A study on the passive voice in english and in vietnamese (nghiên cứu về thể bị động trong tiếng anh và tiếng việt)

- Give some implications for English teaching and learning of the passive voice - Find out the similarities and differences in construction of the passive voice in English and in Vietnam

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC PHENIKAA

KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP

A STUDY ON THE PASSIVE VOICE IN ENGLISH

AND IN VIETNAMESE

Sinh viên: Nguyễn Thị Duyên

Mã số sinh viên: 16D220201004 Khóa: K10

Giảng viên hướng dẫn: M.A Dương Hồng Quân

Hà Nội – Năm 2020

PHIẾU ĐÁNH GIÁ KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP

CỦA GIẢNG VIÊN HƯỚNG DẪN

I THÔNG TIN CHUNG

Người đánh giá: Dương Hồng Quân Học hàm, học vị: Thạc sĩ

Đơn vị công tác: Khoa Ngoại Ngữ, Trường Đại học Phenikaa

Họ tên sinh viên: Nguyễn Thị Duyên

Tên đề tài: A study on the passive voice in English and in Vietnamese ( Nghiên

cứu về câu bị động trong tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt)

II ĐÁNH GIÁ (Điểm từng tiêu chí và điểm cuối cùng làm tròn đến 1 chữ số thập

phân)

Điểm tối

đa

Điểm đánh giá

1 Ý thức và thái độ của sinh viên trong quá trình thực hiện đề tài 2.0

2 Khả năng xử lý, giải quyết vấn đề của sinh viên trong thực

3

Hình thức trình bày quyển thuyết minh và bản vẽ (Theo quy

định của nhà trường, không có lỗi chính tả, ngắn gọn, mạch

lạc, xúc tích )

1.0

4

Thực hiện các nội dung của đề tài (Về nội dung chuyên môn

và khoa học cũng như về phương pháp nghiên cứu, xử lý vấn

đề của ĐA, KLTN có gì đúng, sai, có gì mới, mức độ sáng

tạo)

3.0

5 Mối liên hệ với những vấn đề liên quan (cơ sở lý thuyết và các

6 Tính ứng dụng thực tiễn (phạm vi và mức độ ứng dụng, triển

vọng của đề tài, tính mới, tính sáng tạo ) 1.0

Hà Nội, ngày … tháng … năm 20…

GIẢNG VIÊN HƯỚNG DẪN

(Ký và ghi rõ họ tên)

The aim of this thesis is to discuss the English and Vietnamese passive voice and their impact upon learning English in Vietnamese situation It is hoped that this contrastive analysis will provide as much information as possible on English and Vietnamese passive voice It attempts to state this similarities and differences in passive voice of the two languages in term of their internal and external structures The study draws attention to the analysis of the heads of passive voice

in the two languages, the pre and post modifications, their positions and functions of English and Vietnamese passive voice At the same time, some kinds of error made by Vietnamese learners differences in word order and functions of passive voice between the two languages will be discuss and make some solutions for learners so as to help them overtake obstacles

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I would like to express my very great appreciation to Mr Duong Hong Quan, for his valuable and constructive suggestions during the planning and development of this study

In addition, my sincere thanks to the staff of the Faculty of Foreign Languages at Phenikaa University and who give my research, feedback and essential information

I am profoundly grateful to my dear family and friends, who are always besides, support and motivate me throughout my study

Language is a complicated category Only human beings can use language to express their idea, concepts and feelings The use of this tool is for the communication between the addresser and the addressee There are more than two hundred languages and each language has its own feature all over the world Language itself is a complex system and

it is dependent to us culturally, socially and personally Learning a language involves many things such as pronunciation, vocabulary … The aim of this study is to discuss the passive voice in English and Vietnamese I hope this paper will provide as much information as possible for teachers and learners about passive voice It also attempts to state the similarities and differences and the structures in passive voice of two languages Finally, there are some teaching implications made for who are going to learn English teachers Moreover, it can help students to achieve maximum communication

