Oposiciones de Ingles Secundaria Unit 27 The Passive Voice: Form and Function

Trinity Centre.
Albacete, Alicante, Valencia Tel: 627 137 138

Unit 27; The Passive Voice
Unit updated: 23/11/2022
OPOSICIONES DE INGLES
SECUNDARIA
UNIT 27
THE PASSIVE VOICE:
FORM AND FUNCTION
1. INTRODUCTION.
2. FORMS
2.1. By + Agent
2.2. Get
2.3. Verbs with Two Objects
2.4. Object Complements
2.5. Transitive and Intransitive Verbs
2.6. Prepositional Verbs
3. FUNCTIONS
4. CONTRAST BETWEEN ENGLISH AND SPANISH PASSIVE
5. CONCLUSION
® Registro Propiedad Intelectual. Autor Ian Miles: Número de Asiento Registral 00/2004/3122
Remember; many underlined words are an interactive link
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Trinity Centre. Albacete, Alicante, Valencia Tel: 627 137 138
1. INTRODUCTION
The action of a sentence can be viewed in two ways, depending upon which voice you choose to use. In English
there are two voices, the active and the passive. In this presentation we will be examining the way in which the
passive is formed and its functions in comparison with the active.
This subject is particularly important for the students due to the way that the passive in English is used far more than
in Spanish. This means that the learners may have difficulty in recognising when to employ the structures, and so we
will close the unit by examining the differences that exist between the uses of the passive in both languages.
The information that we will be using has been taken from Quirk, Greenbaum, Swan and Murphy
A more detailed list of references will be given at the end of this unit.
We will begin by looking at the forms of the passive:
2. FORMS OF THE PASSIVE
According to Quirk, the difference between the active voice and the passive voice involves both the verb phrase and
the clause as a whole. In the verb phrase the passive adds a form of the auxiliary be followed by the ed participle of
the main verb. Look at the following examples:
kisses
is kissed
has kissed
has been kissed
may be kissing
may be being kissed
Note that we often try to avoid using structures such as be being and been being, and so for this reason, the future
continuous and perfect continuous passive tenses are uncommon.
She will be being kissed tomorrow.*
She may have been being kissed when you called.*
The passive sentence is said to be derived from the active one by a process of transformation of several elements,
including the verb phrase, the position of the subject and the position of the object.
Let us now take two sample sentences, one in active and the other in passive, and see the differences at clause level:
My grandfather built this house.

(active)
This house was built by my grandfather.
(passive)
The active subject, if retained, becomes the passive agent, whilst the active object becomes the passive subject.
The preposition by is inserted before the agent as a means of demonstrating who or what causes the action.
Let us look in a little greater detail at the by + agent form of the passive:
2.1. By + Agent.
In sentences like: the trouble was caused by your mother, the part of the sentence introduced by by is called the
agent. The agent in a passive sentence is the same person or thing as the subject of an active sentence. Compare:
I was shocked by her attitude.

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Her attitude shocked me.
After some past participles which are used like adjectives, other prepositions are used instead of by to introduce the
agent:
We were worried about (or by) her silence.
I was excited at (or by) the prospect of going abroad.
Also note that get is frequently used with the passive. This is more often found in informal English, whereas be is
found in all situations:
2.2. Get
Look at the following examples:
She got caught by the police as she was leaving the building.
(She was caught...)
I’m surprised that Ann didn’t get offered the job.

(...wasn’t offered..)
You can use get to say that something has happened to someone or something. This is especially true if the action
was unplanned, or unexpected, as can be seen in the following example:
He ran into the road and got run over by a car.
However, in addition to this, it can also convey the sense that the referent of the subject has some responsibility for
the action. Compare the construction with a reflexive pronoun:
She got herself caught.
He got himself run over.
The sense is that although the result was negative for the subject, he or she brought it on themselves, probably as a
result of carelessness.
One thing that should be taken into consideration with the use of get is that we tend only to use it when things
happen or change. You cannot, for example, use get in sentences such as:
Jill is liked by everybody
or
He is a mysterious man, nothing is known about him.
If we try to say get liked or got known it sounds strange because they do not refer to things that happen or change.
Care should also be taken with the use of get in sentences such as get married, get divorced or get dressed. These
are not passive in meaning, and the students should not be allowed to become confused by this.
2.3. Verbs with Two Objects
Many verbs such as give, send, show, lend can be followed by two objects, which usually refer to a person and a
thing:
She gave her sister a present.
When these verbs are used in the passive, there are two possibilities:
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Her sister was given the present.
The present was given to her sister.
Most often in such cases the object becomes the subject of the passive verb.
I’ve just been sent a lot of roses.
This would be more usual than:
A lot of roses have just been sent to me.
Let us move onto look at sentences with object complements, and see how these are formed in the passive.
2.4. Object Complements
After some verbs the direct object can be followed by an object complement, which can take the form of either a
noun or adjective that is used in order to describe the object. Compare the following two examples:
They elected him President.
He was elected president.
If we think of the above two examples we can see that in the first the main focus of the sentence is on the they who
voted for him as president. In the second example, the voters are secondary in focus to the fact that he was elected to
be the president.
2.5. Transitive and Intransitive Verbs
However, it must be remembered that not all verbs have passive forms. Intransitive verbs cannot normally be used
in the passive since they do not have objects. This means that therefore there is nothing to act as the subject of a
passive verb.
Some transitive verbs cannot be used in the passive, at least in some of their meanings. Most of these are
STATIVE verbs (verbs which refer to states, not actions and which often have no continuous forms). Examples are:
have, fit, lack, resemble. In the following examples, the second sentence is impossible:
He has a brother.
A brother is being had.*
He lacks money.
Money is being lacked*
He resembles his mother.

