| Transitivity and valency |
|---|
| Transitivity |
| Intransitive verb Transitive verb Ambitransitive verb |
| Valency |
| Impersonal (Avalent) Intransitive verb (Monovalent) Monotransitive (Divalent) Ditransitive verb (Trivalent) Tritransitive verb (Quadrivalent) |
| Valence increasing |
| Causative Applicative Benefactive Dative shift |
| Valence decreasing |
| Passive Antipassive Impersonal passive |
| Reflexives and reciprocals |
| Reflexive pronoun Reflexive verb Reciprocal construction Reciprocal pronoun |
 Linguistics portal |
Apassive voice construction is agrammatical voice construction that is found in many languages.[1] In a clause with passive voice, the grammaticalsubject expresses thetheme orpatient of the main verb – that is, the person or thing that undergoes the action or has its state changed.[2] This contrasts withactive voice, in which the subject has theagent role. For example, in the passive sentence "The tree was pulled down", the subject (the tree) denotes the patient rather than the agent of the action. In contrast, the sentences "Someone pulled down the tree" and "The tree is down" are active sentences.
Typically, in passive clauses, what is usually expressed by theobject (or sometimes anotherargument) of the verb is now expressed by the subject, while what is usually expressed by the subject is either omitted or is indicated by someadjunct of the clause. Thus, turning an activesense of a verb into a passive sense is avalence-decreasing process ("detransitivizing process"), because itsyntactically turns atransitive sense into anintransitive sense.[3] This is not always the case; for example inJapanese a passive-voice construction does not necessarily decrease valence.[4]
Many languages have both an active and a passive voice; this allows for greater flexibility in sentence construction, as either thesemantic agent or patient may take thesyntactic role of subject.[5] The use of passive voice allows speakers to organize stretches of discourse by placing figures other than the agent in subject position. This may be done toforeground the patient, recipient, or otherthematic role;[5] it may also be useful when the semantic patient is thetopic of on-going discussion.[6] The passive voice may also be used to avoid specifying the agent of an action.
Different languages use various grammatical forms to indicate passive voice.
In some languages, passive voice is indicated by verbconjugation, specific forms of the verb. Examples of languages that indicate voice through conjugation includeGreek,Latin, andNorth Germanic languages such asSwedish.
| Voice | Latin | Swedish | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Passive | Vīnum ā servōportātur. | Vinetbärs av tjänaren. | "The wineis carried by the waiter." |
| Active | Servus vīnumportat. | Tjänarenbär vinet. | "The waitercarries the wine." |
Norwegian (Nynorsk) andIcelandic have a similar system, but the usage of the passive is more restricted.The passive forms in Nynorsk are restricted to being accompanied by anauxiliary verb, which is not the case inSwedish andDanish.
Nynorsk uses "å verte" or "å bli" + past participle for passive voice, and Swedish and Danish use the passive suffix "-s" and Icelandic uses "aðverða" or "aðvera" + past participle or "-st" suffix for middle voice.[citation needed][7]
In Latin, the agent of a passive sentence (if indicated) is expressed using a noun in theablative case, in this caseservō (the ablative ofservus). Different languages use different methods for expressing the agent in passive clauses. In Swedish, the agent can be expressed by means of aprepositional phrase with the prepositionav (equivalent here to the English "by").
TheAustronesian languageKimaragang Dusun also indicates passive voice by verb conjugation using theinfix,⟨in⟩.[3]
| root | past passive | meaning |
|---|---|---|
| patay | pinatay | "was killed" |
| nakaw | ninakaw | "was stolen" |
| garas | ginaras | "was butchered" |
Other languages, including English, express the passive voiceperiphrastically, using anauxiliary verb.
English, like some other languages, uses aperiphrastic passive. Rather than conjugating directly for voice, English uses thepast participle form of the verb plus an auxiliary verb, eitherbe orget (calledlinking verbs intraditional grammar), to indicate passive voice.
If the agent is mentioned, it usually appears in a prepositional phrase introduced by the prepositionby.
The subject of the passive voice usually corresponds to the direct object of the corresponding active-voice formulation (as in the above examples), but English also allows passive constructions in which the subject corresponds to anindirect object orpreposition complement:
In sentences of the second type, astranded preposition is left. This is called theprepositional passive orpseudo-passive (although the latter term can also be used with other meanings).