CONTENTS

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale of the study 1

2 Aims of the study 1

3 Scope of the study 1

4 Methods of the study 2

5 Design of the study 2

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 3

CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 3

1 Sentence 3

2 Tense, Aspect and Mood 3

2.1 Tense 4

2.2 Aspect 5

2.3 Mood 5

3 Kinds of the Verb 6

3.1 Dynamic and Stative Verb 6

3.2 Intensitive and Extensive Verb 6

3.3 Copulative Verb 6

3.4 Monotransitive, Ditransitive and Complex Transitive Verb 7

CHAPTER II: AN OVERVIEW OF PASSIVE VOICE 7

1 Definition of passive voice 7

2 Sketches on passive voice 9

3 Function of Passive Voice 9

CHAPTER III: CLASSIFICATION, FORMATION AND USE OF PASSIVE VOICE 10

1 The way to change active into passive 10

2 Form of the passive voice 11

2.1 The affirmative form 11

2.2 The negative form: 12

2.3 The interrogative form: 12

3 The use of the passive 14

3.1 Form of Passive voice 15

3.2 Personal and Impersonal Passive 16

4 Some special forms with passive meaning 18

4.1 The passive with get 18

4.2 The passive with verbs of giving 19

4.3 The passive with passive have and get 19

4.4 Prepositions with passive verbs 20

4.5 Modal verb in the passive 20

4.6 The passive with verbs of reporting 20

4.7 Pseudo-passives: 21

CHAPER IV: COMPARISION BETWEEN VIETNAMSE AND ENGLISH PASSIVE VOICE 25

1 The passive voice in Vietnam 25

2 The differences between English and Vietnamse passive voice 31

2.1 The similarities 31

2.2 The differences 32

3 Suggestion for students 34

CHAPTER V: SOME MISTAKES PROBABLY MADE BY VIETNAMESE LEARNERS IN LEARNING PASSIVE VOICE AND SUGGESTED WAYS OF OVERCOMING THESE MISTAKES 35

1 In translation 35

2 In changing the active sentence into the passive one 36

PART C: CONCLUSION 38

PRACTICE 39

REFERENCES 44

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

In the current trend of international economic integration, learning foreign languages, especially English, in any country, is paid attention and invested satisfactorily

Learing foreign languages in general and English in particular re quires the learner

to work hardly, study and draw knowledge for their own benefit

Realizing and thinking highly of the importance of English grammar, I decided to pick it out for the study of my graduation paper However, due to the limitation of time and knowledge, I will just spend time concentrating on the study of an issue of English grammar called “The passive voice”

I hope that it will become useful for those who study English Grammar in general and the passive voice in particular

2 Aims of the study

Today, along with the development of science and technology as well as the requirements of international economic intergration, English is considered the global language of the world In addition, English helps to communicate with everyone from different countries and understand more about their tradition and culture However, to learn English as well as is rather difficult There are many complex problems and one of them is passive voice Thence , the aims of the study are:

- Presenting, describing and analyzing the passive voice in English and in Vietnamese

- Identifying the similarities and differences between these two languages

- To make some solutions for learners so as to help them overtake obstacles

- Show the expressions of “bị” and “được” in Vietnamese

- Give some implications for English teaching and learning of the passive voice

- Find out the similarities and differences in construction of the passive voice in English and in Vietnamese equivalent

- Give the list of their usage

3 Scope of the study

I will concentrate mainly on formations, usages and variations of passive voice Throughout the study, the similarities and differences of using passive voice in the two

languages are drawn out It makes contribution to the improvement of teaching and learning of English to Vietnamese learners

I decide to raise these following questions to discuss:

- What is the form of passive voice? How does active change into passive

voice?

- How many special kinds of passive voice?

- How are these errors eliminated?

- How can the passive voice be used?