His mother is resembled by him.*
My shoes don’t fit me.

I am not fitted by my shoes.*
In the same way that there are transitive verbs that cannot be used in the passive, so too can we find some
prepositional verbs that would be impossible to find in passive structures.
2.6. Prepositional Verbs
For example, we can say:
That chair’s not to be sat on.
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or
The children have been very well looked after.
But we cannot say:
I have been agreed with by everybody.

or
The room was walked into.
There are no clear rules about this. The student has to learn, one by one, which expressions can be used in the
passive. Of course, this can be both difficult and frustrating for them, however, they are helped by the fact that
where there is a choice between the active and the passive, the active is normally chosen.
With this last point in mind, we will now go onto looking at the functions of the passive, which will help us to
realise the reasons for choosing to use it.
3. FUNCTIONS
The choice between the active and the passive often depends on what has already been said, or on what the listener
already knows. We usually like to start sentences with what is already known and to put new information later in the
sentence.
Look at these two sentences:
Your little boy broke my kitchen window this morning.
That window was broken by your little boy this morning.
In the first example the listener does not know about the broken window, so the speaker makes it the object of the
sentence.
In the second example the listener knows about the window- perhaps it is being pointed out to him so that he can see
it- so the speaker uses a passive construction. In this way he can put the window first, and keep the new information
(who broke it) for later in the sentence.
Look at these other examples:
John has written a book
This novel was probably written by Steinbeck.
In the first sentence, John is likely to be somebody that the listener and the speaker know; the news is that he has
written a book. The speaker prefers to put this at the end, so he begins with John, and uses an active verb. The
reason for choosing to put the information at the end may be to give it force.
In the second sentence a passive structure allows the speaker to begin with the novel (which the hearer already
knows about), and to put the news, who wrote it, at the end. This process of end-focus shows us that in the first
sentence, the speaker feels the most startling piece of news to be that John had written a book. It is assumed that the
listener has no knowledge of this. In the second, the writer has more prominence than the novel itself.
We often prefer to put longer and heavier expressions at the end of a sentence, and this is another reason for
choosing a passive structure. Compare the following two sentences:
Mary’s behaviour annoyed me
I was annoyed by Mary’s behaviour.
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I was annoyed by Mary wanting to tell everybody else what to do.
The first sentence can easily be active or passive. But if the second sentence was active, the subject would be very
long:
Mary wanting to tell everybody else what to do annoyed me.
In this case, a passive structure is more natural as otherwise it takes too long to get to the statement of how the
behaviour of Mary made the speaker feel.
Passive structures are also used when we want to talk about an action, but we are not interested in saying who (or
what) did it:
Those pyramids were built around 400 A.D.
Too many books have been written about the second world war.
In these cases the passive is used because the speaker is more interested in concentrating on the action. He or she is
not particularly interested in who built the pyramids, or who wrote the books. The important thing is that the
pyramids have been built and too many books have been written.
In a similar way the identity of the person who performed the action may not be known to the speaker, and for this
reason he or she must use the passive:
Shots were fired into the crowd.
Here the speaker only knows that shots were fired, he or she does not know by whom. However, maybe the speaker
assumes that it was the police who fired the shots, but he does not want to say outright. Therefore he can use the
passive structure as a way of avoiding apportioning blame. Because of this ability of the passive to make a sentence
neutral it is often favoured by newspaper editors as a way of writing the headlines:
Woman Robbed in High Street.
Fire Started in Cafe.
The speaker may also use the system to avoid accepting responsibility. Look at the following example:
A mistake has been made with your change.
Here it is possible that the speaker is the shop assistant who made the mistake, but would rather not admit to it.
Passives are also very common in scientific writing, as well as the other kinds of events and processes where we are
more interested in things that happen rather than the person or thing that performed them.
Scientific writers often use the passive to avoid the constant repetition of the subject I or we, and to put the emphasis
on the process and experimental procedures.
This use of the passive helps to give the writing the objective tone that the writers wish to convey:
The subject was blindfolded and a pen was placed in his left hand.
For this reason, we can often find standard fixed expressions such as:
It is said that ....
Occasionally there is the necessity to keep the same subject, as can clearly be seen in the following example:
He stood up and was applauded.
Here the performers of the action (the audience) are obvious. The most important part is the subject who received
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the applause.
Occasionally the identity is important, but the speaker wishes to use the passive in order to place end focus, as we
have seen before, so that the identity is emphasised:
We discovered that my bag had been stolen by John.
Here the passive is used in an attempt meant to surprise or shock (or both) the listener, to whom John is clearly
known.
As we can see, the passive has many uses in English. The problem for the Spanish student comes in learning when
to use it, as there is little for him or her to refer back to in his or her native language.
We would like to finish this unit with a very brief contrast between the Spanish and the English use of the passive, in
order to demonstrate the things to be considered in the L2 classroom:
4. CONTRAST BETWEEN ENGLISH AND SPANISH PASSIVE.
When we want to talk about the similarities between the English and the Spanish passive we are encouraged to find
the formation to be the same. Look at the following example of the passive in English:
They sold many copies of the record
Many copies of the record were sold..

