Talk:Passive voice

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What languages have passive voice?

What languages have passive voice? Is there a list available? - Fabrício, 23/june/2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fabrício Kury (talk • contribs) 20:32, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Redirect from Passive sentence

I added it. Rosilisk (talk) 01:11, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Passive Voice in Romance Languages

"Conversely, the Romance languages tend to use the passive voice more often than the active voice, resulting in the subject being less conspiciously defined, yet not necessarily obscure." [sic] Is this actually true? I couldn't find a source for this statement. I also speak some French, and this appears not to be the case. 'conspiciously' should be spelled 'conspicuously'. I am making that change now. 165.82.82.193 (talk) 23:28, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

I know of no reliable sources suggesting that Romance languages use the passive voice more often or more conspicuously than Germanic languages, let alone that Romance languages use passive voice more often than active voice. On the contrary, the only scholarly sources I could find saying anything near this suggest just the opposite. For example, Jisa, Reilly, Verhoeven, Baruch, and Rosado (2002) suggest that "When a language has productive alternative rhetorical options" to remove the agent from topic position, it tends to use passive voice less often. In short, this claim is unverified and needs to cite a source or be removed from the article. Cnilep (talk) 01:06, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Languages that "almost" lack passive voice

After reading this.

Polish passives: "Polish verbs have a passive form but the passive is not used as frequently and generally as it is in English, while the reflexive form is frequently used when speaking about self or others."

I wonder how many languages have limited features of passive voice. Korean technically doesn't have a passive form, if you don't count the Japanese-influenced passive construction. Komitsuki (talk) 02:35, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Dynamic and static passive

I can find only one published source discussing "dynamic and static passive", and that bears no resemblance to the content recently added to this page.

• El-Marzouk, Ghiath (2009). "The dynamics and statics of passive". Groninger Arbeiten zur Germanistischen Linguistik. 49: 1–40.

El-Marzouk uses dynamic passive to indicate constructions where "at least one internal argument moves to subject position under canonical passivization" (p. 3) and static passive to indicate passive constructions where arguments do not move. Nothing about agency or aspect as suggested here. Cnilep (talk) 04:56, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

I've found two papers on stative/eventive passives, and I gather that "stative passive" is in wider use, but couldn't easily locate papers in EBSCO.

• De Garavito, Joyce; Elena Valenzuela (2008). "Eventive and stative passives in Spanish L2 acquisition: A matter of aspect". Bilingualism: Language & Cognition. 11 (3): 323–336.
• Sinha, Anjani Kumar (1973). "On stative passives and treatment of some idioms". In Claudia Corum, T. Cedric Smith-Stark, and Ann Weiser (ed.). Papers from the Ninth Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic Society. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. pp. 615–626.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)

Cnilep (talk) 02:18, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

The German section talks about what we call "Vorgangs-/Zustandspassiv". The former (Der Rasen wird gemäht) is translated correctly as "The lawn is being mown", while to my intuition the latter (Der Rasen ist gemäht) has perfect meaning. "The lawn is mown" seems to fit, but I would have translated it as "The lawn has been mown". I'll try to find a source. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 10:25, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

mähen is an active verb, thus perfect active is "hat (or: habe, hast ...) gemäht", like at [de.wiktionary.org/wiki/Flexion:m%C3%A4hen#Finite_Formen]. Though, in case of neuter verbs which use sein to form tenses, such a gehen, constructions with a present form of sein and the past participle such as "ist gegangen" are perfect, like at [de.wiktionary.org/wiki/Flexion:gehen]. -84.161.8.150 (talk) 09:36, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

According to the article, “Die Erde wird von Schnee bedeckt” is incorrect. As a native speaker of German, however, I consider that sentence perfectly valid, describing the process of the Earth becoming covered in snow. I'm neither a linguist nor a Germanist though, so I don't know any “official” position (in literature) regarding this. --77.187.251.127 (talk) 11:55, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

I agree. It sounds a bit old-fashioned but grammatically correct. I'd translate it as "The earth is being covered in snow." --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 17:20, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

The English passive voice - possible further explanation?

The section for the English passive voice states:

English, like some other languages, uses a periphrastic passive. Rather than conjugating directly for voice, English uses the past participle form of the verb plus an auxiliary verb, either be or get, to indicate passive voice.

At first I thought this isn't true since a sentence can be expressed in passive voice and in present tense. An example is "the book is being ripped". But I reread the above statement and realized the statement is correct. Yet, since both examples given for English passive voice are in the past tense - "the money was donated to the school", and "the vase got broken during the fight" - could an example in the present tense be given as well? This way someone reading this section won't think that the English passive voice can only be used to denote past tense.

— Jclu: talk-contribs 08:33, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Done. John M Baker (talk) 13:47, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Overly specialized section

According to the section 'Defining "passive"', "The term passive is applied to a wide range of grammatical structures and is therefore difficult to define." The section allows that this is true "with non-European languages."

Although it may be hard to define "passive" for the needs of linguistic theory or writing descriptive grammars, it's easy to approximate for the needs of a general reader, especially an English speaker. Therefore, this section risks giving the wrong impression to most Wikipedia readers. I would recommend that this and other issues of interest to linguists but less useful to general readers – say, students in high school English classes or people learning a (European) foreign language – be moved to a section that positions the discussion within the field of linguistics. Cnilep (talk) 23:38, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

I agree. Thank you for bringing this to my attention (I added the section yesterday). Do you happen to know of any examples on other pages of something similar? I'm not sure how to go about the change. Joeystanley (talk) 15:43, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Divine passive

The section "The 'divine passive' in theological discourse" seems to me to give undue weight to use of the passive in a single genre. Various genres – natural science writing, political speech, and insincere apologies are three that spring to mind immediately – have been described as using (or over-using) passive voice for particular reasons. Judeo-Christian theological discourse doesn't strike me as particularly relevant to understanding passive voice as such. Cnilep (talk) 00:32, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Hearing no objection, I removed the section. Cnilep (talk) 08:31, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Common critiques of importance?

