Voice Peculiarities of Participle II

Participle II of transitive verbs, when it is not part of a perfect form, is always passive in meaning. Depending on the verb and the context it may correspond to any passive participle in Russian: built— построенный, строившийся, строящийся; begun — начатый, на­чинаемый, начинающийся; translated— переводящийся, переводившийся, переводимый, переведенный.

Having a passive meaning participle II of transitive verbs is opposed to common participle I active; asking-asked, loving-loved, seeing-seen, writing-written, teaching-taught, watching-watched, etc.

The passive meaning of participle II may be of three types:

1) denoting an action directed towards the subject as the carrier of the action. This is peculiar to durative (non-terminative) transitive verbs, such as: to accompany, to follow, to watch, to carry, to teach, to listen (to), to laugh (at), to look (at, for, on), to speak (of, to), to love, to hate, as in:

Spanish is one of the foreign languages taught at our Institute. I won't have my friend laughed at.

2) denoting a state, which is the result of an action. This is typical of terminative transitive verbs, such as to bring, to catch, to do, to find, to make, to put, to solve, to build, to realize, to open, to close, etc.

The problem is solved. The door is shut.

Occasionally, in a certain context, participle II of the above-men­tioned verbs may denote action, as in:

Brightman's place was an old English farm-house, built two years before.

3) denoting a pure state. This is the case with verbs denoting psychological states and emotions, such as to amuse, to annoy, to offend, to surprise, to please, to excite.

I felt annoyed when he refused to help me. I'm very (much) pleased with what he has done.

Note: The carrier of the action or state denoted by participle 11 is to be found in the subject of the sentence, in the noun or pronoun modified by participle II, in the first (nominal) element of a predicative construction.

Participle II of intransitive verbs is always active in meaning. The use of the active participle is restricted. Only participles II of verbs denoting motion or change of state can be used independently, mostly as attributes. These are participles П of the verbs to arrive, to fall, to go, to rise, to depart, to decease, to retire, to fads, to wither, to vanish, to decay and some others. Participles II of these verbs correspond to the Russian active participle of the perfective aspect; arrived — прибыв­ший, vanished— исчезнувший, faded— увядший, decayed— сгнивший, as in arrived guests, the risen moon, the vanished civilization, the fallen leaves, the retired president.

Among these participles we find some which can be used either transitively or intransitively, such as hidden, increased, diminished, returned. They correspond to the Russian perfective active participles with the suffix -СЯ (спрятавшийся, увеличившийся, вернувшийся): the man hidden behind the tree, an increased population, the returned traveller.