I have tried my best to complete my thesis and I hope that my study will bring the useful information to everybody who is passionate about English

In this thesis, the passive is viewed from different grammatical aspects based on the definitions, classifications, usage and structures in both English and Vietnamese will

be taken as the basis for the comparison and contrast

4 Methods of the study

The main purpose of this study is to find out the passive voice in English and in Vietnamese The result of this study will help to make language learning and teaching more effective The writer has used the collecting and analyzing methods in this study

- Collecting method is used to find out all the passive voice from a variety

of books and valuable resources such as internet, graduation papers, etc

- Examples are used to illustrate given information which are extracted from a variety of textbooks and resources

- Comparison is indispensable method to point out similarities and differences of passive voice in English and in Vietnamese

- organization

5 Design of the study

Part A is the introduction, which gives the reason for choosing the topic of this study, pointing out aims of conducting the study, making out the methods applied, limiting the study and giving out the design of the study as well

Part B refers to the main content that consists of three chapters:

Chapter I discusses the theoretical preliminaries in which attention is paid to the comparison between passive and active voice, the relation between transitivity and voice, tense, aspect and mood, semantic differences between active and passive voice and kinds

of verb

Chapter II is the main part of the study It describes the way to change active into passive, the forms and the use of the passive Some special forms and voice restrictions are also presented

Chapter III, the passive voice in English through contrastive analysis with Vietnamese, consists of some problems such as: some remarks on Vietnamese, the differences and the similarities between two languages

Chapter IV, comparision between Vietnamese and English passive voice

Chapter V, some mistakes made by Vietnamese learners and suggested ways of overcoming these mistakes

Part C offers the overview of the study and gives conclusion

According to Modern English, sentence consists of two immediate constituents: subject and predicate

In linguistic, a sentence is an expression in natural language – a grammatical and lexical unit consisting of one or more words, representing distinct and differentiated concepts, and combined to form a meaningful statement, question, request, command, etc

According to syntactic, sentence can be divided into four major classes:

 STATEMENTS are sentences in which the subject: is always present and generally

precedes the verb:

E.g Lan will speak to the doctor today

 QUESTIONS

E.g Who will you speak to?

E.g You will speak to the doctor?

 COMMANDS are sentences which normally have no overt grammatical subject, and

whose verb is in the imperative:

E.g Speak to the doctor today

2 Tense, Aspect and Mood

2.1 Tense

Time is universal, non-linguistic concept with three divisions: past, present and future

By tense we understand the correspondence between the form of the verb and our concept

of time

In modern English, as well as in many other languages, verbal forms imply not only subtle shade object of time distinction but serve for other purposes, too They are also often marked for person and number, for mood, voice and aspect

Uses of tense:

- At the most basic level, past tense marks situations as distanced either in time or reality from the speaker or writer, while present tense (the absence of past tense) indicates the absence of such distancing

- The difference between the present and past tense forms of the questions is not one of the time distance but of the social distance The past tense indicates greater social distance, making the question seem less confrontational

We generally distinguish finite and non-finite forms of the verb:

- The non-finites are: the infinitives, the gerunds and the participles The following, for instance, is non-finites of the regular verb: to drive

Active perfect Having drive Passive perfect Having been drived

- The grammatical nature of the finite forms may be characterized by the following six with reference to:

 If she knew it now Voice distinction We invited him

 She was invited

 he danced

2.2 Aspect

English has two such aspects, perfect and progressive Perfect aspect is shown in the verb phrase by means of the verb have When have is used to indicate aspect, the verb immediately following it must be in its past participle form, the so-called –en form

E.g Lan was eating the potato

E.g Lan may have been very careful about selling books

2.3 Mood

a Imperative Mood:

Serves to express request which in different contexts may range from categorical order or command to entreaties Imperative Mood is used only in the second person singular and plural The Imperative Mood may take over the function of the Subjunctive

Mood

E.g Say what you will, I shall have my own way

E.g Say what you would, I should have my own way

b Subjunctive Mood:

The formal mark of the Subjunctive is the absence of inflection for the third person singular except in the verb to be, where it has full conjugation In Modern English

the subjunctive is almost out of use except a few well-established phrases such as:

E.g Lan live peace and friendship among nations!

c Indicative Mood:

Are used to present predication as reality, as a fact This predication need not necessarily be true but the speaker presents it as being so It is not relevant for the purpose of our grammatical analysis to account for the ultimate truth or untruth of a statement with its predicate expressed by a verb The form of verb of Indicative mood is

used in declarative sentences or in questions

E.g She arrived home two days ago

3 Kinds of the Verb

3.1 Dynamic and Stative Verb

The system of English verb is considered to be the most complex grammatical structure

of the language

- Verbs of bodily sensation (ache, feel, hurt, itch, etc) can have either simple or progressive

aspect with little difference in meaning

- Momentary verbs (hit, jump, kick, knock, nod, tap, etc) have little duration, and thus the

progressive aspect powerfully suggests repetition

- Activity verbs: abandon, ask, beg, call, drink, eat, help, learn, listen, look at, play, rain,

read, say, slice, throw, whisper, work, write, etc

- Process verbs: change, deteriorate, grow, mature, slow down, widen, etc Both activity and process verbs are frequently used in progressive aspect to indicate incomplete events

in progress

3.2 Intensitive and Extensive Verb

- Intensive verbs: are the verbs that take subject complement or obligatory adverbial E.g She is kind

E.g He is a doctor

- Extensive verbs: are the verbs that do not take subject complement or adverbial

E.g He heard the thunder

3.3 Copulative Verb

A linking verb (sometimes referred to as a copulative verb by grammarians) is a special class of intransitive verbs It is a verb used to equate, identify, or join together one interchangeable substantive with another It connects the subject of the sentence with a coordinating (or complementary) predicate An example of linking verbs would be any form of the words “is” or “become”

There are some types of copulative verbs:

- Verbs of the senses: feel, smell, taste, etc

E.g The coffee tastes delicious

- Verbs of action: grow, turn, etc

E.g George grew tall gradually

- Stay and remain

E.g Lan stayed director for one year

- Become

E.g Hai became the doctor

- Verbs of appearance: appear, look, seem, etc

E.g Lili seems bored

3.4 Monotransitive, Ditransitive and Complex Transitive Verb

 Monotransitive: A monotransitive verb is a verb that takes two arguments: a subject and a

single direct object, such as buy, bite, break, eat, etc

E.g He broke the glass

The students ate porridge

 Complex transitive: A verb that takes a direct object plus an object complement

 Ditransitive: a ditransitive verb is a verb which takes a subject and two objects

According to certain linguistics considerations, these objects may be called direct and

indirect, or primary and secondary

E.g she gave me twenty stickers

CHAPTER II: AN OVERVIEW OF PASSIVE VOICE

1 Definition of passive voice

A passive voice is a type of a clause or sentence in which an action (though verb),

or an object of a sentences, is emphasized rather than its subject Simple, the subject receives the action of the verb The emphasis or focus is on the action, while the subject

is not known or is less important

Object + “to be” + past participle + by + subject

E.g Active: Lan eats pizza

Passive: Pizza is eaten by Lan

The necessary and sufficient conditions:

- The object in active sentence becomes the subject in passive sentences, respectively

-The predicate includes some words “bị, được, do” which attach the transitive verb

- Behind the predicate is the subject – predicate group ( The subject in active sentence can be missing)

According to Homby (2005), voice, in term of grammar, is the form of a verb that shows whether the subject of a sentence performs an action ( the active voice) or is affected by it

In another project, Farlex (Inc, 2010) also considered that more specifically, passive voice is the recipient (not the source) of the action denoted by the verb

Stillman said that voice refers to whether the subject of a sentence is on the giving

or receiving end of the action

In general, a passive sentences is one that reflects the above- mentioned feature of passive voice

In this sentence “ All the assignments were done by Kelvin” the recipient

“assignment” is denoted and emphasized by the verb “do”, not the agent “Kelvin” therefore, this is a passive sentence

