main parts which are interlinked, and complement

each other. The first part deals with the theoretical knowledge about the passive voice in

English as well as in Czech, whereas in the second part I investigate the applications of

the passive voice in concrete short stories. In addition, the text is divided into five

chapters.

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In the first chapter, I delineate the theoretical background of the use of the

passive voice in English. This information is summarized from the professional

literature and both from a syntactic and a semantic point of view. The same research as

for the use of the passive voice in Czech is concerned, is performed in Chapter 2.

Further, in chapter 3, I present the data for an analysis. It comprises two tables in which

I make an incidence statistics of the passive expressions in the English fiction and in the

relevant Czech passages. Chapter 4 analyses the frequency data and the different ways

of translation of the passive forms, summarized in the preceding tables. The last, fifth

chapter, focuses on the functional and semantic analysis, it looks at individual instances

of the passive voice’s usage, trying to find out its practical circumstances and

conditions. It compares the theoretical facts with my own findings and draws

conclusions about the similarities and differences in the use of the passive in the two

languages.

After I have gone through some of my resources, I have found out that the term

passive voice covers various phenomena and can be expressed in several different ways,

especially in the Czech language. That is why I decided to restrict my field of

exploration in English only to the passive voice proper. This one is realized through the

auxiliary verb to be + past participle of a lexical verb. The auxiliary verb may take

different tenses and may occur in progress as well. The range of the passive as a means

of functional syntax is wide, although not as much as that of the active voice.

To specify the interpretations of the passive voice, let me consider one basic

example. The passive sentence: The man was bitten by the dog shows that the subject of

the sentence receives the action expressed in the verb, in other words the subject is, in a

passive manner, acted upon. The agent performing the action may appear in a “by the...”

phrase or may be omitted. The dog here obtains the full amount of reader’s attention.

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One of the results of the use of the passive voice is the production of an indirect and

wordy utterance, which can be rhetorically effective in given situations. My aim is to

draw out the situations in which the passive voice is preferred, for example, when an

author wants to emphasize some participant of an action other than the subject.

Regarding the critical approach that I am going to employ in my diploma thesis,

I will compare and contrast my own conclusions about the use of the passive voice in

English with those found out about this use in Czech. Further, I will compare my own

results about the types of usages of the passive voice in English and in Czech with the

theorems. This will distinguish those more appropriate and practically applicable ones

from the rest, and I also hope to discover maybe a few specific usages of the passive

voice which are not mentioned in the books.

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1. The English language

1.1 Introduction

In spite of the fact that the syntactic and the semantic structures form their own

categories, there must be links between the two. The basic rule says that differences in

syntax indicate differences of meaning (Miller 1985: 193). The differences may be

‘mere’ matters of perspective and orientation, which is my concern here; however, they

exist and must be taken into account (Miller 1985: 193).

The notion of voice is defined variously in the literature; I have adopted the way

as it is defined in A Grammar of Contemporary English: “voice is a grammatical

category which makes it possible to view the action of a sentence in two ways, without

change in the facts reported” (Quirk et al. 1974: 801), since this particular feature of the

passive voice is the most useful and indeed utilized one. One and the same idea can

often be expressed in two different ways, by means of an active, and by means of a

passive construction. The active voice is considered as the unmarked member of the

pair. The names active and passive derive from the role of subject-referent in clauses

which express an action: it will standardly be the actor, or active participant in the

unmarked version, and the patient, or passive participant in the marked version

(Huddleston 1984: 438).

1.2 Formation of the passive

The English passive is formed with an auxiliary, generally be, but often also get

or become, and the past participle of a full verb. The passive form of the verb phrase

thus contains this pattern: be + past participle. Concerning the passive auxiliaries, get is

a serious contender of be, however, its application is “usually restricted to constructions

without an expressed animate agent”: *The boy got given a violin by his father. (Quirk

et al. 1974: 802) Apparently well-founded, the get-passive is avoided in formal style.

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On the other hand, it is common as a resulting copula, in which case it is equivalent to

become which is used to “express gradual change, often enhanced by modification with

more and more, increasingly, etc.” (Quirk et al. 1974: 803). Biber et al. (1999: 477)

argue that the get-passive is “a recent innovation in English and is [therefore] found

almost exclusively in dialog in fiction”.

In ‘John was beaten by Tom’ the participant John or generally the subject of the

passive voice is typically called the patient since it is associated with a passive role. By

contrast, the participant Tom is traditionally called the agent as it is aligned with the

active role. However, in clauses which do not express an action, the roles in question

are sometimes called by more relevant names of experiencer and stimulus, e.g. The

premier was hated by most members of the cabinet (Huddleston, Pullum 2002: 1427).

Furthermore, Huddleston and Pullum (2002: 1428) refer to the agent as to an

internalised complement, for they do not want to confuse the term with the name of a

semantic role. In the active, Tom is the subject and hence external to the verb phrase,

but in the passive it is internal to the verb phrase (Huddleston, Pullum 2002: 1428).

‘Tom beat John’ (active) and ‘John was beaten by Tom’ (passive) means

essentially the same thing, and yet they are not in every respect synonymous, and it is

therefore not superfluous for a language to have both turns. As Leech notes, “an active

sentence has a different meaning from its passive equivalent, although in conceptual

content they seem to be the same” (Leech 1981: 19). Such clauses (as above) are alike

as far as the ‘type of process’ and the ‘participant roles’ are concerned: the difference

has to do with such matters as information focus (Halliday: 1967, cited in Huddleston

1971: 64-5). Leech treats them against the background of thematization (i.e.“the process

of organizing the elements of the message so that weight and emphasis fall in

appropriate place”) (Leech 1981: 195). The thematic meaning of an utterance is

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“communicated by the way in which a […] writer organizes the message, in terms of

ordering, focus, and emphasis.” (Leech 1981: 19) The clauses are different in respect of

thematic or discourse organization. The thematic dimension involves such matters as

foregrounding or emphasis, distinction between ‘given’ and ‘new’ information etc.,

which typically affect the order of elements in the sentence and the intonation and

rhythm (or punctuation). Leech claims that the semantic difference between an active

sentence and its passive transformation can be seen in the layers of different types of

meanings. For example,

(i) Mrs Bessie Smith donated the first prize. (ii) The first prize was donated by Mrs Bessie Smith.

Certainly these two parallels have different communicative values and call for different

contexts: in (i) we know who Mrs Bessie Smith is and the issue in focus is the fact of

donation of the first prize; thus we can ask “What did Mrs Bessie Smith donate?”

Whereas in (ii) the focus of our attention is drawn to the agent who is unknown to us,

thus we can ask “Who donated the first prize?”, which implicitly suggests that the fact

of a donation of the first prize by someone is known to us, possibly from the context or

from a previous mention (Leech 1981: 19). Leech concludes that the change of an

overall meaning (communicative value) of an utterance caused by a change of the

thematic meaning is inevitable in each active -> passive transformation.

This basic schema of the formation of the passive is often extended by an

agentive phrase added to the elemental structure be + past participle. Leech speaks

about transformational rule that operates on syntactic structures with their associated

semantic content as follows (Leech 1981: 196):

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Passive rule

…Sa VP [active] (…) Ob … → …Sb VP [passive] (…) (Adverbial Phrase)

by Noun Phrasea

(where a and b indicate the corresponding arguments in the semantic representation).

This rule provides a “device of linear organization on the syntactic level” (Leech 1981:

196) and its function is to “assign different thematic meanings to sentences which

convey the same conceptual meaning”. (Leech 1981: 197)

Before I proceed on to discuss the different kinds of verbs which allow passive

transformation, since there are various terms and notions in the books, I have to state

clearly which terminology I am going to follow in this work. I have chosen to conform

to the conceptions defined by Rodney Huddleston, who – for my purpose here -

distinguishes two subject functions, referring to them as the pre-passive subject and the

concord subject. The former “is defined on the phrase-markers which represent the

structure of the sentence immediately before the passive rule applies” (Huddleston

1971: 62). The concord subject can also be called ‘post-passive’ subject. This latter type

corresponds to the traditional notion of ‘grammatical subject’. I consider these labels

transparent enough, very easily comprehensible, that is why I have chosen them.

1.3 Which verbs allow the passive?

The basic category in verb genus is the active voice. It can be formed in all verbs

(there are verbs which form only the passive voice, but their number is very limited, e.g.

John was said to be a nice man1), and has broader range of meanings than the passive

voice.

1 Say cannot occur in the active with an object + infinitival complement; in other constructions it occurs freely in the active. Examples of verbs which are wholly restricted to the passive would be repute and rumour (Huddleston, Pullum 2002: 1435-6).

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The passive voice can essentially be formed from verbs that have an object,

though even these verbs do not form the passive voice in some cases which I will

discuss later. In the simplest cases the relation between the structures at the pre- and

post- passive levels is exemplified in:

(i) a John killed Peter b Peter was killed by John

(ii) a John died b *was died by John

With intransitives, passivization cannot occur and so there will be no difference in

structure at the two levels (Huddleston 1971: 93). With transitives, passivization is

optional; if it is applied the pre-passive subject and the direct object become adjunct

(with by as the governing preposition)2 and subject respectively at the post-passive, or

concord, level, and be + en is introduced into the auxiliary. This is the general

oversimplified account of voice in English.

Active transitives with no passive counterpart

In the first place there are transitive actives with no acceptable passive

equivalent (Huddleston 1971: 93). In some cases there may be a quite general

explanation for the absence of a passive. Passivization does not normally take place

where:

a) pre-passive subject and object are identical – i.e. we do not normally find

reflexive agents: John knew himself to be in the wrong but *John was known by himself

to be in the wrong. “This constraint does not hold if there is contrastive stress on the

reflexive agent: cf. Halliday`s (1968: 189) he was supervised by himself with himself as

agent (we are not of course concerned with the ‘on his own’ interpretation)” (cited in

Huddleston 1971: 94).

2 The by-adjunct is often referred to as the ‘agent’ – this term is quite different from ‘agentive’, as the name of a ‘case’` in particular, not all agent noun phrases derive from underlying agentives (Huddleston 1971: 93).

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The same principle applies where:

b) the pre-passive object contains a possessive determiner that is coreferential

with the subject: Mary`s briefcase was lost by her (i.e. Mary) is unacceptable if there is

not contrastive stress on her – and indeed rather marginal even if there is. Similarly,

inherently reciprocal verbs, so-called equative verbs, do not normally allow

passivization (Quirk et al. 1974: 803). Thus *‘house’ is meant by ‘maison’ or *nine is

equalled by three squared are ungrammatical whereas that isn`t what was meant and the

world record was equalled by Smith, with non-symmetric meanings of the same verbs,

are perfectly normal (Huddleston 1971: 94). However, the acceptability of passives with

symmetric verbs seems to be subject to some degree of dialectical variation (cf.

Halliday`s Mary isn`t resembled by any of her children, 1967: 68) (cited in Huddleston

1971: 94).

c) statal verbs like in Mary hated/liked/loved/preferred/wanted John to play the

piano hardly allow passivization with John as concord subject – in contrast to similar

clauses containing expect, intend, request, require and so on (Huddleston 1971: 94).

d) the verb have is marked as an exception that blocks the passive rule, although

its meaning ‘to posses’ is necessarily active and the verb ‘posses’ itself can occur in the

passive. The constraint is absolute only for one of the two main uses of have, for we can

attest passives like dinner can be had at any reasonable time, the last word was had by

Mary. The two uses I have in mind are distinguished by whether or not the auxiliary do

is required in the interrogative, negative, etc. It is the use where do is required that

allows passivization – compare at what time do you have dinner?, *at what time have

you dinner?, at what time can dinner be had?, versus how much money does John

have?, how much money has John?, *how much money is had by John? (Huddleston

1971: 94-5).

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1.4 Special types of passive formation

Verbs can be divided into single-word verbs (e.g. John called the man) and in

multiword verbs, which are phrasal verbs (e.g. John called up the man), prepositional

verbs (e.g. John called on the man) or phrasal-prepositional verbs (e.g. John put up

with the man) (Quirk et al. 1974: 811).

1.4.1 Prepositional verbs

Prepositional verbs cannot occur in the passive so freely as the in the active

(Quirk et al., 1974: 804). The constraints can be divided into two spheres, the first being

determined by abstract/concrete distinction and the second by the degree of cohesion

between the verb and its preposition.

‘Pseudo-passives’ is the term used by Huddleston for the construction where the

“concord subject derives not from a direct object but from the object of a preposition”

(1971: 95). Pseudo-passives are typical of the construction in which the prepositions are

determined by the verb or verbal idiom rather than being contrastive and lexically

meaningful – though as far as constituent structure is concerned they are nevertheless

bracketed with the noun phrase, not the verb.

Chomsky (1965: 105-6) observes that with the ambiguous John decided on the

boat passivization is not possible if on the boat is locative (‘John was on the boat when

he made his decision’), but is possible where on is non-contrastive (‘John chose the

boat’); it is obvious that the underlying relationship of the boat to decide is quite

different in the two cases, and this difference may well reflected in different bracketings

at the pre-passive level, as Chomsky`s proposal would imply.

However, not all pseudo-passives are of this type: the preposition is in some cases

lexically contrastive.

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According to Dušková (1988: 251), the possibility to form the passive in verbs

with preposition depends on the type of relation between the verb and the preposition.

Also Quirk et al. (1974: 804) emphasize the degree of cohesion in relation to the

formation of passive. If the government is loose and the preposition represents non-

governmental addition, e.g. agree with, the passive cannot be formed: *She was agreed

with. It follows that only “highly cohesive” (Quirk et al., 1974: 805) prepositional verbs

can take the passive. Namely if the free addition is of an adverbial nature, it may

suggest something concrete and the passive is not formed. However, one and the same

collocation can have also abstract interpretation, in which case the government is not

loose and it is of objective nature (Dušková 1988: 251). Compare:

1. (concrete) They went into the hall. They arrived at the railway station. 2. (abstract) The matter will be gone into. No decision has been arrived at. Such prepositional verbs accept the passive only in the figurative use (Quirk et al.,

1974: 804).

Jespersen (1933: 123) proposes even different view of the issue of the ‘pseudo-

passives’. In such a sentence as Everybody laughed at Jim, laughed is intransitive; Jim

is “governed by” or as it may also be termed “the object of” the preposition at. But the

whole may also be analysed in another way, laughed at may be called a transitive verb-

phrase having Jim as its object. In this way, Jespersen claims, we come to understand

how it is possible to turn the sentence into the passive: Jim was laughed at by

everybody. Other similar passive sentences are This must be looked into. The bed had

not been slept in. Even phrases containing a transitive verb with its object followed by a

preposition may be thus turned into the passive: The original purpose was gradually

lost sight of ( Jespersen 1933: 123).

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1.4.2 Verbs with adverbial preposition

Dušková (1988: 251) marks off when a preposition has an adverbial meaning,

like for example in to live in, sleep in, sit on. In these constructions, the passive voice is

formed very rarely according to her: “the house does not seem to be lived in, the bed

has not been slept in, the chair is rarely sat on” ( Dušková 1988: 251). Nevertheless the

passive transformation is sometimes possible and she accounts for it in terms of

“interchangeability of a word with preposition by one-word transitive verb: live in a

house = inhabit; sleep in a bed = occupy/use a bed; sit on a chair = occupy” (translated

from Dušková 1988: 251).

Another view of the matter is the one proposed by Huddleston, who says that

the object in prepositional phrases of time, duration, manner, reason, etc., cannot become the concord subject of a passive: *the first day of term was eloped on, *a couple of hours were read for, *enthusiasm was sung with, *the rain was remained indoors because of; but with some place and perhaps instrumental prepositional phrases, passivization does seem possible: that bed hasn`t been slept in for years, that chair musn`t be sat on, this cup has been drunk out of, ?this blade has already been shaved with twice. (1971: 95-6)

He thinks that the acceptability of a passive with a locative phrase depends in large

measure on “whether the action not only occurs at the stated place but also affects that

place: a cup that has been drunk out of needs washing, to say that a bed has bee slept in

may suggest that the sheets need changing and so on” (Huddleston 1971: 96).

Huddleston further suggests that we are more likely to accept the bed had been slept in

than the village had been slept in. With regard to a deep structure of the sentence that

bed has been slept in Huddleston distinguishes two roles that the expression that bed

fills: affected and locative. More precisely the locative role would deal with in that bed

and it would then be the affected role that was relevant to passivization (Huddleston

1971: 96).

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1.4.3 Ditransitives

Ditransitive verbs are verbs with a direct and an indirect object. However, if in

the active there are two objects, only one of them can be made the subject in the

passive, i.e. externalised, the other is retained as such; in other words, a passive verb

can have an object. But which of the two objects is made the subject of a passive

sentence? Huddleston and Pullum (2002: 1432) argue that in principle, ditransitive

actives have two passive counterparts. If it is the indirect object that is externalised they

call the thus created passive as first passive. The version with the direct object

externalised is called second passive. These terms are based on the linear position of the

relevant object in the active construction.

Indirect object as the subject of passive construction

Jespersen (1933: 121) records that originally only the direct object could be thus

used, e.g. Her husband left her property → Property was left her by her husband. But

during the last few centuries there has been a growing tendency to make the indirect

object the subject in the passive (Jespersen 1933: 121). He proposes an explanation of

this tendency in the fact that the greater interest started to be felt for persons than for

things, which naturally led to the placing of the indirect before the direct object. It can

be seen in the active They offered the butler a reward; consequently the order in the

passive becomes: The butler was offered a reward. Along with Jespersen’s conclusion,

Huddleston (1971: 97) claims that it is normally the indirect object that is mapped onto

the concord subject in the passive. “Of the three types:

a) John was given the money b) The money was given to John c) The money was given John

the first two are a good deal more usual than the third – Halliday explains this in terms

of the comparative rarity of someone gave John the money in the reading where John

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carries the tonic stress and is thus the focus of new information” (cited in Huddleston

1971: 97). The case b) derives from (someone) gave the money to John: in accordance

with the previous observations it is the only passive version of that clause (which is not

ditranstive). However, c) is not ungrammatical, so that we must allow for two passive

versions of (someone) gave John the money.

Another case when the subject of a passive construction can only be the former

indirect object is found in Dušková. It is when a direct object is expressed via infinitive

or subordinate clause, for example, I was given to understand that…., we were told to

come at three, she was promised that the offer would remain open till her return

(Dušková 1988: 252). All in all, nowadays, ditransitive verbs can have a double passive

construction in English because the subject of the passive voice can become either of

the two objects. However, there are several restrictions as for the various types of

predicates are concerned.

Huddleston (1971: 96) argues that with three-place verbs like blame, present,

provide, etc., where there is a choice as to which underlying preposition is deleted to

yield a direct object, it is “only the noun phrase whose preposition has been dropped

that may become concord subject of a passive” (Huddleston 1971: 96) – compare:

a) He blamed the error on John b) The error was blamed on John c) He blamed John for the error d) John was blamed for the error e) *John was blamed the error on f) *The error was blamed John for

Further on Huddleston (1971: 97) singles out a group of verbs like envy, where there is

never a preposition at the pre-passive level, and in which only the indirect object may

become concord subject: she was envied her good looks, *her office was envied her.

Dušková (1988: 253) summs up simply that the choice of the subject of the

passive construction of a ditransitive verb is in line with functional sentence

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perspective, this means that the subject is the former object with less degree of

communicative dynamism. For example: John has been awarded the first prize – the

first prize has been awarded to John. She adds that also an indirect inanimate object

(not only animate) can become the subject of a passive construction, for example the

proposal bill will be given consideration to (Dušková 1988: 253).

1.4.4 Verbs with adverbial particle

The passive voice is formed also from verbs with adverbial particle, or phrasal-

prepositional verbs, if they are transitive. For example: the scheme was given up; their

business relations have been broken off; the offer was turned down (Dušková 1988:

251). The passive voice occurs also in transitive verbs which are tied to an adverbial

particle and a preposition, e.g. inefficiency must be done away with; such conduct

cannot be put up with; the losses have been made up for etc. (Dušková 1988: 252).

1.4.6 Summary

As has been mentioned above, the formation of the passive is in principle

allowed in transitive verbs, if an object participates in the verbal action in such a way

that the action passes over to it or which is somehow affected by the action. Some

objective relations, however, express other semantic relations and then, even a transitive

verb does not form the passive voice. We encounter this phenomenon in the cases when

the verb’s meaning approaches the meaning of a copula and when the nature of an

object borders on an adverbial.

1.4.7 The verb “have”

Have and get allow for the passive voice only in the infinitive, cf. there was

nothing to be had/to be got. Marginally the passive voice occurs in the examples as

Besides, an enjoyable time was had by all for after the concert we invariably played

poker till all hours (Dušková 1988: 258).

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Have does not form the passive voice since it represents a transitive copula (a

possessive relation can often be transformed to an attributive relation, cf. she has blue

eyes – her eyes are blue, in case of get the impossibility to form the passive voice

follows from its semantics of “to obtain or receive”: the subject has the same role as in

the passive voice, cf. he got a watch = he was given a watch (Dušková 1988: 258).

