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When the Subject is the agent or actor of the verb, the verb is said to be in the active voice. When the subject is the patient, target or undergoer of the action, it is said to be in the '''passive voice'''. For example, The cat ate the mouse is active, but The mouse was eaten by the cat is passive. In a transformation from an active voice sentence to an equivalent passive voice construction, the subject and the Direct Object switch places. The direct object is ''promoted'' to subject, and the subject is ''demoted'' to an optional complement. In the above examples, ''the mouse'' is the direct object in the active voice version, the subject in the passive version. The subject of the active voice version, ''the cat'', becomes part of a prepositional phrase in the passive version of the sentence, and could be left out entirely. THE PASSIVE VOICE IN ENGLISH Main article: English Passive Voice In the English Language , the passive voice is '' Periphrastic ''; that is, it is not a single word form, but rather a construction making use of other word forms. Specifically, it is made up of a form of the auxiliary verb ''to be'' and a past participle of the main verb. In other languages, such as Latin , the passive voice is simply marked on the verb by Inflection : the passive voice uses different verb endings than the active voice. THE MIDDLE VOICE Some languages (e.g. Sanskrit and Classical Greek ) have a middle voice. An intransitive verb that appears active but expresses a passive action characterizes the English middle voice. For example, in ''The casserole cooked in the oven'', ''cooked'' is Syntactically active but Semantically passive, putting it in the middle voice. In Classical Greek , the middle voice is often reflexive, denoting that the subject acts on or for itself, such as "The boy washes himself." or "The boy washes." It can be transitive or intransitive. It can occasionally be used in a causative sense, such as "The father causes his son to be set free." or "The father ransoms his son." Many Deponent Verb s in Latin are also survivals of the Proto-Indo-European middle voice; many of these in turn survive as obligatory pseudo- Reflexive Verb s in the Romance Language s such as French and Spanish . OTHER GRAMMATICAL VOICES Some languages have even more grammatical voices. For example, in Classic Mongolian there are five voices: active, passive, causative, reciprocal and cooperative. Ergative Language s usually do not have a passive voice, since their syntactic structure does not agree with it; instead some have an Antipassive Voice that deletes the object of transitive verbs. THE PASSIVE VOICE IN TOPIC-PROMINENT LANGUAGES Topic-prominent Language s like Mandarin tend not to employ the passive voice as frequently. In Mandarin, the passive voice is constructed by prefixing the active noun phrase with ''bei-'' and rearranging the usual word order. For example, this sentence using active voice: corresponds to this sentence using passive voice: In addition, through the addition of the auxiliary verb "to be" (''shi'') the passive voice is frequently used to emphasise the identity of the actor. In this example, the emphasis is on ''dog'', presumably as opposed to some other animal: Despite being a topic-prominent language, Japanese employs the passive voice quite frequently, and has two types of passive voice, one that corresponds to that in English and an indirect passive not found in English. This indirect passive is used when something undesirable happens to the speaker. THE FOURTH PERSON IN BALTIC-FINNIC LANGUAGES Some languages do not contrast voices, but similar-looking persons. For example, Baltic-Finnic Languages such as Finnish and Estonian have a "passive", which is conceptually more of a never-mentioned "fourth person" than variation of subjectivity or objectivity. For example, translating the sentence "The house was blown down" as ''Talo puhallettiin maahan'' would give the idea that some unmentioned person is blowing the house down by the force of his breath. Also, Transitivity may be used, such that the fourth-person ''Ongelma ratkaistiin'', which uses the transitive, means "Someone solved the problem", while the fourth-person ''Ongelma ratkesi'' uses the intransitive anticausative, and means "The problem was solved". DYNAMIC AND STATIC PASSIVE In some languages there is a distinction between static or stative passive voice, and dynamic or eventive passive voice. Examples include German , Spanish or Dutch . Static means that an action was done to the subject at a certain point in time, whereas dynamic means that an action is done. In German Static passive auxiliary verb: sein Dynamic passive auxiliary verb: werden ''Ich bin am 20. August geboren'' ("I was born on August 20", static) ''Ich wurde am 20. August geboren'' ("I became born on August 20", dynamic) In Spanish Static passive auxiliary verb: estar Dynamic passive auxiliary verb: ser In Dutch Static passive auxiliary verb: zijn Dynamic passive auxiliary verb: worden ''De muur is geverfd.'' (There is paint on the wall, static) ''De muur wordt geverfd.'' (Someone is painting the wall, dynamic) LIST OF VOICES Here are some voices found in some languages:
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