Here we can see that the structure to be + past participle is used.
Now let us compare this with the Spanish equivalent:
Vendieron muchas copias del disco.
Muchas copias del disco fueron vendidas
In this example, the Spanish structure follows the same rule as its English counterpart, through the use of ser + past
participle.
Unfortunately the similarities seem to end here.
The main difference is, as we pointed out in the introduction, that the passive is used much less frequently in
Spanish than it is in English. This causes obvious problems for the Spanish student of English as he or she must first
become accustomed to using the structure.
In Spanish you can place the direct object at the head of the sentence without having to turn to the passive voice:
(a ella) la eligieron presidente.
In English if you wish to place the direct or indirect object at the head of the sentence then you must, in the majority
of cases, use the passive:
She was elected president.
Although, as we pointed out at the beginning, it is unusual to use the English passive in a continuous form, it is
possible. Look at the following example:
It is being said.
This case and form does not permit a translation directly into Spanish: está siendo dicho, although grammatically
correct, would be unlikely to be used. Instead most Spanish people would say:
Se está diciendo....
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In both languages this form would be used when the speaker wishes to emphasise that something is happening now,
such as a surprising piece of news. For less topical matters the sentence would probably be it is said... in English or
se dice... in Spanish.
If in Spanish you say se rompió la cuerda you have to bear in mind if the rope broke because of low quality, or if it
were the result of the presence of an agent (unknown). In English this is clearly defined. In the first case you would
say:
The rope broke.
whilst in the second:
The rope got broken.
There are naturally many other differences between the use of the passive in the two languages, but this short
representation should provide us with some idea of how complicated the English passive construction must be for
Spanish learners.
4. CONCLUSION
We would therefore like to conclude this unit by stressing, in the light of what we have just seen, the importance of
correct and thorough teaching of the English passive. Once the students have mastered the various uses, they should
find themselves in possession of a valuable means of expressing themselves in a variety of different situations where
they find that the use of the active alone is insufficient.
The teacher should not try to teach the passive as a simple alternative to the active, this is not what it is used as.
Instead the passive is a verbal form in its own right, and one that should be used when required, not simply as a
different way of saying something
A USEFUL HYPERLINK
http://www.ego4u.com/en/cram-up/grammar/passive
REFERENCES
1976. Arguments for a Non-transformational Grammar. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Kolln, Martha. 1982. Understanding English Grammar. New York: Macmillan.
Kress, G. R., ed. 1976. Halliday: System and Function in Language. London: Oxford University Press.
Kuhn, Thomas S. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Leech, Geoffrey and Jan Svartvik. 1975. A Communicative Grammar of English. London: Longman.
UNIT 27. PASSIVE VOICE. FORM AND FUNCTION

