From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article is about the passive voice in English. For the passive voice generally, including its use in other languages, see Passive voice. English grammar | * Adjectives * Adverbs * Articles * Clauses * Compounds * Conditionals * Conjunctions * Determiners * Gender * Idiom * Interjections * Inversion * Nouns * Pronouns * Phrases * Plurals * Possessives * Prepositions * Verbs * Auxiliaries, contractions * Irregular verbs * Modal verbs * Passive voice * Phrasal verbs * Subjunctive * Verb usage * Grammar disputes | This box: * view * talk * edit |
The passive voice is a grammatical construction (specifically, a "voice"). The noun or noun phrase that would be the object of an active sentence (such as Our troops defeated the enemy) appears as the subject of a sentence with passive voice (e.g. The enemy was defeated by our troops).
The subject of a sentence or clause featuring the passive voice denotes the recipient of the action (the patient) rather than the performer (the agent). The passive voice in English is formed periphrastically: the usual form uses the auxiliary verb be (or get) together with the past participle of the main verb.
For example, Caesar was stabbed by Brutus uses the passive voice. The subject denotes the person (Caesar) affected by the action of the verb. The agent is expressed here with the phrase by Brutus, but this can be omitted. The equivalent sentence in active voice is Brutus stabbed Caesar, in which the subject denotes the doer, or agent, Brutus. A sentence featuring the passive voice is sometimes called a passive sentence, and a verb phrase in passive voice is sometimes called a passive verb.[1]
English allows a number of passive constructions which are not possible in many of the other languages with similar passive formation. These include promotion of an