1.4.8 Bare passive

As opposed to be-passives and get-passives, which are called expanded passives

there is also the notion of a bare passive defined in the literature. These are the passive

constructions which do not contain any auxiliary verb, like e.g. He saw Kim mauled by

our neighbour’s dog. Since the verb is in the past participle form, such clauses are

always non-finite and thus restricted to subordinate position. Passive main clauses

always contain either be or get (Huddleston, Pullum 2002: 1429-30).

1.5 Non-formation of the passive voice

Except for the cases mentioned in chapter 1.3 where I discuss the active verbs

which do not have any passive counterpart, along with Dušková (1988: 259), we

encounter the non-formation of the passive voice in the examples of locative and

locativo-possessive subject; the car leaks oil, in which the subject expresses the site

where the intransitive action takes place. In the following, the book has sold over

100,000 copies, is the subject in a possessive relation towards the object. In the

sentences as he burst a blood-vessel, the subject is both the place of verbal action and at

the same time the possessor towards an object. These cases do not allow for the passive

voice because in principle they represent intransitive actions with an adverbial, cf. oil

leaks from the car, in which the English, as opposed to Czech, is also susceptible of a

subject construction (Dušková 1988: 255). Further, the passive voice cannot be formed

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in verbonominal bonds of the following type: she gave an impatient sigh, and in cases

like he groped his way; we walked ten miles (Dušková 1988: 259).

1.5.1 Verbs which do not allow the passive voice

Further, as Dušková (1988: 258) enumerates, the passive voice cannot be formed

in the following verbs: cost, last, measure, weigh, equal, mean, resemble, hold3

(“contain”), lack, become (“befit”), suit, fit, escape and some others in the following

cases and suchlike: it cost a lot of money, the supplies will last three weeks, the room

measures twenty feet, two plus two equals four, ‘lucrative’ means ‘profitable’, the hall

holds two hundred people, he lacks experience, this hat does not become you, the dress

does not fit me, they escaped punishment. Inanimate objects in these verbs border on

adverbials (we ask: how much does it cost /measure/weigh?, how long did it last?). The

fact that the verbs semantically relate to copular verbs can be manifested by the

possibility of use of a periphrastic construction by means of a copula, cf. it cost five

pounds – the price was five pounds, it weighs two pounds – the weight is two pounds,

she resembles her mother – she is like her mother, any weekday suits me equally well –

any weekday is equally suitable.

1.5.2 Object restrictions

Generally it is valid that the subject of the passive voice can be transformed to

the object of the active voice, nevertheless, during the operation in reverse direction,

there are some restrictions put into effect. In addition to the restrictions following from

the verbal semantics, there are also certain restrictions as for the nature of an object is

concerned. Fundamentally, for the following objects it is impossible to make them the

subject of the passive voice. Such objects are reflexive object, reciprocal and possessive

object: he excused himself, they don’t know each other, she shrugged her shoulders.

3 If the verb has as well transitive meanings, the passive voice is formed in these meanings, cf. the conference will be held in May, it was meant as a compliment, the sample was weighed and measured and the like.

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Furthermore, the subject of the passive usually cannot be any non-finite clause (Quirk et

al. 1974: 805-6), such as an infinitive object and participle object, for instance, I hate to

contradict you, he admitted having acted thoughtlessly. In addition, finite clauses occur

rarely in the passive, e.g. that such a possibility exists has been suggested before

(Dušková 1988: 259).

1.6 Relation of the active to the passive voice

The relation between the active and the passive voice is best visible in action

verbs bearing a direct object, for example the state provides free education on all levels

– free education is provided on all levels (by the state). In the active voice both

participants in the action are obligatory, the agent is construed as a subject and the aim

of action (patient) as an object. In the passive voice only patient is obligatory and is

construed as a subject. The agent is ordinarily optional in the passive voice; if it is

expressed, it has the form of agentive adverbial by means of prepositional phrase using

by, in Czech by means of instrumental or genitive with od (Dušková 1988: 253).

Dušková notes that expression of the agent is obligatory in the passive voice in

situations like the following: the cart was pulled by a horse, (not *the cart was pulled),

possibly the absence of an agent can compensate for other adverbial, cf. he was brought

up by his aunt – he was brought up with great care but never *he was brought up

(1988: 253).

Although the relation between the active and the passive voice can be considered

as an instant of syntactic synonymy, in real language expressions of their functional

differentiation occurs. This differentiation follows predominantly from the facultativity

of an agent in the passive voice. Linguists agree on the assertion that in a vast majority

of cases the agent is unexpressed because it is either unknown, or is not relevant to the

conveyed content from the point of view of the speaker. If the agent is expressed, the

19

passive voice enables different linear arrangement of the action’s participants. As a

consequence of the change of syntactic functions, the agent and the patient interchange

their positions in the passive voice. The different layout of the sentence can

accommodate the purposes of the functional sentence perspective.

Semantic relation of the subject to the action is unambiguously determined only

in the passive voice, which explicitly communicates that the subject is not the doer. In

the active voice the semantic relation of the subject to the action expressed by the verb

is more varied, the subject can be not only the doer of the action but also its bearer or

can be somehow affected by the action. Such cases are similar to the passive

constructions and we speak about an active with a passive meaning or about an

unmarked passive voice (Dušková 1988: 253-4).

1.6.1 Actional versus statal passives

English passive constructed by means of the auxiliary verb be does not

distinguish in between the expression of an action and the expression of a state. As

contrasted to Czech, where an action and a state are indicated by different aspect, in

English the active or stative nature of the verb follows mostly from context, cf. all our

effort is wasted – much effort is wasted on things like that; my things are packed – my

things are always packed by my wife (Dušková 1988: 262). The distinction between

actional (or dynamic) and statal (or stative) passives can be drawn artificially by

different sufficient and necessary conditions. This division can also be accounted for in

terms of adjectival versus verbal passives since adjectival passives always have a stative

interpretation (Huddleston, Pullum 2002: 1436-7).

Statal passives

Jespersen (1931: 92-3) makes a distinction between ‘conclusive’ and ‘non-

conclusive’ verbs; with the former the “action is either confined to one single moment,

20

e.g. catch, or implies a final aim, e.g. construct”, whereas non-conclusive verbs denote

“feelings, states of mind, etc.; the activity, if any such is implied, is not begun in order

to be finished. As examples can be mentioned love, hate, praise, blame, see, hear. With

conclusive verbs he goes on to distinguish two kinds of passive (1931: 98-9): a passive

of becoming and a passive of being. Semantically, the passives of being describe the

state resulting from an action, rather than the action itself (Biber et al. 1999: 936).

Curme (1931: 443-7) uses other terms to name the same; they are “actional” for

the passives of becoming and “statal” for the passives of being. However, there may

develop an ambiguity as for the type of the passive implied, especially if a sentence is

lifted out of context, as e.g. his bills are paid. In case of actional passive interpretation

this corresponds to the active (someone) pays his bills; the statal passive reading on the

other hand expresses the result of a past action: he (or someone) has paid his bills.

Huddleston (1971: 98) makes a primary division between ‘dynamic’ and ‘non-

dynamic’ verbs instead of Jespersen’s distinction of conclusive and non-conclusive

verbs. Huddleston’s concept differs in that it focuses only at the difference between

actions and states, with no reference made to aim or aimlessness of a situation expressed

by the verb. Dynamic verbs “express actions or processes” and non-dynamic verbs

express “states or relations”. Huddleston proceeds to comment on the passives of

dynamic verbs, in which he tries to structurally depict the distinction between actional

and statal type, as defined above. He asserts that in case of an actional passive and its

active counterpart, such as

(i) a The wall was painted by John. b John painted the wall.,

the structures of (i)a and b are alike in that John is subject and the wall is direct object

before the application of the passive transformation. Contrastively, statal passives,

21

unlike actional, have no direct active counterpart. The statal reading of his bills are paid

with the finished meaning does not correspond to any active counterpart. According to

Huddleston and also Palmer, statal passives have essentially the same structure as

copulative sentences with adjectival attributes, e.g. They were married when I last saw

them (Palmer 1965: 68). They would analyze this sentence as “containing lexical (i.e.

non-auxiliary) be plus a past participle functioning as adjectival complement”

(Huddleston 1971: 99).

The category of the statal passive is rather ambiguous and, as Dušková (1988:

262) says, the past participle borders on an adjective and in some cases, the two merge.

This is the point when a subject cannot operate as an object of the active voice.

Thereafter we talk no longer about the passive, but about copular construction be +

adjective, e.g. are you drunk or something?; his expression was surprised; his tone was

annoyed etc. Therefore, it can be seen that what is considered by Huddleston and

Palmer as a typical statal passive, Dušková no longer considers to be a passive at all.

Huddleston (1971: 99) proposes one more test to distinguish actional from statal

passive forms and that is the possibility of substitution for the participle of a statal

passive by means of the pro-form so. E.g. These motions are generally directed towards

the plane but are not entirely so. On the other hand, so is not a possible substitute with

actional passives: *the first liquid was heated and the second was so too (Huddleston

1971: 100).

Quasi-passives

This borderline category “represents a ‘mixed’ class whose members have both

verbal and adjectival properties” (Quirk et al. 1974: 809). They are verbal in having

active analogues, for example John was interested in linguistics can be turned into

active Linguistics interested John. The adjectival properties are the potentiality for a)

22

coordination of the participles with adjectives, b) adjectival modification with quite,

rather, more, etc., c) replacement of be by a lexically ‘marked’ auxiliary (Quirk et al.

1974: 809). The members of this class are grading into be + predicative adjectives with

stative meaning (Biber et al. 1999: 475).

Dušková (1988: 262) states that sometimes the quasi-passives are not conceived

of as passives at all, for example: I am tired / exhausted, he was surprised, annoyed, she

was extremely upset, he was pleased, amused, satisfied and the like, because the

participle can be modified by very, rather, much, more, too etc. which enables the

coordination with an adjective and the use of another copular verb, e.g. I am very

pleased, you look exhausted, he felt rather flattered etc. Also for Biber et al. it is enough

to label an expression as adjectival participle if it allows modification by very (1999:

937). However, in all these cases a subject of the passive voice can function as an object

of the active voice, cf. the journey tired her, the work exhausted him (Dušková 1988:

262) and that is the reason why I will include these cases into my analysis.

To confuse it a little bit more, adjectival past participle can have both

transforms, copular be plus adjective and passive voice, depending on the context, cf.

the changes are marked (1) (adjective), (2) the changes are marked (on the margin)

(past participle participating in the passive parallelism). Huddleston and Pullum (2002:

1431) distinguish between proper verbal passive, as is the (2) example, and adjectival

passives (1), where the term ‘passive’ is used in extended and derivative sense.

1.6.2 Agent

If we want to mention who does the action of a passive verb, we add the agent,

which is usually a noun phrase following the preposition by (Leech 1991: 331). More

specifically, it is “the person deliberately carrying out the action described” (Hurford,

Heasley 1983: 220). The pre-passive subject of a passive sentence, i.e. what would have

23

been the subject if the idea had been expressed in an active form, is regularly indicated

by means of the preposition by: The city was destroyed by the French. The passive

constructions with an expressed agent are also called agentive passives (Quirk et al.

1974: 808) or long passives (Biber et al. 1999: 475). Similarly, the passive constructions

without an expressed agent are called agentless or short passives (ibid.). Huddleston

and Pullum (2002: 1428) observe that the short passives have no exact active

counterpart as for example the sentence Someone rejected his plan is the active

counterpart of His plan was rejected by someone and not of His plan was rejected.

Huddleston and Pullum (2002: 1428) note that “with a small number of

exceptions, the internalised component is omissible”. The exceptional cases where it is

not omissible include those with precede or follow used in temporal sense, for example:

Dinner was preceded / followed by several speeches. In addition, the preposition by

need not always introduce an gent phrase but has numerous other uses as well. For

example, This result was achieved by dubious means where the by-phrase functions as a

means adjunct, just as it does in the active They achieved this result by dubious means

(Huddleston, Pullum 2002: 1428).

Instrumentals

In case there is a by-phrase, there can occur a problem of determining whether it

does in fact derive from the pre-passive subject. There are two types often

distinguished: instrumental versus agent. Where the by-phrase has been given an

instrumental interpretation (by=with), an active subject must be supplied, cf. Coal has

been replaced by oil. [People in many countries] have replaced coal by oil (Quirk et al.

1974: 808-9). Fillmore (1968: 25) contrasts John opened the door and the key opened

the door and finds the syntactic difference between John and the key demonstrated by

24

the fact that they cannot be coordinated, yet can be combined non-coordinately: John

opened the door with the key.

1.7 Why is the passive turn chosen?

The verbal voice determines the syntactico-sematic relation that the participants

of verbal action bear towards the action itself (Dušková 1988: 253). In the active voice,

the subject is the “doer”, agent, or other generator of the verbal action, whereas in the

passive voice the doer or agent is different from the subject, cf. they train; and they are

trained. As Leech (1991: 330) states, in most clauses the subject refers to the ‘doer’, or

‘actor’ of the action of the verb (the cat chased the mouse). However, the passive form

allows us to put someone or something that is not the actor first, in the position of

subject (the mouse was chased by the cat).

As a rule the person or thing that is the centre of interest at the moment is made

the subject of the sentence, and therefore the verb is in some cases put in the active, in

others in the passive. There are two basic types of the passive voice and each of them

has different functions.

1. The passive without agent allows us to omit the ‘actor’ if we want to – e.g. if the

‘actor’ is not important or is not known:

“The post office has been robbed!” “Who did it?” “I don’t know!”

In fact, as Leech claims, “most passives have no agent phrase” (1991: 332). Also

Dušková thinks that the “primary function of the passive voice is to express a verbal

action without any doer or actor” (translated from Dušková 1988: 259).

In the vast majority of cases the choice of the passive turn is due to one of the following

reasons:

(I) The pre-passive subject (i.e. what would be the subject if we had chosen the

active turn) is unknown or cannot easily be stated:

25

Her father was killed in the Boer war. I was tempted to go on.

(II) In the doctor was sent for neither the sender nor the person sent is

mentioned, because they present no interest to the speaker.

(III) The active subject is self-evident from the context:

He was elected Member of Parliament for Leeds.

(IV) The short passive can be used to avoid identifying the person responsible

for some situation (Huddleston, Pullum 2002: 1446):

Mom! The vase got broken!

(V) There may be a special reason (tact or delicacy of sentiment) for not

mentioning the active subject; thus the mention of the first person is often

avoided, (in writing more frequently than in speaking):

You will be required to fill in the form.

(VI) It is well-known feature of scientific writing that it has a higher proportion of

passives than most registers; the reason being the more objective flavour of

the texts without specific reference to the writer (Huddleston, Pullum 2002:

1446):

The solution was drained under a hydrogen atmosphere.

2. The passive with agent allows us to save the ‘actor’ to the end of the clause. This

is useful:

(VII) If the ‘actor’ is the most important piece of new information.

E.g. This painting is very valuable. It was painted by Van Gogh. Here the

most important information is the name of the painter.

(VIII) If the ‘actor’ is described by a long phrase which could not easily be the

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subject. E.g. The school will always be remembered and supported by the

boys and girls who received their education here. Here the agent is a long

noun phrase (underlined).

(IX) Where it is indicated (“converted subject”) the reason why the passive turn is

preferred is generally the greater interest taken in the passive than in the

active subject (Jespersen 1933: 12 ):

The house was struck by lightning.

His son was run over by a car.

(X) The passive turn may facilitate the connection of one sentence with another:

He rose to speak, and was listened to with enthusiasm by the great crowd

present.

Ad 1. Since one of the major functions that the passive voice provides us with is

the omission of the agent, therefore there is large number of the passive clauses which

do not contain any by phrase. I will give here the reasons why now.

In many examples it can be argued that there is an agent understood: no specific

mention is made of it because it is assumed to be recoverable from the context

(linguistic and/or situational). As Huddleston claims, “this type can be described

formally by the familiar agent-deletion transformation, which suppresses by + NP

provided the latter is a pro-form” (1971: 104). (The covert agent is understood to be, or

to refer to, the writer; the writer is reporting a series of actions carried out by the same

person, to specify the agent for each would involve a degree of repetition that is

generally regarded as stylistically undesirable. This factor is likely to have favoured the

selection of passive rather than active voice.)

A second large class of instances involves the generalized human ‘one’ or

‘people’, as in: It is said that the president will come. Thus the closest active version

27

would be something like People say that the president will come. The passive here

contains no less information than the active, for say belongs to the class of verbs that

must have a human subject at the pre-passive level. According to Dušková (1988: 259),

these sentences with unexpressed general doer are in narrow relation to the sentences

with expressed general doer, ‘people’ or ‘man’, and are in some cases with these

sentences interchangeable. In English the method of passive voice’s usage that implies a

general doer to some extent compensates the lack of a widely used means of expressing

a general human doer (as it is known from German – man, or from French – on).

The type of the passive voice that implies a general human doer is used above all

in professional jargon, for example several systems have been devised and tested, it is

believed that the method yields safe results. In colloquial style the passive voice very

often alternates with the active formulation, cf. that sort of man cannot be trusted/ you

can’t trust that sort of man (Dušková 1988: 259).

Quite frequent type of the passive with unexpressed doer is the so called

authorial passive, i.e. the actor is an author of an article, book, described work etc. The

use of authorial passive is also characteristic of the professional jargon, since in this

jargon the attention is turned to the subject of the message whereas the author’s

personality is backgrounded. For instance: As has already been stated, the present study

was originally undertaken in the hope of finding a satisfactory explanation for the

difference between the uses of the expanded and non-expanded verb-clusters in English

(Dušková 1988: 260).

The implied doer can be other identifiable or unidentifiable person or entity, the

explicit expression of which is not relevant to the conveyed message or the speaker

intentionally avoids its expressing; sometimes the implied doer is indefinite (somebody,

something). For example, our team was beaten, the connection has been cut off. As

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some examples show, the originator of an action of a verb is not always known. This is

often the case with natural sciences, e.g. genes are arranged in fixed positions (Dušková

1988: 260).

Verbs which do not imply a human agentive at a deeper level present more of a

problem in the passive. In some cases the only plausible explanation for the absence of

an agent is that there is no corresponding participant involved in the process, i.e. there

is no agent understood. For example His eyes were firmly imbedded in his face.

Huddleston (1971: 107) considers helpful to consider such constructions with regard to

ergative verbs:

(i) a They quickly sold the book. b The book sold quickly.

(ii) a He opened the door. b The door opened. (iii) a He marched the prisoners. b The prisoners marched. Huddleston calls such verbs as ‘ergative’ verbs, since

they suggest an ergative organization of the clause (one where a one-place verb, i.e. a verb combining with a single noun phrase, takes an ‘affected’ element as subject, while a two-place verb takes a ‘causer’ as subject and an affected element as object) rather than a transitive organization (one where a one-place verb takes an ‘actor’ as subject and a two-place verb an actor as subject and a ‘goal’ as object). (1971: 65-6)

Dušková’s attitude to the passive constructions without an expressed doer, which

do not imply any doer since no agent suggests itself, is simplier. She claims that such

constructions approach the intransitive constructions which sometimes develop into the

coexistence of the passive and the active (intransitive) relation, without any substantial

difference in their meanings. The active and the passive voice are in these cases more or

less free variations, cf. the village is situated/lies on the bank of a lake, speech and

thought are developed/develop simultaneously.

29

She notes that the free variation in between the active and the passive construction is not

limited only to nonagentive passive voice, but occurs also in types implying a doer, e.g.

he counts/is counted among the best, or even in types with an expressed doer, e.g. he

was worried/ he worried about his brother. Other examples of nongentive passive are

for example more than money is involved, the plain is exposed to northern winds, the

two forms are distributed evenly ( Dušková 1988: 260).

Ad 2. The passive with an expressed doer is, in comparison with the passive

with an unexpressed doer, substantially rarer, which follows from the main function of

the passive voice and this is the suppression of the actor associated with the verbal

action. In English, the passive with expressed doer enables a preverbal positioning of a

patient and a post-verbal positioning of an agent, which can be made use of as a tool of

functional sentence perspective.

The inaminate adverbial with the preposition by in a passive sentence does not

always represent a doer corresponding to an active sentence. If there is an implied

animate doer, this is the question of adverbial of means, e.g. this difference was

examined by statistical methods (we/the author examined the difference by statistical

methods), he was treated by antibiotics (the doctor treated him by antibiotics).

Sometimes the adverbial with the preposition by is ambiguous in a passive sentence,

since in an active sentence there can be both as a subject (doer) or as an adverbial

(means) corresponding to it, e.g. the order of the elements is indicated by subscripts: (1)

the author indicates the order of the elements by subscripts, (2) subscripts indicate the

order of the elements.

An adverbial with the preposition by can also be local or temporal. Such

adverbials are, with regard to the relations between the active and passive voice,

external, the changes of verbal voice do not affect them (it is the same as in the case of

30

the adverbial of means when there is an expressed or implied agent), cf. she was

seated/sat by the open window, an agreement was reached/ they reached an agreement

by midnight.

The inaminate doer can be introduced by means of another preposition. The

choice of preposition is then determined by verbal regimen, e.g. she isn’t interested in

sculpture (sculpture doesn’t interest her), I am surprised at her attitude (her attitude

surprises me). Sometimes in the passive voice there is even the animate doer

constructed with a preposition different from by, e.g. this fact wasn’t known to me, the

need for more highly educated man power is reflected generally in the foundation of

new universities (Dušková: 1988, 262).

