Passive Voice – Preliminary issues

1. How is the passive voice formed? (Formal consideration)

a. Subject (former D:O) + to be + Past Participle + [BY agent (former subject)
b. The verb ‘to be’ will have all the grammatical properties of the verb phrase
i. Tense
ii. Aspect
iii. Mood
iv. Number agreement
2. What are three functions of the passive voice?
a. To emphasize the direct object / to de-emphasize the subject (doer)
i. To give ‘agency’ to the subject (responsibility)
1. The thieves were arrested yesterday
a. ‘the police’ is an obvious agent
b. Who did the ‘arresting’ is irrelevant
2. The police arrested the thieves yesterday
3. The squatters were evicted (the squatters did something to
deserve it)
4. The judge evicted the squatters (the judge used his authority)
b. To provide ‘thematic unity’ to a piece of discourse
i. Jane sent the letter to Jim. Then she left in a hurry.
ii. Jim was sent a letter. He read it thoroughly
iii. The letter was sent to Jim. It had no forwarding address.
c. Disclaimer of responsibility
i. Jim broke the window
ii. The window was broken with a bar (‘with’ implies an instrument)
iii. The window was broken by a branch
iv. It is rumored that the window was broken by someone.
v. The window broke
3. What is the relationship between passive voice (syntactic category) and agent –
patient constructions (semantic category)
4. What is the ‘theme’ and the ‘rheme’ in a sentence?
a. ‘Theme’ is old information – the theme goes first (on the left)
b. ‘Rheme’ is new information – the rheme goes after the theme (on the right)