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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)
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 ...
In the passive voice, The apples were eaten by Sam, the order is reversed and so that patient is followed by the verb and then the agent. However, the apples become the subject of the verb, were eaten, which is modified by the prepositional phrase, by Sam, which expresses the agent, and so the usual subject–verb–(object) order is maintained.
Here the subject may invert with certain main verbs, e.g. After the pleasure comes the pain, or with a chain of verbs, e.g. In the box will be a bottle. These are described in the article on the subject–verb inversion in English. Further, inversion was not limited to auxiliaries in older forms of English.
The first English grammar, Bref Grammar for English by William Bullokar, published in 1586, does not use the term "auxiliary" but says: All other verbs are called verbs-neuters-un-perfect because they require the infinitive mood of another verb to express their signification of meaning perfectly: and be these, may, can, might or mought, could, would, should, must, ought, and sometimes, will ...
Spanish is an example of a modern language with a mediopassive voice, normally indicated by the use of a reflexive pronoun. This can variously have a middle-voice meaning (subject acting onto itself, or for its own benefit) or a passive-voice meaning (something acts onto the subject).