5.7.1 Grammar Explanation of the Passive Voice

In this chapter you will learn about the passive se.  In order to talk about the passive se it is helpful to first review what is the active voice and what is the passive voice and see a few examples in English.

In order to truly understand the difference between an active voice and passive voice sentence, we would like to introduce the linguistic concept of AGENT.  Agents do the action in a sentence.  You may have been taught that a subject does an action in a sentence but that’s not quite right.  Subjects are what we use to conjugate verbs and in the active voice the subject is usually the agent.  Let’s look at an example in which the subject and the agent are the same:

The merchant sells books

In this sentence, the merchant is the one selling and “the merchant” is what we use to conjugate the verb.  The word order in English tells us that the merchant is the subject and we can also tell because the third person singular in English has a final -s.

When we make passive voice sentences we break the subject and agent relationship.  Whatever (or whomever) was in the object position in an active sentence becomes the subject and the agent becomes a mystery.  Let’s make the above sentence passive:

The books are sold

As many of you know, I could add “by the merchant” to the end but as a general rule of thumb, if you want to add that “by the merchant” or feel that the sentence is unclear without that information then you should stay in the active voice.  The passive voice is used whenever you don’t want to or need to mention who did an action.  The fact that the action occurred is what is important in a passive voice sentence.