passiiv

Passiiv, or passive voice, is a grammatical voice in which the subject of a sentence is the recipient or undergoer of the action rather than the doer. In a passive construction, the event is presented from the viewpoint of what happens to the subject, while the agent performing the action may be omitted or expressed separately, often with a by-phrase.

In English, the passive is typically formed with a form of the auxiliary verb be plus the past participle of the main verb, as in “The ball was thrown by John.” Many languages use different mechanisms to mark the passive. Some rely on dedicated verb forms or inflection, others use auxiliary verbs, and some rely on syntactic or morphological changes to mark voice. The agent, if mentioned, is usually introduced by a preposition or case marker.

Passives serve several functions. They can foreground the action or its result, de-emphasize the agent, or present information in an impersonal or formal style. They are common in scientific, formal, and news writing for this reason. In many languages, agents may be omitted when unknown, unimportant, or obvious from context.

Typologically, passives are related to other voice phenomena such as antipassives (which reduce the prominence of the agent) and mediopassives (where the subject participates in the action in a reflexive or middle sense). The exact form and frequency of passives vary widely across languages, but the basic idea—shifting focus from the agent to the action or patient—is widespread.

See also: Active voice, Voice (linguistics).