LEARN LANGUAGE: VOICES

Voices refer to the context that determines the way a finite or a non-finite verb is performed in a sentence. You may have dealt with them in respect of finite verbs already, but non-finite verbs also pertain to the rules of the voice. There are mainly two types of voices in so far as they are used in most of the sentences we use in our every usage, but a third type of them is sometimes found in sentences; we call them the quasi-passive voice, they are, of course, felt indispensable to make our connotation. Every time you come across this specific phenomenon, be careful the kind of tense of the finite verb the sentence belongs to, because ‘voices ‘agree with the tense of the verb in the sentence provided. Let’s analyse these sentence; ‘Thomson discovered the electron in 1897.’

 What do you think the above sentence is all about? A careful study will disclose the idea that Thomson, a scientist discovered the electron in a certain year. Now, when we emphasize the idea the subject (a person, thing or idea) does something, we consider the active voice. If we change information and emphasize what is done, and the person, thing or idea doing this piece of action is given a secondary or marginal emphasis, we must consider the passive voice. The sentence given above may be rewritten as-‘The electron was discovered by Thomson in 1897.’ In the passive emphasis is on ‘what is done’ and the agent (who or what do or does the action) can’t play such a major role. The person, thing or idea doing the action is called the ‘topic’ and the rest of the information in the sentence is ‘new information about the topic’. The active voice concerns the agent and goes on to say what it does. The passive, on the other hand, stresses ‘the new information about the topic’ and lays a secondary emphasis on ‘the agent’. So’ your selection of the voice depends which part of the sentence you’d like to lay emphasis on.

There are a great number of verbs in English which, although they are active in form, are passive in meaning. We have a different approach to treat them when used in the passive construction. The sentence ‘A sponge feels soft’ exemplifies that it is not the agent ‘a sponge’ that feels something soft, but a person, not mentioned, in the context of the sentence provided. The sentence turned into a passive mode reads ‘A sponge is soft when it is felt’. This is what we call the ‘quasi-passive’ voice. Given here are some more sentences of this type: ‘Apples taste sweet.’ ‘His newly published novel sells like hot cake’, etc. Always remember to interchange positions of the subject and the object in the sentence you are dealing with; the subject in the active becomes the object in the passive and vice versa. The finite verb in between the subject and the object should be judiciously represented in the past participle form or third form (as do-did-done) along with the auxiliary verb or verbs in accordance with the tense of the verb used in the sentence. If any sentence has more than one object, care should be taken that the direct object (that usually refers to a person) replaces the subject in the passive, while the other one in the active construction retains its position as an object and is called the retained or residual object. The sentence ‘I can reserve you a seat at the theatre’ changed into the passive mode becomes ‘You can be reserved a seat at the theatre (by me)’. As it is not of much significance to put the agent (sometimes interchangeable with the term ‘topic’) in the passive mode, we can place them in brackets.

The passive with ‘get’: We sometimes form the passive with ‘get’ rather than with verb ‘be’. This phenomenon found mainly in informal English and has a more limited use than ‘be’. It often refers to something happening by accident, unexpectedly or incidentally. ‘If you don’t put your ear-rings in a safe, they may get stolen.’, ‘They get paid annually.’

‘Get+passive’ conveys an idiomatic expression:  They hadn’t enough time to get washed (wash oneself).Get is usually followed by an adjective in ‘ed’ as in the example ‘Amelia got interested in film-direction.’ To know how non-finite verbs are used with the passive voice, please consult ‘ PASSIVE WITH NON-FINITES & HAVE.