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E1 - The Passive Voice - C
E1 - The Passive Voice - C
In an Active sentence the Agent (the person or thing that performs the action) usually comes
first and is the Subject of the sentence.
In a Passive sentence, the Result or the new information comes first and is the subject of the
sentence.
Ex. It’s generally recognized that smoking is bad for one’s health.
-in scientific or factual writing when the focus is usually on events, achievements, etc. rather
than Agents.
Passive Forms
We use the passive with almost all tenses in the English language.
Ex. When we arrived at the stadium the national anthem was being played.
By the time I got there the songs had already been selected.
Ex. In the next ten years, full equality will have been achieved for women.
Ex. She recalled having been taken there when she was young.
We use passive forms with the expression “to be going to” – am/are/is going to be + V3
The Agent
In most passive sentences we are not interested in who or what performs the action. We are
interested in the action itself, who or what is affected by the action, or what is the result of it.
In fact, only about 20% of passive sentences mention the Agent.
We mention the agent when we think that piece of information is important, especially if we
want to say more about it, for example with a Relative Clause.
Ex. I remember being taken to the fair by my father, who rarely showed any interest in
such things.
The survivors were picked out of the water by a cruise liner which had heard their
distress call.
Most frequently the Agent is introduced with the preposition “by” but sometimes “with” or
“in” may be used instead.
D.O. I.O.
I.O. D.O.
-It is more common for the person to be made the Subject of the passive verb.
D.O. I.O.
Passive 2 = All the Spanish he knows was taught to him by Jane. (clumsy)
-in the Passive Voice we usually add the preposition “to” or “for” before the Indirect Object.
Ex. A note was handed to the minister. (Active= They handed the minister a note.)
A slice of cake was cut for him. (Active = She cut him a slice of cake.)
-Verbs: allow, ask, cause, forgive, deny may be used in the Passive without a preposition
before the Indirect Object.
-some verbs are followed by two nouns but the second is not really an object so we only have
one passive variant in this case. We can check this if it can be replaced by an adjective.
D.O.
D.O.
-some verb phrases with two objects cannot be used in the passive at all.
-with verbs: to explain and to suggest, the Indirect Object cannot become a Subject in a
Passive variant.
I.O. D.O.
I.O. D.O.
Active = They heard him complain about the service at the restaurant.
-We cannot use the verb ”let” in the passive voice. We have to replace it with the verb “to be
allowed to/to be permitted to”.
-We can use the verb “let” in fixed phrases like: to let loose, to let down.
Impersonal Constructions
After verbs referring to mental processes or after reporting verbs such as: agree, allege,
announce,appear,assume,believe,calculate,claim,consider,decide,declare,discover,estimate,e
xpect,fear, feel, hope, know, presume, propose, recommend,report, seem, show, suggest,
suppose, suspect, think , understand we mainly use two passive reporting patterns.
Ex. It has been alleged that she married her third husband last week.
With some of the above verbs we can use the Infinitive instead of a “that” Clause.
-We can use “seem” and “appear” to give information without stating categorically that we
know it to be true. They can be used in two patterns.
We can make the statement more tentative with the use of “would”.
Causative Constructions
-We can use get and have in both the active and the passive voice when we talk about making
other people do something for us.
Ex. I will get my assistant to bring you the other pair of shoes.
You must go and get/have your photo taken for your new passport.
You ought to have /get your blood pressure checked more often.
-We use the structure have + Object + V3 in order to describe unpleasant things that happen
to us, often misfortunes. Get is much less common than have in these situations.
-Sometimes it is only the context that can identify the precise meaning of a statement.
(causative vs. misfortune )
Meaning 2 = The fence was pulled down without their planning or knowing it.
(misfortune)
Ex. They got punished by the principal for making so much noise.
-“get” with the meaning become is often used in collocations with past participle forms (V3).