A general rule is to use the passive voice only when the doer or the agent in your sentence is unknown or is unimportant or when you want to connect the topics of the two clauses

E.g She had a lot of people working for her, may be sixty, and almost of them liked her most of time Three of the will be seriously considered for his job

Identifying the English passive

The passive voice is a specific grammatical construction The essential components,

in English, are a form of the auxiliary verb be (or sometimes get) and the past

participle of the main verb denoting the action The agent (the doer of the action) may be

specified using a prepositional phrase with the preposition by, but this is optional. It can

be used in a number of different grammatical contexts; for instance, in declarative,

interrogative, and imperative clauses, and in gerundial constructions:

 "Kennedy was assassinated in 1963."

 "Mistakes were made."

 "The window got broken."

 "Have you ever been kicked by an elephant?"

 "Don't get killed."

 "Being attacked by Geoffrey Howe was like being savaged by a dead sheep."

2 Sketches on passive voice

Types of Passive Voice:

- Short Passive: In this type of construction, the subject or the performer is not known For instance, in the phrase “a mistake is made”, there is no subject, or the subject

is unknown

- Long Passive: In this type of construction, the object becomes the subject of the sentence For instance, in the sentence, “The house was cleaned by aunty”, the object “the house” has become the subject

3 Function of Passive Voice

Style guides do not support the use of passive voice in technical writings, because

it makes the text lengthy, slow to read, and often ambiguous However, it is very common in literature, lab reports, and scientific writings, where the performer is given lesser importance than the action In these types of writings, a passive voice is very helpful to avoid taking reponsibiliity of the actions It is also useful when a writer wants

to shift focus from the subject to an action

The passive voice is used to show interest in the person or object that experiences

an action rather than the person or object that performs the action In other words, the most important thing or person becomes the subject of the sentence

E.g The road is being repaired

The house was built in 1998

Sometimes we use the passive voice because we don't know or do not want to express who performed the action

E.g My car has been stolen!

I noticed that a window had been left open

All the cookies have been eaten

The passive voice is often used in formal texts Switching to the active voice will make your writing clearer and easier to read

A great deal of meaning is conveyed by a

few well-chosen words

A few well-chosen words convey a great deal of meaning

Our planet is wrapped in a mass of gases A mass of gases wrap around our planet

Waste materials are disposed of in a variety

1 The way to change active into passive

Active and Passive voice: Words come together to form a sentence and these sentences can be formed in more than one way The way these sentences are made make a lot of difference in writing and we are going to learn all about that in this chapter One thing

to note here is that no matter what the structure of the sentence is, the meaning of the sentence does not change That’s actually a very important point to remember throughout

this chapter Keep it in mind Let’s dive straight into the realm of Active and Passive voice

“The passive of an active tense is formed by putting the verb to be into the same tense as the active verb and adding the past participle of the active verb The subject of the active verb becomes the agent of the passive verb, when it is mentioned it is preceded by “by” and places at the end of the clause”

Passive voice = to be + past participle (PII)

Active: Mr Smith teaches English

Passive: English is taught by Mr Smith

We can see that the object “English” of the active sentence becomes the subject of the passive one And the verb “teaches” in the active sentence becomes “taught” in the passive one In the passive sentence, the form is “be + past participle” Thus, the past participle of “teaches” is “taught” It is the reason why that the verb has to be changed into “was destroyed”

Is There an Easy Way to Identify Passive Voice?

