English passive voice
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In English as in many other languages, the passive voice is the form of a transitive verb whose grammatical subject serves as the patient, receiving the action of the verb. The passive voice is typically contrasted with the active voice, which is the form of a transitive verb whose subject serves as the agent, performing the action of the verb. The subject of a verb in the passive voice corresponds to the object of the same verb in the active voice. English's passive voice is periphrastic; that is, it does not have a one-word form. Rather, it is formed using a form of the auxiliary verb be together with a verb's past participle.
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[edit] The canonical passive
Passive constructions have a range of meanings and uses. The canonical use to map a clause with a direct object to a corresponding clause where the direct object has become the subject. For example, consider the following sentence:
- John threw the ball.
Here, threw is a transitive verb with John as its subject and the ball as its direct object. If we recast the verb in the passive voice (was thrown), then the ball becomes the subject (it is promoted to the subject position) and John disappears:
- The ball was thrown.
The original subject can typically be re-inserted using the preposition by:
- The ball was thrown by John.
[edit] Promotion of other objects
One non-canonical use of English's passive is to promote an object other than a direct object. It is usually possible in English to promote indirect objects as well. For example, consider the following:
- John gave Mary a book. → Mary was given a book.
In the active form, gave is the verb; John is its subject, Mary its indirect object, and a book its direct object; in the passive form, the indirect object has been promoted and the direct object has been left in place. (In this respect, English resembles dechticaetiative languages.)
It is also possible, in some cases, to promote the object of a preposition:
- They talked about the problem. → The problem was talked about.
In the passive form here, the preposition is "stranded"; that is, it is not followed by an object. (See Preposition stranding.) Indeed, in some sense it doesn't have an object, since "the problem" is actually the subject of the sentence.
[edit] Promotion of content clauses
It is possible to promote a content clause that serves as a direct object. In this case, however, it typically does not change its position in the sentence, and an expletive it takes the normal subject position:
- They say that he left. → It is said that he left.
[edit] Stative passives
The passives described so far have all been eventive (or dynamic) passives. There exist also stative (or static, or resultative) passives; rather than describing an action, they describe the result of an action. English does not usually distinguish between the two. For example, consider the following sentence:
- The door was locked.
This sentence has two meanings, roughly the following:
- [Someone] locked the door.
- The door was in the locked state. (Presumably, someone had locked it.)
The former meaning represents the canonical, eventive passive; the latter, the stative passive. (The terms eventive and stative/resultative refer to the tendencies of these forms to describe events and resultant states, respectively. The terms can be misleading, however, as the canonical passive of a stative verb is not a stative passive, even though it describes a state.)
Some verbs do not form stative passives. In some cases, this is because distinct adjectives exist for this purpose, such as with the verb open:
- The door was opened. → [Someone] opened the door.
- The door was open. → The door was in the open state.
[edit] Adjectival passives
Adjectival passives are not true passives; they occur when a participial adjective (an adjective derived from a participle) is used predicatively (see Adjective). For example:
- She was relieved to find her car undamaged.
Here, relieved is an ordinary adjective, though it derives from the past participle of relieve.[1]
In some cases, the line between an adjectival passive and a stative passive may be unclear.
[edit] Passives without active counterparts
In a few cases, passive constructions retain all the sense of the passive voice, but do not have immediate active counterparts. For example:
- He was rumored to be a war veteran. ← *[Someone] rumored him to be a war veteran.
(The asterisk here denotes an ungrammatical construction.) Similarly:
- It was rumored that he was a war veteran. ← *[Someone] rumored that he was a war veteran.
In both of these examples, the active counterpart was once possible, but has fallen out of use.
[edit] Double passives
It is possible for a verb in the passive voice — especially an object-raising verb — to take an infinitive complement that is also in the passive voice:
- The project is expected to be completed in the next year.
Commonly, either or both verbs may be moved into the active voice:
- [Someone] expects the project to be completed in the next year.
- [Someone] is expected to complete the project in the next year.
- [Someone] expects [someone] to complete the project in the next year.
In some cases, a similar construction may occur with a verb that is not object-raising in the active voice:
- ?The project will be attempted to be completed in the next year. ← *[Someone] will attempt the project to be completed in the next year. ← [Someone] will attempt to complete the project in the next year.
