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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.
In sentences using the active voice, the subject is the performer of the action—referred to as the agent. Above, the agent is omitted entirely, but it may also be included adjunctively while maintaining the passive voice: The enemy was defeated by our troops. Caesar was stabbed by Brutus. The initial examples rewritten in the active voice yield:
The following pair of examples illustrates the contrast between active and passive voice in English. In sentence (1), the verb form ate is in the active voice, but in sentence (2), the verb form was eaten is in the passive voice. Independent of voice, the cat is the Agent (the doer) of the action of eating in both sentences.
The passive voice is formed using the verb be (in the appropriate tense or form) with the past participle of the verb in question: cars are driven, he was killed, I am being tickled, it is nice to be pampered, etc. The performer of the action may be introduced in a prepositional phrase with by (as in they were killed by the invaders).
The passive voice in English may appear to be in the OVS order, but that is not an accurate description. In an active voice sentence like Sam ate the apples, the grammatical subject, Sam , is the agent and is acting on the patient , the apples , which are the object of the verb, ate .
Some "writing tutors" believe that the passive voice is to be avoided in all cases, [22] but "there are legitimate uses for the passive voice", says Paul Brians. [23] Mignon Fogarty also points out that "passive sentences aren't incorrect" [24] and "If you don't know who is responsible for an action, passive voice can be the best choice".
Passive: The books were given to him by Jean. He was given the books by Jean. Not all languages have a passive voice, and some that do have one (e.g. Polish) do not allow the indirect object of a ditransitive verb to be promoted to subject by passivization, as English does. In others like Dutch a passivization is possible but requires a ...
The subject of a sentence is generally a noun or pronoun, or a phrase containing a noun or pronoun. If the sentence features active voice, the thing named by the subject carries out the action of the sentence; in the case of passive voice, the subject is affected by the action. In sentences with imperative mood, the subject may not be expressed.