Note: Also the prepositional phrase with a preposition different from by can be

ambiguous in a passive sentence, with regard to the relation between an active and a

passive sentence, e.g. the relative frequency of the two forms is shown in Table 1: (1)

the author shows the relative frequency of the two forms in Table 1 (adverbial), (2)

Table 1 shows the relative frequency of the two forms (subject) (Dušková 1988: 262).

1.7.1 Communicative dynamism

Communicative dynamism is a central feature of the Prague School theory of

functional sentence perspective (FSP), which is concerned with the distribution of

information as determined by all meaningful elements. Jan Firbas in his book

Functional Sentence Perspective in Written and Spoken Communication discusses the

distribution of degrees of communicative dynamism over sentence elements and how

this determines the orientation or perspective of the sentence. He examines the relation

of theme and rheme to syntactic components, with particular attention to word order.

He defines communicative dynamism (CD) as “an inherent quality of

communication and manifests itself in constant development towards attainment of a

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communication goal; in other words, towards the fulfilment of a communicative

purpose” (Firbas 1992: 7).

Firbas (1992: 8) claims that the CD of an English sentence often shows

alignment with sentence linearity. In many cases, the actual linear arrangement of

sentence elements is in agreement with a gradual rise of CD. Further he even suggests

that “the element towards which the communication … is perspectived tends to occupy

the final position” (Firbas 1992: 8).

Further, he distinguishes two basic principles which can be related to active and

to passive sentence arrangement, respectively. The first is the grammatical principle or

as he later modifies its name, FSP linearity principle, which manifests itself in that the

sentence position of an element is determined by its syntactic function. In accordance

with it English puts the subject before the predicative verb and the latter before the

object. In addition to that, the principle of FSP arranges the sentence elements in a

Theme – Transition – Rheme sequence. If asserting itself to full extent, it orders the

elements in accordance with a gradual rise in CD and induces the sentence to display

the basic distribution of CD (Firbas 1992: 118).

The second is the principle of emphasis or as it is also termed the emotive

principle. This principle orders the words in a way that strikes the recipient as more or

less out of ordinary. This is due to the fact that the same words can appear in an order

that does not create such an impression of unusualness. The unusual order fulfils an

additional communicative purpose not served by the usual order, and is on this sense

marked (Firbas 1992: 118).

As Jan Firbas (1992: 119) claims, Mathesius has shown that while in English the

dominant role in the system of word order is played by the grammatical principle, in

Czech it is played by the FSP linearity principle. Further he asserts that “in comparison

32

with Czech, English is less ready to observe the Th-Tr-Rh sequence. This is because the

grammatical principle renders English word order less flexible. In spite of it, English

shows a strong tendency to render the grammatical subject thematic” (Firbas 1992:

119). The passive construction is one of the means of the English language which is

employed to arrange the sentence elements in a Th-Tr-Rh sequence (Firbas 1992: 120).

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2. The Czech language

The passive voice in Czech is defined under the same conditions as in English;

we talk about the passive voice if the actor of an action does not stand in the position of

grammatical subject (Trávníček 1949: 739). Particularly this situation is to be found in

two cases: with or without the grammatical subject.

Formal analogy of the passive voice in English is the periphrastic passive in

Czech, which besides this has the reflexive passive at its disposal. I am going to deal

only with the two parallel passive voices now, since their structure can be subject to

comparison. There is a similar way of formation of the periphrastic passive in Czech

and English, but it has restrictions as well. It is formed by the auxiliary verb be and the

past participle, that is also the reason why it is called periphrastic passive. “The past

participle can be formed solely in transitive verbs with expressed object” (translated

from Rusínová 1996: 323). Dušková (1988: 250) elaborates that the formation is similar

to English only in monotransitive verbs, i.e. verbs that take direct object. The subject of

a passive construction is then the object of an active construction. Compare some details

have been omitted with Czech některé podrobnosti byly vynechány (Dušková 1988:

250).

The periphrastic passive in present-day Czech coalesces with predicate

constructions which consist of an adjective and a verbal element (Rusínová 1996: 324)

This happens when the final state can be viewed as a quality of the subject: Byt byl

zapečetěn / zapečetěný x V továrně jsou zavedena / *zavedená přísná ekologická

opatření. Rusínová proposes a test to distinguish between the two meanings, which

facilitates their proper usage as well. She suggests that the adjectival past participle can

answer the question “What is it like?” (Rusínová 1996: 526). Thus Jaký je byt? –

zapečetěný x Jaká jsou opatření? - *zavedená. However, further Rusínová admits that it

34

is very difficult sometimes to find the difference between the two meanings (1996:

526).

2.1 Periphrastic passive

As has been mentioned above, this kind of passive voice can be in Czech used

only in verbs which require an object, besides it is used predominantly in perfective

verbs and its stylistic value is more or less literary and formal (Rusínová 1996: 525).

Sentences containing periphrastic passive can have either active or stative meaning

(unlike reflexive passive), whereas one of the most decisive factors is the verbal aspect:

a) sentences with perfective aspect

In sentences in which the auxiliary verb be is in past or future tense, the periphrastic

construction can have both meanings: active or stative:

1. In sentences with active meaning an agent can be expressed. In such cases

the periphrastic passive is the only possibility: Byl jsem pochválen ředitelem.

2. In sentences with stative meaning, expressing a certain state as a

consequence of previous action, an agent cannot be expressed: Byt byl

uzamčen dva měsíce.

In sentences in which the auxiliary verb be is in present tense, the periphrastic passive

has always the meaning of resultant state: Byt je uzamčen.

b) sentences with imperfective aspect

In these sentences the periphrastic passive has ordinarily active meaning.

However these are literary constructions which are perceived as affected style of

speaking: Trávník je pravidelně stříhán (Rusínová 1996: 526). Only exceptionally such

sentences with periphrastic passive have stative meaning: V Bibli je psáno, že si lidé

mají odpouštět (Rusínová 1996: 526).

35

Havránek and Jedlička (2002: 105) state that the periphrastic passive in Czech

can take different cases. In verbs which make it possible to bear an object in the second

or in the fourth case, both passive types is grammatical: města bylo dobyto and město

bylo dobyto.

2.1.1 Agent in periphrastic constructions

As opposed to reflexive passive forms, it is in most cases possible to express an

agent, which is coded usually via instrumental: Byt byl zajištěn policií. This

instrumental construction corresponds to the English by-phrase in most Czech

translations (Dušková 1988: 250). In individual verbs there are differences in

government: an English verb, except for the instrumental, often corresponds to Czech

verb with genitive and dative relation or with prepositional case, e.g. The aim has been

reached – cíle bylo dosaženo (genitive relation); What is it called? – Jak se tomu říká?

(dative relation), Jak se to nazývá? (instrumental relation), What language is spoken

there? – Jakým jazykem se tam mluví? (prepositional case) (Dušková 1988: 250-1). The

genitive relation is sometimes joined via preposition od in Czech, e.g. Byl pokousán od

psa. This preposition is preferred if the agent is non-human.

According to Rusínová (1996: 524), some linguists overall distinguish between

personal and impersonal passive in periphrastic constructions: Vilém Závada byl

jmenován zasloužilým umělcem (personal passive), whereas examples like pevnosti bylo

dobyto, cíle bylo dosaženo, projektu bylo využito are instances of impersonal passive.

She concludes that in practise it is not usual to come across sentences where the agent is

specified through personal pronouns I and you: Syn byl mnou potrestán, Tebou o tom

bylo rozhodnuto (rare) (Rusínová 1996: 524).

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2.2 Special cases of the passive formation

2.2.1 Idioms

In English idiomatic collocations of verbs and prepositions (i.e. cases when the

verb and preposition create a new semantic unit), e.g. reckon with behave in the same

way as a one-word verb as for the formation of the passive voice is concerned. The

subject of a passive clause is again the object of an active clause and the preposition

remains stuck to the verb: This possibility has been reckoned with. Such a construction

does not exist in Czech: S touto možností se počítalo. The prepositional object (with

this possibility) remains the same as in an active reformulation and the passive is

formed as non-subjective passive (Dušková 1988: 251).

2.2.2 Ditransitive verbs – which object will be transformed into subject?

Ditransitive verbs (verbs with a direct and an indirect object) have a double

passive construction in English because the subject of the passive voice can become

either of the two objects. On the contrary, in Czech, the subject of the passive voice can

become only the direct object. For example, everyone is given an opportunity –

každému je dána příležitost, an opportunity is given to everyone – příležitost je dána

každému; he was assigned an important task – an important task was assigned to him

byl mu přidělen důležitý úkol.

Dušková (1988: 252) notes that an indirect object often bears to in the passive.

Concurrently there occurs the passive with indirect object without to: a reward was

given to him/given him. The choice of construction depends a great deal on individual

verbs (Dušková 1988: 252).

37

2.2.3 Czech word order stands in for English passive voice

In English the passive with expressed doer enables a pre-verbal positioning of a

patient and a post-verbal positioning of an agent, which can be made use of as a tool of

functional sentence perspective. In Czech such a change can be reached via mere

change of a word order, without any change of syntactic construction. An active

construction with a changed word order is usually a counterpart of an English passive

with expressed doer, namely when the doer is animate. In both languages then, the basic

distribution of communicative dynamism is the same, with theme at the beginning and

rheme in the end position. Compare In some animals the protection of the young is

carried out by the males.

Also an inanimate doer can be in Czech constructed as a subject after an action

verb, e.g. As a medical student I was impressed by the discipline in the operating

theatre. Když jsem studoval medicínu, zapůsobila na mne kázeň v operačním sále.

However, more frequently, the passive is the same as in English, cf. Performance in

particular subjects can be considerably affected by attitudes towards a teacher. Výkon v

jednotlivých předmětech může být značně ovlivněn postoji k učiteli (Dušková 1988:

261).

2.2.4 Non-formation of the passive

We encounter the non-formation of the passive voice in the examples of locative

and locativo-possessive subject; the car leaks oil, in which the subject expresses the site

where the intransitive action takes place, which in turn, expresses in the Czech by

means of adverbial construction. In the following, the book has sold over 100,000

copies, is the subject in a possessive relation towards the object, cf. the Czech

equivalent té knihy se už prodalo přes 100,000. In the sentences like he burst a blood-

vessel praskla mu céva, the subject is both the place of verbal action and at the same

38

time the possessor towards an object. These cases do not allow for the passive voice

because in principle they represent intransitive actions with an adverbial, cf. oil leaks

from the car, in which the English, as opposed to Czech, is also susceptible of a subject

construction (Dušková 1988: 259).

2.2.5 Aspect of the Czech passive voice

English passive constructed by means of the auxiliary verb be does not

distinguish in between the expression of an action and the expression of a state. As

contrasted to Czech, where an action and a state are indicated by different aspect, in

English the active or stative nature of the verb follows mostly from context, cf. all our

effort is wasted – much effort is wasted on things like that; my things are packed – my

things are always packed by my wife (Dušková 1988: 262).

2.2.6 Other auxiliary verbs in periphrastic passive

In Czech as well as English the periphrastic passive can be formed also by

means of other auxiliary verbs than the basic verb be, for example: Problém zůstal

nevyřešen, Tento problém nemáme dosud vyřešen,(Hladká, Karlík 2004: 391), Pavel

dostal vynadáno (Grepl, Karlík: 1986, 168). These syntactic constructions serve as basic

means of secondary diathesis which is characterized by the removal of an agent from its

subject position (Grepl, Karlík: 1986, 167)

2.2.7 Non-subjective (impersonal) passive

The instances of impersonal passive, as they are mentioned by Rusínová (1996:

524) or by Havránek and Jedlička (1981: 236) merge with the non-subjective passive as

it is defined by Trávníček (1949: 740). It is characterised by the absence of grammatical

subject in a periphrastic construction. It occurs relatively rarely, partly in cases like

města bylo dobyto, which contain expressed indirect object of perfective action, partly

in similar cases without an object, bylo oznámeno. The former case can be altered into

39

subjective variant by use of nominative case instead of the genitive (Trávníček 1949:

740). The English passive is always binominal, i.e. contains a subject. Monominal

passive like the non-subjective passive rozkazu bylo uposlechnuto does not have

analogy in English. Against Czech monominal sentences in English there are binominal

ones with the expressed subject which corresponds to various Czech cases (except for

nominative and accusative): the command was obeyed (Dušková 1988: 265).

2.3 Reflexive passive

This passive construction is formed by means of a verb shaped as in active-like

shaped verb plus the reflexive pronoun se, e.g. noviny se tisknou (Daneš 1955: 58).

Havránek and Jedlička (2002: 105) argue that the subject of the reflexive passive is

ordinarily material rather than personal. The reflexive passive has certain restrictions on

its use:

1. In the sentences with reflexive passive, it is impossible to express an agent,

except for the case when the agent is represented by the semantic notion “place” or

“time”, and then it takes the form of place or time adverbial: Na dráze se zavedly nové

typy jízdenek. If the reflexive passive is conveyed by means of time or place adverbial,

it can hold the shape of instrumental or adverbial case: Nová ústava Parlamentem / v

Parlamentě schválena hned napoprvé (Rusínová 1996: 524). We say that the reflexive

passive bears de-agentive function (Rusínová 1996: 324). Štícha in his essay directly

suggests calling the reflexive passive as reflexive deagentive (in Hladká, Karlík 2004:

391). Also Dušková (1999: 177) claims that the reflexive passive may be called non-

agentive since in the events involved the question of agency does not arise. On the other

hand sentence containing the reflexive passive largely imply the general human agent.

Hence agency, though merely implicit, is a relevant semantic feature of this type of

clauses (Dušková 1999: 177)

40

2. Reflexive passive is limited to the third person. This means that it is

impossible to use this construction if the patient is the speaker or addressee and in

majority of cases even if the patient is a human person: Maminka umývá malou Janičku

→* Malá Janička se umývá. In such case it is possible to use only the periphrastic

passive: Malá Janička je umývána (maminkou). Otherwise a homonymy with the

sentence containing predicate in the active voice can occur. The reflexive particle se

acquires then the function of an object and expresses that the agent and patient are the

same person (Rusínová 1996: 524).

3. Sentences with reflexive passive have meaning of an action, especially in

imperfective verbs (Havránek, Jedlička 1981: 237). That is why the reflexive passive is

preferred (grammatically and also stylistically) in imperfective verbs which imply some

agent: S tím se počítalo již dávno is more appropriate than S tím bylo počítáno již dávno

(Rusínová 1996: 525).

4. In case of intransitive verbs the phenomenon in question is not the passive

voice but anonymization of an agent, for example, Sedí se tam dobře (Rusínová 1996:

324).

2. 4 Functions

Generally the shift in between the points of view with respect to active (point of

view of an agent, actor, doer, performer) and passive (point of view of a patient,

experiencer) voice is included in the term de-agentative transformation (translated from

Grepl, Karlík 1998: 133). More concretely this is the question of de-agentization of the

type agent – patient. The agent is displaced from the subject position and its placed is

taken up by an element with the role of a patient (Grepl, Karlík 1998: 133).

There are many motives that can inspire a speaker or writer to remove agent

from its position of the subject of a sentence. And in texts the various motives often

41

combine. The enumeration of reasons given by Rusínová (1996: 528) includes

anonymization, generalization, secondary attention paid to an agent or emphasis on

different semantic role of an agent than agentive.

First of all, an agent can be backgrounded which means that it is not expressed

in the hierarchically highest position in a sentence. This can be reached only by means

of periphrastic passive. Anonymization of an agent means that it is unexpressed in any

sentence position, which occurs due to its unimportance and irrelevance for the given

situation, or when the speaker does not know the agent (or does not want to know). For

these purposes both passive forms can be used: Moje motorka byla opravována asi

týden; Moje motorka se opravovala asi týden.

Generalization of an agent differs from anonymization only in the incentive

leading to non-expression of an agent which is the fact that the agent can be anybody

who comes into consideration with regard to the action described by the verb. This can

be reached by means of reflexive passive: Před ale se píše čárka or less frequently, by

periphrastic passive: Toho nařízení není dbáno (Rusínová 1996: 528).

As for the different semantic role than agentive is concerned, this is the domain

solely of the reflexive passive which make the agent remove from its subject position

into a dative position which consequently results in the weakening of its agentive

nature. Thus other natures come into foreground:

1. “Experiencer” – Spalo se mi dobře. The emphasis put on the experiencing of the

agent shows through the expressions like the following: dobře, špatně, lehce,

snadno which characterize the intensity of the experience.

2. “Intentionality” – Petrovi se chtělo spát. The reflexive passive containing modal

verb chtít is used.

42

3. “Non-agentive” – Petrovi se rozlilo mléko. Such a sentence unambiguously

indicates that the action happened not on purpose.

Daneš (1964: 222) sticks at the phrases like for example Četa byla nastoupena.

He points at the fact that the verb in question is intransitive and thus it is impossible to

form the passive voice. In comparison with a very similar sentence Četa byla napadena

the two sentences look alike which would suggest the passive voice. However, in the

former case, as Daneš draws to attention, the used construction is not a representative of

the passive voice and the past participle nastoupena has “validity of an adjective here

and in connection with the verbal element byla it does not form verbal expression”

(translated from Daneš 1964: 222-3). Rather on the contrary, it is analogous to the type

of sentences as strom je rozkvetlý, rybník je zamrzlý.

2.5 Stylistic differences between periphrastic and reflexive passive

Solely periphrastic passive voice is used in constructions like být chválen,

jmenován, trestán, odsouzen etc. where it really has the meaning of “passivity”: the

subject is able to passively receive given activity and submit to it.

Solely reflexive passive is used in expressions like prodá se (dům), zvyšuje se

(nájemné), hledá se (zařízený pokoj). Also intransitive verbs (verbs which take an object

in a case different from the fourth) construct the passive voice exclusively by reflexive

form: vypráví se o tom v celém městě. Since the use of this passive form is limited to the

third person of both numbers, if it is required to express oneself about a first and second

person we have to use periphrastic passive: byl jsem přeložen na jiné pracoviště.

To sum it up, the possibility of choice between the two passive constructions is

available (except for the above mentioned cases) only in case of a third person.

Periphrastic passive is used always if we wish to express an actor. If an emphasis is

focused on the activity itself and an agent is unexpressed we use the reflexive passive:

43

svetry se nosí za špatného počasí. The same is valid for sentences with impersonal

subject: říká se, hovořilo se.

The use of periphrastic passive is to a great amount connected with professional

style because in passive generally the actionality is strongly reduced and the view of a

situation as a state resulting from previous action is stressed and foregrounded

(especially in passives of perfective verbs): přehrada byla postavena.

Thus periphrastic passive voice is a part of strongly or even fully stative

phraseology and that is why it is not suitable for narrative style or news reporting

(Novinářský studijní ústav, 1955, 59). In such instances it is replaced by reflexive

passive which maintains the actionality of a situation to the full.

44

3. Tables

The following Table 1 provides a summary of the occurrences of the passive

voice in the twenty explored short stories by O.Henry. Individual entries are reserved

for verbs which function as idiomatic expressions, for example the verb play is

distinguished from the perfective play out by separate analysis. The analysis includes

the indication of an agent, specification of an agent (attached via by-phrase: here I

distinguish between human and non-human agent; attached via the preposition with or

by means of any other preposition which is then stated in the respective column). The

abbreviation “Imp (hum)” stands for a situation when the human agent is unexpressed,

nevertheless it can be deduced either from the previous verbal context or the agent is

represented by, what is called, generalized human doer, which is usually conditioned by

the nature of a concrete verb, for example the verb arrange presupposes a human actor.

Unknown doer completes the possibilities as for an agent is concerned by accounting

for all cases when an agent is unexpressed owing to the fact that it is unknown at all

(e.g. his eyes were firmly imbedded in his face), when the agent cannot be thought of

and created with the given verb (e.g. the old restaurant is gone), or when it is unclear

whether the agent is human or non-human (e.g. the window was opened – by wind or by

somebody?).

Attention is also paid to the tense of the passive voice, the basic tenses are

marked by words “past, present, future” with the expression “perfect” added behind if it

is the case. The fact that the passive voice has been expressed in progress is indicated by

the abbreviation “cont.” (continuous) following after the appropriate tense. I include an

infinitive form as one of the “Tense category”. Finally the information about the formal

aspects of a passive phrase is ended by demonstration of the presence of negation in the

phrase.

45

The presence of a value is marked via number 1 (if not specified further). The

various colours are applied when there is more than one occurrence of a same verb in

the texts and where an ambiguity would otherwise arise. The differentiation of the

colours and their assignment to individual instances is rather intuitive and does not need

further explanation. I do not include the statistics concerning the incidence proportion of

the passive as a percentage of all (inc. active) verbal occurrences since it is a well-

known and well-proven fact that the way of expression by means of the active voice is

preponderant in language.

3. 1 Table 1 Verb Passive By

(hum) By (Non-hum)

With Other prep.

