Grammatical voice

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 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 a complement (that may be left out).

In English, the passive voice is a periphrastic construction, i.e. 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 Latin, the passive voice is simply marked on the verb as an inflection.

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.

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.

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.

Topic-prominent languages like Mandarin tend not employ the passive voice as frequently. In Mandarin, the passive voice is constructed by prefixing the active noun phrase with "bei-" and by rearranging the usual word order:

Gou yao-le zheige nanren. (active)

A dog bite-(past) this-(accusative) man. (A dog bit this man)

Zhege nanren bei gou yao-le. (passive)

This-(nominative) man by a 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:

Zhege nanren shi bei gou yao-le. (passive)

This-(nominative) man is by a dog bite-(past). (This man was bitten by a DOG, [as opposed some other animal])

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 ha dorobō ni saifu wo nusumareta. (彼は泥棒に財布を盗まれた。)

He top-mark thief IO-mark wallet DO-mark was stolen. (His wallet was stolen by a thief.)

Boku ha kanojo ni uso wo tsukareta. (僕は彼女に嘘をつかれた。)

I top-mark her IO-mark lie DO-mark was told. (I was lied to by her./She lied to me.)

Dynamic and static passive

In some languages there is a distinction between static passive voice and dynamic passive voice, for example German. Static means, that an action was done to the subject at a certain point in time, whereas dynamic means that an action is done.

"Ich bin am 20. August geboren" (German, literally "I am born on August 20")

this is static, you have the state born on August 20

"Ich wurde am 20. August geboren" (German, literally "I became born on August 20")

this is dynamic, you were getting the state born on August 20

Usage of the English passive voice

In English, the passive voice is a syntactic formation of the past participle of a verb in combination with one of the auxiliary verbs of to be, like is or was. For example, consider the two clauses: "John is helped" and "John was helped." In both clauses, the subject is John. The expressed action is either "is helped" or "was helped," and "helped" is the past participle of "to help." Many English educators and usage guides, especially in the USA, do consider passive voice as bad practice because it obscures the subject or adds unnecessary ambiguity.

Ditransitive verbs in English (i.e. with a subject, direct object and indirect object) can have a passive form which takes a direct object. Contrast:

• I sent a present to you or I sent you a present
• A present was sent (to you by me)
• You were sent a present (by me)

The passive voice is still common practice in formal and business communications. The passive voice may create a deliberate vagueness, or it may obscure the cause but not the effect: "He was hurt" instead of "Someone hurt him." Sometimes, the passive voice is preferable because a writer wishes to place or maintain emphasis on the object of the action, not for purposes of "deception," but simply as a matter of style. In such cases, the subject may also be obvious, or explicitly supplied with a "by X" construction later on. Particularly in journalistic writing, science writing and law, some people consider the passive voice normal rather than a sign of deception.

Disambiguation of the passive voice

In the clause "John was married," the use of the verb was expects an adjective to describe John, so married is a technical ambiguity because it is not a simple adjective but a complex state, a noun (verb with tense) used as an adjective mistaken for a verb. The clause is easily questionable because the action is not clear, like:

• Is John in a marriage?
• Was John in a marriage?
• Did John just marry someone?
• Was John married by someone?

To remove ambiguity, simply drop the use of the to be forms and add the correct tense, likewise:

• John married his wife. (past tense, it occurred awhile ago)
• John had married his wife before their honeymoon. (past perfect tense, it occurred sometime ago usually before a stated event)
• John has married his wife. (present perfect tense, it occurred recently or presently)

Or, use the to be forms with a simple adjective:

• John is not single.
• John was single.

List of voices

Here are some voices found in some languages:

• Active voice
• Passive voice
• Mediopassive 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
• E-Prime