In §1.1 of the article (in its fifth paragraph) the third sentence now reads

Contrary to common critiques, the passive voice has important uses, with virtually all writers using the passive voice (including Orwell and Strunk & White).

Earlier in the same paragraph, the critiques of Orwell and Strunk & White are mentioned, which leaves the remainder of the set of “common critiques” unidentified and puzzling (as such critiques are not common, and the few critiques found outside of Orwell and Strunk & White consistently cite Orwell and Strunk & White as their sources of authority).

Beyond that ambiguity, the sentence quoted above says that common critiques of the use of the passive voice in English have included the claim that the passive voice does not have important uses (along with the implication that either those same critiques, or Orwell and Strunk & White, or all of them, have claimed that a writer might write in standard English without using the passive voice). No critique of English usage goes as far as to say that the passive voice has no important uses. That idea would never withstand critical examination.

Neither Orwell nor Strunk & White ever said that the passive voice in English was unimportant. Nor did any of them ever say that a writer could completely discard its use. The advice of both Orwell and Strunk & White is that the passive voice in English is stylistically weaker than the active voice, and they both encouraged writers to favor the use of the active voice.

That Orwell and Strunk & White, or either of them

1. ever said that the passive voice in English has no important uses, or
2. ever said that a writer could write well while never using it, or
3. are hypocrites because they themselves sometimes used the passive voice when they wrote

are ideas which are not only incorrect, they are also fallacious. Good advice is good advice, whether or not it is followed by the advisor. catsmoke (talk) 19:09, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

The B-Class rating on this project's quality scale is quite generous

The closest that this article comes to defining passive voice is, "In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb – that is, the person or thing that undergoes the action or has its state changed." Its problems include:

1. The ipse dixit that "the subject [...] undergoes the action or has its state changed" is semantically valid but grammatically oxymoronic, begging the questions relating to the axiomatic notion of what a subject is and how it functions linguistically.
2. Invoking the outmoded "main verb" concept merely requires discombobulation of antiquated terminology that is infrequently used nowadays due to its various linguistic frailties.
3. Interpolating 20th century concepts (i.e. "theme" and "patient") is a valiant attempt at elucidation that ultimately fails a neat correspondence to the linguistic baggage associated with the "passive voice" taxon, which was coined in 1530.

Additionally, the ipse dixit that passive voice "contrasts active voice" falls victim to traditional notions about the binary nature of a linguistic voice in English. Specifically, a paradigm that defaults a sentence such as "the sky is blue" to active voice (since it it clearly isn't passive voice) exposes some serious linguistic defects if a subject/stative verb/adjective structure is construed to be active in the sense commonly understood as "the unmarked voice for clauses featuring a transitive verb in nominative–accusative languages," to quote the relevant Wikipedia article on the topic.

Is there a linguistic light at the end of this passive voice tunnel? I think so. In my own lexicon, the passive voice definition comprises merely 10 words, with each of those words precisely defined axiomatically. Unfortunately for all of us, our inherited corpus of traditional linguistic terms (as semantically associated with English grammar from the 12 century onward) emerged according to a naive set theory rather than axiomatic set theory. Forgive me for not sharing my 10-word darling for passive voice here as I'm not yet ready to cede the intellectual property rights to the public domain. Next year the time should be ripe. --Kent Dominic·(talk) 12:15, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

The discussion of voices in the Nordic (Germanic) is rather simplified.

It is correct that Germanic languages lost the old simple passive verbforms, and instead developed some kinds of "periphrastic conjugations" in order to express the same function (as English and German do to-day). It is also true that the Nordic branch of the Germanic languages developed some new simple ways to express non-active voices, by letting some often postponed reflexive pronouns degenerate to mere endings. However, all the Nord-Germanic languages also retained the periphrastic constructions. As to the precise use of the periphrastic vz. the simple forms, these languages (and sometimes dialects or sociolects of the same langue) varies, both as regards frequencies and semantics.

Thus, in Icelandic (which is not a language I know very well), according to a school grammar, the simple forms on -st are used to indicate the middle voice, while the periphrastic constructions are employed for the passive voice. I believe there are some exceptions. In Swedish, both the simple forms on -s and the periphrastic ones may be used for the (properly) passive voice, with little semantic difference. The -s forms to some extent also may be used for some middle voice variants; especially to express reciprocal meaning. ("We met" often is expressed by vi möttes, if the meaning is rciprocal: "I met you and you met me"; but "we met them" is vi mötte dem, in active voice. The pure passive voice example "They were met by their parents" may be translated to Swedish either as de möttes av föräldrarna or de blev mötta av föräldrarna.) However, the middle voice use of -s in Swedish seems more restricted than the corresponding use of -st in Icelandic; the latter, but not the former, seems regularly used to express reflexivity (where the subjects are doing something to themselves).

The developments of such (middle or passive or mediopassive) forms in the North-Germanic and in some Slavic languages seem to be suspiciously similar, both as regards the etymology and the semantics of the new forms. However, I do not at all know whether they influenced each others (reciprocally), or just one language group was influenced by the other, or neither holds. JoergenB (talk) 21:57, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Use of passive voice in propaganda and avoiding blame

It seems to me this might be something useful to include, but I'm not nearly familiar enough with Wikipedia to add something potentially controversial - I'm imagining something like this description (from Center for Media and Democracy) but in NPOV 152.105.62.50 (talk) 08:56, 12 April 2023 (UTC)