passive voice
Chapter 6: Using Passive and Active Voice: Architectural and Engineering Marvels
6.0 Introduction to Voice So far in this grammar, verbs have been classified by their form, tense, aspect, and modality. Another essential concept in the English verb system is voice. Grammatical voice refers to either passive or active voice. Consider the sentence The French government commissioned sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi to design the Statue of Liberty. The sentence is considered an active voice sentence because the subject, the French government, actively commissioned the object, Bartholdi, to design the statue. Consider the sentence Frederic Auguste Bartholdi was commissioned to design the Statue of Liberty by the French government. The sentence is a passive voice sentence because the subject, Bartholdi, is acted upon by an agent, in this case, the French government. In a passive voice sentence, the agent, the one that performs the action, is frequently the object of the preposition by or with. We refer to this prepositional phrase containing the agent as the by phrase. Passive constructions require verbs with transitive meaning; that is, the verb requires an object to have meaning. In the examples above, the verb commission has transitive meaning; thus, both an active and passive sentence can be generated. When a verb has intransitive meaning, a passive sentence can not be generated. For example, in the sentence For over 100 years, the Statue of Liberty has stood in New York Harbor as a symbol of freedom and independence, the verb stand has intransitive meaning; the sentence is in active voice, and there is no passive counterpart. Therefore, we see that the passive voice has certain restrictions that active voice does not have. Both direct and indirect objects in active sentences can transform to passive sentences. In the sentence The French government gave the Statue of Liberty to the United States for its centennial celebration, the direct object of the verb
6.0 Introduction to Voice So far in this grammar, verbs have been classified by their form, tense, aspect, and modality. Another essential concept in the English verb system is voice. Grammatical voice refers to either passive or active voice. Consider the sentence The French government commissioned sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi to design the Statue of Liberty. The sentence is considered an active voice sentence because the subject, the French government, actively commissioned the object, Bartholdi, to design the statue. Consider the sentence Frederic Auguste Bartholdi was commissioned to design the Statue of Liberty by the French government. The sentence is a passive voice sentence because the subject, Bartholdi, is acted upon by an agent, in this case, the French government. In a passive voice sentence, the agent, the one that performs the action, is frequently the object of the preposition by or with. We refer to this prepositional phrase containing the agent as the by phrase. Passive constructions require verbs with transitive meaning; that is, the verb requires an object to have meaning. In the examples above, the verb commission has transitive meaning; thus, both an active and passive sentence can be generated. When a verb has intransitive meaning, a passive sentence can not be generated. For example, in the sentence For over 100 years, the Statue of Liberty has stood in New York Harbor as a symbol of freedom and independence, the verb stand has intransitive meaning; the sentence is in active voice, and there is no passive counterpart. Therefore, we see that the passive voice has certain restrictions that active voice does not have. Both direct and indirect objects in active sentences can transform to passive sentences. In the sentence The French government gave the Statue of Liberty to the United States for its centennial celebration, the direct object of the verb