Using passive voice
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Overview | page 2 of 6 |
Relating passive clauses to active clauses
Passive clauses can in most cases be related to active clauses
, ie clauses containing active
voice verbs:
The bus driver arrested the boy ...
active clauseThe boy was arrested by the bus driver ...
passive clause
The active clause tells us what the bus driver did, whereas the passive clause tells us what happened to the boy.
In this pair of examples of active and passive clauses, the noun
group at the beginning of the
active clause, the bus driver, functions as the subject of the clause, while in the
passive clause it comes at the end following the preposition by. The subject
in the passive clause is now represented by the noun group the boy, while the
bus driver now functions as the agent . Such noun groups are often referred to as
agents because they typically represent the doers or causers of the actions or
events. However, agents are very often left out:
A 13-year-old boy who was alleged to have driven away a Kowloon double-decker bus in Mei Foo Sun Tsuen last night was detained for investigations. (SCMP 6/10/92)
In this example, the reader is left to deduce that the agent who did the alleging and the detaining is probably the police.
For further information about the differences in form between active and passive
clauses, see 
Using passive voice: Forming passive
voice clauses.
For further information about some of the reasons for either including or omitting the
agent in passive clauses, see Using passive voice: Omitting or
including the agent.
Introduction
Relating passive clauses to active clauses
