User:Bace1000/Passive Voice

Transitive clauses have two arguments (example in Latin).

“The boy writes a letter”:  puer epistulam scribit. boy.NOM letter.ACC write.3PS.ACT

One of these arguments is the agent and the other the patient.

“The boy writes a letter (agent underlined)”:  puer epistulam scribit. boy.NOM letter.ACC write.3PS.ACT

We can drop the patient, if we want.

“The boy writes”: puer scribit. boy.NOM write.3PS.ACT

However, we can’t drop the agent and just leave the patient.

“Writes a letter”: *epistulam scribit. letter.ACC write.3PS.ACT

This leaves us with a problem. What if we don’t know the agent, but we know the patient? This is where we need the passive voice.

The passive voice is a verb valence decreasing operation (it gets rid of an argument). The patient is promoted to the case in which the agent usually resides; the agent is removed.

“A letter is written”: epistula scribitur. letter.NOM write.3PS.PAS

The original agent can be reintroduced in some way according to the language. This could be with another case, adposition, word order, or something else.

“A letter is written by the boy”: epistula a puero scribitur. letter.NOM by boy.ABL write.3PS.PAS

These same concepts apply to absolutive-ergative languages in the antipassive, except the agent and patient are swapped.