Grammatical voice
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In grammar, voice is the relationship between the action or state expressed by a verb, and its arguments (subject, object, etc.). When the subject is the agent or actor of the verb, the verb is said to be in the active voice. When the subject is the patient, target or undergoer of the action, it is said to be in the passive voice.
For example,
- The cat ate the mouse
is active, but
- The mouse was eaten by the cat
is passive.
In a passive voice sentence, the subject and the direct object switch places. The direct object is promoted to subject, and the subject is demoted to an optional complement, that may be left out.
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The passive voice in English
In the English language, the English passive voice is periphrastic; that is, it is modelled using an ad hoc phrase structure with a different word order, an auxiliary verb and a participle of the main verb. In other languages, such as the Latin language, the passive voice is simply marked on the verb by inflection: the passive voice uses different endings than the active voice.
The middle voice
Some languages (e. g. Sanskrit and Classical Greek) have a middle voice. An intransitive verb that appears active but expresses a passive action characterizes the English middle voice. For example, in The casserole cooked in the oven, cooked is syntactically active but semantically passive, putting it in the middle voice. In Classical Greek, the middle voice is often reflexive, denoting that the subject acts on or for itself, such as "The boy washes himself." or "The boy washes." It can be transitive or intransitive. It can occasionally be used in a causative sense, such as "The father causes his son to be set free." or "The father ransoms his son."
Many deponent verbs in Latin are also survivals of the Indo-European middle voice; many of these in turn survive as obligatory pseudo-reflexive verbs in the Romance languages such as French and Spanish.
Other grammatical voices
Some languages have even more grammatical voices. For example, in Classic Mongolian there are five voices: active, passive, causative, reciprocal and cooperative.
Ergative languages usually do not have a passive voice, since their syntactic structure does not agree with it; instead some have an antipassive voice that deletes the object of transitive verbs.
The passive voice in topic-prominent languages
Topic-prominent languages like Mandarin tend not to employ the passive voice as frequently. In Mandarin, the passive voice is constructed by prefixing the active noun phrase with bei- and rearranging the usual word order. For example, this sentence using active voice:
Gou yao-le zheige nanren. dog bite-PAST this man "A dog bit this man."
corresponds to this sentence using passive voice:
Zheige nanren bei gou yao-le. This man by dog bite-PAST. "This man was bitten by a dog."
In addition, through the addition of the auxiliary verb "to be" (shi) the passive voice is frequently used to emphasise the identity of the actor. In this example, the emphasis is on dog, presumably as opposed to some other animal:
Zheige nanren shi bei gou yao-le. This man is by dog bite-PAST. "This man was bitten by a dog."
Despite being a topic-prominent language, Japanese employs the passive voice quite frequently, and has two types of passive voice, one that corresponds to that in English and an indirect passive not found in English. This indirect passive is used when something undesirable happens to the speaker.
Kare wa dorobō ni saifu wo nusumareta. He TOPIC thief AGENT wallet OBJECT steal-PASSIVE-PAST "His wallet was stolen by a thief."
Boku wa kanojo ni uso wo tsukareta. I TOPIC her AGENT lie OBJECT tell-PASSIVE-PAST. "I was lied to by her." (or "She lied to me.")
The fourth person in Baltic-Finnic languages
Some languages do not contrast voices, but similar-looking persons. For example, Baltic-Finnic languages such as Finnish and Estonian have a "passive", which is conceptually more of a never-mentioned "fourth person" than variation of subjectivity or objectivity. For example, translating the sentence "The house was blown down" as Talo puhallettiin maahan would give the idea that some unmentioned person is blowing the house down by the force of his breath. Also, transitivity may be used, such that the fourth-person Ongelma ratkaistiin, which uses the transitive, means "Someone solved the problem", while the fourth-person Ongelma ratkesi uses the intransitive anticausative, and means "The problem was solved".
Dynamic and static passive
In some languages there is a distinction between static or stative passive voice, and dynamic or eventive passive voice. Examples include German, Spanish or Dutch. Static means that an action was done to the subject at a certain point in time, whereas dynamic means that an action is done.
In German
Static passive auxiliary verb: sein
Dynamic passive auxiliary verb: werden
Ich bin am 20. August geboren ("I was born on August 20", static)
Ich wurde am 20. August geboren ("I became born on August 20", dynamic)
In Spanish
Static passive auxiliary verb: estar
Dynamic passive auxiliary verb: ser
In Dutch
Static passive auxiliary verb: zijn
Dynamic passive auxiliary verb: worden
De muur is geverfd. (There is paint on the wall, static)
De muur wordt geverfd. (Someone is painting the wall, dynamic)
List of voices
Here are some voices found in some languages:
- Active voice
- Passive voice
- Mediopassive voice
- Impersonal passive voice
- Middle voice
- Antipassive voice
- Reflexive voice (the subject and the object of the verb are the same, as in I cut myself)
- Reciprocal voice (subject and object perform the verbal action to each other, e. g. I cut her and she cut me)
- Causative voice
- Applicative voice
See also
- Grammatical aspect
- Grammatical mood
- Grammatical tense
- Dative shift
- E-Prime
- English passive voiceTemplate:Link FA
de:Diathese (Linguistik) fr:Diathèse ja:態 pl:Strona (językoznawstwo) pt:Voz verbal zh:语态