NAMA : FILIN ANGGRAINI
KELAS : 4EA15
NPM : 10209576
DPSEN : NONI MARLIANINGSIH
The
passive voice is a
grammatical
construction (specifically, a
"voice").
The
noun
or noun phrase that would be the
object of an active sentence (such as
Our
troops defeated the enemy) appears as the
subject of a sentence with passive voice (e.g.
The
enemy was defeated by our troops).
The subject of a sentence or clause featuring the passive voice denotes the
recipient of the action (the
patient) rather than the performer (the
agent).
The passive voice in
English is formed
periphrastically:
the usual form uses the
auxiliary verb be (or
get)
together with the
past participle of the main verb.
For example,
Caesar was stabbed by Brutus uses the passive voice. The
subject denotes the person (Caesar) affected by the action of the verb. The
agent is expressed here with the phrase
by Brutus, but this can be
omitted. The equivalent sentence in
active voice
is
Brutus stabbed Caesar, in which the subject denotes the doer, or agent,
Brutus. A sentence featuring the passive voice is sometimes called a
passive
sentence, and a verb phrase in passive voice is sometimes called a
passive
verb.
English allows a number of passive constructions which are not possible in
many of the other languages with similar passive formation. These include
promotion of an
indirect object to subject (as in
Tom was
given a bag) and promotion of the complement of a
preposition
(as in
Sue was operated on, leaving a
stranded preposition).
Use of the English passive varies with writing style and field. Some
publications' style sheets discourage use of the passive voice, while others
encourage it. Although some purveyors of usage advice, including
George Orwell
(see
Politics and the English Language,
1946) and
William Strunk, Jr. and
E. B. White
(see
The Elements of Style, 1919),
discourage the English passive, its usefulness is generally recognized,
particularly in cases where the patient is more important than the agent, but
also in some cases where it is desired to emphasize the agent.
S
+ AUXILIARY + PAST PARTICIPLE
Note:
v Auxiliary verb can be either be (is, are, am, was, were) or a combination of the
two primary auxiliary (is / are being,
was / were being, has / have been) as well as between the primary capital
(will be, will have
been ).
v Auxiliary combination used in the form of
passive tenses. Fuller
explanation can be found in the
form of the tenses
Passive, Infinitive and Gerund.
v Past participle used a transitive
verb (has a direct
object).
v
Contoh:
v
play (base form) —> played (past participle),
sing (base form) —> sung (past participle)
Contoh Passive Voice pada Auxiliary Verb be:
|
Komponen
|
Contoh Passive Voice dalam Kalimat
|
|
Subject
|
be
|
PP
|
|
I
|
am
|
paid
|
I am paid in dollars.
(Saya dibayar dalam dollar.)
|
|
the red velvet recipe
|
is
|
used
|
The red velvet recipe is used by many people.
(Resep red velvet tsb digunakan oleh banyak orang.)
|
|
all of my shoes
|
are
|
washed
|
All of my shoes are washed every month.
(Semua sepatu saya dicuci setiap bulan.)
|
|
large amounts of meat and milk
|
are
|
consumed
|
Large amounts of meat and milk are consumed by many people in the
countries.
(Sejumlah besar daging dan susu dikonsumsi oleh banyak orang di negara-negara
tsb.)
|
|
the book
|
was
|
edited
|
The book was edited by Beatrice Sparks.
(Buku tsb disunting oleh Beatrice Sparks.)
|
|
the books
|
were
|
edited
|
The books were edited by Beatrice Sparks.
(Buku-buku tsb disunting oleh Beatrice Sparks.)
|
Identifying
the English passive
The passive voice is a specific
grammatical construction; not every expression that serves to take focus away
from the performer of an action is classified as an instance of passive voice.
The essential components of the English passive voice are a form of the auxiliary
verb be (or sometimes get), and the past
participle of the main verb denoting the action. For example:
... that all men are created equal...
We have been cruelly deceived.
The captain was struck by a missile.
I got kicked in the face during the fight.
A distinction is made between the
above type of clause, and those of similar form in which the past participle is
used as an ordinary adjective, and the verb be or similar is simply a copula linking the subject of the sentence
to that adjective. For example:
I am excited (right now).
This would not normally be classed
as a passive sentence, since the participle excited is used adjectivally
to denote a state, not to denote an action of excitation (as it would in the
passive the electron was excited with a laser pulse). See Stative and
adjectival uses below.
Sentences which do not follow the
pattern described above are not considered to be in the passive voice, even if
they have a similar function of avoiding or marginalizing reference to the
agent. An example is the sentence A stabbing occurred, where mention of
the stabber is avoided, but the sentence is nonetheless cast in the active
voice, with the verbal noun stabbing forming the subject
of the simple past tense of the verb occur. (Similarly There was a
stabbing.) Occasionally, however, writers misapply the term "passive
voice" to sentences of this type. An example of this loose usage can be
found in the following extract from an article from The New
Yorker about Bernard
Madoff (bolding and italics added; bold text indicates the verbs
misidentified as passive voice):
Two sentences later, Madoff said,
"When I began the Ponzi scheme, I believed it would end shortly,
and I would be able to extricate myself, and my clients, from the scheme."
As he read this, he betrayed no sense of how absurd it was to use the
passive voice in regard to his scheme, as if it were a spell of bad weather
that had descended on him . . . In most of the rest of the statement, one not
only heard the aggrieved passive voice, but felt the hand of a lawyer:
"To the best of my recollection, my fraud began in the early
nineteen-nineties."
The intransitive verbs would end
and began are in fact in the active voice. Although the speaker uses the
words in a manner that subtly diverts responsibility from him, this is not
accomplished by use of passive voice.
