Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
When we want to give more importance to the action and not to the one who has carried it out,
we use the passive voice. The passive voice is formed with the verb "to be" and the past participle.
Examples:
They made this car in 1963. (active voice) This car was made in 1963. (passive voice)
He ate all of the cookies. (active voice) All of the cookies were eaten. (passive voice)
Note: The subject of a passive verb corresponds to the object of an active verb.
Composition
To transform an active to a passive sentence we take into account the following points:
2. The main verb is replaced by the auxiliary “to be”, at the same time, together with the main
verb in participle.
3. The subject of the main sentence becomes an agent complement of the passive.
4. If we make mention in the sentence of the subject that performs the action (agent subject), this
will normally be preceded by the preposition “by”.
Aspects to consider:
In the forms of ‘future progressive’ (will be being + pp) and ‘perfect progressive’ (has been being +
pp) its use is not very common.
To say who was doing the action or what was causing it, use 'by'.
Examples:
The passive voice is usually used when it is unknown or not interested in mentioning who or what
does the action.
Examples:
Functions
We use the passive voice when we do not know who has performed the action.
Examples:
We use the passive voice when we want to give more importance to what happened, than to who
performed the action or when we do not want to say who performed it.
Examples:
Note: We cannot use the passive voice with intransitive verbs like "die", "arrive" or "go".
Intransitive verbs are verbs that do not carry a direct object.
VOCABULARY TO CONSIDER: