Voice (grammar)

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 doer of the action, the verb is in the active voice. When the subject is the patient, target or undergoer of the action, the verb is said to be in the passive voice. Voice is sometimes called diathesis.[1]

For example, in the sentence:

The cat ate the mouse.

the verb "ate" is in the active voice. However, in the sentence:

The mouse was eaten by the cat.

the verbal phrase "was eaten" is passive.

In the sentence:

The hunter killed the bear.

the verb "killed" is in the active voice, and the doer of the action is the "hunter". A passive version of the sentence is:

The bear was killed by the hunter.

where the verbal phrase "was killed" is followed by the word "by" and then by the doer "hunter".

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 demoted to an (optional) adjunct. In the first example 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 can be left out entirely.

History

In the grammar of Ancient Greek, voice was called διάθεσις (diáthesis) "arrangement" or "condition", with three subcategories: active (ἐνέργεια [enérgeia]), passive (πάθος [páthos]), and middle (μεσότης [mesótēs]).[2][3] In Latin there are two voices: active and passive (Latin: [genus] activum, passivum).

Active

The active voice is the most commonly used in many languages and represents the "normal" case, in which the subject of the verb is the agent.

In the active voice, the subject of the sentence performs the action or causes the happening denoted by the verb.

Example: Kabaisa ate the potatoes.

The verb ate indicates the active voice. But consider the following sentence which is in passive voice:

The potatoes were eaten by Kabaisa.

The words were eaten indicate the passive voice.

The passive voice shows that something has been acted upon by someone or something else.

Passive

The passive voice is employed in a clause whose subject expresses the theme or patient of the verb. That is, it undergoes an action or has its state changed.[4]

In the passive voice the grammatical subject of the verb is the recipient (not the doer) of the action denoted by the verb.

Some languages, such as English and Spanish, use 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 for some tenses is simply marked on the verb by inflection: librum legit "He reads the book"; liber legitur "The book is read".

Middle

Some languages (such as Albanian, Bengali, Fula, Tamil, Sanskrit, Icelandic, Swedish, Biblical Hebrew, Modern Hebrew and Ancient Greek) have a middle voice, which is a set of inflections or constructions which is to some extent different from both the active and passive voices.

In some cases, the middle voice is any grammatical option where the subject of a material process cannot be categorized as either an Actor (someone doing something) or a Goal (that at which the actor aims their work). For example, while the passive voice expresses a Medium (Goal) being affected by an external Agent (Actor) as in The casserole was cooked in the oven, the middle voice expresses a Medium undergoing change without any external Agent The casserole cooked in the oven. In English, the inflections and constructions for middle voice and active voice are the same for these cases. In other cases such as in Classical Greek, the middle voice is often used for material processes where the Subject is both the Actor (the one doing the action) and the Medium (that which is undergoing change) as in "the man got a shave", opposing both active and passive voices where the Medium is the Goal as in "the barber shaved the man" and "the man got shaved by the barber". Finally, 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".

In English there is no verb form for the middle voice, though some uses may be classified by traditional grammarians as middle voice, often resolved via a reflexive pronoun, as in "Fred shaved", which may be expanded to "Fred shaved himself" – contrast with active "Fred shaved John" or passive "John was shaved by Fred". This need not be reflexive, as in "my clothes soaked in detergent overnight". English used to have a distinct form, called the passival, which was displaced over the early 19th century by the progressive passive and is no longer used in English.[5][6] In the passival, one might say "The house is building.", which may today be rendered instead as "The house is being built." Likewise "The meal is eating.", which is now "The meal is being eaten." Note that the similar "Fred is shaving" and "The meal is cooking" remain grammatical. It is suggested that the progressive passive was popularized by the Romantic poets, and is connected with Bristol usage.[5][7]

Many deponent verbs in Latin (i.e., verbs passive in form but active in meaning) are survivals of the Proto-Indo-European middle voice.[8]

Others

Some languages have even more grammatical voices. For example, Classical Mongolian features five voices: active, passive, causative, reciprocal, and cooperative. Hebrew has active, passive, causative, causative-passive, intensive, intensive-passive and reflexive voices.

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–absolutive languages (which may feature passive voices as well), but also occurs among nominative–accusative languages.

