English grammar - Roger Berry 2012
A6.4 The passive voice
A6 Auxiliaries and the verb phrase
Section A. Introduction
All verbs can have perfect forms, and all verbs (with some restrictions - see the discussion of stative verbs in B5) can have progressive forms. But not all verbs can have passive forms. This is because they need to be transitive, with an object. Transitivity is examined more fully in C6 as a characteristic of verbs.
Intransitive verbs such as happen have no object and cannot have a passive: ’It was happened to me’. A few transitive verbs such as have and cost do not normally have a passive: ’Two cars are had by him.’ ’Ten dollars are cost by the ticket.’
Some verbs are very common in the passive, for example:
It was alleged/claimed that . . .
Be born (I was born in 1964) only occurs in the passive.
The passive is formed from its counterpart ’active’ sentence by making the object into the subject, transforming the verb as shown above, and expressing the original subject (if needed) in a prepositional phrase beginning with by:
Shakespeare wrote Macbeth. (active)
Macbeth was written by Shakespeare. (passive)
Passives can be ’reduced’ so that only the -ed participle remains in a ’non-finite’ or ’participle’ clause (see A10), for example:
It sounds reasonable, put like that.
If noticed, it will cause trouble.
If we paraphrase we can see the hidden passives: . . . when it is put like that; If it is noticed. See C5 for more on reduced passives.
There are three reasons for using the passive:
□ so that the original subject does not have to be mentioned, either because it is known, or obvious from the context, or thought undesirable to mention, e.g.: He’s been arrested (by the police presumably)
In fact, most passives do not have a by phrase.
□ to avoid having a long subject
□ to change the ’information structure’ of a clause:
Macbeth? Wasn’t it written by Shakespeare?
Here the use of the passive allows ’Shakespeare’ to be presented as new information at the end of the clause.
These last two reasons are explained more fully in A11.
Get is sometimes used in place of be as an auxiliary for the passive.
I finally got promoted.
This sounds informal; it can also have the idea that the subject is somehow responsible for the action, rather than an affected party.
Comments
Activity A6.1: b) is correctly formed; it represents the present perfect progressive passive of find. Here is an analysis of the other two:
Figure A6.4.1 Analysis of incorrect verb phrase structure 2
The problem here is that there is no aspect form that is represented by have+ -ing.
Figure A6.4.2 Analysis of incorrect verb phrase structure 3
This contains the correct forms for both progressive and perfect, but they are in the wrong order. If they were ordered correctly we would get the verb phrase have been finding.
Activity A6.2:
1. he is taken
2. he is being taken
3. he has been taken
4. he has been being taken
5. he was taken
6. he was being taken
7. he had been taken
8. he had been being taken
Activity A6.3:
1. present perfect progressive
2. present progressive passive
3. past perfect progressive passive (though it sounds strange)
4. present perfect
5. past progressive
6. This is a trick question - it is not a correctly formed verb phrase. (Can you work out why?)