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The passive voice is a specific grammatical construction. The essential components, in English, are a form of the stative verb be (or sometimes get [4]) and the past participle of the verb denoting the action.
In the first example above, the mouse serves as the direct object in the active-voice version, but becomes the subject in the passive version. The subject of the active-voice version, the cat , becomes part of a prepositional phrase in the passive version of the sentence, and can be left out entirely; The mouse was eaten .
Thus, turning an active sense of a verb into a passive sense is a valence-decreasing process ("detransitivizing process"), because it syntactically turns a transitive sense into an intransitive sense. [3] This is not always the case; for example in Japanese a passive-voice construction does not necessarily decrease valence. [4]
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. 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.
Latin deponent verbs can belong to any conjugation. Their form (except in the present and future participle) is that of a passive verb, but the meaning is active. Usually a deponent verb has no corresponding active form, although there are a few, such as vertÅ 'I turn (transitive)' and vertor 'I turn (intransitive)' which have both active and deponent forms.
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 ...
The impersonal passive deletes the subject of an intransitive verb. In place of the verb's subject, the construction instead may include a syntactic placeholder, also called a dummy. This placeholder has neither thematic nor referential content. (A similar example is the word "there" in the English phrase "There are three books.")
Some languages (such as Latin and Russian) have distinct participles for active and passive uses. In English, the present participle is essentially an active participle, and the past participle has both active and passive uses. The following examples illustrate those concepts: I saw John eating his dinner. (Here eating is an active present ...