Yes, and it’s really simple To identify passive voice, look at what happened and look at who was responsible for doing it If the person or thing responsible for doing the actions

is either omitted or occurs in the sentence AFTER the thing that happened, AND if you see a past participle straight after the form of “to be,” it’s passive voice

 “Poland was invaded.” Passive voice – the doer is absent

 “Poland was invaded by Germany.” That’s passive voice The doer comes after the thing that was done

 “Germany invaded Poland.” That’s active voice The doer comes first

2 Form of the passive voice

2.1 The affirmative form

A passive verb has a form of be and a past participle ”Be” is in the same tense as

the equivalent active form

a Simple tenses (simple form of be + past participle)

E.g A letter is written by Ann

Large numbers of people are killed on the roads

b The perfect (perfect of be + past participle)

E.g A letter has been written by Ann

The drugs had been loaded onto the ship in Ecuador

c The continuous (continuous of be + past participle)

E.g Three men were being questioned by detectives last night

d Will and be going to ( future of be + past participle)

E.g The drugs will be destroyed

The men are going to be charged with importing cocaine

We do not use future progressive and perfect progressive to form passive voice

We usually avoid saying “be-being” So they are rare and impossible

Other pattern forms:

- Conditional form: would be + PII

He would be seen (by you) now

- Perfect conditional: would have been + PII

The president should have been called this morning

- Present infinitive: to be + PII

He hates to be criticized

- Perfect infinitive: to have been + PII

A letter has been written by Ann

- Perfect participle/ gerund: being + PII

E.g The document is being sent right now

- Perfect participle: having been + PII

E.g Money was admitted having been stolen

2.2 The negative form:

- To negate a sentence in passive voice, put ‘not” after the helping verb:

Subject + Helping Verb be + not + Verb (past participle)

E.g Egypt was not built in a day

 The fish was not eaten

 The TV was not broken

2.3 The interrogative form:

- Is built up by placing the (first) auxiliary verb before the subject of the sentence Yes- No question

Has the law been changed?

Wh-question

Who was it painted by?

 Passive voice in imperative sentence

Active: V+O + Adjunct

Pasive: Let +O + be +P.P + adjunct

Egg: She let me go out

→ I was let to go

→ I was allowed to go out

 Passive voice with verbs of opinion: say, think, believe, report, rumor,

Active: S + V + ( that) + clause (S2+ V2 + O2)

Pasive: S2 + be +P.P + to-infinitive + to have + P.P

E.g People say that he is a famous doctor

→ It is said that he is a famous doctor

→ He is said to be a famous doctor

E.g They thought that Mary had gone away

→ It was thought that Mary had gone away

→ Mary was thought to have gone away

 Passive voice with verbs of perception: see Watch, hear,

Active: S + V + O + bare infinitive/V-ing

Passive: S + Be + P.P + to Infinotive/V-ing

E.g They saw her come in

→ She was seen to come in

 Passive voice with causative forms: have, get

Active: S + have/get + O + bare infinitive + O

Passive: S + have/get + O + P.P (+by +O)

E.g I get her to make some coffee

→I get some coffee made

 Passive voice with a modal auxiliary, we use the modal + be + past participle

Present: I can be misunderstood

Future: I could be misunderstood

Past: I could have been misunderstood

Passive voice in the twelve tenses:

a) Simple present: am/is/are + p.p (+by + agent)

E.g The door is locked

This hat is made by my sister

b) Present progressive: am/is/are + being + p.p (+by +agent)

E.g The door is being locked

This hat is being made by my sister

c) Present perfect: have/has +been + p.p (+by + agent)

E.g The door has been locked

This hat was made by my sister

d) Present perfect progressive: have/has + been + being + p.p (+ by +agent)

E.g The door has been being locked

This hat was being made by my sister

e) Simple past: was/were + p.p (+by +agent)

E.g The door was locked

This hat has been made by my sister

f) Past progressive: was/were + being + p.p (+by +agent)

E.g The door was being locked

This hat has been being made by my sister

g) Past perfect: had + been + p.p (+by + agent)

E.g The door had been locked

This hat had been made by my sister

h) Past perfect progressive: had +been + being + p.p (+by +agent)

E.g The door had been being locked

i) Simple future: will + be + p.p (+by + agent)

E.g The door will be locked

This hat will be made by my sister

j) Future progressive: will + be + being + p.p (+ by + agent)

E.g The door will be being locked

This hat will being made by my sister

k) Future perfect: will + have + been + p.p (+ by + agent)