Imp (hum)

Uknw. doer

Tense Neg.

accompany 1 1 past perfect 1 accomplish 1 1 present perfect 1 administer 1 1 past admit 1 1 past allow 4 4 present 2x; future,

inf. 1

arrange 1 1 present arrest 1 1 future ask 1 1 past assign 1 1 past perfect awaken 1 1 past perfect back up 1 1 past balk 1 1 inf. bark 1 1 inf. bear 3 3 past 2x; inf. begin 1 1 past believe 1 1 inf. beset 1 1 present bless 1 1 present perfect blockade 2 1 in past 2x bog 1 1 present book 1 1 past break up 1 past buck 1 1 inf. build up 1 1 inf. burden 1 past button 1 1 past cage 1 1 present call 3 3 past; present 2x carry 1 1 past charge 1 past churn 1 1 inf. close ½ 1 past perfect

46

Verb Passive By (hum)

By (Non-hum)

With Other prep.

Imp (hum)

Uknw. doer

Tense Neg.

compare 1 1 inf. 1 complete 1 1 past connect 1 1 past consider 1 1 present consume 1 1 past corner 1 1 present cover 3 2 past 2x; present dash 1 on past deal with 1 1 inf. declare 1 1 past defeat 1 1 present 1 deliver 1 1 inf. demolish 1 1 past deny 2 1 1 present; past 1 descend from

1 from past 1

direct 1 1 past perfect discover 1 1 future dismiss 1 1 past dispatch 2 from 1 past; past perfect dispossess 1 1 past perfect dispute 2 1 1 past; inf. do 2 2 present; past

drag 1 1 past draw 1 1 past dress 1 1 past drive away 1 1 past embrace 1 1 past perfect end 1 1 past enter 1 1 past perfect entrance 1 1 past erect 1 1 inf. escort 1 1 past perfect examine 1 1 past expect 1 1 inf. 1 feed 1 1 present fill 3 2 1 past 3x 1 find 3 1 + 1 1 Inf.; present; past 1 finish 1 1 past fire 1 1 past fix 1 1 past flag 1 1 past flank 1 1 past flutter 1 1 past force 2 2 present, past forget 1 1 past perfect forgive 1 1 inf. frown 1 1 present gather 1 1 past give 1 1 past perfect go 3 3 present 2x; past hale 1 1 past perfect hang 2 2 past, inf. have 1 1 inf. 1

47

Verb Passive By (hum)

By (Non-hum)

With Other prep.

Imp (hum)

Uknw. doer

Tense Neg.

heap 1 1 past hear 1 1 future hedge 1 past hem in 1 past hold 2 1 1 past, future hold up 1 ½ ½ present perfect house 1 in present imbed 1 1 past import 1 1 past

impress 1 1 present include 1 1 present inform 1 1 present perfect instruct 1 1 present intend 2 1 1 past 2x intermix 1 1 past perfect 1 interrupt 1 1 past introduce 1 1 present perfect 1 jar 1 past keep in 1 1 past kidnap 2 1 1 past 2x knock down 1 1 past lay 2 around 1 past, future leave 2 1 1 past 2x light 1 1 present light 1 1 past lose 2 1 present; past make 3 1 + 1 1 past; inf.; past

perfect

make up 1 from past perfect manufacture 1 1 present mark 1 1 present mean 1 1 present miss 1 1 inf. mistake 3 3 past; present

perfect; present

name 4 4 inf. 2x; past; past inf.

need 1 1 past occupy 1 1 past open 1 1 past order 1 1 past overcharge 1 1 past overcome 1 1 past overpower 1 1 past paint 1 1 inf. patrol 1 1 present pay 1 1 past perfect

peel 1 1 past 1 perform 1 1 past permeate 1 1 past

play 2 2 present; past cont.

play out 1 1 past perfect

48

Verb Passive By (hum)

By (Non-hum)

With Other prep.

Imp (hum)

Uknw. doer

Tense Neg.

precipitate 1 1 past prey 1 1 present proclaim 1 1 present prompt 1 1 inf. pull 1 1 past quench 1 1 past raise 2 2 past 2x realize 1 1 inf. 1 rebuff 1 1 past receive 3 3 past; future; inf. re-christen 1 1 past perfect recognize 1 1 past record 1 1 past recruit 1 1 past refill 1 1 past request 1 1 past perfect restore 2 2 past; inf. reveal 1 in past rouse 1 past say 2 2 past 2x scatter 1 1 past scuttle 1 1 present perfect season 1 1 past 1 seat 2 2 past 2x see 1 1 past sell 1 1 present serve 3 3 inf.; past` present set 1 1 present sew 1 1 past perfect shoot 1 1 past perfect 1 shove 1 1 past show 2 1 1 past 2x shrink 1 1 past situate 1 1 present smooth 1 1 past 1 spend 2 2 past; past perfect 1 step on 1 1 past perfect stew 1 present store 1 1 present stray 1 1 present stretch 1 1 past sub-let 1 1 inf. 1 supply 1 1 past suppose 1 1 past suspend 1 1 past tag 1 1 present perfect take 2 1 1 past 2x 1

tattoo 1 1 past tear away 1 1 past perfect tear down 1 1 past tell 3 1 1 + 1 past; inf.; present

perfect

tempt 1 1 present think 1 1 past

49

Verb Passive By (hum)

By (Non-hum)

With Other prep.

Imp (hum)

Uknw. doer

Tense Neg.

tie 1 1 past tie down 1 to present 1 torture 1 1 inf. trample 1 1 past transfer 1 1 inf. trim 1 1 past perfect tuck in 1 1 present tug 1 1 past typewrite 1 1 past perfect use 2 1 1 present, inf. waken 1 1 present wash 1 1 past perfect wear 2 2 inf. 2x 2 whistle 1 1 inf. wipe out 2 2 past; future witness 1 1 inf. worship 1 1 inf. wreck 1 1 past write 1 1 past

50

3.2 Table 2

Each instance of the passive voice entered in the Table 1 is illustrated by an

appropriate example in Table 2 which cites the relevant passages containing the passive

expression in English. In parallel, the correspondent Czech translations of the excerpts

are offered for comparison. By letter “D” placed in front of a passage I chose to mark a

direct speech periscope. The passive construction in English is marked off in bold

letters including the highlighted agentive preposition if there is any. In Czech

translations then, in bold are pointed out passages which correspond to the English

passive constructions, regardless of the used voice or form. The English abstracts are

ordered alphabetically, whereas the first letters of the highlighted passive construction’s

lexical verb are considered as determinative. The abstracts are numbered in order to

serve as examples in the following analytical part.

1 […], had they not been accompanied

by […] vanity (p. 124) […], nebýt toho, že je provázela […] marnivost (HT4, p. 82)

2 This could not have been accomplished […] (p. 25)

Toho nemohlo býti dosaženo […] (HT, p. 75)

3 With the effect of a schoolmaster entering the play-room of his pupils was that blow administered. (p. 397)

Úder měl stejný účinek jako vstup učitele do třídy. (VŠ5, p. 93)

4 2x […] you were admitted […] to dine. (p. 393)

[…] směli jste pojíst. (VŠ, p. 88)

5 D Why am I not allowed to accept this […] offer? (p. 408)

Proč nesmím přijmout nabídku […]? (HT, p. 53)

6 D But I’m allowed to meet her […] (p. 223)

Smín na ni počkat […] (ZH6, p. 249)

7 D […] tenants should be allowed to use […] (p. 333)

[…] budou sloužit nájemníkům jako […] (HT, p. 160)

8 D […] girls […] who will in time be allowed to accept […] (p. 408)

[…]děvčat, kterým bude časem dovoleno přimout […] (HT, p. 53)

4 HT stands for the short stories’ collection called Harlemská tragédie a jiné povídky. 5 VŠ stands for the short stories’ collection called Vrtkavá štěstěna aneb jak se Gladys činila a jiné povídky. 6 ZH stands for the short stories’ collection called Zpověď humoristova.

51

9 D Every hour […] is arranged for days in advance. (p. 223)

Každá hodina […] je zadána dny předem. (ZH, p. 249)

10 D […] you will be arrested by one of our agents. (p. 408)

[…], naši agenti vás zatknou. (HT, p. 53)

11 D […] here’s a note I was asked to hand you. (p. 261)

Byl jsem požádán, abych vám jej odevzdal. (ZH, p. 85)

12 The merry top-riders had been assigned to their seats by the gentlemanly conductor. (p. 251)

Ochotný vedoucí ukázal účastníkům jejich místa. (VŠ, p. 79)

13 […] they had been awakened […] by the noise of a pistol-shot […] (p. 71)

[…] byli probuzeni […] výstřelem z pistole […] (VŠ, p. 107)

14 […] it was backed up by the muzzle of a breech-loader. (p. 27)

[…] situaci jistila hlaveň zadovky. (HT, p. 76)

15 […], yet will his prowess be balked when he comes to wrest salt […] (p. 276)

[…] než by vydobyl sůl […] (VŠ, p. 23)

16 […], to be barked at by hopeful cabmen […] (p. 395)

[…] a soustřeďujíce na sebe pokřiky nadějných taxikářů […] (VŠ, p. 91)

17 […] the Spaniard was bearded again in recapitulation. (p. 324)

[…] setkání provázely posměšky na adresu Španělů. (HT, p. 107)

18 […] winter season was well begun. (p. 127)

[…] byla zimní sezóna v plném proudu. (HT, p. 87)

19 […] if countenances are to be believed […] (p. 74)

[…] pokud bylo možno věřit zdání […] (VŠ, p. 110)

20 […] the roads […] are beset with “pitfall and with gin”. (p. 406)

Kolem cest […] jsou ‚nástrahy a gin‛ […] (HT, p. 50)

21 D […] I’ve been blessed with since […] (p. 325)

[…], kolik jsem nezažil od doby, co […] (HT, p. 108)

22 D He was blockaded in a tangled mess of vehicles and horses. (p. 224)

Byl zablokován v klubku povozů a koní. (ZH, p. 250)

23 The sidewalk was blockaded with sightseers […] (p. 251)

Na chodníku došlo k tlačenici, vyvolané čumily, […] (VŠ, p. 79)

24 […] that little Alice is bogged […] (p. 216)

[…], že se malá Alenka zabořila do bahna […] (VŠ, p. 7)

25 Keogh was booked for a passage […] (p. 125)

Keogh si zamluvil místo pro […] přeplavbu. (HT, p. 84)

26 I was born a yellow pup; […] (p. 213) Narodil jsem se jako žluté štěně; […] (VŠ, p. 6)

27 D […] we happened to be born there. (p. 178)

[…] se přihodilo, že jsme se tam narodili. (VŠ, p. 21)

28 D The madam was broken up worst of all. (SR7, p. 50)

Nejvíce ze všeho to ale postihlo paní domu; […] (ZH, p. 186)

29 D […] rules […] couldn’t be bucked for a yard by a team of ten-millionaires. (p. 223)

[…] zákony […] nelze zvrátit ani desetispřežením milionářů. (ZH, p. 250)

30 D Now, that business could be built up. (p. 374)

Dal by se z něho vybudovat docela slušný obchod. (VŠ, p. 46)

7 SR stands for the short stories’ collection called The Skylight Room and Other Stories; all the other unmarked abstracts are taken from my main source 69 Short Stories.

52

31 D […] baggage […] with which his flight was burdened. (p. 75)

[…] nebo cokoli, co by mu ztěžovalo útěk. (VŠ, p. 111)

32 His shabby coat was buttoned high […] (p. 295)

Ošumělý kabát byl zapnut na všechny knoflíky […] (ZH, p. 215)

33 Thus an animal […] acts when it is caged […] (p. 294)

Takhle si počíná zvíře, když je lidé dají do klece (ZH, p. 213)

34 D I’m called the Llano Kid in the Rio Grande country. (SR, p. 48)

V kraji kolem Ria Grande mi však říkají Llano Kid. (ZH, p. 185)

35 […] hummed what is still called a chanson […] (p. 395)

[…] si pobrukovala něco, čemu se dosud říká […] chanson. (VŠ, p. 90)

36 The black-and-tan was called “Tweetness”.

Černožlutýmu říkají Cukrouš. (VŠ, p. 7)

37 It was charged that not only had he given away […] (p. 133)

Tvrdilo se, že nejen udělil […] (HT, p. 94)

38 D […] or the thing in which it was carried […] (p. 71)

[…] či ta věc, v níž měly být uloženy […] (VŠ, p. 106)

39 […] wit that can be churned out of California claret. (p. 397)

[…] důvtipem, vyvolaným

kalifornským červeným vínem. (VŠ, p. 94)

40 ½ […]; but the majority of the doors belonged to business places that had long since been closed. (p. 259)

Většina dveří však patřila obchodním podnikům, jež byly už dávno zavřené. (ZH, p. 82)

41 Nothing could be compared with them […] (p. 310)

[…] se s tím nedalo nic jiného porovnat. (HT, p. 46)

42 […] picture was completed […] (p. 132)

[…] obraz je hotov […] (HT, p. 92)

43 […] its cause was connected, […], with the slowly moving hands of the time-piece. (p. 247)

[…], že neklid nějak souvisí s ručičkami časoměru, pomalu se pohybujícími. (ZH, p. 303)

44 D I told him it was considered a faithful likeness. (p. 297)

Řekl jsem mu, že to je věrná podoba. (ZH, p. 217)

45 Tons of brew have been consumed over theories […] (p. 177)

Při pátrání […] byly již zkonzumovány

tuny várek různého druhu. (VŠ, p. 19) 46 […] a cur that is cornered by his

tormentors. (p. 295) […] psa, kterého pronásledovatelé zahnali do kouta. (ZH, p. 215)

47 […] and […] his paper is covered! (p. 391)

[…] a […] papír je popsán! (VŠ, p. 85)

48 The walls […] were covered with original sketches by the artists who […] (p. 393)

Stěny […] byly pokryty původními kresbami umělců, kteří […] (VŠ, p. 88)

49 […] his breast was covered […] with croses, […] (p. 125)

[…] byla jeho hruď poseta […] kříži, […] (HT, p. 83)

50 They […] were dashed on the crest of a great human wave of pleasure mad-seekers […] (p. 329)

[…] a na hřbetu mohutné vlny poblázněných návštěvníků prahnoucích po zábavě byli unešeni […] (HT, p. 155)

51 […] and one who was not to be carelessly dealt with […] (p. 72)

[…] a mužem, s nímž se nedalo lehkomyslně jednat […] (VŠ, p. 107)

52 […] Thanksgiving Day was declared […] (p. 309)

[…] Den Díkuvzdání je vyhlášen […] (HT, p. 44)

53

53 But I am not defeated. (p. 397) Nevzdal jsem se však. (VŠ, p. 93) 54 […] it would be delivered to him. (p.

176) […] mu bude bezpečně doručen. (VŠ, p. 18)

55 His pictures […] were demolished. (p. 133)

[…] ničili jeho portréty. (HT, p. 94)

56 It cannot be denied that […] (p. 323) Nelze popřít, že […] (HT, p. 105) 57 Humans were denied the speech of

animals. (p. 215) Lidem není dopřáno dorozumívat se se zvířaty. (VŠ, p. 8)

58 […], Virginians who weren’t descended from Pocahontas, […] (p. 177)

[…], lidi z Virginie, kteří neodvozovali svůj původ od Pocahontas, […] (VŠ, p. 20)

59 […] that had hitherto been directed at Aileen alone. (p. 279)

[…], který do té doby šetřili výlučně pro Aileenu. (VŠ, p. 27)

60 By reference to the almanac a large amount of territory will be discovered upon which its rays also fell. (p. 180)

Podle jednoho kalendáře jeho paprsky dopadaly současně na další rozlehlé území. (VŠ, p. 11)

61 D A police captain […] was dismissed from force […] (p. 373)

[…] policejní kapitán […] byl […] propuštěn ze sboru. (VŠ, p. 45)

62 A sailor had been dispatched for the missing cargo. (SR, p. 47)

Poslal plavčíka pro chybějící náklad […] (ZH, p. 184)

63 Colonel Emilio Falcon […] was dispatched from the capital upon this important mission. (p. 70)

Touto důležitou misí byl pověřen […] plukovník Emilio Falcon. (VŠ, p. 105)

64 […] ghost that had been dispossessed. (p. 372)

[…] jako nějaký vypuzený duch. (VŠ, p. 44)

65 Goodwin was not to be disputed. (p. 75)

O Goodwinovi nebylo třeba pochybovat. (VŠ, p. 112)

66 […] up-hill charge that was disputed […] by the Spaniards and afterward by the Democrats. (p. 323)

[…] útoku do kopce, který byl […] kritizován jak Španěly tak později Demokraty […] (HT, p. 105)

67 D It’s done, […] (p. 298) Hotovo, […](ZH, p. 218) 68 […] when wrong or harm was done to

one of them. (SR, p. 46) […] kdykoli bylo některému z nich ublíženo, […](ZH, p. 182)

69 […] the ranchman was dragged away. (p. 407)

[…] rančer byl vlečen pryč, […] (HT, p. 52)

70 The shades were drawn, […] (p. 248) Žaluzie byly staženy […] (ZH, p. 304) 71 He was dressed all in black, […] (p.

310) Byl celý v černém […] (HT, p. 45)

72 […], but were driven away by the military, […] (p. 133)

[…], byly však odehnány vojskem, […] (HT, p. 94)

73 Not even Aileen herself had been publicly embraced […] (p. 278)

Ani samotná Aileen nebyla veřejně objata […] (VŠ, p. 27)

74 […] the inquiry was ended […] (p. 76) […] vyšetřování je u konce, […] (VŠ, p. 113)

75 […] negotiations […] had been entered into […] (p. 133)

[…] došlo k […] jednání […] (HT, p. 95)

76 If the transients were entranced by the fascinating Aileen, […] (p. 277)

Jsou-li občasní hosté Aileenou okouzleni, […] (VŠ, p. 24)

77 In every town he caused to be erected statues of himself […] (p. 125)

V každém městě dal postavit své pomníky […] (HT, p. 83)

54

78 […] the prince had been escorted to the door by the butler […] (p. 372)

[…] princ byl komorníkem vyveden ze dveří […] (VŠ, p. 43)

79 Two or three who were thus examined

[…] (p. 71) Dva nebo tři z těch, kdož byli takto vyslýcháni, […] (VŠ, p. 106)

80 A yellow dog […] mustn’t be expected to perform any tricks […] (p. 213)

Od žlutého psa […] nelze očekávat žádné zázraky […] (VŠ, p. 6)

81 D Now, while you are fed and […] (p. 394)

Tak a teď, když jsme se dobře najedli a […] (VŠ, p. 90)

82 The benches were not filled; […] (p. 246)

Lavičky nebyly obsazené; […] (ZH, p. 302)

83 Her soul was filled with a […] joy. (p. 396)

Její duše byla naplněna […] radostí. (VŠ, p. 92)

84 The hallways were suddenly filled with sound. (p. 363)

Chodba byla pojednou plná hluku. (HT, p. 7)

85 D When it was finished […] (p. 297) Když byl dokončen […] (ZH, p. 217) 86 D […] when the shot was fired, […]

(p. 73) […], když už jsem byl za výstřelu […] (VŠ, p. 109)

87 […], tablets were fixed […] (p. 125) […] byly desky […] (HT, p. 83) 88 But at Webb, […], where it was

flagged to take on a traveller, […] (SR, p. 46)

Když však vlak zastavil ve Webbu, […], aby přibral cestujícího, […] (ZH, p. 182)

89 […] whose steps were flanked by two green lights. (p. 373)

[…], u jejíhož schodiště zářila po stranách dvě zelená světla. (VŠ, p. 45)

90 The boarders on the steps were fluttered. (p. 181)

Nájemníci na schodech se vylekali. (VŠ, p. 12)

91 […] they are forced to seek […] (p. 333)

[…] jsou nucena vyhledávat […] (HT, p. 160)

92 […] Tommy Tucker, who was forced to hand out vocal harmony for […] (p. 296)

[…] Tommy Tuckera, který byl nucen rozdávat vokální harmonii za […] (ZH, p. 216)

93 D I wanted to be forgiven, […] (p. 249)

Chtěl jsem, aby mi bylo odpuštěno. (ZH, p. 304)

94 […] he had discovered that one of the necessaries of life, […], had been forgotten. (SR, p. 47)

[…], když zjistil, že byla zapomenuta jedna z jeho životních potřeb, […] (ZH, p. 184)

95 […] space for […] a chair was not to be found. (p. 125)

[…] ani nezbylo místo pro […] židli. (HT, p. 84)

96 But beneath hard the crust […] is found a delectable and luscious food. (p. 182)

Avšak I pod tvrdou korou […] bývá lahoda! (VŠ, p. 14)

97 […] it was found that the Kid had committed an indiscretion, […] (SR, p. 44)

[…], zjistilo se, že se Kid dopustil hlouposti […] (ZH, p. 181)

98 […], for […] .45s are frowned upon by town marshals, […] (SR, p. 47)

[…], protože městští strážníci nelibě pohlížejí na revolver ráže .45 […] (ZH, p. 184)

99 […] near which were gathered […] some twenty […] girls. (p. 410)

[…],u nichž postávalo […] asi dvacet […] děvčat. (HT, p. 56)

55

100 […] cats […] saw reason to give thanks that prehensile claws had been given to them. (p. 217)

Kočky […] div že si neukroutily krky z toho, jak jsem je přehlížel. (VŠ, p. 10)