(The question mark here denotes a questionably-grammatical construction.) In this example, the object of the infinitive has been promoted to the subject of the main verb, and both the infinitive and the main verb have been moved to the passive voice. The American Heritage Book of English Usage declares this unacceptable,[2] but it is nonetheless attested in a variety of contexts.[3]
[edit] Other passive constructions
[edit] Past participle alone
A past participle alone usually carries passive force; the form of be can therefore be omitted in certain circumstances, such as newspaper headlines and reduced relative clauses:
- Couple found slain; Murder-suicide suspected. [1]
- The problem, unless dealt with, will only get worse.
- A person struck by lightning has a high chance of survival.
[edit] With get as the auxiliary
While the ordinary passive construction uses the auxiliary be, the same effect can sometimes be achieved using get in its place:
- Jamie got hit with the ball.
This use of get is fairly restricted. First of all, it is fairly colloquial; be is used in news reports, formal writing, and so on. Second of all, it typically only forms eventive passives of eventive verbs. Third of all, it is most often (but not necessarily) used with semantically negative verbs; for example, the phrase get shot is much more common than the phrase get praised.
[edit] Ergative verbs
An ergative verb is a verb that may be either transitive or intransitive, and whose subject when it is intransitive plays the same semantic role as its direct object when it is transitive. For example, fly is an ergative verb, such that the following sentences are roughly synonymous:
- The airplane flew.
- The airplane was flown.
- [Someone] flew the airplane.
One major difference is that the intransitive construction does not permit an agent to be mentioned, and indeed can imply that no agent is present, that the subject is performing the action on itself. For this reason, the intransitive construction of an ergative verb is often said to be in a middle voice, between active and passive, or in a mediopassive voice, between active and passive but closer to passive.
[edit] Reflexive verbs
A reflexive verb is a transitive verb one of whose objects is a reflexive pronoun (myself, yourself, etc.) referring back to its subject. In some languages, reflexive verbs are a special class of verbs with special semantics and syntax, but in English, they typically represent ordinary uses of transitive verbs. For example, with the verb see:
- He sees her as a writer.
- She sees herself as a writer.
Nonetheless, sometimes English reflexive verbs have a passive sense, expressing an agentless action. Consider the verb solve, as in the following sentences:
- He solved the problem.
- The problem solved itself.
One could not say that the problem truly solved anything; rather, what is meant is that the problem was solved without anyone solving it.
[edit] Gerunds and nominalization
Gerunds and nominalized verbs (nouns derived from verbs and referring to the actions or states expressed by them), unlike finite verbs, do not require explicit subjects. This allows an object to be expressed while omitting a subject. For example:
- The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
- Generating electricity typically requires a magnet and a solenoid.
[edit] Usage and style
Many English educators and usage guides, such as The Elements of Style, discourage the use or overuse of the passive voice, seeing it as unnecessarily verbose (when the agent is included in a by phrase), or as obscure and vague (when it is not). This perception is exacerbated by the occasional intentional use of the passive voice to avoid assigning blame, such as by replacing "I made mistakes" with "Mistakes were made."
Nonetheless, the passive voice is frequently used for a number of other reasons:
- Certain verbs frequently appear in the passive — for example, be born, be smitten, and be had are all more common in certain senses than their active counterparts — though in many cases these might be better analyzed as adjectival passives (see above) than as true passives.
- The passive voice serves to emphasize the patient; if the agent is comparatively unimportant to the point, or if the agent is obvious from context, then the passive voice might serve a rhetorical purpose.
- Since in English, the subject nearly always comes before the object in a sentence, using the passive voice (i.e., promoting the patient from object to subject) moves the patient earlier in the sentence. If the patient has been mentioned in a previous sentence, this can serve as a marker of the connection between the two sentences.
- In scientific writing, it has traditionally been considered better to use the passive voice than to mention a researcher in every sentence; this may be changing, however.[citation needed]
- In journalistic writing and law, two areas where it can be essential to state only established facts, use of the passive voice allows uncertain agents to be omitted; again, however, use of the active voice is on the rise, with other mechanisms being used to avoid insupportable claims.[citation needed]
[edit] Notes
- ^ Language Log: How to defend yourself from bad advice about writing
- ^ The American Heritage Book of English Usage, ch. 1, sect. 24 "double passive." Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996. http://www.bartleby.com/64/C001/024.html. Accessed 13 November 2006.
- ^ "Double Your Passive, Double Your Fun," from Literalminded. http://literalminded.wordpress.com/2005/05/16/double-your-passive-double-your-fun/. Accessed 13 November 2006.