E.g The door will have been locked

This hat will have been made by my sister

l) Future perfect progressive: will + have + been + being + p.p (+ by + agent)

E.g The door will have been being locked

This hat will have been being made by my sister

3 The use of the passive

Passive voice is used when the focus is on the action It is not important or not known, however, who or what is performing the action

E.g My bike was stolen

In the example above, the focus is on the fact that my bike was stolen I do not know, however, who did it

Sometimes a statement in passive is more polite than active voice, as the following example shows:

E.g A mistake was made

In this case, I focus on the fact that a mistake was made, but I do not blame anyone

3.1 Form of Passive voice

Subject + infinite form of to be + Past Participle

E.g A letter was written

When rewriting active sentences in passive voice, note the following:

- the object of the active sentence becomes the subject of the passive sentence

- the finite form of the verb is changed (to be + past participle)

- the subject of the active sentence becomes the object of the passive sentence (or is dropped)

Passive Sentences with Two Objects

Some verbs like bring and give, offer which can have two objects, direct and indirect, the direct object is animate on which the writer focuses, and the indirect is an animate which

is less important than the person who performs the action, the study has showed that such kind of verbs come in active forms more than in passive according to this data of news language

E.g This will give them a small boost in daytime energy

E.g Little attention has been given to take back programs at post consumer stage

E.g He had been widely expected to give MPs a free vote on the issue due to the strength

of feeling

Passive: A letter is written by Rita

Passive: A letter was written by Rita

Present Perfect Active: Rita has written a letter

written

by Rita

Passive: A letter will be written by Rita

Rewriting an active sentence with two objects in passive voice means that one of the two objects becomes the subject, the other one remains an object Which object to transform into a subject depends on what you want to put the focus on

3.2 Personal and Impersonal Passive

Personal Passive simply means that the object of the active sentence becomes the

subject of the passive sentence So every verb that needs an object (transitive verb) can form a personal passive

E.g They build houses – Houses are built

Verbs without an object (intransitive verb) normally cannot form a personal passive sentence (as there is no object that can become the subject of the passive sentence) If you want to use an intransitive verb in passive voice, you need an

impersonal construction – therefore this passive is called Impersonal Passive

E.g He says – it is said

Impersonal Passive is not as common in English as in some other languages (e.g

German, Latin) In English, Impersonal Passive is only possible with verbs of perception

(say, think, know)

E.g They say that women live longer than men – It is said that women live longer than men

If you want to be more formal in speech or in writing, you can use the impersonal

passive

Instead of saying ‘People think that drugs are dangerous’, which is the active form, we

can say ‘It is thought that drugs are dangerous’ We can also use ‘Drugs are thought to be

dangerous’

The forms are:

It + be + past participle of reporting verb + that

Ob + be+ past participle of reporting verb+ to + clause

Instead of using said or thought, you can use believed, claimed, estimated or other

reporting verbs

 It is said that classical music is the most mathematical of all music

 Classical music is said to be the most mathematical of all music

The Causative

Very simply, the causative form shows that other people do an action for us

The form is:

Sb + have sth + past participle

We use it for two reasons

 to show that someone arranges for someone else to do an action for them

 to talk about a negative situation which was definitely not arranged

E.g I have had my hair cut at the same salon for ten years

I had my car broken into last night I was so upset

It is possible to use get instead of have, but that makes the form more informal

Although Impersonal Passive is possible here, Personal Passive is more common

E.g They say that women live longer than men – Women are said to live longer than

Sometimes the term Personal Passive is used in English lessons if the indirect

object of an active sentence is to become the subject of the passive sentence

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 subject rather than raising-to-object – that is, when there is no object before the infinitive

raising-to-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

4 Some special forms with passive meaning

4.1 The passive with get

The get-passive has two structures: get + adjective and get + past participle

For both structures, the verb tense of get changes based on whether you're talking about

the present, past or future

Get + adjective

The verb get can be followed by some adjectives to express the idea of change or

becoming something We use this structure for people and things We can talk about the