Grammatical voice

In grammar, the voice of a verb describes the relationship between the action (or state) that the verb expresses and the participants identified by 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 the patient, target or undergoer of the action, it is said to be in the passive voice.

For example, in the sentence:

The cat ate the mouse

the verb "ate" exemplifies the active voice, but in:

The mouse was eaten by the cat

the verbal phrase "was eaten" is passive.

In a transformation from an active-voice clause to an equivalent passive-voice construction, the subject and the direct object switch grammatical roles. The direct object gets promoted to subject, and the subject gets demoted to an (optional) complement. In the examples above, the mouse serves as the direct object in the active-voice version, but becomes the subject in the passive version. The subject of the active-voice version, the cat, becomes part of a prepositional phrase in the passive version of the sentence, and could be left out entirely.

The passive voice in English

The English language uses a periphrastic passive voice; that is, it is not a single word form, but rather a construction making use of other word forms. Specifically, it is made up of a form of the auxiliary verb to be and a past participle of the main verb. In other languages, such as Latin, the passive voice is simply marked on the verb by inflection: the passive voice uses different verb endings than the active voice.

The middle voice

A few languages (such as 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 appears syntactically active but semantically passive, putting it in the middle voice. In Classical Greek, the middle voice is often reflexive, denoting that the subject acts on or for itself, such as "The boy washes himself." or "The boy washes." It can be transitive or intransitive. It can occasionally be used in a causative sense, such as "The father causes his son to be set free." or "The father ransoms his son."

Many deponent verbs in Latin represent survivals of the Proto-Indo-European middle voice; many of these in turn survive as obligatory pseudo-reflexive verbs in the Romance languages such as French and Spanish.

Other grammatical voices

Some languages have even more grammatical voices. For example, Classic Mongolian features five voices: active, passive, causative, reciprocal and cooperative.

The antipassive voice deletes or demotes the object of transitive verbs, and promotes the actor to an intransitive subject. This voice is very common among ergative languages (which may feature passive voices as well), but very rare among nominative-accusative languages.

The passive voice in topic-prominent languages

Topic-prominent languages like Mandarin tend not to employ the passive voice as frequently. Mandarin-speakers construct the passive voice by prefixing the active noun phrase with bei- and rearranging the usual word order. For example, this sentence using active voice:

{|cellspacing="10" 狗咬了這個男人。 Gouyao-lezhegenanren. dogbite-PASTthisman "A dog bit this man."

corresponds to this sentence using passive voice:

{|cellspacing="10" 這個男人被狗咬了。 Zhegenanrenbeigouyao-le. Thismanbydogbite-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. This example places emphasis on the dog, presumably as opposed to some other animal:

{|cellspacing="10" 這個男人是被狗咬了。 Zhegenanrenshibeigouyao-le. Thismanisbydogbite-PAST. "This man was bitten by a dog."

Although 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.

{|cellspacing="10" 彼は泥坊に財布を盗まれた。 Karewadorobōnisaifuwonusumareta. HeTOPICthiefAGENTwalletOBJECTsteal-PASSIVE-PAST "His wallet was stolen by a thief."

{|cellspacing="10" 僕は彼女に嘘を吐かれた。 Bokuwakanojoniusowotsukareta. ITOPICherAGENTlieOBJECTtell-PASSIVE-PAST. "I was lied to by her." (or "She lied to me.")

The fourth person in Baltic-Finnic languages

Some languages do not contrast voices, but similar-looking persons. For example, Baltic-Finnic languages such as Finnish and Estonian have a "passive", which conceptually postulates a never-mentioned "fourth person" rather than varying subjectivity or objectivity. For example, translating the sentence "The house was blown down" as Talo puhallettiin maahan would give the idea that some unmentioned person is blowing the house down by the force of his breath. Also, transitivity may be used, such that the fourth-person Ongelma ratkaistiin, which uses the transitive, means "Someone solved the problem", while the fourth-person Ongelma ratkesi uses the intransitive anticausative, and means "The problem was solved".

Dynamic and static passive

Some languages draw a distinction between static (or stative) passive voice, and dynamic (or eventive) passive voice. Examples include German, Spanish or Dutch. "Static" means that an action was done to the subject at a certain point in time, whereas "dynamic" means that an action takes place.

In German

Static passive auxiliary verb: sein

Dynamic passive auxiliary verb: werden

Ich bin am 20. August geboren ("I was born on August 20", static)

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

In Spanish

Static passive auxiliary verb: estar

Dynamic passive auxiliary verb: ser

In Dutch

Static passive auxiliary verb: zijn

Dynamic passive auxiliary verb: worden

De muur is geverfd. (There is paint on the wall, static)

De muur wordt geverfd. (Someone is painting the wall, dynamic)

List of voices

Voices found in various languages include:

Active voice
Passive voice
Mediopassive voice
Impersonal passive 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

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