There are also constructions in some languages that appear to change the valence of a verb, but in fact do not. So called hierarchical or inversion languages are of this sort. Their agreement system will be sensitive to an external person or animacy hierarchy (or a combination of both): 1 > 2 > 3 or Anim > Inan and so forth. E.g., in Meskwaki (an Algonquian language), verbs inflect for both subject and object, but agreement markers do not have inherent values for these. Rather, a third marker, the direct or inverse marker, indicates the proper interpretation: ne-wa:pam-e:-w-a [1-look.at-DIR-3-3Sg] "I am looking at him", but ne-wa:pam-ekw-w-a [1-look.at-INV-3-3Sg] "He is looking at me". Some scholars (notably Rhodes) have analyzed this as a kind of obligatory passivization dependent on animacy, while others have claimed it is not a voice at all, but rather see inversion as another type of alignment, parallel to nominative–accusative, ergative–absolutive, split-S, and fluid-S alignments.

Passive in topic-prominent languages

Chinese

Mandarin

Topic-prominent languages like Mandarin tend not to employ the passive voice as frequently. In general, Mandarin is best analyzed as using middle voice, but Mandarin-speakers can construct a passive voice by using the coverb 被 (bèi) and rearranging the usual word order.[9] For example, this sentence using active voice:

Note: the first line is in Traditional Chinese while the second is Simplified Chinese.

一條

一条

Yī-tiáo

Α

狗

gǒu

dog

咬了

yǎo-le

bite-PERFECT

這個

这个

zhège

this

男人。

nánrén.

man

"A dog has bitten this man."

corresponds to the following sentence using passive voice. Note that the agent phrase is optional.

這個

这个

Zhège

This

男人

nánrén

man

被

bèi

PASSIVE

(狗)

(gǒu)

(dog)

咬了。

yǎo-le.

bite-PERFECT

"This man has been bitten (by a dog)."

In addition, through the addition of the auxiliary verb "to be" 是 (shì) the passive voice is frequently used to emphasize the identity of the actor. This example places emphasis on the dog, presumably as opposed to some other animal:

這個

这个

Zhège

This

男人

nánrén

man

是

shì

to be

被

bèi

PASSIVE

狗

gǒu

dog

咬

yǎo

bite

的。

de.

(suffix)

"This man has been bitten by a dog."

Mandarin has also an object-retaining passive which contains both object and topic (mostly the possessor of the object):

他

tā

He

被

bèi

PASSIVE

小偷

xiǎotou

thief

偷了

tōu-le

steal-PERFECT

錢包。

钱包。

qiánbāo

wallet

"His wallet was stolen by a thief."

被 (bèi) as a passive marker is a relatively new addition to the language, introduced as part of the early 20th century language reforms that also added gender-specific pronouns such as 他>她 and 你>妳 and culminated in attempts to romanize Chinese entirely. Classically, 被 marked an adversative mood, indicating that something bad had happened. Even today, the following sentence is perfectly acceptable in speech：

蛋糕

dangao

cake

吃了。

chi-le

eat-PERFECT

"The cake was eaten."

In general, Chinese employs middle voice.[10] For a fuller treatment of Chinese morphosyntax see He, Xiaoling, Patient-Subject Constructions In Mandarin Chinese: Syntax, Semantics, Discourse. See also the discussion in works such as Li, Charles N; Thompson, Sandra A, where, arguing against Chao's analysis of Mandarin, the two dispute that there is a distinct class of middle voice verbs, but in so doing recognize that Mandarin (and Cantonese) verbs as a whole behave the same way.

Cantonese

In Cantonese, those features are quite similar by using the coverb 俾 (bei²), but the agent phrase is NOT optional, often with a formal agent 人 (jan⁴):

個

Go³

The

男人

naam⁴jan⁴

man

俾

bei²

PASSIVE

狗

gau²

dog

咬唨喇。

ngaau⁵-zo²-laa³

bite-PERFECTIVE-PERFECT

"The man has been bitten by a dog."

佢

Keoi⁵

He/She/It

俾

bei²

PASSIVE

人

jan⁴

someone

食唨喇。

sik⁶-zo²-laa³

eat-PERFECTIVE-PERFECT

"He/She/It has been eaten (by someone)."

However, in some dialects of Yue, a passive voice with an optional agent phrase is also available:

Qinzhou (Qin-Lian Yue):

佢

Ki³

He/She/It

著

zoek⁶

PASSIVE

打喇。

daa²-laa³

beat-PERFECT

"He/She/It has been beaten."

In the actor-emphasizing passive voice of Cantonese, besides the addition of the auxiliary verb "to be" 係 (hai⁶), the perfective event is also converted to an adjective-like predicative with the suffix 嘅 (ge³) or 㗎 (gaa³), which is a more emphasized one from the liaison of 嘅 (ge³) and 啊 (aa³):

個

Go³

The

男人

naam⁴jan⁴

man

係

hai⁶

to be

俾

bei²

PASSIVE

狗

gau²

dog

咬

ngaau⁵

bite

嘅。

ge³

(suffix)

"The man was bitten by a dog."

Japanese

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.

彼

Kare

He

は

wa

TOPIC

泥棒

dorobō

thief

に

ni

AGENT

財布

saifu

wallet

を

o

OBJECT

盗まれた。

nusumareta.

steal-PASSIVE-PAST

"He got his wallet stolen by a thief."

僕

Boku

I

は

wa

TOPIC

彼女

kanojo

her

に

ni

AGENT

嘘

uso

lie

を

o

OBJECT

つかれた。

tsukareta.

tell-PASSIVE-PAST

"I was lied to by her." (= "She lied to me.")

Impersonal voice

While in ordinary passive voice, the object of the action becomes the subject of the sentence, in impersonal passive voice, it remains the grammatical object. The subject can be replaced with an impersonal pronoun, as in English One reads the newspaper, French On lit le journal, or German Man liest die Zeitung. ("The newspaper is (being) read"). Similar constructions are sometimes used in English, as in "One reads the newspaper"; "you" and "they" can also be used in an impersonal sense

In other languages, the subject is omitted and a specific impersonal form of the verb is used.

Finnic languages

Verbs in the Finnic languages, such as Finnish and Estonian, have an impersonal voice, often simply called the passive (Finnish: passiivi, Estonian: umbisikuline tegumood), which omits the subject and retains the grammatical role of the object. It has also been called the "zero person"[11]. In Estonian:

Naised loevad ajalehte.

Women read the newspaper.

Ajalehte loetakse.

The newspaper is (being) read.

In Estonian, the agent can be included by using the postposition poolt, although using such a construction instead of the active voice is critisised as a foreiginism (influenced by German, Russian and English) and characteristic of officialese[12].

Ajalehte loetakse naiste poolt.

The newspaper is read by women.

In both Finnish and Estonian, the use of the impersonal voice generally implies that the agent is capable of own initiative . For example, Finnish Ikkuna hajotettiin ("The window was broken") would generally not be used if the window was broken by the wind, rather than a person. In the latter case, one could instead use a reflexive (anticausative) verb in the active voice, such as Ikkuna hajosi ("The window broke").

Celtic languages

Celtic languages have an inflection commonly called the "impersonal" or "autonomous" form,[13] of similar origin to the Latin "passive-impersonal". This is similar to a passive construction in that the agent of the verb is not specified. However its syntax is different from prototypical passives, in that the object of the action remains in the accusative.[14]

It is similar to the use of the pronoun "on" in French (except wherever "on" is instead used an alternative to "we", which is very frequent). It increasingly corresponds to the passive in modern English, in which there is a trend towards avoiding the use of the passive unless it is specifically required to omit the subject. It also appears to be similar to the "fourth person" mentioned in the preceding paragraph. However, what is called in Irish an briathar saor or the free verb does not suggest passivity but a kind of generalised agency.

The construction has equal validity in transitive and intransitive clauses, and the best translation into English is normally by using the "dummy" subjects "they", "one", or impersonal "you". For example, the common sign against tobacco consumption has its closest direct translation in English as "No smoking":

Ná

Don't

caitear

use-IMPERSONAL

tabac

tobacco.

An example of its use as an intransitive is:

Téithear

Go-IMPERSONAL

go dtí

to

an sráidbhaile

the village

go minic

often

Dé Sathairn

Saturday

"People often go to the village of a Saturday."

The difference between the autonomous and a true passive is that while the autonomous focuses on the action and overtly avoids mentioning the actor, there is nonetheless an anonymous agent who may be referred to in the sentence. For instance:[15]

Théití

go[PAST.HAB.AUT]

ag

eat

ithe

PROG

béile

meal

le chéile

with each other

"People used to go eating a meal together."

In English, the formation of the passive allows the optional inclusion of an agent in a prepositional phrase, "by the man", etc. Where English would leave out the noun phrase, Irish uses the autonomous; where English includes the noun phrase, Irish uses its periphrastic passive – which can also leave out the noun phrase:

The

Bhí

Was

tobacco

an

the

was

tabac

tobacco

smoked

caite

consumed

(by

(ag

(by

the

an

the

man)

bhfear)

man)

The impersonal endings have been re-analysed as a passive voice in Modern Welsh and the agent can be included after the preposition gan (by):

Darllenir y papur newydd.

The newspaper is read.

Cenir y gân gan y côr.

The song is sung by the choir.

Dynamic and static passive

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

German

Static passive auxiliary verb: sein
Dynamic passive auxiliary verb: werden

Der Rasen ist gemäht ("The lawn is mown", static)

Der Rasen wird gemäht ("The lawn is being mown", literally "The lawn becomes mown", dynamic)

English

Static passive auxiliary verb: be (the "be-passive")
Dynamic passive auxiliary verb: get (the "get-passive")

Note that for some speakers of English the dynamic passive constructed with get is not accepted and is considered colloquial or sub-standard.

The grass is cut (static)

The grass gets cut or The grass is being cut (dynamic)

Swedish

Static passive auxiliary verb: vara (är, var, varit)
Dynamic passive auxiliary verb: bli (blir, blev, blivit)

Dynamic passive in Swedish is also frequently expressed with the s-ending.

Dörren är öppnad. "The door has been opened."

Dörren blir öppnad. "The door is being opened."

The vara passive is often synonymous with, and sometimes preferable to, simply using the corresponding adjective:

Dörren är öppen. "The door is open."

The bli passive is often synonymous with, and sometimes preferable to, the s-passive:

Dörren öppnas. "The door is opening."

Spanish

Spanish has two verbs corresponding to English to be: ser and estar. Ser is used to form the ordinary (dynamic) passive voice:

La puerta es abierta. "The door is [being] opened [by someone]"

La puerta es cerrada. "The door is [being] closed [by someone]"

However, this construction is very unidiomatic. The usual passive voice is the se pasiva, in which the verb is conjugated in the active voice, but preceded by the se particle:

La puerta se abre.

La puerta se cierra.

Estar is used to form what might be termed a static passive voice (not regarded as a passive voice in traditional Spanish grammar):

La puerta está abierta. "The door is open.", i.e., it has been opened.

La puerta está cerrada. "The door is closed.", i.e., it has been closed.

In the ser and estar cases, the verb's participle is used as the complement (as is sometimes the case in English).

Italian

Italian uses two verbs (essere and venire) to translate the static and the dynamic passive:

Dynamic passive auxiliary verb: essere and venire (to be and to come)

La porta è aperta. or La porta viene aperta. "The door is opened [by someone]" or "The door comes open [by someone]".

La porta è chiusa. or La porta viene chiusa. "The door is closed [by someone]" or "The door comes closed [by someone]".

Static passive auxiliary verb: essere (to be)

La porta è aperta. "The door is open," i.e., it has been opened.

La porta è chiusa. "The door is closed," i.e., it has been closed.

Venetian

In Venetian (Vèneto) the difference between dynamic (true) passive and stative (adjectival) passive is more clear cut, using èser (to be) only for the static passives and vegner (to become, to come) only for the dynamic passive:

Ła porta ła vien verta. "The door is opened", dynamic

Ła porta ła xè / l'è verta. "The door is open", static

Static forms represents much more a property or general condition, whereas the dynamic form is a real passive action entailing "by someone":

èser proteto. "To be protected = to be in a safe condition", static

vegner proteto. "To be protected = to be defended (by so)", dynamic

èser considarà. "To be considered = to have a (good) reputation", static

vegner considarà. "To be taken into consideration (by people, by so)", dynamic

èser raprexentà (a l'ONU). "To be represented (at the UN) = to have a representation", static

vegner raprexentà a l'ONU (da un dełegà). "To be represented at the UN (by a delegate)", dynamic

List of voices

Voices found in various languages include:

Active voice
Adjutative voice
Antipassive voice
Applicative voice
Causative voice
Circumstantial voice
Impersonal passive voice
Mediopassive voice
Medium voice = middle voice
Neuter voice
Passive voice
Reciprocal voice (subject and object perform the verbal action to each other, e.g., She and I cut each other's hair)
Reflexive voice (the subject and the object of the verb are the same, as in I see myself (in the mirror))

gollark: USB cables exist in 4-dimensional space and thus actually sometimes require three rotations to fit in the port.

gollark: Random bodging in Haskell is too fiddly for me, probably because I haven't used Haskell much.

gollark: I need a good language for my random bodging.

gollark: Is there a good Lua equivalent to Python's requests and its useful string handling functions yet? Also good regexes.

gollark: I didn't say standard ones, I'd be fine with installing a bunch of packages.