The active voice is the dominant voice used in English. Many commentators, notablyGeorge Orwell in his essay "Politics and the English Language" andStrunk &White inThe Elements of Style, have urged minimizing use of the passive voice, but this is almost always based on these commentators' misunderstanding of what the passive voice is.[8] Contrary to common critiques, the passive voice has important uses, with virtually all writers using the passive voice (including Orwell and Strunk & White).[9]There is general agreement that the passive voice is useful for emphasis or when the receiver of the action is more important than the actor.[10]
Merriam–Webster's Dictionary of English Usage refers to three statistical studies of passive versus active sentences in various periodicals, stating: "the highest incidence of passive constructions was 13 percent. Orwell runs to a little over 20 percent in "Politics and the English Language". Clearly he found the construction useful in spite of his advice to avoid it as much as possible".[10]
In the field oflinguistics, the termpassive is applied to a wide range of grammatical structures. Linguists therefore find it difficult to define the term in a way that makes sense across allhuman languages. The canonical passive in European languages has the following properties:
The problem arises with non-European languages. Many constructions in these languages share at least one property with the canonical European passive, but not all. While it seems justified to call these constructionspassive when comparing them to European languages' passive constructions, as a whole the passives of the world's languages do not share a single common feature.[1]: 255
R. M. W. Dixon has defined four criteria for determining whether a construction is a passive:[11]
Dixon acknowledges that this excludes some constructions labeled aspassive by some linguists.[11]
In some languages, including several Southeast Asian languages, the passive voice is sometimes used to indicate that an action or event was unpleasant or undesirable.[3] This so-calledadversative passive works like the ordinary passive voice in terms of syntactic structure—that is, a theme or instrument acts as subject. In addition, the construction indicates adversativeaffect, suggesting that someone was negatively affected.
InJapanese, for example, the adversative passive (also called indirect passive) indicates adversative affect. The indirect or adversative passive has the same form as the direct passive. Unlike the direct passive, the indirect passive may be used with intransitive verbs.[12]
朝まで
asa-made
morning-until
花子が 隣の 学生に ピアノを 朝まで 弾かれた。
Hanako-ga tonari-no gakusei-ni piano-o asa-made hika-re-ta.
Hanako-NOM neighbor-GEN student-DAT piano-ACC morning-until played-PASS-PFV
"Hanako was adversely affected by the neighboring student playing the piano until morning."[12]
Yup'ik, from theEskimo–Aleut family, has two different suffixes that can indicate passive,-cir- and-ma-. The morpheme-cir- has an adversative meaning. If an agent is included in a passive sentence with the-cir passive, the noun is usually in theallative (oblique) case.[13]
neqe-rrluk
fish-departed.from.natural.state
neqe-rrluk yuku-cir-tu-q
fish-departed.from.natural.state be.moldy-get-IND.INTR-3sg
"That beautiful piece of dry fishgot moldy."[13]
In some languages, for example English, there is often a similarity between clauses expressing an action or event in the passive voice and clauses expressing a state. For example, the string of words "The dog is fed" can have the following two different meanings:
The additions in parentheses "force" the same string of words to clearly show only one of their two possible grammatical functions and the related meaning. In the first sentence, the combination of the auxiliary verb "is" and thepast participle "fed" is a regular example of the construction of the passive voice in English. In the second sentence, "is" can however be interpreted as an ordinarycopula and the past participle as anadjective.
Sentences of the second type are calledfalse passives by some linguists, who feel that such sentences are simply confused with the passive voice due to their outward similarity. Other linguists consider the second type to be a different kind of passive – astative passive (rarely calledstatal,static, orresultative passive), in contrast to thedynamic oreventive passive illustrated by the first sentence. Some languages express or can express these different meanings using different constructions.
The difference between dynamic and stative passives is more evident in languages such as German that use different words or constructions for the two.[14] In German, the auxiliary verbsein marks static passive (German:Zustandspassiv, rarelystatisches Passiv, in referring to German also calledsein-Passiv orSein-Passiv), whilewerden marks the dynamic passive (Vorgangspassiv orHandlungspassiv, rarelydynamisches Passiv, in referring to German also calledwerden-Passiv orWerden-Passiv or simplyPassiv orPassivum).[15]The English string of words "the lawn is mown" has two possible meanings corresponding to the example "the dog is fed" above. It can be used in the following two different senses:
German uses two different grammatical constructions for these sentences:
Further examples and explanations:
A number of German verbs such asbedecken ("cover"),erfüllen ("fill"), andtrennen ("separate"), when used asstative verbs, usually only form static passives.
In English, the passive voice expressed with the auxiliary verb "get" rather than "be" ("get-passive") expresses a dynamic rather than a static meaning. But when the auxiliary verb "be" is used, the main verb can have either a dynamic or static meaning as shown below (including copies of some examples from above):
Verbs that typically express static meaning can show dynamic meaning when used in the passive formed withget, for examplebe known (static) vs.get known (dynamic):
All good writers use the passive voice.
There is general agreement that the passive is useful when the receiver of the action is more important than the doer[...] The passive is also useful when the doer is unknown, unimportant, or perhaps too obvious to be worth mentioning.
