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This contrasts with the passive voice, where the subject is the recipient of the action, such as in "The fish was eaten by the cat." The use of both active and passive voices in languages enhances versatility in sentence construction, allowing either the semantic agent or patient to assume the syntactic role of the subject. [2]
The active voice is the dominant voice used in English. Many commentators, notably George Orwell in his essay "Politics and the English Language" and Strunk & White in The Elements of Style, have urged minimizing use of the passive voice, but this is almost always based on these commentators' misunderstanding of what the passive voice is. [8]
The active voice is the most commonly used in many languages and represents the "normal" case, in which the subject of the verb is the agent. In the active voice, the subject of the sentence performs the action or causes the happening denoted by the verb. Sentence (1) is in active voice, as indicated by the verb form saw.
The English passive voice is used less often than the active voice, [3] but frequency varies according to the writer's style and the given field of writing. Contemporary style guides discourage excessive use of the passive voice but generally consider it to be acceptable in certain situations, such as when the patient is the topic of the ...
The following 10 pages are in this category, out of 10 total. ... Voice (grammar) A. Active voice; Adjutative voice; Antipassive voice; Applicative voice; C ...
Swedish has a few passive-voice deponents, although its closely related neighbour languages Danish and Norwegian mostly use active corresponding forms. Indeed, Norwegian shows the opposite trend: like in English, active verbs are sometimes used with a passive or middle sense, such as in boka solgte 1000 eksemplarer ' the book sold 1000 copies '.
Passive voice, a grammatical voice common in many languages, see also Pseudopassive; Passive language, a language from which an interpreter works; Passivity (behavior), the condition of submitting to the influence of one's superior; Passive-aggressive behavior, resistance to following through with expectations in interpersonal or occupational ...
The infinitives of these languages are inflected for passive voice through the addition of -s or -st to the active form. This suffix appeared in Old Norse as a contraction of mik (“me”, forming -mk ) or sik (reflexive pronoun, forming -sk ) and originally expressed reflexive actions: (hann) kallar (“[he] calls”) + -sik (“himself ...