What is a Passive Voice Sentence?

The topic of passive sentences naturally leads onto participles. As such the next two post form a unit and should be read together.

Now so far on this blog, we have dealt only with active sentences – where subject performs an action on some target object.

With a passive sentence (sometimes called the passive voice) the grammatical subject  gets something done to them!

Compare:

	Active voice				Passive voice
Semantic:	agent		patient		patient		agent
Grammatic:	subject	transitive	object		subject	intransitive	instrument
	The dog	chases	the cat		The cat	is chased	by the dog

Notice:

the semantic terms: agent - patient; and
the grammatic terms: subject - object.

In the active sentence above, the subject of the verb is the dog! And this is also the agent of the action. While the object of the verb is the cat.
In the passive sentence, the subject of the verb is the cat! And the agent of the action, in both instances is the dog.

In active sentences the meanings of subject - object and agent - patient overlap, and indeed, many grammar guides use them interchangeably. However, it is only with passive sentences that the difference becomes clear.

The agent is always the entity doing the action - here it is the dog, the one doing the chasing.
The patient (or target) is the entity acted upon - this is the cat, the one being chased.

And these are actually different notions from the grammatical terms: subject and object.

The grammatical subject is the noun (or phrase) with which the verb agrees in person and number. It relates to the syntax of the verb...

Notice how the object of the active sentence becomes the subject of the passive sentence. While the agent remains the same in both. But, in a passive sentence, the agent is relegated to a prepositional phrase (in instrumental), and its inclusion is optional.

Because of this, it often better to adopt the agent - patient terminology when dealing with passive sentences in order to avoid any confusion.

Note also, that the verb chased is actually a past participle which is accompanied by the auxiliary verb is (a form of 'to be'). In English, the passive voice is always marked by an auxilary verb and a past participle.

Here's a video tutorial exploring:

English: Active & Passive Voice Rules :Language Basics

What is the passive voice? This tutorial looks at how English uses the passive voice and analyses the structure of active and passive sentences. It covers grammatical terms like subject & object as we...

Passive Voice in Pali

In Pali, the subject of a passive verb (i.e. the patient of the action), is denoted by the nominative case, and any agent will be in instrumental (or sometime genitive). It is rare for an auxiliary to be present so one has to be added by the translator.
Unlike English, there are two ways of forming a passive sentence in Pali. The verb can be either:

1. a past participle, or
2. a passive indicate

1. with a Past Participle

Grammar guides often label the past participle as the Past Passive Participle as they are predominantly used in passive sentences.

a-daṇḍena	a-satthena	nāgo	danto	mahesinā
instr	instr	nom	nom	instr
m	m	m	m	m
sgl	sgl	sgl	sgl	sgl
			past part.
by no stick	by no knife	the elephant	trained	by the great sage
without a stick or knife, the elephant (is) trained by the great sage

the negation (a-) prefixed to an instrumental can be rendered ‘without’ (by-no).
The past participle. although called Past, can actually be used to express any time period: past, present or future. For more see the section on Aspect below...

2. with a Passive indicative stem

Though not frequent, Pali has a class of verbs that are specifically passive in meaning. These are a secondary derivative and are sometimes called passive indicatives. They are created from verb roots or the present stem by adding the suffix -(i)ya- (sometimes with 'i' connecting).

base + (i)ya + personal endings
√kar + īya + ti => kariyati (is done)
√pahā + īya + ti => pahīyati (is given up)

I think all tense endings can be applied - present endings shown.

The ‘y’ of the ‘-ya’ often assimilates and disappears, sometimes resulting in a consonant in the base verb being doubled.

labha + ya + ti => labbhati
 √vac + ya + ti => vuccati

As such they can be hard to spot. For more detail on formation see the post Secondary verb derivation and also the Assimilation of y.

When translating passive verbs, because in English the passive is always expressed by an auxiliary + past participle, this general guide can be followed where the auxiliary expresses the required tense.

• passive verb in present: 'is/are' + past participle
• passive verb in past:  'was/were' + past participle
• passive verb in future: 'will be' + past participle

Some examples:

kicchena	labbhati
adv	pres, pass
	sgl
	3rd pers
with difficulty	to be obtained
...(it) is obtained with difficulty

na	candim-asūriyā	paññāyanti
indec	nom	pres, pass
	f
	pl	pl
		3rd pers
not	sun & moon	(made) evident
the sun & moon are not evident

katamesaṃ	dhammānaṃ	uppādo	paññāyissati ?
dat/gen	dat/gen	nom	fut, pass
m	m	m
pl	pl	sgl	sgl
pn-intg			3rd pers
(of) which	phenomena	arising, birth	will be (made) evident
of which phenomena will arising be evident?

The patient/subject of the passive verb is always in nominative!

