Grammatical voice
Voice, in grammar, is the relationship between the action or state expressed by a verb, and its arguments (subject, object, etc.).
When the subject is the agent or actor of the verb, the verb is said to be in the active voice. When the subject is patient, target or undergoer of the action, it is said to be in the passive voice. For example, "The cat ate the mouse" is active, but "The mouse was eaten by the cat" is passive.
In a passive voice sentence, the subject and the direct object switch places. The direct object is promoted to subject, and the subject is demoted to a complement (that may be left out).
In English, the passive voice is a periphrastic construction, i .e. it's modelled using an ad hoc phrase structure with a different word order, an auxiliary verb and a participle of the main verb. In other languages the passive voice is simply marked on the verb as an inflection.
Some languages (e. g. Sanskrit and Classical Greek) have a "middle voice". An intransitive verb that appears active but expresses a passive action characterizes the English middle voice. For example, in "The casserole cooked in the oven", "cooked" is syntactically active but semantically passive, putting it in the middle voice.
Many deponent verbs in Latin are also survivals of the Indo-European middle voice; many of these in turn survive as obligatory pseudo-reflexive verbs in the Romance languages such as French and Spanish.
Some languages have even more grammatical voices. For example, in Classic Mongolian there are five voices: active, passive, causative, reciprocal and cooperative.
Ergative languages usually don't have a passive voice, since their syntactic structure doesn't agree with it; instead some have an antipassive voice that deletes the object of transitive verbs.
Topic-prominent languages like Mandarin and Japanese tend not to have a passive voice, or to use it only in very special cases.
| Table of contents |
|
2 Usage of the English passive voice 3 See also: |
In some languages there is a distinction between static passive voice and dynamic passive voice, for exampe German. Static means, that an action was done to the subject at a certain point in time, whereas dynamic means that an action is done.
Some people consider it bad practice to use the passive voice in English, because it obscures the subject. There is a difference in approach between the UK and the USA. In the UK passive voice is commonly used. In the USA people commonly use the active voice. This is especially true regarding formal and business communications.
Of course, there is still one situation where the passive will always be popular in any country. Many people find it far more appealing to write the second of these two sentences:
Ditransitive verbs in English (i.e. with a subject, direct object and indirect object) can have a passive form which takes a direct object. Contrast:
Dynamic and Static Passive
"Ich bin am 20. August geboren" ( german, literally "I am born on August, 20th" )
this is static, you have the state ''born on August, 20th"
"Ich bin am 20. August geboren" ( german, literally "I become born on August, 20th" )
this is dynamic, you are getting the state ''born on August, 20th"
Usage of the English passive voice
The passive voice is very often found in academic and journalistic writings. The passive voice is also used to avoid "blame". For example, "The bombing was attributed to unknown freedom fighters."See also: