Content tagged with "passive"

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Ditransitive verbs in the passive voice

Ditransitive verbs have both a direct object and an indirect object. If the direct object is not a personal pronoun, the order of the objects is optional, but if the direct object comes first, the indirect object is preceded by a preposition, usually to:

The company paid the customer $500 as compensation.
The company paid $500 to the customer as compensation.

Form: passive voice

be + past participle

The passive is formed by making the object of the active sentence the subject of the new sentence and using the appropriate form of the passive auxiliary be + the past participle form of the verb. Be is in the same tense as the verb in the active sentence.

Impersonal reporting

Some reporting verbs can be made impersonal with the personal pronoun it and the passive voice when the agent (the doer) of the action is unimportant, unknown or obvious.

Passive voice with reporting verbs

If we want to avoid mentioning the generalised agents we, they, people, everybody, one etc. with reporting verbs, we can use the following passive patterns:

Reporting a simultaneous event in the passive voice

subject + passive reporting verb + to-infinitive (simple or continuous)

If the reporting and the reported event happen simultaneously, i.e. in the same time frame, we use simple or continuous infinitives, depending on whether the verb in the reported clause was simple or continuous.

If the time frame is the present:

Reporting an earlier event in the passive voice

subject + passive reporting verb + to-infinitive (perfect or perfect continuous)

If the reported event happens before the reporting, we use perfect or perfect continuous infinitives, depending on whether the verb in the reported clause was simple or continuous.

If the reporting happens in the present and the reported event in the past:

The agent with the passive voice

The agent is the person or thing that performs the action and is the subject of the active sentence. In most passive sentences, the agent is not mentioned. If it is mentioned, however, it is usually preceded by the preposition by:

The pigeons were dispersed by a tourist walking past. (A tourist walking past dispersed the pigeons.)
He was hit by a falling branch while walking in the woods.
(A falling branch hit him while he was walking in the woods.)

The difference between the active and passive voice

Voice shows the relation of the subject of the sentence to the action of the verb.

In the active voice, the subject is the agent (or doer) of the action:

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