[1] In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb – that is, the person or thing that undergoes the action or has its state changed.
[4] Many languages have both an active and a passive voice; this allows for greater flexibility in sentence construction, as either the semantic agent or patient may take the syntactic role of subject.
[5] The use of passive voice allows speakers to organize stretches of discourse by placing figures other than the agent in subject position.
The passive forms in Nynorsk are restricted to being accompanied by an auxiliary verb, which is not the case in Swedish and Danish.
Nynorsk uses "å verte" or "å bli" + past participle for passive voice, and Swedish and Danish use the passive suffix "-s" and Icelandic uses "að verða" or "að vera" + past participle or "-st" suffix for middle voice.
The Austronesian language Kimaragang Dusun also indicates passive voice by verb conjugation using the infix, ⟨in⟩.
[3] Other languages, including English, express the passive voice periphrastically, using an auxiliary verb.
[9] There is general agreement that the passive voice is useful for emphasis or when the receiver of the action is more important than the actor.
Linguists therefore find it difficult to define the term in a way that makes sense across all human languages.
[12] 花子がHanako-gaHanako-NOM隣のtonari-noneighbor-GEN学生にgakusei-nistudent-DATピアノをpiano-opiano-ACC朝までasa-mademorning-until弾かれた。hika-re-ta.played-PASS-PFV花子が 隣の 学生に ピアノを 朝まで 弾かれた。Hanako-ga tonari-no gakusei-ni piano-o asa-made hika-re-ta.Hanako-NOM neighbor-GEN student-DAT piano-ACC morning-until played-PASS-PFV"Hanako was adversely affected by the neighboring student playing the piano until morning.
In the first sentence, the combination of the auxiliary verb "is" and the past participle "fed" is a regular example of the construction of the passive voice in English.
[15] The English string of words "the lawn is mown" has two possible meanings corresponding to the example "the dog is fed" above.
It can be used in the following two different senses: German uses two different grammatical constructions for these sentences: Further examples and explanations: A number of German verbs such as bedecken ("cover"), erfüllen ("fill"), and trennen ("separate"), when used as stative verbs, usually only form static passives.