A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages.[1] In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb – that is, the person or thing that undergoes the action or has its state changed.[2] This contrasts with active voice, in which the subject has the agent role. For example, in the passive sentence "The tree was pulled down", the subject (the tree) denotes the patient rather than the agent of the action. In contrast, the sentences "Someone pulled down the tree" and "The tree is down" are active sentences.
Typically, in passive clauses, what is usually expressed by the object (or sometimes another argument) of the verb is now expressed by the subject, while what is usually expressed by the subject is either omitted or is indicated by some adjunct of the clause. Thus, turning an active sense of a verb into a passive sense is a valence-decreasing process ("detransitivizing process"), because it syntactically turns a transitive sense into an intransitive sense.[3] This is not always the case; for example in Japanese a passive-voice construction does not necessarily decrease valence.[4]
Many languages have both an active and a passive voice; this allows for greater flexibility in sentence construction, as either the semantic agent or patient may take the syntactic role of subject.[5] The use of passive voice allows speakers to organize stretches of discourse by placing figures other than the agent in subject position. This may be done to foreground the patient, recipient, or other thematic role;[5] it may also be useful when the semantic patient is the topic of on-going discussion.[6] The passive voice may also be used to avoid specifying the agent of an action.
^Siewierska, Anna (1984). The Passive: A Comparative Linguistic Analysis. London: Croom Helm.
^O'Grady, William; John Archibald; Mark Aronoff; Janie Rees-Miller (2001). Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction (Fourth ed.). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's. ISBN 978-0-312-24738-6.
^Kroeger, Paul (2005). Analyzing Grammar: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521816229.
^Booij, Geert E.; Christian Lehmann; Joachim Mugdan; Stavros Skopeteas (2004). Morphologie / Morphology. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-019427-2. Retrieved 13 September 2013.
^ abSaeed, John (1997). Semantics. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-631-20035-2.
^Croft, William (1991). Syntactic Categories and Grammatical Relations: The Cognitive Organization of Information. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-12090-4.
A passivevoice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passivevoice, the grammatical subject...
In English, the passivevoice is marked by a subject that is followed by a stative verb complemented by a past participle. For example: The enemy was...
impersonal passivevoice is a verb voice that decreases the valency of an intransitive verb (which has valency one) to zero.: 77 The impersonal passive deletes...
European and Indian languages, the past participle is used to form the passivevoice. In English, participles are also associated with periphrastic verb...
theme is named a passive clause, and its verb is expressed in passivevoice. Many languages have both an active and a passivevoice and this allows for...
Look up passive, passively, or passivity in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Passive may refer to: Passivevoice, a grammatical voice common in many languages...
The mediopassive voice is a grammatical voice that subsumes the meanings of both the middle voice and the passivevoice. Languages of the Indo-European...
This construction is similar to the passivevoice, in that it decreases the verb's valency by one – the passive by deleting the agent and "promoting"...
'speaks', 'spoke', 'has spoken', and 'had spoken', respectively or in the passivevoice, 'it is spoken', 'it was spoken', 'it has been spoken', and 'it had...
In grammar, a circumstantial voice, or circumstantial passivevoice, is a voice that promotes an oblique argument of a verb to the role of subject; the...
(indicative, imperative, subjunctive and optative), three voices (active, middle and passive), as well as three persons (first, second and third) and three...
ditransitive verbs have a passivevoice form which can take a direct object. Contrast the active and two forms of the passive: Active: Jean gave the books...
valency. In languages that have a passivevoice, a transitive verb in the active voice becomes intransitive in the passivevoice. For example, consider the following...
{to go} where 'Where are you going, sir?': 302 Khmer does not have a passivevoice, but there is a construction utilizing the main verb /trəw/ ("to hit"...
can also be marked for passivevoice (as can the plain infinitive): (to) eat (plain infinitive, active) (to) be eaten (passive) (to) have eaten (perfect...
active voice of this verb but have the passive meaning "to be called" alongside the dated active meaning "to command".) The morphological passive in North...
has four voices: the active voice a.k.a. the agent trigger the passivevoice for direct objects a.k.a. the patient trigger the passivevoice for indirect...
tense and the conditionals. The passive participle is also called "n/t-participle" and is used for forming the passivevoice. There are two types of endings:...
in older texts: he is come.) It is used as a passive participle, with be or get, to form the passivevoice: This book was written last year; Trees sometimes...
express meanings such as negation, present and past tense, volition, passivevoice, causation, imperative and conditional mood, and ability. There are...
possible verb voices: active and passive. The active voice corresponds with the active voice of English, but the Finnish passivevoice has some important...
build the passivevoice in French. We are hosted by a friend. These auxiliaries help express a question, show tense/aspect, or form passivevoice. Auxiliaries...
pseudo-passive may refer to: Impersonal passivevoice, a grammatical form that deletes the subject of an intransitive verb Prepositional passive, a form...
tenses. For related passive constructions (of the type it is said that and she is said to), see English passivevoice § Passive constructions without...
standardised. The passivevoice in Swedish is formed in one of four ways: adding an -s to the infinitive form of the verb (s-passive); this form tends...
rules applied. Prefix maka- is used for active voice (with (m)aN- and -um- integrated), while passivevoice uses the prefix pinaka- (with -in- and ka- integrated)...
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