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THEMES NOTES
In verb phrase, passive adds a form of be plus ed participle of main verb. Passive sentence is
derived from active one by transformation of verb phrase: position of subject and position of object.
The active subject becomes the passive agent, active object becomes the passive subject, by is
inserted before the agent as a means of demonstrating who or what causes the action.
By + Agent: The part of the sentence introduced by by is the agent. The agent of a passive sentence
is the same as the subject of an active. Get is used to say that something happened to something or
someone. Also can say that the referent of the subject has some responsibility for the action. It is
only used when things happen or change.
Verbs such as give, send, show, lend can be followed by two objects. Two possible positions when
they are used in the passive. Object Complements can follow the direct object. They can take the
form of a noun or adjective that is used in order to describe the object.
Transitive and Intransitive Verbs: Intransitive cannot normally be used in the passive as they don’t
have objects. Stative Intransitive Verbs cannot always be used in the passive.
Prepositional Verbs can sometimes be impossible to use in the passive. There are no clear rules, and
the student has to learn them.
Functions. he choice between the active and the passive depends on what is being said. We usually
start sentences with what is known and put new information later in the sentence. We often put
longer and heavier expressions at the end of the sentence. Passive structures are also used when we
want to talk about an action, but are not interested in saying who or what did it. The speaker may
also use the passive to avoid accepting responsibility. Passives are common in scientific writing.
This can help to avoid the constant use of I or we. It gives the writing an objective tone.
Contrast between English and Spanish. With to be + past participle, Spanish uses ser + past
participle. This is one of the few similarities. The passive is used much less frequently in Spanish
than it is in English. In Spanish you can place the direct object at the head of the sentence without
having to turn to the passive. It is possible to use the passive in the continuous form in English,
more unlikely in Spanish. The difference between the reflexive and the passive is clearer in English
than it is in Spanish. In the English sentences: the rope broke and the rope got broken we can see
that there is a difference in meaning, in the second example we can infer that there was a deliberate
action which was performed by someone. In the Spanish equivalent, we can find only one way to
say it: se rompió la cuerda. This means that it is impossible for the listener to tell if there was a
deliberate action performed by someone, or if there was just an unfortunate accident.
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Now test your knowledge of unit 27 by answering the following questions:
1. Explain the process of transformation from active to passive sentences.
2. Explain the use of get in passives.
3. Explain the process of end focus in passive sentences.
4. Name the different types of passive structures and their uses.
5. Explain the differences between the English and the Spanish passives.
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WHAT HAVE WE FORGOTTEN?
If you think that we should include anything more in this unit

tell us.
If you think this is a bad unit, tell us why!
(The only thing we ask is that you don’t judge it according to

how interesting it is – we cannot help that!)
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Oposiciones de Ingles Secundaria Unit 27 The Passive Voice: Form and Function

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Trinity Centre.

Albacete, Alicante, Valencia Tel: 627 137 138

THE PASSIVE VOICE:

FORM AND FUNCTION

4. CONTRAST BETWEEN ENGLISH AND SPANISH PASSIVE

We will begin by looking at the forms of the passive:

2. FORMS OF THE PASSIVE

She will be being kissed tomorrow.*

She may have been being kissed when you called.*

My grandfather built this house.

I was shocked by her attitude.

Her attitude shocked me.

We were worried about (or by) her silence.

I was excited at (or by) the prospect of going abroad.

Look at the following examples:

I’m surprised that Ann didn’t get offered the job.

He ran into the road and got run over by a car.

She got herself caught.

He got himself run over.

Jill is liked by everybody

2.3. Verbs with Two Objects

She gave her sister a present.

Her sister was given the present.

The present was given to her sister.

I’ve just been sent a lot of roses.

This would be more usual than:

A lot of roses have just been sent to me.

2.4. Object Complements

They elected him President.

He was elected president.

2.5. Transitive and Intransitive Verbs

He resembles his mother.

My shoes don’t fit me.

2.6. Prepositional Verbs

For example, we can say:

That chair’s not to be sat on.

The children have been very well looked after.

But we cannot say:

I have been agreed with by everybody.

Look at these two sentences:

Your little boy broke my kitchen window this morning.

That window was broken by your little boy this morning.

Look at these other examples:

John has written a book

This novel was probably written by Steinbeck.

Mary’s behaviour annoyed me

I was annoyed by Mary’s behaviour.

Mary wanting to tell everybody else what to do annoyed me.

Those pyramids were built around 400 A.D.

Shots were fired into the crowd.

Woman Robbed in High Street.

Fire Started in Cafe.

A mistake has been made with your change.

It is said that ....

He stood up and was applauded.

We discovered that my bag had been stolen by John.

4. CONTRAST BETWEEN ENGLISH AND SPANISH PASSIVE.

They sold many copies of the record

Many copies of the record were sold..

Vendieron muchas copias del disco.

Muchas copias del disco fueron vendidas

Unfortunately the similarities seem to end here.

(a ella) la eligieron presidente.