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A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. [1] In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb – that is, the person or thing that undergoes the action or has its state changed. [2]
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.
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 has progressive forms available). For example: This room is tidied regularly. (simple present passive) It had already been accepted. (past perfect passive)
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 passive voice is formed using the verb be (in the appropriate tense or form) with the past participle of the verb in question: cars are driven, he was killed, I am being tickled, it is nice to be pampered, etc. The performer of the action may be introduced in a prepositional phrase with by (as in they were killed by the invaders).
The simple present, present simple or present indefinite is one of the verb forms associated with the present tense in modern English. It is commonly referred to as a tense, although it also encodes certain information about aspect in addition to the present time. The simple present is the most commonly used verb form in English, accounting for ...
Most combinations of tense, aspect, mood and voice are expressed periphrastically, using constructions with auxiliary verbs. Generally, the only inflected forms of an English verb are a third person singular present tense form ending in -s , a past tense (also called preterite ), a past participle (which may be the same as the past tense), and ...
[Used to + infinitive] expresses the lexical verb’s habitual aspect in the past tense, and is in the indicative mood and active voice. In informal spoken English questions or negative statements, it is treated like neither a modal nor an auxiliary verb, but as a past tense of an ordinary verb.