101 Rita’s cough is almost gone. (p. 380) Rita se už skoro zbavila kašle. (VŠ, p. 255)

102 D The old restaurant is gone, […] (p. 261)

Stará restaurace je pryč, […] (ZH, p. 85)

103 D […] bank account was gone […] (p. 297)

[…] peníze už byly z banky pryč […] (ZH, p. 217)

104 They were not to be had in Pension Murphy; […] (p. 181)

V penziónu paní Murphyové sice nebyly k mání, […] (VŠ, p. 12)

105 […] guest who had been haled from the line […] (p. 295)

[…] hosta, kterého vybral z řady […] (ZH, p. 215)

106 The great bulk of the Captain […] was heaped against the arm of the bench […] (p. 372)

Mohutná kapitánova postava […] opírala se sklesle o opěradlo lavičky […] (VŠ, p. 43)

107 […] and he will be heard from next summer at Coney Island. (p. 176)

[…] a v létě prý na sebe strhne pozornost v zábavném parku na Coney Island. (VŠ, p. 17)

108 She was hedged, […] (p. 396) Byla omezována, […] (VŠ, p. 92) 109 D […] certain amount of cleanliness

will not be held against him. (p. 295) […] jistá dávka čistoty mu nebude přičítána k tíži. (ZH, p. 215)

110 […] overriding of all tenets […] that were held by his caste […] (p. 330)

[…] potlačování […] zásad dodržovaných jeho kastou […] (HT, p. 155)

111 D I’ve been held up for my story with a loaded meal pointed at my head twenty times. (p. 296)

Už jsem byl dvacetkrát nucen vyprávět za dobrou večeři svůj příběh. (ZH, p. 216)

112 D […] while the cab was hemmed in. (p. 225)

[…], zatím co drožka byla zablokována. (ZH, p. 252)

113 […] thus a caged man acts when he is housed in a jungle of doubt. (p. 294)

[…] podobně jedná polapený člověk, když je uzavřen v džungli nejistoty. (ZH, p. 213)

114 Below it was hung a […] canvas […] (p. 410)

[…] pod ním byl upevněn plakát […] (HT, p. 56)

115 It was to be hung in the National Gallery […] (p. 132)

Obraz má viset v Národní galerii […] (HT, p. 93)

116 His eyes were […] firmly imbedded in […] (p. 309)

Jeho oči byly […] pevně zasazené do […] (HT, p. 44)

117 His clothes were imported […] (SR, p. 52)

Oděv byl z dovozu […] (ZH, p. 189)

118 People are more impressed by a kodak […] (p. 128)

Na lidi udělá větší dojem fotoaparát […] (HT, p. 88)

119 D All that’s included in the fall. (p. 298)

Toto vše patří k mému pádu. (ZH, p. 218)

120 D I suppose you have been informed of the subsequent facts. (p. 75)

Soudím, že další fakta jsou vám už známa. (VŠ, p. 111)

121 D […] I am instructed to pursue […] (p. 76)

Já jsem […] dostal příkaz, abych sledoval […] (VŠ, p. 112)

122 Speech was intended; […] (p. 311) […]; měl to být projev. (HT, p. 47)

56

123 […], as a dog was intended to do. (p. 215)

[…] jako správný pes […] (VŠ, p. 7)

124 […], had not that genius been intermixed with other traits […] (p. 124)

[…], kdyby onen genius nebyl prostoupen jinými vlastnostmi, […] (HT, p. 82)

125 My meditations were interrupted by a tremendous noise and conflict […] (p. 179)

Moje meditace byla přerušena rámusem náhle vzplanuvší rvačky […] (VŠ, p. 22)

126 D […] whom I have not been introduced. (p. 328)

[…] kteří mi nebyli představeni. (HT, p. 154)

127 The fist […] banged […] and I was jarred into silence. (p. 177)

Pěst […] dopadla […] a vyvolala mé zmlknutí. (VŠ, p. 19)

128 But here he was kept in like a schoolboy […] (p. 328)

[…], ale on tu musil zůstat jako školák […] (HT, p. 153)

129 D […] Pat was kidnapped […] (p. 183)

[…] Pat…byl unesen […] (VŠ, p. 16)

130 D […] New Yorker who was kidnapped […] by some Afghanistan bandits. (p. 179)

[…] Newyorčana, kterého unesli nějací afgánští bandité […] (VŠ, p. 21)

131 […] men […] were knocked down […] (p. 179)

[…] muži […] padali na podlahu […] (VŠ, p. 22)

132 […], was laid around the characteristics […] (p. 124)

[…], byl založen na charakteristice […] (HT, p. 82)

133 They will be laid before you tomorrow […] (p. 327)

Budou vám předloženy zítra […] (HT, p. 151)

134 D What was left of you they’d feed to alligators. (SR, p. 53)

Co z vás zbude, předhodí krokodýlům. (ZH, p. 189)

135 So I was left with the would-be periwinkle, […] (p. 179)

A tak jsem byl opuštěn s rádoby koňadrou, […] (VŠ, p. 22)

136 As soon as the cigars were lighted, […] (p. 74)

[…] jakmile byly zapáleny doutníky, […] (VŠ, p. 111)

137 D Is it lit? (p. 392) Je zapálená? (VŠ, p. 86) 138 D […] many lives are lost when a

theatre catches fire? (p. 409) […] tolik lidí přijde o život, když hoří divadlo? (HT, p. 54)

139 Yet not all was lost. (p. 280) Všechno však nebylo ztraceno. (VŠ, p. 28)

140 […] reparation had been made. (p. 279)

[…] záležitost pěkně urovnal. (VŠ, p. 28)

141 […] that it was made of paint. (p. 130) […], že je namalován barvami. (HT, p. 91)

142 I desire that everything be made plain […] (p. 406)

Snažím se, aby vám všechno bylo naprosto jasné […] (HT, p. 51)

143 […] as if it had been made up from individual contributors from the chorus of a musical comedy. (p. 246)

[…] jako by bylo zhotoveno z jednotlivých příspěvků účinkujících ve sboru muzikálu. (ZH, p. 302)

144 D […] the costumes […] are manufactured. (p. 409)

[…] se vyrábějí […] kostýmy. (HT, p. 55)

145 […] a point that is marked by no monument […] (p. 375)

[…], místu, neoznačenému pomníkem, […] (VŠ, p. 47)

57

146 […] a comparison that is not meant to go further. (p. 253)

[…] přirovnání, o kterém se nebudeme

dále šířit. (VŠ, p. 82) 147 […] not a chance must be missed. (p.

394) […] nesměla […] propást jedinou příležitost. (VŠ, p. 90)

148 […] with a sigh that was mistaken for […] (p. 311)

[…] s povzdechem, který byl mylně

vykládán jako […] (HT, p. 47) 149 […] about having been mistaken for a

burglar. (p. 253) […], jak si jej spletli se zlodějem. (VŠ, p. 83)

150 D […] I’m mistaken in my man, […] (SR, p. 51)

[…], pak se ve vás mýlím. (ZH, p. 187)

151 D […] Pat he would be named, […] (p. 183)

Byl by se jmenoval Pat, […] (VŠ, p. 15)

152 D After him would the bye be named. (p. 183)

Hošík by se jmenoval po něm! (VŠ, p. 15)

153 […] it was […] a daring thing to have been named Mary. (p. 394)

[…] to byla […] odvážná věc, jmenovat se Mary. (VŠ, p. 89)

154 My cosmopolite was named E. Rushmore Coglan […] (p. 176)

Můj kosmopolita se jmenoval E. Rushmore Coglan […] (VŠ, p. 17)

155 Her services were needed at once, […] (p. 408)

[…] její služby byly žádány okamžitě […] (HT, p. 54)

156 His arms were occupied with bundles. (p. 363)

Náruč měl plnou balíčků. (HT, p. 7)

157 The broad jalousies were opened wide, […] (p. 72)

Široké žaluzie byly otevřeny dokořán […] (VŠ, p. 108)

158 The dinner was ordered. (p. 394) Hosté si objednali večeře. (VŠ, p. 89) 159 Stuffy Pete was overcharged with the

caloric […] (p. 309) Buclík Pete byl přeplněn kaloriemi […] (HT, p. 44)

160 By and by the restless mood was overcome. (p. 294)

Pomalu setřásl neklidnou náladu. (ZH, p. 213)

161 […] they were almost overpowered by a great clapping of hands […] (p. 177)

[…] budou přehlušeny velkým potleskem […] (VŠ, p. 19)

162 Artists had been paid more for portraits. (p. 127)

Umělcům už bylo zaplaceno víc za portréty. (HT, p. 85)

163 He is to be painted as Jupiter […] (p. 130)

Chce, abych ho namaloval jako Jupitera […] (HT, p. 90)

164 […] most of the […] paths are patrolled by their agents, […] (p. 406)

[…] většina […] pěšin je hlídána agenty, […] (HT, p. 50)

165 […] potatoes which were not yet peeled for breakfast. (p. 395)

[…] neoloupané brambory, chystané k snídani. (VŠ, p. 91)

166 His duty was performed. (p. 75) Splnil svou povinnost. (VŠ, p. 112) 167 He was permeated with the curse of

domesticity. (p. 364) Vyzařoval prokletí zdomácnělosti. (HT, p. 8)

168 When “Dixie” was being played […] (p. 177)

Když hráli „Dixii“, […] (VŠ, p. 19)

169 I will tell you how it’s played. (p. 232) Povím vám, jak se to hraje. (ZH, p. 274)

170 […] the game of Fox-in-the-Morning had been played out, […] (p. 71)

[…] „hon na lišku“ skončil, […] (VŠ, p. 107)

58

171 Expression on these subjects were precipitated […] by the third corner to our table. (p. 177)

Popud k rozuzlení těchto problémů přišel od třetího stolu, od našeho. (VŠ, p. 19)

172 […] every creature on earth is preyed upon by some other creature. (p. 251)

[…] pozemští tvorové se rádi navzájem pozorují. (VŠ, p. 79)

173 […] this day […] is well proclaimed to each of us. (p. 310)

Tento den […] je požehnáním pro nás všechny. (HT, p. 46)

174 […] he must be prompted to do his duty. (p. 364)

[…] je nutné ho pobídnout, aby konal svou povinnost. (HT, p. 10)

175 His hat was pulled low, […] (p. 372) […]; s kloboukem hluboko naraženým

do čela […] (VŠ, p. 44) 176 […] a fire that was seldom quenched.

(p. 76) […] zřídkakdy uhasitelný oheň. (VŠ, p. 113)

177 He and I were raised here in New York […] (p. 260)

Vyrostli jsme spolu v New Yorku […] (ZH, p. 82)

178 Loud voices and […] uproar were raised […] (p. 184)

Hlasy […] nabývaly na síle a rozruch vzrůstal. (VŠ, p. 16)

179 […] any hopes that may not be realized, […] (SR, p. 52)

[…] naději, která se možná nevyplní, […] (ZH, p. 188)

180 He was often rebuffed but never offensively. (p. 248)

Stalo se, že byl často odmítnut, nikdy však hrubě. (ZH, p. 303)

181 D […] and is waiting to know whether he will be received […] (SR, p. 51)

[…] a čeká na zprávu, zda bude přijat […] (ZH, p. 187)

182 […] as to how he would be received. (SR, p. 52)

[…] z toho, jak bude přijat. (ZH, p. 188)

183 […] and was at once received in the library.

[…], a byl okamžitě uveden do knihovny. (ZH, p. 252)

184 Blythe had been re-christened “Beelzebub” […] (p. 76)

Blythovi říkali „belzebub“ […] (VŠ, p. 113)

185 […] on […] face was recorded a little library of […] thoughts […] (p. 252)

Do tváře […] byla vepsána malá knihovnička […] myšlenek […] (VŠ, p. 81)

186 They were recognized. (p. 311) Už je tam znali. (HT, p. 47) 187 The Gentle Riders were recruited

from the aristocracy […] (p. 323) Vznešení jezdci byli rekrutováni z aristokracie […] (HT, p. 105)

188 The glasses were refilled. (p. 76) Sklenice byly znovu naplněny. (VŠ, p. 114)

189 The artist had been requested to […] (p. 132)

Umělec byl pozván, aby[…] (HT, p. 93)

190 […] order was restored, […] (p. 133) […] byl obnoven pořádek […] (HT, p. 95)

191 D You’re to be restored to favor. (p. 375)

Budeš rehabilitován! (VŠ, p. 48)

192 […] sadness that was revealed in their deep shadows […] (SR, p. 52)

[…] zármutek, odrážející se v hlubokých stínech […] (ZH, p. 189)

193 And my glee was roused because I had caught Mr. Kipling napping. (p. 176)

Moje radost byla vyburcována přesvědčením, že jsem pana Kiplinga nachytal na švestkách. (VŠ, p. 18)

194 […], it was said, […] (p. 133) […]- jak se vyprávělo -[…] (HT, p. 94) 195 It was said that […] (p. 125) Vyprávělo se, že […] (HT, p. 83)

59

196 […] portraits were scattered […] (p. 125)

[…] portréty byly rozptýleny (HT, p. 83)

197 D His ship has just been scuttled, […] (p. 225)

Zrovna mu potopili loď […] (ZH, p. 252)

198 […] who was not seasoned to […] liquids. (p. 324)

[…], který nebyl zvyklý na […] alkohol. (HT, p. 107)

199 […] he was seated at her side. (p. 328) […] tak se […] posadil vedle ní. (HT, p. 153)

200 A group of boarders were seated on the high stoop […] (p. 180)

Skupina nájemníků seděla na schodišti […] (VŠ, p. 11)

201 D He was seen once afterward in Texas, it was thought, […] (SR, p. 50)

Jednou prý byl viděn v Texasu, […] (ZH, p. 186)

202 D By the time dinner is served, […] (p. 295)

Až bude prostřena večeře, […] (ZH, p. 213)

203 Dinner was served to Goodwin […] (p. 74)

Večeře byla Goodwinovi […] naservírována […] (VŠ, p. 111)

204 […] they could be served. (p. 311) […] se to ocitlo na stole. (HT, p. 47) 205 D […] when your marriage day is set

[…] (p. 250) Až bude určen den vašeho sňatku, […] (ZH, p. 306)

206 Buttons that had been sewed upon […] by kind Salvation fingers […] (p. 309)

Knoflíky, které mu […] přišily […] pečlivé prsty Armády spásy, […] (HT, p. 44)

207 Even Aileen had not been shot at with a pistol. (p. 279)

Ani Aileen by se nemohla pochlubit tím, že po ní někdo střílel pistolí. (VŠ, p. 27)

208 The greatness […] was shown by the fact that […] (p. 133)

[…] velikost se projevila skutečností, že […] (HT, p. 94)

209 She was shown directly into his private office. (p. 410)

Okamžitě byla uvedena do soukromé kanceláře pana Vydry. (HT, p. 57)

210 Murray […] was shrunk into his dingy and ragged suit […] (p. 372)

[…] Murray zachumlán v ošumělých a potrhaných šatech […] (VŠ, p. 44)

211 Bogle’s is situated in that highway […] (p. 275)

Bogleova restaurace je situována na oné dálnici […] (VŠ, p. 23)

212 […] the line […] was not smoothed

away. (p. 247) […] vráska se neztratila. (ZH, p. 303)

213 D […] the money for which brandy balls are sold. (p. 409)

[…] peněz, vydávaných za rumové pralinky! (HT, p. 55)

214 […] days […] were spent in preliminaries. (p. 128)

[…] dny […] připadly na běžné přípravy. (HT, p. 87)

215 […] and the wiles of jewellers had not been spent upon him in vain. (SR, pp. 52-3)

[…] a odráželo se na něm umění klenotníků. (ZH, p. 189)

216 D […] like a frog that had been stepped on, […] (SR, p. 53)

[…] jako žábu, na kterou někdo šlápl […] (ZH, p. 189)

217 D I’m stewed, Remsen. (p. 324) Jsem nadrátován, Remsene. (VŠ, p. 28)

218 In that vault are stored the anti-climaxes […] (p. 397)

V tom trezoru jsou uloženy antiklimaxy, […] (VŠ, p. 93)

219 D If the bye we never had is strayed […] (p. 184)

Když chlapec, kterého jsme nikdy neměli, se ztratí […] (VŠ, p. 16)

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220 […] clothes-lines were stretched. (p. 393)

[…] plandaly šnůry s rodinným prádlem. (VŠ, p. 87)

221 D […] of houses should not be sub-let, but […] (p. 333)

[…] v domech nebudou pronajímány […] (HT, p. 160)

222 The needs […] were supplied by two waitresses […] (p. 276)

Potřeby […] uspokojují dvě číšnice […] (VŠ, p. 23)

223 He was supposed to have stowed himself away among the banana bunches on a fruit steamer, […] (SR, p. 50)

Rodiče se domnívali, že se ukryl mezi trsy banánů na parníku, […] (ZH, p. 186)

224 D […] the sentence was suspended. (p. 373)

[…] byl odsouzen podmíněně. (VŠ, p. 45)

225 […] anticlimaxes that should have been tagged to all stories […] (p. 397)

[…] antiklimaxy, které by vždy měly

být připojeny ke všem příběhům […] (VŠ, p. 93)

226 […] he was taken by surprise. (p. 132) […] byl […] překvapen. (HT, p. 93) 227 That week’s wash was not taken in for

two years. (p. 393) Usušené prádlo tam pak viselo dva roky. (VŠ, p. 87)

228 D On the back of the boy’s left hand was tattooed a flying eagle carrying a spear in his claws. (SR, p. 50)

Hoch měl na levé ruce vytetovaného letícího orla s kopim v drápech. (ZH, p. 187)

229 I’m tempted to […] (p. 130) Jsem v pokušení […] (HT, p. 91) 230 A useless strip […] was tied beneath

her chin, […] (p. 252) Pod bradou měla uvázanou zbytečnou stužku […] (VŠ, p. 81)

231 D I’m not tied down to anything that isn’t 8,000 miles in diameter. (p. 179)

Mne nepoutá nic, co by nemělo alespoň 12 756 km v průměru. (VŠ, p. 21-2)

232 […] when reserve is thawed. (p. 177) […] uvolňování zábran rezervovanosti. (VŠ, p. 19)

233 He was once seen in Texas, it was thought, […] (SR, p. 50)

Jednou prý byl viděn v Texasu, […] (ZH, p. 186)

234 Will it tire you to be told again […] (p. 276)

Nebude vás nudit, zopakujeme-li, že […] (VŠ, p. 24)

235 I was told by a sculptor from Mauch Chunk that […] (p. 176)

Sochař z Mauch Chunk mne kdysi poučil, že […] (VŠ, p. 17)

236 […] the stories that have been told in the world. (p. 397)

[…] příběhům, na světě vyprávěným. (VŠ, p. 93)

237 His collar had been torn away; […] (p. 373)

Měl utržený límec, […] (VŠ, p. 45)

238 D It was torn down then. (p. 259) Potom budovu zbourali. (ZH, p. 82) 239 Music […] that could be tortured

from brass […] (p. 329) Hudba […] vyluzovaná z žesťů […] (HT, p. 155)

240 He […] was trampled upon and shoved forward […] (p. 328)

Byl pošlapáván a postrkován […](HT, p. 153)

241 […] debt was to be transferred into the hands […] (p. 133)

[…] dluh má být převeden do […] rukou […] (HT, p. 94)

242 […] had been cunningly trimmed a vista, […] (p. 73)

[…] byl […] důmyslně vystřižen průhled […] (VŠ, p. 109)

243 It had been neatly typewritten; […] (p. 394)

Psal je vždy pečlivě na psacím stroji […] (VŠ, p. 89)

244 Now her gloves are tucked in. (p. 394) Konečně si svékla rukavice. (VŠ, p. 89)

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245 […] team was tugged […] by Remsen’s tough muscles. (p. 325)

Pevné Remsenovy svaly přiměly […] pár […] (HT, p. 109)

246 […]; if the comparison be used here […] (p. 295)

[…]; pokud mohlo toto přirovnání být použito I v tomto případě, […] (ZH, p. 215)

247 […] the Park is rarely used, […] except by unimportant people […] (p. 325)

[…] býval park ještě opuštěn, s výjimkou několika lidí, […] (HT, p. 108)

248 D You’re wakened every morning by the sweet singin’ of red birds with seven purple tails, […] (SR, p. 47)

Každé ráno vás probudí příjemný zpěv červených ptáčků s nachovým chvostem […] (ZH, p. 184)

249 His face and hands had been recently washed […] (p. 295)

Muž měl obličej i ruce čertsvě umyté […] (ZH, p. 215)

250 D […] five cops had to be whistled for, […] (p. 255)

[…], že jich muselo přijít pět […] (VŠ, p. 84)

251 Their offences were wiped out. (p. 330)

Jejich provinění rázem vymazal. (HT, p. 156)

252 D […] pride […] will be wiped out, […] (p. 178)

[…] bude […] namyšlenost […] smazána […] (VŠ, p. 21)

253 […] this […] scene can be witnessed every evening […] (p. 177)

[…] tento […] výjev se odehrává každý večer […] (VŠ, p. 19)

254 2x […] cap which could not be worn while automobiling except by a personage. (pp. 324, 325)

[…] čapkou, jakou by si nenasadil lecjaký motorista, ale jen osobnost. (HT, pp. 106, 108)

255 […] hall in which to be worshipped. (p. 392)

[…] svatyni, ve které by mohl být uctíván. (VŠ, p. 87)

256 […] shoes were wrecked […] (p. 246) Boty […] byly rozedrané […] (ZH, p. 302)

257 […] a few words that […] were written by him […] (p. 411)

[…] několika vět, napsaných […] mužem […] (HT, p. 58)

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4. Analysis of frequency data

4.1 The English language

I have analysed altogether twenty short stories by the American writer O.Henry

(1862-1910). In these, I detected 208 different verbs which were used in proper passive

voice. Now I will classify the verbs with regard to their numbers in individual

categories. First of all, from the most general point of view, there are several verbs

which repeated themselves throughout the short stories. The most numerous figure of

occurrences was found in the verbs allow (4 instances) and name (4 instances). Nine

verbs were repeated three times: call, cover, fill, find, go, make, mistake, receive and

tell. There were also some others, for example deliver, occupy, say which were repeated

only twice (see Table 1). Out of the total of 208 verbs in the passive there were 26 verbs

which were used twice throughout the short stories. When the verbs with more

frequency are resumed, they make nearly 18% (37 verbs) of all 208 verbs, which means

that 18% of all verbs used in proper passive voice tended to reoccur in the passive and

thus are inclined to passivization. This shows that the passive voice is not only

connected with semantics but also it is a matter of syntactic properties of individual

verbs.

