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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.
The impersonal passive voice is a verb voice that decreases the valency of an intransitive verb (which has valency one) to zero. [1]: 77 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 ...
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 ...
[25] When the active or passive voice can be used without much awkwardness, there are differing opinions about which is preferable. Bryan A. Garner notes, "Many writers talk about passive voice without knowing exactly what it is. In fact, many think that any BE-VERB signals passive voice." [26]
The uses of these various passive forms are analogous to those of the corresponding tense-aspect-mood combinations in the active voice. The passive forms of certain of the combinations involving the progressive aspect are quite rare; these include the present perfect progressive (it has been being written), past perfect progressive (it had been ...
9. Set up an annuity. An annuity can be a good place to set up reliable income. With a typical annuity, you make payments to an insurance company, which will provide you with a stream of income in ...
An illustration of a weasel using "weasel words". In this case, "some people" are a vague and undefined authority. In rhetoric, a weasel word, or anonymous authority, is a word or phrase aimed at creating an impression that something specific and meaningful has been said, when in fact only a vague, ambiguous, or irrelevant claim has been communicated.