Friedberg_Nila-2021

М . Б У Л Г А К О В « С О Б А Ч Ь Е С Е Р Д Ц Е » . О Т Р Ы В О К 5 2 4 9 Задание 6 | Грамматика Прочитайте комментарий и выполните задание. EQUIVALENTS OF THE PASSIVE VOICE Recall that one of the ways in which an equivalent of the passive voice (e.g. “The apartment is not heated”) is created in Russian is by using the third-person plural verb without an overt subject. This construction is called a “personal indefinite sentence,” неопределенно-личное предложение (Shakhmatov 1925). In this case, the subject is not explicitly stated, but implied, i.e., the idea is that “someone” did or did not do something (Wade 200: 331). (а) Когда украли калоши? When were the galoshes stolen? (b) В квартире не топят. The apartment is not heated. English speakers might be tempted to instead use a passive structure with the auxiliary verb быть and a participle, as in (c), since such a construction is closer to the structure of English passives: (c) Когда были украдены калоши? When were the galoshes stolen? (d) Квартира не отапливается. The apartment is not heated. However, while sentence (c) is an acceptable Russian sentence, it sounds more formal than sentence (a); moreover, sentence (a) focuses on the implicit “someone” that is being blamed for the theft, while sentence (c) lacks this nuance, and is thus not completely equivalent to (a) semantically (see Plungian 2011). The same contrast holds for sentence (b) versus sentence (d).