Some of the repetitions can be found within one story (e.g. admit) where the

topic is responsible for repetition and sometimes even the same clause is deliberately

repeated by the author (e.g. wear) in the course of description, which is the author’s

peculiarity. In the rest of the repetitions which occurred in different short stories it can

be argued that the most frequent verbs (allow, name) are inclined to appear in the

passive voice in English since the agent is of secondary importance as the meaning of

the verbs is concerned: the verb allow primarily tries to communicate what has been

allowed and possibly to whom (we do not say I allow you to… unless we want to

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specifically focus attention on the person of “allower” which is a minority situation),

The verb name is clearly an example of the unimportance of the doer, if not a

contrastive emphasis is in play, and concentration on the patient. Also in other repeated

verbs it can be accounted for the repetition in terms of the verbal semantics. For

example the verb cover is usually associated with inanimate agents which do not have

the potential to cover something out of their own will, which consequently means that

the passive voice is preferred. In the further analysis of the data, I will make the figure

of all 258 occurrences, in which the total of 208 different verbs appeared, the source

value.

4.1.1 Expressed agent

Out of the total of 258 occurrences of the total 208 different verbs, 56 cases, i.e.

22%, had the agent expressed in some way, for example:

(1) You will be arrested by one of our agents. (no. 10) (2) His arms were occupied with bundles. (no. 156) (3) They had been awakened by the noise of a pistol-shot. (no. 13) (4) He was blockaded in a tangled mess of vehicles and horses. (no. 22)

The number of agentive constructions is slightly higher than I expected on the grounds

that omission of an agent is considered to be the major function of the passive voice.

This, apart from other things, suggests that the second major role of the passive, i.e. the

shifting of a point of view, is employed. This higher figure can be also partially

explained by the personal style of writing of the author as well as the time period when

his works appeared. O.Henry lived most of his life in the nineteenth century; however,

he started to write and publish his short stories at the turn of 19th and 20th century. As

his stories were going with times, the vocabulary and syntax were naturally influenced.

The language of the nineteenth century is characterized by overt politeness and

respectful phrases, including the passive voice which is perceived as formal, literary and

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old-fashioned nowadays, especially in direct speech. The fact that the passives are

found in dialogs quite often supports the assertion about particular period stylistics.

As far as the individual means of agent expression are concerned, proportionally,

the leading position accrues to the by-phrase which constitutes over 60% of the agentive

constructions. The rest of the expressed agentive forms is distributed evenly among the

agentive structure introduced by preposition with (21.5%); other prepositions partake in

the agentive structures by nearly 18%. With regard to the by-phrase there has to be one

further division and calculation made: Approximately 65% of the total distribution of

the phrase is taken up by human agents and the remaining 35% is devoted to non-human

agents (here I include animals as well).

These figures show that far most frequent means of agent expression is the by-

phrase, nevertheless the immediately following and in no case insignificant means is the

preposition with, the relative frequency of which was not mentioned in the literature I

worked with. Since the preposition with introduces an instrument, the agent thus

expressed should be inanimate, however, I have encountered one exception to this rule

(the sidewalk was blockaded with sightseers (no. 23)). In a few cases the preference of

with to a different preposition is conditioned rather by internal syntactic demands of a

verb (filled with, covered with, connected with). With regard to other prepositions that

transpired in the short stories’ agentive phrases I will present here a synoptic table

which summarizes the individual occurrences.

AGENT Other prepositions than by and with

Frequency Around (no. 132) 1 Because (no. 193) 1 From (no. 58, 63, 143) 3 In (no. 22, 113, 192) 3 On (no. 50) 1 To (no. 231) 1

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As can be seen, an agent is expressed via prepositions different from by and with

very rarely. This detailed overview shows that the most favoured prepositions for the

introduction of an agent are from and in. Both these are local prepositions which are

followed for the most part by an inanimate agent, for example:

(5) Thus a caged man acts when he is housed in a jungle of doubt. (no. 113) (6) […] as if it had been made up from individual contributors from the

chorus of a musical comedy. (no. 143) (7) Once you had seen her eyes, and comprehended the great sadness that was revealed in their deep shadows and hopeless expression […]. (no. 192)

The other ones (around, on, to) are local prepositions taking inanimate agents as well,

except for the causal preposition because which is opening an agentive subordinate

clause:

(8) And my glee was roused because I had caught Mr. Kipling napping. (no. 193)

4.1.1.1 Nature of the agent phrase

The character of an agent was evenly distributed between short and long phrase,

where short phrase stands for a maximum of two words. The short phrase typically

comprised a noun, often modified by an adjective, for example:

(9) The Park is rarely used, except by unimportant people. (no. 247) (10) Her soul was filled with a delirious joy. (no. 83)

Rarely is it formed by a single word, for example:

(11) He was taken by surprise. (no. 226). (12) The hallways were suddenly filled with sound. (no. 84)

By the same token, the basis of the expanded agent was construed by a noun phrase:

(13) Buttons that had been sewed upon by kind Salvation fingers. (no. 206) (14) On that occasion his breast was covered from shoulder to shoulder with croses, stars, golden roses, medals and ribbons. (no. 49) (15) My meditations were interrupted by a tremendous noise and conflict. (no. 125);

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sometimes combined with a prepositional phrase with of, for example:

(16) He was permeated with the curse of domesticity. (no. 167) (17) […] its cause was connected with the slowly moving hands of the time-

piece. (no. 43)

or created by a whole subordinate sentence, for example:

(18) The greatness of was shown by the fact that by noon the next day order was restored. (no. 208) (19) […] a point that is marked by no monument save that groove on the

pavement worn by tens of thousands of waiting feet. (no. 145)

In a few cases, the agent was reserved for a name, for example:

(20) […] an up-hill charge that was disputed by the Spaniards and afterward by the Democrats. (no. 66) (21) If the transients were entranced by the fascinating Aileen, […]. (no. 76)

These findings are related to the use of the passive voice as a means of shifting attention

since the expressions in the agent phrase were in 99% constructed with nouns, which

points at different arrangement of sentence elements.

4.1.2 Unexpressed agent

78% (202 out of 258 occurrences) of the total number of passive verbs are

agentless, like for example:

(22) I’m called the Llano Kid in the Rio Grande country. (no. 34) (23) He and I were raised here in New York. (no. 177) (24) He was often rebuffed but never offensively. (no. 180) (25) That week’s wash was not taken in for two years. (no. 227)

Quirk et al. (1974: 807) state that “four out of five English passive sentences [i.e. 80%]

have no expressed agent”, which is testified by my findings as well. This result

confirms that the most important function of the passive is the avoidance of an agent

expression. Although not explicitly stated, the agent is not usually completely

undetectable. Rather on the contrary - it was traceable in most cases, in 146 cases, i.e. in

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72% of all agentless verbs, the agent could be deduced, either from previous context or

logically from semantic properties of the verbs like for example in:

(26) The picture was completed. (no. 42) (27) I am instructed to pursue every clue that presents itself in this matter. (no.

121) (28) Madame Timotea Ortiz, the proprietress of the hotel in which the game of Fox-in-the-Morning had been played out (no. 170)

In addition to the fact that the agent is in the majority of cases implied, it is also

human. People as the covert doers, actors and causers occupy the leading position. The

most frequently repeated verbs are simultaneously ones with implied human agent,

specifically allow and name. Both these verbs semantically require a human agent so

that the activity which they denote is performed. This allegation that the semantic nature

of a verb plays an important part can be further proved right by the fact that in all four

repetitions when the verbs allow and name were used in different situations and

contexts they always maintained their implied agentive character.

Full 25%, i.e. 51 verbs out of the total 202 cases with unexpressed agent, are

agentless constructions where the agent cannot be tracked down, for example:

(29) And on Mrs. James Williams’s face was recorded a little library of the world’s best thoughts. (no. 185) (30) Prince Michael’s shoes were wrecked far beyond the skill of the carefullest cobbler. (no. 256) (31) When Keogh and White reached their destination, the gay winter season was well begun. (no. 18)

The unknown doer proved to be quite a frequent situation. On one hand, the elementary

semantic definition of a verb is “a word denoting action or state” (Dušková 1988: 165)

which would suggest that ‛a verb’ implies an agent inherently. On the other hand, the

fact that I called the agent in these 25% of verbs as unknown does not necessarily mean

that it does not exist. It only points to the reality that the agent was not trackable for me,

either because of the ambiguousness, abstraction and poly-possibility as far as the

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implied agents are concerned (when pride is wiped out (no. 252), it is impossible,

without any further specifications or hints, to determine more closely the cause or

causer of the ‘wiping out’). In other cases, there could be two distinctive agents

determined, in particular one human and one non-human. Again, if not specified an

activity can be very often carried out by a person as well as with a thing (e.g. the verb

tattoo implies a ‘maker of tattoos’ as well as a ‘needle’ or ‘ink’ for the agent position,

for instance).

The remaining five verbs, 2.5% of all agentless passive voice phrases, do not

have any mark in the Table 1 as far as the agent is concerned, from which follows that

their agent is unexpressed yet implied, but non-human. These verbs with implied non-

human agent are as follows: break up, hedge, hem in, jar and stew. For example:

(32) The fist banged and I was jarred into silence (no. 127)

has the most probable reading that of a ‘fist’ or a ‘bang’ or possibly ‘surprise’, by all

means something non-human, that jarred the storyteller into silence.

I have to comment on the case of a verb phrase hold up, to which I assigned half

human and half non-human agent; the example says:

(33) I’ve been held up for my story with a loaded meal pointed at my head twenty times. (no. 111),

which, in my opinion, points at two different active readings of equal plausibility: ‘a

loaded meal pointed at my head has held me up for my story twenty times’ or equally

possible version of agent assignment ‘somebody (a person) with a loaded meal pointed

at my head has held me up for my story twenty times’. The human doer is maybe a little

bit “added” into the lexical equipage of the sentence and little more hidden, since a gun,

in this case a meal, has full potential to put people in motion, however there is always

some human agent behind the pointing of a gun.

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4.1.3 Tense

Tense of the passive constructions is an interesting phenomenon to be explored

since the application of tense refers to extralinguistic properties of reality and can

indicate much about the function of the passive voice. Out of the total 258 occurrences

of the 208 different verbs that I noted in Table 1, the majority, as I have supposed,

belongs to the past tense: over 49%, i.e. 128 out of altogether 258 occurrences, are

expressed in the past tense. Examples of this phenomenon can be:

(34) The great bulk of the Captain was heaped against the arm of the bench. (no. 106) (35) My meditations were interrupted by a tremendous noise and conflict. (no. 125) (36) It was charged that not only had he given away priceless concessions, but that the public debt was to be transferred in to the hands of the English. (no. 37) (37) His pictures in the government office were demolished. (no. 55)

Such frequency makes the past the most widely associated tense with the passive voice.

The reason for this is obvious, as the passive is usually avoided in dialogs, but it is

primarily used in descriptions where the person or thing described are in the centre of

our attention. We can describe things as they are as they were at the time when the plot

of a story took place. From a semantic point of view, the past tense coveys invalid

statements that ceased to hold or lost their validity for some reason (Bělíček 2005: 118).

This is the case in O.Henry’s short stories which are predominantly narrated in the past

tense - an event is viewed as having already passed and the author retails what once

(this is not meant to indicate that an event happened a long time ago) happened.

The rest 50% of register are shared by, respectively, present tense (18%, 46

occurrences), infinitive form (15%, 39 occurrences), past perfect (11%, 28 occurrences),

present perfect (3.5%, 9 occurrences) and future tense (3%, 8 occurrences). The overall

incidence of perfect tenses is 14.5% (37 occurrences) as compared to the incidence rate

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of basic tenses, which makes over 70% of the whole, especially due to the past tense.

The proportion of future and present perfect tense is fractional. The share of infinitive

makes for the remaining 15%, which corresponds to the joint use of perfect tenses.

The present tense, as the second most widely applied tense, accounts for the

second possibility mentioned above, that is for the description of things what they are

like (as opposed to what they were like) which is employed in general characteristics of

people, generally valid conclusions, conditions or states of mind, for example:

(38) Bogle’s is situated in […] Eighth Avenue. (no. 211) (39) Especially for the vagrant feet of youth are the roads of Manhattan beset with “pitfall and with gin”. (no. 20) (40) I’m stewed. (no. 217)

The present tense is semantically considered as an unmarked form, opposed to the

marked past and future tenses (Bělíček 2005: 115). In the short stories, the present tense

subserves to sketch in the contour of the narration, to create the generally valid

background against which a story is planted.

The third position occupied by infinitive constructions is largely connected with

two specialized structures, one of them being the modal verb can/could, which

syntactically requires an infinitive following, for example:

(41) Nothing could be compared with them. (no. 41) (42) In the car was […] an old gentleman with […] a Scotch plaid cap which could not be worn while automobiling except by a personage. (no. 254)

There are nine central modal auxiliary verbs which are used to express modality

in English (Biber et al. 1999: 483): can, could, may, might, shall, should, will, would,

must. The most frequently occurring modal verb in the short stories is could. Since a

task of a modal in sentence is to express modality, can/could stands for ability,

possibility, permission, wasted opportunity, or in negative for impossibility. Here the

aspectual and tense complement is necessary for closer determination. According to

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Quirk et al. (1974: 807) the verb phrases containing auxiliaries that have more than one

meaning, e.g. shall, will and can may acquire a shift in meaning when the active and

passive versions are compared. Quirk et al. (1974: 807) state the following example:

(i) John cannot do it. (ii) It cannot be done (by John).

In the active sentence can would normally be interpreted as expressing ability, whereas

in the passive sentence it is interpreted as expressing possibility. This holds valid also in

the following example from O.Henry’s short stories: This could not have been

accomplished, which suggests the impossibility whereas the active construction They

could not have accomplished this refers rather to the inability. The clarification is a

matter of context.

The other one structure associated with the use of infinitive is the official phrase

is to be, for example:

(43) Goodwin was not to be disputed. (no. 65) (44) Goodwin was a powerful friend to new administration, and one who was not to be carelessly dealt with. (no. 51)

Also in other cases the use of infinitive implies high English and the passive

constructions are examples of class language, for example

(45) We happened to be born there. (no. 27) (46) In every town he caused to be erected statues of himself. (no. 77)

Biber et al. in their corpus research arrived at a conclusion that in fiction the

most common combination of tense and aspect in the passive is the perfect passive in

the past tense (1999: 483). The relatively high score of past perfect tense (when

compared to the representation of the remaining perfect tenses) is explicable in the same

terms as the wide use of past tense. Since the past perfect tense only refers even one

step further back in the line of the story action. O.Henry lays emphasis on precise

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depiction of a situation and exactly suggests which action preceded another one. It is

important for him to highlight that for example the coach passengers had been first

assigned to their seats by the conductor and only then the journey began (no. 12).

Nowadays the use of the past perfect is declining and its presence is usually considered

as abundant and unnecessary. Generally, one can logically deduce which event

happened first: whether a person first sits down or a vehicle starts off for a trip. Its

overuse in history is related to different, more complicate and formal, speech patterns.

Finally, the least significant amounts of distribution are manifested by the future

tense. On the whole, its use is limited in O.Henry’s short stories in either voice. His

storytelling is hardly ever oriented into the future. One example can be found in

(47) By reference to the almanac a large amount of territory will be discovered upon which its rays also fell. (no. 60)

With regard to the present perfect tense, the situation is alike; the means

“designed to provide statements about present states that have arisen as a result of past

actions” is in short stories with mainly past tense used very sporadically (Bělíček 2005:

174). An example follows:

(48) I suppose you have been informed of the subsequent facts. (no. 120)

The notion of tense can be also viewed from an analytical perspective. Manfred

Sandmann (1954: 172-3) proposes that a verbal role can be characterized by two major

constructions, the outer one and the inner one. The former is represented with the

syntactic role of a verb with regard to other parts of a sentence and the latter verbal

construction is described as “the way in which verbal time itself is constructed”

(Sandmann 1954: 173). This one is of interest for me, as Sandmann (1954: 173) states

that verbal time shows a rich structure and speaks of real anatomy of verbal time. He

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asserts that a finite verb never refers to a mathematical moment or a point in time but to

a phase (Sandmann 1954: 173). To explain this he uses the example

(49) The hunter kills the dear

in which he shows the phase distribution: “the action of ‘killing’ starts in an actor (the

hunter), but is fulfilled only in the thing-acted-upon (the deer)” (Sandmann 1954: 173).

He therefore suggests that the whole phase represented in the construct The hunter kills

the dear may be divided into two sub-phases, of which the first is called causational or

active or subjective, and the second affective or passive or objective (Sandmann 1954:

173-4). These sub-phases can be detected in every active sentence. In the passive voice

the time phase exists as well, only is it reported in the reverse order.

Thus an active construction follows the catachronic way from the origin to the

goal, while the essence of a passive is of a representational nature and is created by an

antichronic construction, which is followed from the goal of an action backwards to its

origin:

(50) The deer is killed by the hunter.

Sandmann (1954: 173) further distinguishes between real and potential time, with the

former being always referred to by the verb itself and the representation of the real time

being always bound up with the representation of the manner in which the time is spent.

Similarly, it is possible to analyse the passive examples from the short stories,

e.g. in the antichronic reading of

(51) The prince had been escorted to the door by the butler (no. 78),

‘the prince’ as well as ‘the door’ stands for the affective sub-phase of the verbal phase

and ‘the butler’ represents the causational sub-phase. The action of escorting starts in

the butler and is fulfilled in the prince and through the door. Overall can be concluded

that, from the viewpoint of real temporal phases of an action, the passive voice has

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antichronic connotations and can be split into two mutually transitional sub-phases. In

the process the verb is perceived as the central element of a clause since the labels of an

actor and acted upon subject are pre-conditioned by its semantic character.

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5. Functional and semantic analysis

5.1 The English original

In this section, various functions of the passive voice, that I encountered

throughout the short stories will be analysed in detail. The conclusions may in several

aspects overlap with the previous section of frequency analysis as I have tried to suggest

reasons for the individual numeral results as well. Not only deal I with the function and

the meaning of the passive voice, but I also focus on the questions “Why did the author

use the passive? And what would have been changed if the sentence was in the active?”

Answering these questions in each case and comparison with active turn provides better

understanding of the function of the passive voice. All the quoted examples employed

in this part, that are derived from the compilation 69 Short Stories by O’Henry edited by

G. F. Maine, specifically from the twenty explored short stories (see Appendix), are

marked by their corresponding number in Table 2..

5.1.1 Passive constructions with unexpressed agent

The crucial difference between a short passive and an active clause is that the

information expressed in the subject of the active is omitted in the passive. There may

be a variety of reasons why a writer might wish to omit such information.

Functionally the short passive turn is chosen where the agent is unimportant and

offers a redundant information since the verb, as Dušková (1988: 260) says, implies a

human doer at a deeper level, for example the verb name. In the case like

(52) My cosmopolite was named E. Rushmore Coglan. (no. 154),

any agent would be needlessly additional and repetitive. These constructions which do

not require any agent specification are translated into Czech in two ways, either by

reflexive passive which is obligatorily agentless or by expressed general human agent.

