Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The English passive voice typically involves forms of the verbs to be or to get followed by a passive participle as the subject complement—sometimes referred to as a passive verb. [ 1 ] English allows a number of additional passive constructions that are not possible in many other languages with analogous passive formations to the above.
Static passive auxiliary verb: be (the "be-passive") Dynamic passive auxiliary verb: get (the "get-passive") For some speakers of English the dynamic passive constructed with get is not accepted and is considered colloquial or sub-standard. The grass is cut (static) The grass gets cut or The grass is being cut (dynamic)
In English, the similarity between the active past tense form of verbs (i.e., "John kicked the ball") and the passive past tense (i.e., "the ball was kicked") can give rise to confusion concerning a special form of reduced relative clause, called the reduced object relative passive clause [5] (so called because the noun being modified is the ...
The canonical passive in European languages has the following properties: The subject is not an agent. There is a change in: word order; or in nominal morphology—the form of the nouns in the sentence. There is specific verbal morphology—a particular form of the verb indicates passive voice. The problem arises with non-European languages.
In the canonical form of the passive, a form of the auxiliary verb be (or sometimes get) is used, together with the past participle of the lexical verb. Passive voice can be expressed in combination together with tenses, aspects and moods, by means of appropriate marking of the auxiliary (which for this purpose is not a stative verb, i.e. it ...
Verbs such as λέγω require either ὡς or ὅτι as an introductory particle. If the introductory verb is in a secondary tense, the finite verb of the ὡς / ὅτι clause is usually changed from the indicative mood into the corresponding tense in the optative mood, but the indicative verb is sometimes retained for vividness.
If the main verb of a reported statement is a reflection of a future perfect tense in direct speech, it cannot be expressed using an active verb, but it is possible to use a passive or deponent perfect participle with fore: [166] Carthāginiēsēs dēbellātum mox fore rēbantur (Livy) [167] 'the Carthaginians thought that the war would soon be ...
"Mediopassive" may be used to describe a category that covers both the middle (or "medium") and the passive voice. In synchronic grammars, the mediopassive voice is often simply termed either "middle" (typical for grammars of e.g. Ancient and Modern Greek) or "passive" (typical for grammars of e.g. modern Danish).