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The passive voice is a specific grammatical construction. The essential components, in English, are a form of the stative verb be (or sometimes get [4]) and the past participle of the verb denoting the action.
In the first sentence, the combination of the auxiliary verb "is" and the past participle "fed" is a regular example of the construction of the passive voice in English. In the second sentence, "is" can however be interpreted as an ordinary copula and the past participle as an adjective.
When ser is used with the past participle of a verb, it forms the "true" passive voice, expressing an event ("El libro fue escrito en 2005"/"The book was written in 2005"). When the past participle appears with estar , it forms a "passive of result" or " stative passive" ("El libro ya está escrito "/"The book is already written "—see Spanish ...
To say the same thing with a past participle, estar (or quedar) is required, in order to differentiate it from the use of ser with a past participle implying an action expressed in the passive voice: Es ilegal fumar en este vuelo = "It is illegal to smoke on this flight" (straightforward case of ser)
English past participles have both active and passive uses. In a passive use, an object or preposition complement becomes zero, the gap being understood to be filled by the noun phrase the participle modifies (compare similar uses of the to-infinitive above). Uses of past participles and participial phrases introduced by them are as follows:
When the past participle is used in this way, it invariably ends with -o. In contrast, when the participle is used as an adjective, it agrees in gender and number with the noun modified. Similarly, the participle agrees with the subject when it is used with ser to form the "true" passive voice (e.g. La carta fue escrita ayer 'The letter was ...
The usual passive voice is the se pasiva, in which the verb is conjugated in the active voice, but preceded by the se particle: La puerta se abre. La puerta se cierra. Estar is used to form what might be termed a static passive voice (not regarded as a passive voice in traditional Spanish grammar; it describes a state that is the result of an ...
The participle of describir is descrito in some regions, but descripto in others. There are three verbs that have both a regular and an irregular past participle. Both forms may be used when conjugating the compound tenses and the passive voice with the auxiliary verbs haber and ser, but the irregular form is generally the only one used as an ...