The Passive VS. Active Voice

The Passive VS. Active Voice

摘要：根据不用的语言情景和功能差异，对动词的被动语态和主动语态进行对比分析。

关键词：被动语态主动语态语法

Passive voice, it is the grammatical feature of voice, which pertains to who or what serves as the subject in a clause. In the active voice, the subject of a clause is most often the agent, or doer of some action. At other times, speakers or writers of English will have reason to put the receiver or undergoer of the action into subject position. One way to do so is to use the passive voice.

ⅠData collection & Analysis.

1. From conversation around me, I have collected 3 sentences:

(1) Linda was born in Changsha. / ? Her mother bore Linda in Changsha.

(2) The windows are broken. / Somebody breaks the windows.

(3) Grapes are grown in Xinjiang province of china. / People grow grapes in Xinjiang province.

2. Analyze the 3 sentences according to the different meaning and forms of the passive or active voice.

Sentence (1): We notice that the active form of it seems strange and questionable. For all intents and purposes, t here is no active voice counterpart to “to be bore” to talk about facts concerning human birth.

Sentence (2): In this sentence, the past participle “broken” could be regarded as either adjectival or passive. We change it into the active from that someone breaks the windows, and it is easier to understand why we’d prefer to use its passive form. The emphasis is the broken windows, not the agent “who”. The passive is used when we want to defocus the agent.

Sentence (3): It is redundant and unnecessary to express its agent, let alone its active form. We all know that grapes grow in Xinjiang area, but we do not care who grows it, just telling people a objective thing.

ⅡResearch

In previous part we have some examples of passive voice, and analyzed why we’d prefer to use passive voice in some situations. Then let’s have a deep look at these two kinds of voice, of course, the emphasis is passive voice.

1. The form of passive voice and active voice

General form

Passive voice－be + past participle(+by phrase). Form all passive verbs in the same way. Only the “be” auxiliary changes form. There is often no information about who or what performed the action, but when there is, it appears as a by phase. (GD.P.48)

For example: They were discovered in 1930s by scientists.(P)

Scientists (agent) discovered them (receiver) in 1930s.(A)

The active form is also ok. Its form is an ordinary one; subject + verb (predicate) +object, verbs in it are used in a regular way. Which form to be used is relied on which part we want to underline, the agent or the receiver.

Negative form: be + not + past participle

2. The use of passive voice and active voice.

As most people know, passive voice and active voice are used in different situations for different purposes or emphasis respectively. I’ll list some common situations when using these two kinds of forms.

(1) The passive is most frequently used when it is not known or not important to know exactly who performs an action.