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Psychologically, since there is one element added into the sentence structure of

the non-agentive passive, namely the auxiliary verbal form be, which facilitates greater

focus placed on the verb phrase itself. In the following active variant,

(53) People will hear from him next summer at Coney Island,

the verbal element has only a representative meaning, as it stands for ‘attract attention

of people’, let it be through hearing or seeing, which causes the meaning of the actual

concrete verb “to hear” to dissolve and makes it rather marginal, with the core of the

message being elsewhere than in specification of the channel. On the other hand, the

passive transform

(54) He will be heard from next summer at Coney Island (no. 107)

presents the verb hear as a ‘meaning-full’ word, with the unusual construction attracting

the attention of a reader, it takes more time to read the part concerned and the overall

result is rather formal, even prophetic, promissory or forewarning. Since the pronoun he

is at the beginning of the sentence, it has a more thematic value than him in the active

version, which consequently causes the verb hear to sound more contrastively and

belong to the rhematic information in the sentence. Another fact is that the agentless

passive phrase very often occupies the final position in clause, which is reserved for

new, rhematic information. Biber et al. add that it is a verb which most of the time

conveys the new information (1999: 939). For example:

(55) He had discovered that one of the necessaries of life had been forgotten. (no. 94) (56) As I was in the rooms when the shot was fired, […]. (no. 86) (57) I do not allow gentlemen to sit by me to whom I have not been introduced. (no. 126)

Jan Firbas (1992: 7) formulates that a finite verb conveys irretrievable

information, which becomes an element with the highest degree of communicative

dynamism, under certain condition. He maintains that a finite verb can serve as the most

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dynamic element in a sentence or clause only if it operates in the absence of successful

competitors (Firbas 1992: 7). In particular, the competitors could be “an element

expressing a phenomenon to be presented or one expressing a specification” (Firbas

1992: 7). In other words, a finite verb completes the development of communication if

it is the only irretrievable element in a sentence, which is very often the case of short

passives

(58) Thus an animal acts when it is caged. (no. 33) (59) As soon as the cigars were lighted, the American cleared the way by inquiring whether […]. (no. 136)

The second possibility arises from irretrievability of a subject. If the subject is

the most important element (is context-independent) in the passive clause, it then

represents the presentative function. The verb presents a phenomenon in the subject

position to appear on the scene. For example:

(60) Quite a number of new houses have been built in our town (Firbas 1992: 62).

He closes:

These observations by no means belittle the role played by the passive in perspectiving the sentence away from the information conveyed by a subject in pre-verbal position. But they are a reminder that it depends on the interplay of FSP factors whether the passive participates in perspectiving the sentence away from the subject or towards it. At the same time they do not disprove the well-known fact that in a majority of cases the passive participates in the perspectiving the sentence away from the subject. (Firbas 1992: 62)

There is a special case of passive constructions which are more or less

interchangeable with active verbs. Dušková (1988: 262) as well as Huddleston (1971:

99-100) mention this situation, I will remind that Huddleston accounts for these verbs in

terms of ergative verbs (the book was sold well – the book sold well) whereas Dušková

simplier compares an interchangeable passive verb to intransitive active verb of the

same meaning. For example in the passive sentence,

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(61) And my glee was roused because I had caught Mr. Kipling napping. (no. 193),

the passive construction can be replaced by active verb roused without any substantial

loss of meaning. The sole difference I can detect between the two versions is the more

perfective or rather perfected nature of the passive variant was roused.

I have noticed that the passive voice, due to its impersonal nature and message,

has less authoritative effect than the active form. For example, the clause

(62) this remarkable scene can be witnessed every evening in numerous cafés (no. 253)

is purely of informative character and does not imply any pressure laid on the reader to

actually visit such a place. It is just a suggestion spread in front of us, readers, and the

choice is wholly upon us. Whereas the active version with the added subject

(63) you can witness this remarkable scene every morning in numerous cafés

is more direct, invasive and thus sounds more pleading and urging. I have to remind at

this point that I do not try to treat the passive and the supplied active version as

equivalent in any case. The voice variants cannot be considered as fully equivalent,

especially in cases with a covert agent (Huddleston, Pullum 2002: 1430-1).

Also, generally valid is the assertion that passive turn is chosen when greater

emphasis and interest is taken in the object (which is made a subject) than in the subject

at the pre-passive level (Firbas 1992: 62). This can be proved right almost in all

passives with unexpressed agent, to mention several examples:

(64) Now her gloves are tucked in. (no. 244) (65) His hat was pulled low; he sat quiet and a little indistinct. (no. 175) (66) […] when “Dixie” was being played a young man sprang up. (no. 168)

The author’s primary interest in the last instance, for example, is to communicate that it

was the melody of a song called “Dixie”, not any other one, which lifted the boy up

from his chair. The subject here is the most important clausal element.

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Well-known class of passives consists of constructions in which it is difficult

and sometimes even impossible to determine any agent. Quirk et al. (1974: 807) claim

that once the agent is unrecoverable, it may be impossible to conduct the passive to

active transformation. Dušková (1988: 260) says that these cases occur frequently in

professional style, especially in natural science discipline; however, I have found

similar structures also in the genre of a short story. For example,

(67) Without wishing to excite any hopes that may not be realized, […]. (no. 179) (68) Rita’s cough is almost gone. (no. 101) (69) The evening was at the period when reserve is thawed. (no. 232)

In (69) for example, the most probable actor or causer would be the late night time or

maybe alcohol, anyhow, we can only speculate. In the following case, the passive voice

has a prognostic meaning, directed into future, where things are always uncertain so it is

logical that an agent is unknown so far:

(70) Some day all this petty pride in one’s city or state or section or country will be wiped out, and we’ll all be citizens of the world. (no. 252)

The most utilized function of the passive which is mentioned by Biber et al. on

the grounds of their corpus analysis is the service for “cohesion and contextual fit

through ordering of information” (1999: 935). This can be seen in the following

example where the passive voice enables fluent joint not only between clauses, but also

between the two sentences:

(71) These houses are in the shopping districts, and are mainly tenanted by young working girls. As it is they are forced to seek companionship outside. (no. 91)

The reasons for the suppression of the agent range from generalizations to

specifications. Some situations suppress the omitted agent because its nature is generic

and therefore unimportant and uninteresting. For example,

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(72) […] if countenances are to be believed (no. 19) or (73) […] that business could be built up (no. 30)

Others are concerned with specific events rather than with generalizations (Biber

et al. 1999: 939). For example,

(74) She was shown directly into his private office (no. 209).

The agent is specific but its identity is not at issue and does not need to be stated. The

latter type can be found in the short stories more often, also the verbs are rather

meaningfully specific and concretely oriented, for example the verb hem in

(75) […] while the cab was hemmed in (no. 112).

5.1.2 Passive constructions with expressed agent

In the passive voice containing converted subject the reasons for its preference

are different. Biber et al. suggest that it is reasonable to expect that the reasons for the

choice of passive with an expressed agent will be similar to factors influencing pure

word-order variation. Their assertion is based upon the fact that the long passive (as

opposed to short passive) preserves the information of the corresponding active clause,

but presents it in a different order (1999: 940). Further, two such factors are especially

important: length of subject v. agent phrase and givenness of subject v. agent phrase. In

long passives, there is a clear tendency for the subject to be shorter than the agent

phrase.

It is often the case that the actor is expressed via a too long phrase which, as

Jespersen (1933: 12) argues, could not easily be the subject. This can be observed in the

following example:

(76) The concluding air was “Dixie,” and as exhilarating notes tumbled forth they were almost overpowered by a great clapping of hands from almost every table. (no. 161)

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The underlined section shows the subject at the pre-passive level. The use of the passive

here guards the “weight management” of the sentence (Biber et al. 1999: 935). This

sentence, of course, could have been written in the active voice, nevertheless, its

interpretation would have been slightly different then. The subject phrase would attract

needlessly too much attention and the main message, that of “overpowering noise”,

would have be overshadowed and made secondary. In addition, very long subject would

be in conflict with the principle of end-weight (tendency for long and heavy clause

elements to be placed at the end of a clause) (Biber et al. 1999: 942) Since it is natural to

express given information briefly (e.g. by pronoun substitution), this principle of end-

weight works together with the principle of end-focus, which is a tendency to place new

information towards the end of the clause (Quirk R., Greenbaum S. 1973: 410). Other

examples of this would be:

(77) They had been awakened by the noise of a pistol-shot in the Hotel de los Estranjeros. (no. 13) (78) […] when it was backed up by the muzzle of a breech-loader. (no. 14)

Concerning the givenness of subject versus agent phrase Biber et al. conclude

that subjects, generally, varies substantially more in the information status than agent

phrases, since about 90% of the agent phrases bring in new information which means

that the subject has a higher level of givenness than the agent phrase (1999: 941). The

use of the long passive agrees with the information principle, most commonly the

subject contains given information and the agent new information:

(79) The two weeks’ stubble on his face was gray and brown and red and greenish yellow as if it had been made up from individual contributors from the chorus of a musical comedy (no. 143).

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This clause naturally opens with a reference to the preceding context and only then it

moves on to the new point being made. The choice of the passive provides a smooth

continuation.

Pragmatically, the long passive bears one major constraint. It says that the

subject of the verb phrase cannot be less familiar in the discourse than the agent

expression, in other words, the constraint excludes the new + old combination as for the

two noun phrases are considered. Huddleston and Pullum (2002: 1444) emphasize that

it is discourse familiarity what matters, not addressee familiarity. For example,

(80) A press conference will be held by the President at 3 p.m.

is perfectly natural assuming there has been no mention of the president in the prior

discourse. The President, although addressee-old, is discourse-new, and hence the

constraint is met (Huddleston, Pullum 2002: 1444).

Both forms of the passive voice can be found predominantly in expanded

compound and complex sentences as opposed to the situation where it constitutes part

of a simple sentence. The passive voice is a language means which is employed in

luxuriant stylistics rather than in everyday speech. The ascendancy of the passive in

expanded sentences was overwhelming. About 23% of the incidence of the passive

voice was realized in a direct speech. This figure corresponds to the incidence rate of an

agent phrase which I find interesting. It testifies among others of two different main

functions of the passive voice, one being associated with the style of storytelling, i.e.

wordy descriptions of the surroundings and other types of background information, and

the other function, represented by the use of passive in dialogs and direct speech,

exemplifies formal and polite style of speaking, influenced by the time period

(discussed above). Biber et al. claim that the passive verbs that are commonly used in

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dialogs tend to be stative in meaning and often come close to adjectival functions (1999:

480). My findings are that the verb allow appeared solely in direct speech instances:

(81) Why am I not allowed to accept this offer? (no. 5) (82) But I’m allowed to meet her with a cab at the Grand Central Station to- morrow. (no. 6) (83) He intended […] that tenants should be allowed to use them for reception rooms. (no. 7) (84) We have 600 girls on the waiting list who will in time be allowed to accept positions […]. (no. 8)

Other such verbs are consider and go. All meanings of these verbs are stative, e.g.

(85) the old restaurant’s gone (no. 102)

and they could be alternatively analyzed as the copula be followed by a predicative

adjective. Predominance of active verbs in dialogs is correlated with the high frequency

of personal pronouns, particularly of forms with exclusively human reference (Biber et

al. 1999: 939-40). Presenting actions in relation to agents is then a natural consequence

of the focus on human beings.

5.1.3 Combination of aspect and voice

English verb phrases can be marked for complex combinations of aspect and

voice. That is, perfect aspect, progressive aspect, and passive voice often occur together

in various combinations, presenting more specialized verbal meanings (Biber et al.

1999: 482). The most common combination in the short stories has been the perfect

aspect used in the past tense. Such combinations typically retain the time orientation

(‘past with past relevance’) of the past perfect aspect while demoting the agent through

the use of the passive voice:

(86) […] that the wiles of jewellers had not been spent upon him in vain. (no. 215)

The progressive aspect which can be found in my sample refers to a situation or

an activity in progress in a particular time:

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(87) […] when Dixie was being played, a dark-haired young man sprang up. (no. 168)

The ‘in progress’ meaning is combined with the change of focus and receding into the

background associated with the passive voice.

The Czech translation often violates the aspectual principle, as in the following

example:

(88) men were knocked down - muži padali na podlahu (no. 131).

Here the verb knock down represents a special type of perfective verbs which are called

momentary verbs since the activity depicted takes only one phase and cannot be

temporarily extended. Therefore, to knock somebody down is one-off matter. The

proper translation should have preserved the perfective nature of the original verb at

least by eliminating the progressive aspect which is used inappropriately: muži padli na

podlahu. Naturally, even better would have been to keep the impersonal periphrastic

passive voice in translation as well, since it actually indicates an intervention of some

unspecified force, which made the men fall on the ground as in:

(89) muži byli sraženi (na zem / podlahu).

5.1.4 Semantics

Semantically, the passive voice has several meanings and it serves various

purposes. Biber et al. have noticed that the use of “passive conveys an objective

detachment from what is being described” (1999: 477). This shade of interpretation is

valid for the examples of the following type:

(90) It cannot be denied that… (no. 56) (91) It’s done. (no. 67) (92) But beneath the hard crust is found a delectable and luscious food. (no. 96)

The passive structures are implemented instead of the active transforms,

(93) I denied that…

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(94) I have done it8 (95) But beneath the hard crust I find a delectable and luscious food,

where the added agent calls for personalization of the meaning. The last case, for

example, is a perfectly valid general assertion when the passive is used, whereas the

active shifts the sense to a single inference of one person.

This ‘objectivity’ shade of interpretation bears relation to the formal marking of

the passive. The official tone, where nobody nominally but an institution is responsible,

can be traced in:

(96) A police captain was dismissed from force. (no. 61) (97) Colonel Emilio Falcon was dispatched from the capital upon this important mission. (no. 63)

The explicit construction I dismiss or I dispatched would be too direct and personal an

involvement on the part of the signatory or speaker (Huddleston, Pullum 2002: 1446). It

is interesting to note that the verb dispatch occurs exclusively in the passive voice,

although it is grammatical to form an active voice as well. Reference to ‘the police’ is

usually omitted in an example like

(98) Two or three who were thus examined. (no. 79),

where it is easy to infer. I even venture into an assertion that in case of dispatch the

passive form is the more natural-sounding one of the pair.

As Biber et al. have found out, in the storytelling and in fiction generally, often

“the focus of a story is an event involving an affected person” (1999: 477). This is

shown in examples as

(99) Blythe had been re-christened “Beelzebub”. (no. 184) (100) Pat was kidnapped. (no. 129)

8 When transforming the expression It’s done, it was necessary to shift the original present tense into present prefect so that the semantics of the phrase was preserved: I have done it. This suggests that the passive voice can function as a means of expressing the perfectivity.

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Here, the ‘performer’ is unimportant with respect to the information in the message.

5.2 The Czech translation

In the Czech translations there are basically four possibilities for treating the

English passive phrase. First, the passive voice can be preserved as such, i.e. translated

via periphrastic passive. Second, since there are two options in Czech to choose from

when the passive voice is concerned, the reflexive passive can be used instead. Third, a

translator can transform the sentence ‘back’ into the active voice, and add or restore the

agent in the process to its subject position. Last, the passive construction can be totally

avoided in translation, which is then substituted by various stylistic means, for example

the original passive is replaced by a different, “new” verb and an adjective:

(101) His collar had been torn away – měl utržený límec (no. 237),

or the verb is in Czech very often completely avoided:

(102) the stories that have been told in the world – příběhům, na světě vyprávěným (no. 236).

5.2.1 Ways of translating the passive voice

When the English text and Czech translation are compared, the results are as

follows: 37% of the total passive constructions has been preserved as such in

translation, i.e. the passive voice as well as the appropriate verb has been maintained;

for example,

(103) The Gentle Riders were recruited from the aristocracy. - Vznešení jezdci byli rekrutováni z aristokracie. (no. 187) (104) Here’s a note I was asked to hand you - Byl jsem požádán, abych vám jej odevzdal. (no. 11) (105) […] most of the paths are patrolled by their agents - […] většina pěšin je hlídána agenty. (no. 164)

26% of the total passive structures has been turned into active voice during the

translation, as in the clauses:

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(106) All that’s included in the fall - toto vše patří k mému pádu. (no. 119) (107) The game of Fox-in-the-Morning had been played out - „hon na lišku“ skončil. (no. 170) (108) Even Aileen had not been shot at with a pistol. - Ani Aileen by se nemohla pochlubit tím, že po ní někdo střílel pistolí. (no. 207)

24% has been translated by an entirely different construction, verb, tense, mood, etc. or

completely omitted like e.g.:

(109) […] the line was not smoothed away - […] vráska se neztratila (no. 212) (110) […] a fire that was seldom quenched - […] zřídkakdy uhasitelný oheň (no. 176).

The smallest figure of 13% belongs to the number of reflexive passives in Czech which

have served to translate the original periphrastic constructions, e.g.:

(111) […] he was seated at her side - […] tak se posadil vedle ní (no. 199).

The number of preserved passives is quite high, if the tendency of the Czech

language to use active voice is taken into consideration. This shows that the translator

probably treated the passive voice as a period pattern and a peculiarity concerning the

author’s personal style of writing and tried to preserve it in plenty of occurrences.

Together with the reflexive passive, the total share of the passive voice constructions in

Czech translation is over 60% which is indeed an unusual quantity. The typical passive

construction that is translated by means of reflexive passive is the phrase

(112) I was born […] – narodil jsem se […]. (no. 26)

In the next example,

(113) That business could be built up. - Dal by se z něho vybudovat docela slušný obchod (no. 30),

it can be seen that the reflexive passive is a good choice where the translator does not

wish to think up a doer to fill in the subject position.

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In the case of the formation of an active voice out of a passive construction this

change has been possible in structures with expressed as well as implied agent, which

has in Czech been added to the sentence or made the subject. Example of the added doer

can be:

(114) Thus an animal acts when it is caged - Takhle si počíná zvíře, když je lidé dají do klece (no. 33)

The general agent is derived from the situational context, as only a human person is able

to cage an animal. An example showing the passive to active transformation with

expressed agent phrase is:

(115) […]whose steps were flanked by two green lights - […] u jejíhož schodiště zářila po stranách dvě zelená světla (no. 89).

Here, the Czech free word order allows the agent to appear at the end of the

clause; however, it still represents the subject.

Since the basic rule of English sentence structure requires every sentence to have

both subject and predicate, the subject is always present or at least implied in English

which sometimes calls for a filler for cases where the subject is not needed. Dušková

(1999: 178) distinguishes a semantic difference between it in it was said and in it

jumped and bit me. The former it is a “purely formal element with no referential or

semantic role, employed solely to fill the position of the subject” (1999: 178), whereas

the latter fulfils referential and pronominal function. In Czech this interpretation holds

true as well with the only difference that the agent is implied in the first expression:

vyprávělo se; skočilo to po mně a kouslo.

Constructions like

(116) I was told by a sculptor that… (no. 235)

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do not exist in Czech language at all, so there has to be a different way of translation

employed. In majority of cases such English structures with the object expressed by

personal pronoun at the pre-passive level correspond in Czech to the active version,

with the agent gathered from context and added to the sentence or re-extracted from the

agentive phrase:

(117) Sochař z Mauch Chunk mne kdysi poučil, že… .

5.2.2 Tense shifting

Further, when Czech translations are compared with the original, there are

divergences as far as the tense in constructions is concerned. One change that is valid

for all passive constructions in past perfect tense in English is its translation into Czech

by simple past tense, as for example in:

(118) Buttons that had been sewed upon by kind Salvation fingers - Knoflíky, které mu přišily pečlivé prsty Armády spásy. (no. 206) (119) […] they had been awakened by the noise of a pistol-shot. - […] byli probuzeni výstřelem z pistole. (no. 13)

This shift is caused by the syntactic properties of the Czech language which does not

form the past perfect tense. The difference between the past and the pre-past level can

be indicated by other means, usually via preposition, conjunction or adverbial (předtím).

Sometimes there is no syntactic indication but common sense as for the distinction of

preceding-following status of actions in Czech:

(120) A teď Phillips přivedl zimomřivého hosta, kterého vybral z řady mužů, žebrajících o nocleh. (And now Phillips wafted in the shivering guest who had been haled from the line of mendicant lodgers, no. 105).

Another frequent situation occurs when past tense in English is expressed by

present tense in Czech. This happens in sentences which bear some generally valid

assertion, for example,

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(121) Humans were denied the speech of animals - Lidem není dopřáno dorozumívat se se zvířaty (no. 57).

The Czech language tends to generalize what is generally true by means of present

tense, which is not always desirable, since it alters the original meaning. In the above

example, the author meant to bring forward the fact that ‘once upon a time’ people were

denied the speech of animals, which now results in the fact that dogs cannot let their

masters know what is worrying them. Even so, then, this applies under the

circumstances of storytelling – the English language sticks to the course of telling the

plot in the past tense, whereas in Czech the author is disposed to transform pieces of a

story into present tense and thus make them more immediate and of action, e.g.:

(122) And to indicate that that the inquiry was ended he added. – A na znamení, že vyšetřování je u konce, dodal. (no. 74)

One more case where this change can be observed is a standard situation of the

consecution of tenses in indirect speech introduced by a statement verb, e.g.:

(123) The Prince noted that its cause was connected in some manner with the slowly moving hands of the time-piece. (no. 43),

which is then obligatorily followed by a verb posed in past tense, which situation is

always translated into Czech through present tense:

(124) Princ si povšimnl, že neklid nějak souvisí s ručičkami časoměru, pomalu se pohybujícími.

Not only may the tense shift happen in the above direction (past → present) but

also vice versa: the original present tense is coded in Czech with past tense, e.g.

(125) But I am not defeated. – Nevzdal jsem se však. (no. 53)

Here the scheme is reversed compared to the above ‘past to present’ shift. For in some

cases, the translator prefers to maintain the cohesion of a narration with regard to his

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translation. Sometimes, the past tense in Czech is chosen instead of the present, because

of the fact that the perfective character which the original passive has imbedded in

itself, needs to be preserved. As Rusínová et al. (1996: 318) state, the Czech language

does not allow synchronous use of the perfective aspect and the present tense e.g.