Examples of misuse of the term are
also found in Strunk and White's influential The Elements of Style. Professor Geoffrey
Pullum notes that three out of four "passive voice"
examples given in that book do not in fact contain passives: "There were a
great number of dead leaves lying on the ground" (no sign of any passive);
"It was not long before she was very sorry that she had said what she
had" (again, no sign of the passive); "The reason that he left
college was that his health became impaired" (here became impaired
is an example of the adjectival, not passive, use of the past participle).
Reasons
for using the passive voice
The passive voice can be used
without referring to the agent of an action; it may therefore be used when the
agent is unknown or unimportant, or the speaker does not wish to mention the
agent.
- Three stores were robbed last night. (the identity of
the agent may be unknown)
- A new cancer drug has been discovered. (the identity of
the agent may be unimportant in the context)
- Mistakes have been made on this project. (the speaker
may not wish to identify the agent)
The last sentence illustrates a
frequently criticized use of the passive – the evasion of responsibility by
failure to mention the agent (which may even be the speaker himself).
- The mixture was heated to 300°C.
However the passive voice can also
be used together with a mention of the agent, using a by-phrase. In this
case the reason for use of the passive is often connected with the positioning
of this phrase at the end of the clause (unlike in the active voice, where the
agent, as subject, normally precedes the verb). Here, in contrast to the
examples above, passive constructions may in fact serve to place emphasis on
the agent, since it is natural for information being emphasized to come at the
end:
- Don't you see? The patient was murdered by his own
doctor!
In more technical terms, such uses
can be expected in sentences where the agent is the focus (comment, rheme), while the
patient (the undergoer of the action) is the topic or theme (see Topic–comment).
There is a tendency for sentences to be formulated so as to place the focus at
the end, and this can motivate the choice of active or passive voice:
- My taxi hit an old lady. (the taxi is the topic, the
lady is the focus)
- My mother was hit by a taxi. (the mother is the topic,
the taxi is the focus)
Similarly, the passive may be used
because the noun phrase denoting the agent is a long one (containing many modifiers), since it is convenient to place
such phrases at the end of a clause:
- The breakthrough was achieved by Burlingame and Evans,
two researchers in the university's genetic engineering lab
Passive
constructions without an exactly corresponding active
Some passive constructions are not derived exactly from a corresponding
active construction in the ways described above. This is particularly the case
with sentences containing
content clauses (usually
that-clauses).
Given a sentence in which the role of direct object is played by such a clause,
for example
- They say
(that) he cheats.
it is possible to convert this to a passive by promoting the content clause
to subject; in this case, however, the clause typically does not change its
position in the sentence, and an
expletive it takes the normal subject
position:
- It is
said that he cheats.
Another way of forming passives in such cases involves promoting the subject
of the content clause to the subject of the main clause, and converting the
content clause into a
non-finite clause with the
to-infinitive.
This infinitive is marked for
grammatical aspect to correspond to the aspect
(or past tense) expressed in the content clause. For example:
- They say
that he cheats. → He is said to cheat.
- They think
that I am dying. → I am thought to be dying.
- They
report that she came back / has come back. → She is reported to have come
back.
- They say
that she will resign. → e.g. She is said to be going to resign.
Some verbs are used almost exclusively in the passive voice. This is the
case with
rumor, for example. The following passive sentences are
possible:
- He was
rumored to be a war veteran. / It was rumored that he was a war veteran.
but it is not possible to use the active counterpart *
They rumored that
he was a war veteran. (This was once possible, but has fallen out of use.)
Another situation in which the passive uses a different construction than
the active involves the verb
make, meaning "compel". When this
verb is used in the active voice it takes the bare infinitive (without the
particle
to), but in the passive voice it takes the
to-infinitive.
For example:
- They
made Jane attend classes.
- Jane was
made to attend classes.
Double
passives
The construction called
double passive can arise when one verb
appears in the
to-infinitive as the complement of another verb.
If the first verb takes a direct object ahead of the infinitive complement
(this applies to
raising-to-object verbs, where the expected
subject of the second verb is raised to the position of object of the first
verb), then the passive voice may be used independently for either or both of
the verbs:
- We expect
you to complete the project. (you is raised from subject of complete
to object of expect)
- You are
expected to complete the project. (passive voice used for expect)
- We expect
the project to be completed. (passive voice used for complete;
now the project is raised to object)
- The
project is expected to be completed. (double passive)
Other verbs which can behave similarly to
expect in such
constructions include
order,
tell,
persuade, etc., leading
to such double passives as
The man was ordered to be shot and
I was
persuaded to be ordained.
Similar constructions sometimes occur, however, when the first verb is
raising-to-subject rather than raising-to-object – that is, when there is no
object before the infinitive complement. For example, with
attempt, the
active voice construction is simply
We attempted to complete the project.
A double passive formed from that sentence would be:
- The
project was attempted to be completed.
with both verbs changed simultaneously to the passive voice, even though the
first verb takes no object – it is not possible to say
*We attempted the
project to be completed, which is the sentence from which the double
passive would appear to derive.
This latter double passive construction is criticized as questionable both
grammatically and stylistically.
Fowler calls it
"clumsy and incorrect", suggesting that it springs from false analogy
with the former (acceptable) type of double passive, though conceding its
usefulness in some legal and quasi-legal language. Other verbs mentioned
(besides
attempt) with which the construction is found include
begin,
desire,
hope,
propose,
seek and
threaten.
Similarly,
The American Heritage Book of English Usage declares this
construction unacceptable. It nonetheless occurs in practice in a variety of
contexts
References:
- The Passive.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/learnit/learnitv65.shtml.
Accessed on March 6, 2013.
- Passive
Voice. http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/passive-voice/. Accessed
on March 6, 201
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_passive_voice
- http://www.wordsmile.com/pengertian-rumus-contoh-passive-voice
Total Time: 25 mins