Notes

Allan, Rutger (2013). "Diathesis/Voice (Morphology of)". Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics. doi:10.1163/2214-448X_eagll_COM_00000099.
Dionysius Thrax. τέχνη γραμματική (Art of Grammar). ιγ´ περὶ ῥήματος (13. On the verb).
διάθεσις. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A Greek–English Lexicon at the Perseus Project
O'Grady, William, John Archibald, Mark Aronoff, and Janie Rees-Miller (eds.) (2001). Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction Fourth edition. Boston: Bedord/St. Martin's. ISBN 0-312-24738-9
Mike Vuolo, "The House is Building"? Why you never learned the passival tense, even though it used to be proper English grammar., Slate, May 29, 2012
Liberman, Mark (January 13, 2011). "A peeve for the ages". Language Log. UPenn.
Platt and Denison, "The language of the Southey-Coleridge Circle", Language Sciences 2000
Sihler, Andrew L, "New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin", 1995, Oxford University Press
Li & Thompson (1981)
https://scholarship.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/bitstream/handle/10066/10847/Baglini_thesis_2007.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Laitinen, Lea (2006). Helasvuo, Marja-Liisa; Campbell, Lyle (eds.). "0 person in Finnish: A grammatical resource for construing human evidence". Grammar from the Human Perspective: Case, space and person in Finnish. Amsterdam: Benjamins: 209–232.
Mäearu, Sirje, Institute of the Estonian Language (19 February 1994). "Keelenõuanne soovitab: poolt vastu". Rahva Hääl (in Estonian). Archived from the original on 23 October 1019. Retrieved 13 July 2020.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Martin John Ball, James Fife (1992). The Celtic Languages. New York: Routledge. pp. 14–15. ISBN 0-415-01035-7.
Na Bráithre Críostaí (1960). GRAIMÉAR GAEILGE na mBRÁITHRE CRÍOSTAÍ. M.H. Mac an Ghoill agus a Mhac Teo.
McCloskey, Jim (January 2007). "the Grammar of Autonomy In Irish" (PDF). Hypothesis A/Hypothesis B: Linguistic Explorations in Honor of David M. Perlmutter.

References

Li, Charles N.; Thompson, Sandra A. (1981). Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-06610-3.

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[1] Allan, Rutger (2013). "Diathesis/Voice (Morphology of)". Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics. doi:10.1163/2214-448X_eagll_COM_00000099.

[2] Dionysius Thrax. τέχνη γραμματική (Art of Grammar). ιγ´ περὶ ῥήματος (13. On the verb).

[3] διάθεσις. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A Greek–English Lexicon at the Perseus Project

[4] O'Grady, William, John Archibald, Mark Aronoff, and Janie Rees-Miller (eds.) (2001). Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction Fourth edition. Boston: Bedord/St. Martin's. ISBN 0-312-24738-9

[vuolo-5] Mike Vuolo, "The House is Building"? Why you never learned the passival tense, even though it used to be proper English grammar., Slate, May 29, 2012

[6] Liberman, Mark (January 13, 2011). "A peeve for the ages". Language Log. UPenn.

[7] Platt and Denison, "The language of the Southey-Coleridge Circle", Language Sciences 2000

[Sihler-8] Sihler, Andrew L, "New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin", 1995, Oxford University Press

[9] Li & Thompson (1981)

[10] ttps://scholarship.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/bitstream/handle/10066/10847/Baglini_thesis_2007.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y

[Laitinen-11] Laitinen, Lea (2006). Helasvuo, Marja-Liisa; Campbell, Lyle (eds.). "0 person in Finnish: A grammatical resource for construing human evidence". Grammar from the Human Perspective: Case, space and person in Finnish. Amsterdam: Benjamins: 209–232.

[12] Mäearu, Sirje, Institute of the Estonian Language (19 February 1994). "Keelenõuanne soovitab: poolt vastu". Rahva Hääl (in Estonian). Archived from the original on 23 October 1019. Retrieved 13 July 2020.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

[13] Martin John Ball, James Fife (1992). The Celtic Languages. New York: Routledge. pp. 14–15. ISBN 0-415-01035-7.

[14] Na Bráithre Críostaí (1960). GRAIMÉAR GAEILGE na mBRÁITHRE CRÍOSTAÍ. M.H. Mac an Ghoill agus a Mhac Teo.

[15] McCloskey, Jim (January 2007). "the Grammar of Autonomy In Irish" (PDF). Hypothesis A/Hypothesis B: Linguistic Explorations in Honor of David M. Perlmutter.