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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.
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.
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 ...
There are certain sentence patterns in English in which subject–verb inversion takes place where the verb is not restricted to an auxiliary verb. 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.
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).
An auxiliary verb (abbreviated aux) is a verb that adds functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it occurs, so as to express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc. Auxiliary verbs usually accompany an infinitive verb or a participle, which respectively provide the main semantic content of the clause. [1]