(126) He felt like a cur that is cornered by his tormentors. - Měl pocity psa, kterého pronásledovatelé zahnali do kouta. (no. 46)

The reason for this lies in the nature of perfectivity as it expresses limitation of action’s

duration in terms of the wholeness of action, where the action is finished since it has

been accomplished, the aim has been reached and there is no point in continuing in it

(Rusínová et al. 1996: 319).

Slightly different point of view is adopted in the following analysis. It deals with

the preservation of a modal in translation. So then, in many cases the shift of tense is

replaced by the change of mode. Especially, the original past tense is translated by

means of a conditional in Czech, e.g.:

(127) […] a baggage with which his flight was burdened - cokoli, co by mu ztěžovalo útěk (no. 31). (128) […] or the thing in which it was carried - […] či ta věc, v níž měly být uloženy (no. 38).

This shift in modality works also in the opposite direction, more concretely, a

conditional phrase is translated via future tense in Czech, e.g.

(129) […] feeling confident that it would be delivered to him. – […] a byli přesvědčeni, že mu bude bezpečně doručen. (no. 54) (130) […] parlors of these houses should not be sub-let. - […] salónky v domech nebudou pronajímány. (no. 221)

As follows from my sample, the Czech language employs future tense more

often than English does. The future substitutes for the past as well as the present tense.

Here is one more example:

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(131) People are more impressed by a Kodak. - Na lidi udělá větší dojem fotoaparát. (no. 118)

Again, the choice of the translator can be best explicated in terms of emphasizing the

perfective nature of the original passive construction.

Since the present perfect tense ranges among the ones which do not have a

precise counterpart in Czech, it is natural that it has to be expressed in some other way.

The very rare number of present perfect passive structures has been translated by

various means: past tense, infinitive form, or present tense. For example,

(132) […] his ship has just been scuttled – […] právě mu potopili loď (no. 197),

is a variant which most closely preserves the original meaning, since it sketches out the

perfectivity with regard to the presence in the adverbial právě. In my opinion, in this

case I consider the Czech active interpretation to be a more suitable and appropriate one

since it depicts the action and suspense of the moment.

5.2.3 Alternative translations

In this last part of my analysis I will have a look at constructions which have

been translated in an alternative way; where the original has been followed only

semantically, not at the level of formal sentence arrangement. The passive constructions

have been not only turned into active ones, or into reflexive passives, but rather have

been totally omitted and avoided. I will present here a classification together with an

evaluation of the cases. I include also my animadversion as far as the Czech altered

translations are concerned.

With regard to proportion, the translator’s own creativity has been implemented

in 24% of the all 258 passive occurrences. As I have suggested above, the passive voice

including the verb carrying it has often been entirely omitted. For example:

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(133) With the effect of a schoolmaster entering the play-room of his pupils was that blow administered. - Úder měl stejný účinek jako vstup učitele do třídy. (no. 3)

In the Czech version there is neither a mention of the verb administer, nor is its meaning

saved in any other verb. This situation can be found in numerous cases and it brings

about an alteration of meaning. For example in the pair:

(134) I told him it was considered a faithful likeness. - Řekl jsem mu, že to je věrná podoba. (no. 44),

the Czech interpretation loses the conditioned meaning, and assigns the agency directly

to the speaker who draws the conclusion. While in the original the agent who considers

things is (theoretically) unknown to a reader, it can be represented by the person of the

speaker but also by a group of artists (the topic in question is a portrait).

Another possibility is the use of a verb different from the original text. At the

same time, the meaning is preserved. Examples are

(135) I’ve been blessed with – (kolik) jsem nezažil (no. 21) (136) […] you were admitted to dine - […] směli jste pojíst (no. 4).

Here the original verbs bless and admit are replaced by verbal forms of experience and

may, respectively. The semantic impact is not a striking one, since the Czech verbs

accurately communicate the intended meaning.

Different verb is used also in the second variant of this possibility, which is

characterized by deterioration of the semantic value of the original verb due to the

Czech choice of an unmarked verb. For example in the passage

(137) […] five cops had to be whistled for - […] že jich muselo přijít pět (no. 250)

the original meaning, consisting in the blowing one’s whistle to call for other mounted

policemen who were wandering around, is entirely lost. What is left is the basic frame

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of a vague coercive measure that has been employed to make the police officers appear

on site. The choice of verb is not the happiest one also in the following example:

(138) By and by the restless mood was overcome - Pomalu setřásl neklidnou náladu (no. 160).

In Czech the verb setřást is in semantic contradiction to pomalu, the former implying a

rapid intense movement, whereas the latter meaning “slowly”. The enumeration of the

inaccurate translated excerpts could continue by the piece

(139) […] near which were gathered some twenty girls (no. 99),

in which the Czech verb in the part

(140) […] u nichž postávalo asi dvacet děvčat

even changes and shifts the meaning of the passive semantics of ‘being gathered’, rather

unpromptedly. The Czech verb comments on the consequent situation which is only the

result of the process of gathering. Definitely, the use of Czech shromáždilo se would

have been more appropriate here.

Next variant for the translator has been the use of the construction be +

adjective, which is in Czech interchangeable with the passive voice, and in English it is

difficult to distinguish between the two. Here are some examples:

(141) Is it lit? - Je zapálená? (no. 137) (142) His eyes were firmly imbedded […]. - Jeho oči byly pevně zasazené […]. (no. 116).

Even more reduced is the translation by means of solely an adjective. The whole

original passive phrase is substituted by an adjective which can occur in the attributive

position or participates in a post-modifying clause. Examples of the former would be:

(143) […] potatoes which were not yet peeled for breakfast. - […] neoloupané brambory, chystané k snídani. (no. 165) (144) […] ghost that had been dispossessed - […] jako nějaký vypuzený duch (no. 64);

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the latter situation can be exemplified by

(145) […] wit that can be churned out of California claret - […] důvtipem, vyvolaným kalifornským červeným vínem (no. 39).

The listing of alternative ways of translating the passive phrase can be ended by

the group of other instances which cannot be easily classified. For example,

(146) […] the old restaurant is gone - […] stará restaurace je pryč (no. 102); (147) […] when the shot was fired - […] když už jsem byl za výstřelu (no. 86); (148) […] as a dog was intended to do - […] jako správný pes (no. 123).

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Summary

The passive is traditionally described as a formal and impersonal choice.

Especially the passive form comprising be and the past participle is perceived as

literary, as opposed to the expressive and colloquial form conjugated with get instead of

be (Curme 1931: 445). The formality is consistent with the distribution among registers,

with high frequencies in academic writing and with dialogs in fiction at the opposite

extreme (Biber et al. 1999: 943). Quirk et al. found out that the “major stylistic factor

determining the frequency [of the passive voice] seems to be related to the distinction

between informative and imaginative prose rather than to the difference of subject

matter and of spoken and written English” (1974: 808). Although they assert that the

passive voice is noticeably more frequently used in informative writing than in

imaginative prose (Quirk et al. 1974: 808), I have dealt with a sample containing

passives quite frequently, notably in informative passages.

The most general function of the passive voice proved to be the shift of a

viewpoint. Since the passive “involves a restructuring of the clause”, thus it is not a

simple order variation (Biber et al. 1999: 935). The passive construction “demotes the

agent of the verb, while giving topic status to the affected patient” (Biber et al. 1999:

477). Especially short dynamic passive forms leave the initiator of an action

unexpressed because the agent is unknown, redundant, or irrelevant (i.e. of particularly

low information value). Its omission also means that the verb phrase is more often in

clause final position, characteristic of new information.

The choice between the active and the passive verb is related to the presentation

of given and new information, which is also connected with the use of short versus long

passives (Biber et al. 1999: 476). Typically, the short passive makes it possible to

eliminate the participant that would have been expressed in the subject of corresponding

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active construction, which is exploited for many reasons. Since the agent is most

typically human, it suggests itself to characterize the short passive constructions as

impersonal. Although these two passive types differ with respect to the given/new

division, as for the expression of given information they are alike. They are

characterized by the tendency to place given information in subject position. This is,

however, true of subjects in general and is not limited to passive constructions (Biber et

al. 1999: 943).

On the other hand, the long passive preserves all the information that would be

expressed in the corresponding active construction. Because of this difference between

the short and the long passive, the latter “should be considered as competing with the

corresponding active construction rather than with the short passive” (Biber et al. 1999:

943). Here, the winner is the active voice as the active construction is the more frequent

choice in describing a situation involving an agent, an action, and an affected

participant, presumably because it represents a natural way of viewing things (from

originator to goal). The affected participant is chosen as subject if the context makes it a

more natural starting-point than the agent, especially if this is given in the context and is

less informative than the affected participant (Biber et al. 1999: 943).

The passive voice as a means of stylistics influences the tone of a sentence and

contributes to its meaning. As can be seen in the following example:

(149) He was permeated with the curse of domesticity (no. 167),

the chosen passive contours the overall passive meaning, as the context of this excerpt is

the description of a couch potato. The possibility to omit an agent is made used of and

the construction thus suggests that he, passively and without his own effort or volition,

became extremely lazy. The passivity is apparent in comparison with the Czech

translation which is active and not so telling:

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(150) Vyzařoval prokletí zdomácnělosti.

The verb vyzařovat can bear the passive undertone of “unintentionally radiate”,

nevertheless, the fact that it is posed in the active voice causes the inescapably more

active and agentive nature of the phrase.

The author lays emphasis on the notion of preceding and following, and on the

resultative nature of actions. That is why he uses past perfect tense very often.

Semantically it is actually a present perfect aspect but related with the past tense of the

narrative line:

(151) His face and hands had been recently washed. (no. 249)

In this example the sense of the utterance is ‘past with present relevance’ but the

stylistic preference governs the whole of the plot telling to be united in one and the

same tense which is in this case the past tense.

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Conclusion

The aim of the present thesis has been to explore the use of the passive voice

from the semantico-syntactic point of view, with the main focus set on the English

language. Since the research sample is rather small, it means, that it cannot serve as a

ground for general conclusions. However, my hypotheses postulated at the beginning

proved correct, particularly the overall preference of the active to passive voice in Czech

when compared with English, or more specifically, the prevalence of short passive forms,

which confirms the basic functions of the passive voice. These have been the expression

of verbal action without the necessity to specify the agent that performs it, and to mediate

the shift of perspective from the actor to the acted upon subject. Semantically the passive

voice is, above all, a formal means of objective detachment, avoidance of personal

involvement and in fiction, it serves its purposes especially in underlying descriptions

which frame the plot.

In Czech, where the translator could operate with two types of the passive forms,

he preferred active, reflexive and other means of expression in the majority of cases. The

periphrastic passive has been preserved in 37% of cases, which I ascribe to the wider

range of possibilities that are available in Czech (word order, reflexive passive, various

pseudo-passive constructions). Overall, the translations proved the tendency to transform

the passive structures into active ones with the necessary agents added, thought up,

presumed and deduced from the context. Whereas in English the passive facilitates

cohesion and is obligatorily employed in maintaining the rules of functional sentence

perspective, in Czech the active voice can be utilized in this respect.

The English language disposes of only a limited number of possible clause

structures and associated sets of participant roles. These restrictions determine that an

‘agentive’ role cannot be expressed by an object or complement, but only by the subject,

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or by the agent of a passive clause (Quirk R., Greenbaum S. 1973: 411). Hence, the

importance of the passive voice as a means of reversing the normal order of ‘agentive’

and ‘affected’ elements can be seen. Consequently, the adjustment of a clause structure

to conform to end-focus and end-weight principles is achieved.

The scope of my analysis has comprised a lot of various, though interrelated,

perspectives. I have examined the English passive structures from a quantitative as well

as a qualitative point of view. The exploration of qualities included the semantics of the

long and short passive phrase, communicative functions of the passive as well as the

study of its purposes with regard to functional sentence perspective. Attention has been

devoted to the agentive complementation of the passive structures, and further to the

modal modification of a verb phrase. What is more, I compared the implementation and

stylistic roles that the passive plays in English with the roles that it plays in the Czech

language in corresponding translations.

During the process of analysis, my primary aim has been to explore, with the aid

of the sample of short stories, the manifold functions that the passive can bear. I did not

mean to deduce general conclusions about the English passive voice, but rather to find

out all the assorted particular uses in which it can be employed and to account for the

varied purposes that it can serve from both a syntactic and a semantic point of view.

That is why I have reached a lot of sub-conclusions which are not meant to be

generalized. Therefore, I will present here a full list of functions of the passive voice

that I have encountered in my sample.

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Functions and uses of the passive voice SHORT PASSIVE

Function Example

OMISSION OF AN AGENT → unimportant for the message It was a daring thing to have been named

Mary. (no. 153) → unknown His eyes were firmly imbedded in his face.

(no. 116) → redundant We happened to be born there. (no. 27) → avoidance of personal responsibility A police captain was dismissed from

force. (no. 61) → focus on the affected patient The ranchman was dragged away. (no. 69) COMMUNICATIVE DYNAMISM → new information in a verb The picture was completed. (no. 42) → new information in the passive subject9 A group of boarders were seated on the

high stoop. (no. 200) EMPHASIS → on a verb (be + lexical verb = 2 elements)

Order was restored. (no. 190)

→ on the passive subject Dinner was served to Goodwin. (no. 203) → on completion (suggests difficulty in the process of perfection)

By and by the restless mood was overcome. (no. 160)

→ on passivity of verbal meaning He was permeated with the curse of domesticity. (no. 167)

LONG PASSIVE EMPHASIS → on an agent The mobs even attacked the Casa Morena,

but were driven away by the military. (no. 72)

→ on a patient […] like a cur that is cornered by his tormentors. (no. 46)

COMMUNICATIVE DYNAMISM → new information in an agent10 […] as if it had been made up from

individual contributors from the chorus of a musical comedy. (no. 143)

STYLISTICS → long pre-passive object They were almost overpowered by a great

clapping of hands. (no. 161) BOTH TYPES OF THE PASSIVE

9 The rules of functional sentence perspective determine two basic schemes: in the first one attention is drawn to the subject of the passive (i.e. the pre-passive object) since it is more important than the doer. This is a predominant feature of the short passive, which leaves the doer unexpressed for various reasons, and generally greater attention is taken in the affected patient. 10 The second basic scheme is used with an opposite intention, i.e. to emphasize the doer. Naturally, this is an exclusive feature of the long passive.

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→ cohesion I claim descent from the late Tommy Tucker, who was forced to hand out. (no. 92)

→ marked word order The sidewalk was blockaded with sightseers. (no. 23)

→ antichronic way of perception (violation of time line)

[…] a few words that were written by him. (no. 257)

→ objectivity It cannot be denied that […]. (no. 56) → detachment It’s done. (no. 67) → formal, official tone Colonel Emilio Falcon was dispatched

from the capital upon this important mission. (no. 63)

→ politeness I wanted to be forgiven. (no. 93)

My research has shown that the functions and implementations of the passive

voice are abundant which makes it a valuable stylistic means, especially useful for its

primary ability to avoid the expression of an agent. Nevertheless, the passive turn is

employed rather in formal jargon. It is often felt to be heavier than the corresponding

active since it adds one element of complexity to the verb phrase (Quirk et al., 1974:

805). In general, it can be concluded that the passive voice is necessarily used in two

cases: when the agent is unknown and thus unrecoverable, and as a device of alignment

with the FSP linearity principle, since it enables the element carrying the highest degree

of communicative dynamism to close a clause.

103

Bibliography

Analysed Texts

Henry, O. 69 Short Stories. Glasgow: Collins Classics, 1954.

---. Harlemská tragédie a jiné povídky. Trans. Stanislav Klíma. Ostrava: Morava, 199-.

---. Jaro na jídelním lístku. Trans. Stanislav Klíma et al. Praha: Práce, 1988.

---. The Skylight Room and Other Stories. Moscow: Higher School Publishing House,

1972.

---. Vrtkavá štěstěna aneb jak se Gladys činila a jiné povídky. Trans. Stanislav Klíma.

Praha: Melantrich, 1981.

---. Zpověď humoristova. Trans. Stanislav Klíma. Praha: Melantrich, 1972.

Theoretical texts

Bělíček, P. English Semantics: The Semantic Structure of Modern English. Prague:

URANIA Publishers, 2005.

Biber, D., et al. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Longman,

1999, 475-83, 935-43.

Chomsky, N. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1965.

Curme, G. O. A Grammar of the English language, Vol. 3: Syntax. Boston: Heath,

1931.

Daneš, František. Malý průvodce po dnešní češtině. Praha: Orbis 1964.

Dušková, L. Studies in the English Language. Part 2. Praha: Karolinum, 1999.

---. Mluvnice současné angličtiny na pozadí češtiny. Praha: Academia, 1988.

Fillmore, Ch. ‛The case for case’ in Univerals in Linguistic Theory. Bach, E. and

Harms, R. (eds.) New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968.

Firbas, J. Functional Sentence Perspective in Written and Spoken Communication.

Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992.

104

Grepl, M., Karlík, P. Skladba češtiny. Olomouc: Votobia, 1998.

---. Skladba spisovné češtiny. Praha: SPN, 1986.

Havránek, B., Jedlička, A. Česká mluvnice. Praha: SPN, 1981.

---. Stručná mluvnice česká. Praha: Fortuna, 2002.

Hladká, Z., Karlík, P., eds. Čeština – univerzália a specifika 5. Praha: Lidové noviny,

2004.

Huddleston, R., Pullum, G. K. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.

Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002, 230-2, 1426-47.

Huddleston, R. The Sentence in Written English. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1971.

Hurford, J. R., Heasley, B. Semantics: a coursebook. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983.

Jespersen, O. A modern English Grammar on Histrorical Principles Part 4, 5.

Heidelberg: Carl Winter UP, 1931.

---. Essentials of English grammar. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1933.

Leech, G., et al. An A-Z of English grammar and usage. Walton-on-

Thames: Nelson, 1991.

---. Semantics: The Study of Meaning. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981.

Miller, J. Semantics and Syntax: Parallels and connections. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,

1985.

Novinářský studijní ústav. Kapitoly z odborné stylistiky. Praha: Orbis, 1955, 58-60.

Palmer, F. R. A linguistic study of the English verb. London: Longmans, 1965.

Quirk, R., et al. A Grammar of Contemporary English. Harlow: Longman, 1974,

801-11.

Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S. A University Grammar of English. London: Longman, 1973.

Rusínová, Z., Karlík, P., and Nekula, M., eds. Příruční mluvnice češtiny. Praha: Lidové

noviny, 1996, 323-4, 523-9.

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Sandmann, M. Subject and Predicate. A Contribution to the Theory of Syntax.

Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1954.

Trávníček, F. Mluvnice spisovné češtiny. Část II. Skladba. Praha: Melantrich, 1949,

738-49.

106

Appendix

List of the discussed short stories and their Czech titles

A Cosmopolite in a Café: Světoobčan v restauraci (Vrtkavá štěstěna aneb jak se Gladys

činila a jiné povídky)

A Double-Dyed Deceiver: Dvojnásobný podvodník (Zpověď humoristova)

A Harlem Tragedy: Harlemská tragédie (Harlemská tragédie a jiné povídky)

A Madison Square Arabian Night: Příběh z Tisíce a jedné noci na Madisonově náměstí

(Zpověď humoristova)

A Midsummer Knight’s DRAM: Rytířův sen letní noci (Vrtkavá štěstěna aneb jak se

Gladys činila a jiné povídky)

According to Their Lights: Podle vlastních zásad (Vrtkavá štěstěna aneb jak se Gladys

činila a jiné povídky)

After Twenty Years: Po dvaceti letech (Zpověď humoristova)

Between Rounds: Mezi koly (Vrtkavá štěstěna aneb jak se Gladys činila a jiné povídky)

Brickdust Row : Ulice cihlové moučky (Harlemská tragédie a jiné povídky)

Elsie in New York: Elsie v New Yorku (Harlemská tragédie a jiné povídky)

Mammon and the Archem: Mamon a Amor (Zpověď humoristova)

Master of Arts: Mistři umění (Harlemská tragédie a jiné povídky)

Memoirs of a Yellow Dog: Paměti žlutého psa (Vrtkavá štěstěna aneb jak se Gladys

činila a jiné povídky)

Money Maze: Utajené finance (Vrtkavá štěstěna aneb jak se Gladys činila a jiné

povídky)

Sisters of the Golden Circle: Sestry Zlatého kroužku (Vrtkavá štěstěna aneb jak se

Gladys činila a jiné povídky)

The Badge of Policeman O’Roon: Odznak policisty O’Roona (Harlemská tragédie a jiné

107

povídky)

The Brief Début Of Tildy: Tyldin krátký debut (Vrtkavá štěstěna aneb jak se Gladys

činila a jiné povídky)

The Caliph, Cupid and the Clock: Kalif, Amor a hodiny (Zpověď humoristova)

The Country of Elusion: Země úniku (Vrtkavá štěstěna aneb jak se Gladys činila a jiné

povídky)

Two Thanksgiving Day Gentleman: Den díkůvzdání dvou gentlemanů (Harlemská

tragédie a jiné povídky)