Elena de Paz Obiols

Passive Voice
Structure: to be (in the appropriate tense) + past participle (of the main verb)

We use the passive voice in…

 reports of crimes or legal procedures
 newspaper reports
 scientific writing
 announcements
 notices
 when we are more interested in what happens to a thing or a person.

When we want to mention the ‘actual doer’, we put it at the end of the sentence after the preposition by.

Example:

Active voice: My father ate a sandwich.

Subject V Direct Object

Passive voice: A sandwich was eaten by my father.

Subject/Patient V Agent

The Causative

Causative verbs: have and get.

Structure: Have/get + object + past participle

To represent different tenses, we have to conjugate have or get.

To do the negative we use to be (in the correct tense) + not, before the causative verb

Question structure: Question word + auxiliary + subject + have/get + object + past participle

Differences between have and get:

 Get: informal spoken English.
 Have: negative experiences, something unpleasant or unwanted.