Active voice
Active voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. It is the unmarked voice for clauses featuring a transitive verb in nominative–accusative languages, including English and most other Indo-European languages.
Active voice is used in a clause whose subject expresses the main verb's agent. That is, the subject does the verb's designated action.[1] A clause whose agent is marked as grammatical subject is called an active clause. In contrast, a clause in which the subject has the role of patient or theme is named a passive clause, and its verb is expressed in passive voice. 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 subject syntactic role.[2]
Examples
In the following examples the active and passive voice are illustrated with pairs of sentences using the same transitive verb.
| Language | Active voice | Passive voice |
|---|---|---|
| English | The dog bit the postman. | The postman was bitten by the dog. |
| Arabic | عَضّ الكلبُ ساعي البريد. (The dog bit the postman.) 'eَd alklbu sa'ey albryd |
عُضّ ساعي البريد بواسطة الكلب. (The postman was bitten by the dog.) 'eud sa'ey albryd bwasth alklb |
| French | Brackett a écrit ce livre. (Brackett has written this book.) | Ce livre a été écrit par Brackett. (This book has been written by Brackett.) |
| German | Der Hund biss den Postboten. (The dog bit the postman.) | Der Postbote wurde vom Hund gebissen. (The postman was bitten by the dog.) |
| Japanese | 犬がかんだ。 (A dog bit [someone].) Inu-ga kanda |
犬にかまれた。 (By a dog [I] was bitten.) Inu-ni kamareta |
| Polish | Pies ugryzł listonosza. (The dog bit the postman.) | Listonosz został ugryziony przez psa. (The postman was bitten by the dog.) |
| Spanish | La policía detuvo el tráfico. (The police stopped the traffic.) | El tráfico fue detenido por la policía. (The traffic was stopped by the police.) |
| Swedish | Tjänaren bär vinet. (The servant carries the wine.) | Vinet bärs av tjänaren. (The wine is carried by the servant.) |