The following video tutorial goes into some more detail.

Passive Voice in Pāli | Learn Pali Language #26

In this second part to the passive voice, we look at two ways of creating the passive voice in a Pali sentence. We see how passive indicative verbs are formed and this is contrasted with the use of pa...

Tense, Aspect & mood vs Voice

I find much of the terminology around passive sentences and verb tense, mood, & aspects barely comprehensible and confusing. So I will spend some time and explain these terms in English grammar. There is also an excellent article on English verb forms here.

Verb principal parts

As a carry-over from Latin, an English verbs can be be said to have 4 principal forms : the simple, the past and two participles.  Consider the verbs 'to write' & ‘to go’:

simple present	simple past	present participle	past participle
write	wrote	writing	written
go	went	going	gone

Besides the simple present and past there are the participle forms. In English, there are two types of participle traditionally called the present participle (forms such as going, singing and raising) and the past participle (forms such as gone, sung and raised).  Participles are a type of cross between a verb and an adjective. They can qualify other nouns: 'the flying kite' or act as a verb: 'I am writing a letter'. When acting as a verb in English they require another verb (an auxiliary or helping verb) to fully express meaning; compare: 'I go', 'I went',   with   'I have gone' &  'I am going'..

Now although they are called present & past participles, in fact they can be employed to express any the tense! To understand this let's dig into English tenses.

Verb Tense, Aspect & Mood/Mode 

In English grammar, the word tense usually refers to a combination of both time period and aspect - and also sometimes mood. 

• The verb tense indicates the time at which the action of the verb takes place – past, present or future.

• The aspect of a verb tells us the degree to which it is completed. There are continuous (also called progressive or imperfect) aspects that tell us the action is in progress; there are perfect aspects that tell us the action is complete and of continuing relevance, and there are simple aspects that are just that – simple.

• Verb mood or mode  is the purpose of the sentence in which a verb is used. In Pali, the indicative mood is used to make a statement. The optative mood expresses desires or wishes. And the conditional mood (also subjunctive) is for sentences that pose potential or hypothetical scenarios  While the imperative expresses commands and requests - I won’t include it here. 

Pali like many Proto-Indo-European languages makes no division between tense and mode and many guides refer to them as the same thing.

	Tenses & modes
Mood:	Indicative			Conditional	Optative
Aspects:	Present	Past	Future
Simple	go(es)	went	will go	would go	may go
Progressive (imperfect)	am/is/are going	was/were going	will be going	would be going	may be going
Perfect	have/has gone	had gone	will have gone	would have gone	may have gone
Perfect- progressive	have/has been going	had been going	will have been going	would have been going	may have been going

And so we get terms like present progressive 'I am going', future perfect-progressive 'I will have been going' etc. The past perfect 'I had gone' is sometimes called the pluperfect. I include all this because the grammar guides are packed with this jargon, often mixing grammatical terms of English with those of Latin.

English: 12 Tenses: Time vs Aspect :Language Basics

In this tutorial, we look at the 12 tenses in English as combinations of place in Time vs Aspect or completion. There are with explanations including time-lines and formulas. 

Here’s a handy app to conjugate English verbs.

Now notice how the various tense - aspect combinations beyond the simple present and past are formed by

• perfect:  auxiliary + past participle,
• progressive: auxiliary + present participle,

Though the participles are called past and present participles they are employed to express all the tenses!

Some authors refer to participles as future perfect etc. but really I think in English it is the combination of auxiliary + verb/participle that creates the tense-aspect.

Tense vs Passive constructions

Now just to make this all this a bit more confusing; all the tense-aspect combinations expressed above can be cast into the passive voice!

In English this is done by making the patient into the subject and using a past participle with an auxiliary verb. You can tell if a sentence is in passive voice by adding an agent: by me; at the end. If the sentence still makes sense, it's passive.

Tense-aspect	Active	Passive
present simple	I write a blog.	A blog is written (by me).
present continuous	I am writing a blog.	A blog is being written (by me).
past simple	I wrote a blog.	A blog was written (by me).
past continuous	I was writing a blog.	A blog was being written (by me).
present perfect	I have written a blog.	A blog has been written (by me).
pres. perf. continuous	I have been writing a blog.	A blog has been being written (by me).
past perfect	I had written a blog.	A blog had been written (by me).
future simple	I will write a blog.	A blog will be written (by me).
future perfect	I will have written a blog.	A blog will have been written (by me).

Notice how the passive is always expressed in English by:

passive:       auxiliaries + past participle.

Participles often get labelled as ‘active’ and ‘passive’ and this relates to the form of the participle - but not necessarily to the voice of the sentence!
However in Pali, participles and even verbs can be made passive due to their form alone!

So in the next post we'll look at Participles in Pali.