Passive voice

Different languages use various grammatical forms to indicate passive voice. In some languages, passive voice is indicated by verb conjugation, specific forms of the verb. Examples of languages that indicate voice through conjugation include Greek, Latin, and North Germanic languages such as Swedish. Norwegian (Nynorsk) and Icelandic have a similar system, but the usage of the passive is more restricted. The passive forms in Nynorsk are restricted to being accompanied by an auxiliary verb, which is not the case in Swedish and Danish. Nynorsk uses "å verte" or "å bli" + past participle for passive voice, and Swedish and Danish use the passive suffix "-s" and Icelandic uses "að verða" or "að vera" + past participle or "-st" suffix for middle voice. In Latin, the agent of a passive sentence (if indicated) is expressed using a noun in the ablative case, in this case (the ablative of ). Different languages use different methods for expressing the agent in passive clauses. In Swedish, the agent can be expressed by means of a prepositional phrase with the preposition (equivalent here to the English "by"). The Austronesian language Kimaragang Dusun also indicates passive voice by verb conjugation using the infix, . Contrary to common critiques, the passive voice has important uses, with virtually all writers using the passive voice (including Orwell and Strunk & White). There is general agreement that the passive voice is useful for emphasis or when the receiver of the action is more important than the actor. ''Merriam–Webster's Dictionary of English Usage'' refers to three statistical studies of passive versus active sentences in various periodicals, stating: "the highest incidence of passive constructions was 13 percent. Orwell runs to a little over 20 percent in "Politics and the English Language". Clearly he found the construction useful in spite of his advice to avoid it as much as possible". ==Defining "passive"==

In the field of linguistics, the term passive is applied to a wide range of grammatical structures. Linguists therefore find it difficult to define the term in a way that makes sense across all human languages. The canonical passive in European languages has the following properties: • The subject is not an agent. • There is a change in: word order; or in nominal morphology—the form of the nouns in the sentence. • There is specific verbal morphology—a particular form of the verb indicates passive voice. The problem arises with non-European languages. Many constructions in these languages share at least one property with the canonical European passive, but not all. While it seems justified to call these constructions passive when comparing them to European languages' passive constructions, as a whole the passives of the world's languages do not share a single common feature. • It applies to underlying transitive clauses and forms a derived intransitive. • The entity that is the patient or the object of the transitive verb in the underlying representation (indicated as O in linguistic terminology) becomes the core argument of the clause (indicated as S, since the core argument is the subject of an intransitive). • The agent in the underlying representation (indicated as A) becomes a chômeur, a noun in the periphery that is not a core argument. It is marked by a non-core case or becomes part of an adpositional phrase, etc. This can be omitted, but there is always the option of including it. • There is some explicit marking of the construction. Dixon acknowledges that this excludes some constructions labeled as passive by some linguists. ==Adversative passive==

In some languages, including several Southeast Asian languages, the passive voice is sometimes used to indicate that an action or event was unpleasant or undesirable. {{fs interlinear|indent=3|lang = ja Yup'ik, from the Eskimo–Aleut family, has two different suffixes that can indicate passive, -cir- and -ma-. The morpheme -cir- has an adversative meaning. If an agent is included in a passive sentence with the -cir passive, the noun is usually in the allative (oblique) case. {{interlinear|indent=3|lang=esu ==Stative and dynamic passive==

In some languages, for example English, there is often a similarity between clauses expressing an action or event in the passive voice and clauses expressing a state. For example, the string of words "The dog is fed" can have the following two different meanings: • The dog is fed (twice a day). • The dog is fed (so we can leave now). The additions in parentheses "force" the same string of words to clearly show only one of their two possible grammatical functions and the related meaning. In the first sentence, the combination of the auxiliary verb "is" and the past participle "fed" is a regular example of the construction of the passive voice in English. In the second sentence, "is" can however be interpreted as an ordinary copula and the past participle as an adjective. Sentences of the second type are called false passives by some linguists, who feel that such sentences are simply confused with the passive voice due to their outward similarity. Other linguists consider the second type to be a different kind of passive – a stative passive (rarely called statal, static, or resultative passive), in contrast to the dynamic or eventive passive illustrated by the first sentence. Some languages express or can express these different meanings using different constructions. The difference between dynamic and stative passives is more evident in languages such as German that use different words or constructions for the two. In German, the auxiliary verb marks static passive (German: , rarely , in referring to German also called or ), while marks the dynamic passive ( or , rarely , in referring to German also called or or simply or ). The English string of words "the lawn is mown" has two possible meanings corresponding to the example "the dog is fed" above. It can be used in the following two different senses: • dynamic: The lawn is mown (once a week). • stative: ''The lawn is mown (so they're probably not gone.)'' German uses two different grammatical constructions for these sentences: • dynamic: • stative: Further examples and explanations: • dynamic: ("The lawn is being mown right now" / "The lawn is mown often", literally "The lawn gets mown right now / often", dynamic) • stative: ("The lawn is [already] mown.") A number of German verbs such as ("cover"), ("fill"), and ("separate"), when used as stative verbs, usually only form static passives. :- ("Snow covers the ground", active) :- ("The ground is covered with snow", static) :- rare, poetic: ("The ground is being covered with snow", dynamic) :- but not: * (The English equivalent would be equally incorrect: *"The street is being covered with rubble.") :- correct: ("The street is covered with rubble.") In English, the passive voice expressed with the auxiliary verb "get" rather than "be" ("get-passive") expresses a dynamic rather than a static meaning. But when the auxiliary verb "be" is used, the main verb can have either a dynamic or static meaning as shown below (including copies of some examples from above): :The dog gets fed twice a day. (dynamic) :The dog is fed (twice a day). (dynamic) :The dog is fed (so we can leave now). (stative) :The couple got married last spring. (dynamic) :The marriage was celebrated last spring. (dynamic) :It is agreed that laws were invented for the safety of citizens. (stative) Verbs that typically express static meaning can show dynamic meaning when used in the passive formed with get, for example be known (static) vs. get known (dynamic): :Zoltan is known for hosting big parties. (static) :Get your foot in the door, get known. (dynamic) ==See also==