Lesson 10: Passive Voice Sentences

Two Types of Voices

Voice in grammar provides two ways to express thoughts. The two types of voices are active voice and passive voice.

1. In an active voice sentence, the subject denotes the doer of action while the object denotes

the recipient of action of the verb. Take for example the active voice sentence

· Many people have visited the Great Wall of China.

Basic Declarative Sentence Pattern (4): S+V+dO

In this active voice sentence,

· the subject, many people who are the tourist, denotes the doers who have visited the Great Wall, while

· the Great Wall, being the direct object, is the target of action.

2. In a passive voice sentence, on the contrary,

· the recipient or target of the action becomes the subject element, while

· the doer of action is

(a) either put behind the preposition “by” to be the object in a prepositional phrase or

(b) not mentioned at all.

In the following discussion, we let

· S_p = subject element of a passive voice sentence

· VP_p = passive voice verb phrase

· A_p = by + S = prepositional phrase

The passive voice sentence of the active voice sentence above is

· The Great Wall has been visited by many people.

Sometimes, the prepositional phrase A_p is absent in a passive voice sentence. For example,

· The Great Wall of China was built a long time ago.

This sentence makes sense because the builders of the Great Wall are largely unknown, or not relevant or easily identifiable. It should be noted that passive voice sentences without the A_p phrase cannot be converted into active voice sentences because the object of the preposition “by” A_p is needed to function as the subject of an active voice sentence.

Passive Voice Verb Phrases

The verb elements of active voice sentences for the twelve tenses have been discussed in Lesson 5. They are reviewed in Table 10.2 below:

The passive voice auxiliary verb is “be”. It happens to be the same as the continuous auxiliary verb as well as the linking verb. For passive voice sentences, the passive voice auxiliary verb always appears as the last one in a chain of auxiliary verbs. The twelve passive voice verb elements for all tenses are shown in Table 10.2a below:

The results above are summarized below in Table 10.2b.

It should be noted that the form of passive auxiliary verb “be” for A1 simple present and A2 simple past tense is subjected to subject-auxiliary verb agreement. The main verb form for all other tenses is always past participle.

Transformation from Active Voice Sentence to Passive Voice

All the illustrative declarative sentences in Lesson 4 are in active voice. Since an object element is needed for conversion into a passive voice sentence, and only transitive verbs can have objects, only sentences that conform to Basic Declarative Sentence Patterns (4) through (7) can be converted into passive voice sentences.

The transformation from an active voice sentence to a passive voice sentence involves the following three steps:

· Step I: S® A_p =by +S – This step takes care of the subject element of the active voice sentence.

· Step II: V ® VP_p - This step transforms the verb element V of the active voice sentence into its corresponding verb element V_p of the passive voice sentence. The details will be discussed in the next section.

· Step III: dO ® S_p or iO ® S_p – This step establishes the subject element of the passive

voice sentence. Sentences composed according to Basic Pattern (4) have both a direct object dO and an indirect object iO. Both of these two objects can function as the subject

In connection with Step III, it should be understood that:

(a) in principle, passive voice verb element V=VP_p cannot have any object element.

(b) in sentences that have both dO and iO, when one of them, say dO, becomes the subject

element S_p, the other, iO becomes riO (retained iO) , and vice versa.

All other sentence elements, if any, in the active voice sentence remain intact. The following table shows the basic passive voice sentence patterns transformed from the basic active voice declarative sentence patterns (4) to (7) by using the three steps:

As it has been noted that, since the Basic Pattern (6) has both iO and dO, either object can become the subject of a passive voice sentence, and the other becomes a retained object.

Examples of Sentence Voice Transformation

Using the methods described in the previous two sections, we transform the illustrative active voice sentences into passive voice sentences below:

Now we transform the same active voice sentence into a passive one by letting dO be the subject

S_p.

Transformation into Passive Voice Interrogative Sentence

Passive voice declarative sentences can be transformed into interrogative sentences in the same way as active voice declarative sentences as shown in Lesson 9.

Take for instance:

· Active voice sentence: The florist put the flowers in a vase.

Basic Declarative Sentence Pattern (4): S + V + dO +A

· Passive-voice sentence: The flowers are put in a vase by the florist.

Passive-voice sentence pattern (4): S_p + V + A +A _p

There are N=4 sentence elements, S_p + V_p + A + A_p, in the passive voice declarative sentence. So, there can be N-1=3 W-word interrogative sentences. The three W-word questions are:

1. What is put in a vase by the florist?

2. Where does the florist put the flowers?

3. By whom are the flowers put in a vase?

The N = 3 W-word interrogative sentences can be obtained as follows:

1. What is put in a vase by the florist?

Step (I): subject-auxiliary verb inversion

The Usage of the Verb "Be"

The verb “be” can function as a main verb and also as an auxiliary verb. See Lesson 3 Section 2. As an auxiliary verb, it helps to form verb phrases in can continuous tense and a passive voice sentences. See Table 10.5 below:

As can be seen,

· the auxiliary verbs of the two sets of verb phrases (a) Active Voice Auxiliary Verb and (b) Passive Voice Auxiliary Verb are IDENTICAL.

It is interesting to see that “be” as a linking verb is so versatile that it could be construed to link subject of sentences to its subjective complement sC in the following two ways:

(c) 2019 Augustine C. Chen