Basic English-023

This is Lesson 23 of our Basic English Series. 

Parts of Speech 3.6 – Voices of Verbs –

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Voices of Verbs

What is verb voice? It is a grammatical term used to tell whether the subject of the sentence is acting or receiving the action expressed by the verb. There are two voices of verbs and these are the active voice and passive voice.

Let us take a closer look on these with examples and then discuss them after.

The Active Voice

The verb is said to be active when the subject performs, or is the doer of, the action. This structure is the standard construction of a sentence. Please see these examples.

• Alexander the Great established the Greek Empire.
• Columbus discovered America.
• Japan invaded the Philippines in 1941.
• I created this website.
• The Philippines shields the ASEAN countries from the Pacific storms.

If you noticed in the above examples the sentence construction and use of verbs are direct. As example, the first sentence the main part of the subject, Alexander the Great, is the doer of the action and no other cluttering words were added. We will notice the difference with the use of passive voice on the same sentence later. In the English language, and even other languages, the doer of the action is in the subject of the sentence and immediately followed by the word that describes the action (main verb) as seen on the above examples.

To be able to see and understand this point clearer, let’s see the Passive Voice with the same examples.

The Passive Voice

A verb is in the passive voice when the subject of the sentence contains the object (the receiver of the action in the active voice) while the doer of the action is in the predicate. Let us use the same examples above to see the difference.

• The Greek Empire was established by Alexander the Great.
• America was discovered by Columbus.
• The Philippines was invaded by Japan in 1941.
• This website was created by me.
• The ASEAN countries are shielded by the Philippines from the Pacific storms.

What do we learn from the above examples? In the first example the Greek Empire (which is in the subject of the sentence) is not the doer of the action (established), but instead the receiver of the action verb. The doer of the action (Alexander the Great) is found in the predicate. In this case, the sentence is said to be in the passive voice.

We also noticed from the examples that active sentences are about what people (or things) do, while passive sentences are about what happens to people (or things). Another thing we need to take note of is the passive voice is formed by using a form of the auxiliary verb “to be” (be, am, is, are, was, were, being, been) followed by the past participle of the main verb. Here are additional examples that compare the difference between the active and passive voice.

Notice how the auxiliary verbs change the meaning of the main verbs from action to condition or from “doing” to “being.”

Japan invaded the Philippines. (“Japan” is doing an action: invading)
The Philippines was invaded by Japan. (“Philippines” is in a condition: was invaded)

In this way, the past participle functions very much like an adjective; it describes the subject.

The following is a summary of active and passive forms of all verb tenses.

Remember that in active forms the subject of the sentence is the person or thing that does the action (or the one described by the predicate), and the receiver (the description or modifier) in the predicate. In passive forms, the doer of the action (main verb) (or the one being described) is usually found in the predicate of the sentence and the receiver of the action (or being described) in the subject.

So far we have seen examples of active and passive voices in the simple present and simple past tenses. In the nest lesson, we will see examples of Active and Passive sentences in other verb tenses.

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