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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 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.
The passive voice is employed in a clause whose subject expresses the theme or patient of the verb. That is, it undergoes an action or has its state changed. [7] In the passive voice, the grammatical subject of the verb is the recipient (not the doer) of the action denoted by the verb.
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 passive voice is helpful when 1) the object is more important than the subject or 2) the subject is innumerable. Consider the following sentence: "Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested 30 times ...
The passive voice in English is normally expressed with a form of the copula verb be (or sometimes get) together with the past participle of the main verb. In this context be is not a stative verb, so it may occur in progressive forms.
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.
Passive voice; Phrasal verbs; Verb usage; Transitivity; Syntax. Clauses. ... (meaning "at/to that place"), a sentence like There is a river could have either of two ...