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In these languages, a verb is typically in the active voice when the subject of the verb is the doer of the action. In active voice, the subject of the sentence performs the action expressed by the main verb and is thus the agent. For example, in the sentence "The cat ate the fish", 'the cat' is the agent performing the action of eating. [1]
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 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.
The voice [13] of a verb expresses whether the subject of the verb is performing the action of the verb or whether the action is being performed on the subject. The two most common voices are the active voice (as in "I saw the car") and the passive voice (as in "The car was seen by me" or simply "The car was seen").
The active voice (where the verb's subject is understood to denote the doer, or agent, of the denoted action) is the unmarked voice in English. To form the passive voice (where the subject denotes the undergoer, or patient , of the action), a periphrastic construction is used.
Conversely, Latin also has some verbs that are active in form but passive in meaning. fio ' I am made/done ' was used as the passive of facio ' I do/make '. In the perfect forms (perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect), this was a compound verb just like the passive voice of regular verbs (factus sum ' I have been done ').
In the sentence "The boy kicked the ball", the boy is the agent and the subject. However, when the sentence is rendered in the passive voice, "The ball was kicked by the boy", the ball is the grammatical subject, but the boy is still the agent. Many sentences in English and other Indo-European languages have the agent as subject.
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:
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related to: make this sentence active voice