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: Math was taught to us. 4
Active : Maggie sent me some postcards.
Passive : I was sent some postcards. : Some postcards were sent to me.
Pay attention to the examples above. The first of these passive form “He gave me a novel “is more usual, because the indirect object becomes the subject of the
passive voice. The form “A novel was given to me “, would be used when we need to stress this new subject.
2.1.3 Auxiliary verb “be”
In building passive constructions, the auxiliary verb “be” is an important aspect to be considered.
For example : 1. Active : I have read the novel.
Passive : The novel has been read. 2. Active : My mother makes some cakes.
Passive : Some cakes are made by my mother. 3. Active : He took the cassette.
Passive : The cassette was taken by him. 4. Active : They slaughter a cow.
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Passive : A cow is slaughtered. 5. Active : The investors will build a hotel here.
Passive : A hotel will be built here. It can be seen from the examples above that the auxiliary verb “ be “ is very
important in forming passive voice sentences. We should remember if the active voice sentences is in the Simple Present Tense, its passive voice sentence must be in
the Simple Present Tense and if the sentence is in the Past Perfect Tense, its passive should be in the Past Perfect Tense, its passive should be in the Past Perfect Tense,
too. By understanding the statement above, it is clear that the tense of the
auxiliary verb “be “ in passive voice depend on the tense of the verb in the active voice sentence.
2.1.4 The Past Participle
Wren and Martin 1983 : 127 says “past participle is a word which represents a completed action or state of the thing spoken”.
The past participle of regular verbs is formed by adding –ed or –d tp the infinitive.
For examples : Infinitive Past tense
Past Participle Cook
Cooked Cooked
Love Loved
Loved
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Play Played
Played Turn
Turned Turned
Want Wanted
Wanted, etc While the past participle of irregular verbs sometimes divided into strong
verb those which form their past participle by change the internal vowel of infinitive with add –en, -n, or –ne- and weak verb – form their past participle by adding – ed or
–t to the infinitive. For example :
Infinitive Past Tense
Past Participle
Come came
come Do
did done
Drink drank
drunk Rise
rose risen
Seek sought sought Write wrote written
The past participle is used with any form or tenses of the verb be, to make passive form of verbs.
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2.2 The Classification of Passive Voice
Voice is grammatical category which makes it possible to view the action of a sentence in two ways without change.
a. A hired assassin murdered the minister.
b. The minister was murdered by a hired assassin.
In the verb phrase, the difference between the two ways categories is the passive adds a form auxiliary “be” and the past participle of the main verb.
At the clause level, passivitation involves rearrangement of two clause element and one addition.
a. The active subject becomes the passive agent, b. The active object becomes the passive subject, and
c. The preposition “by” is introduced before agent. The process of active – passive transformation can be presented diagrammatically.
The term “subject”, “object”, and “agent” are useful labels for describing phenomenon such as subject – verb concord, but the structure of sentence changes
under voice transformation, its meaning remain the same. In “Andrew kissed Maggie” and Maggie was kissed by Andrew”, Andrew is in both voices the “former
of the action”. In the sentence structure, the active subject corresponds to the passive agent. English passive sentences can be classified into two, they are :
1 Agentive Passive.
2 Non – Agentive passives.
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