The category that is associated with the verb and that refers to the semantic link that it maintains with the object and with the subject is known as grammatical voice. According to the grammatical voice, the subject is patient or agent depending on whether he receives or performs the action.
The passive voice, as its name indicates, appears with the patient subject. A complement is the grammatical element that performs the action of the verb, while the subject receives it. For example: “The tower in the center of town was designed by my father. In this case, “the tower in the center” is the contributor who receives the action (“was drawn”) carried out by the agent’s complement (“my father”).
That same sentence could become active voice as follows: “My father designed the tear in the center. If we analyze this expression, “my father” is the active subject that performs the action (“projected”). The passive voice can also appear in the news presented by the media: “The budget will be approved by Congress” (active voice: “The Congress will approve the budget”), “The Argentine coach was fired from the Catalan club” (active voice: “ The Catalan club fired the Argentine coach”), “The speech was broadcast on public television” (active voice: “Public television broadcast the speech”). Thanks to the use of the passive voice, we can emphasize the action or state that a sentence indicates; Contrary to what happens in the active voice, the topic is not relevant, it is anonymous or we assume that all the interlocutors know it well and that is why we omit it. Here is a small situation where all types of passive voice are used. A woman was hit by a bus. The emergency medical service has already been called. The wound is taken to the health post. The witnesses were interviewed by the police. The woman’s relatives want to be informed. In particular, your father is very worried. Since in the example above the actions seem to be more important than who does them, the passive voice is more appropriate than the active voice for this narrative. This does not mean that agents are absolutely irrelevant. On the other hand, we can deduce those that are not mentioned, thanks to the context; For example, it is likely that witnesses or relatives of the woman called the emergency medical service and took her to the hospital by ambulance.
At this point in the definition, we can distinguish two fundamental types of passive voice: the process voice and the state voice. The passive voice of the process especially emphasizes the action, allows you to answer the question “what happened?”. It is very rare in everyday speech and is reserved for written language; It is formed with the verb ser mais or main, as in the case of “foi trompedo”. Regarding the passive voice of the state, we can say that it serves to describe an event after it has finished. It is built with the verb to be and can be seen in the following example: “he is very worried”; Before reaching that state, the woman’s father received the news or witnessed the accident, which caused him to change his mind, which will remain stable until his daughter recovers. There is another type of passive voice, known as reflex passive voice. Its use is much more frequent in speech than in the passive process voice, although it is often used inappropriately. As a general rule, it is recommended not to use it if the subject of responsibility is a person. An example of reflexive passive voice is the following: “Singing lessons are given. “
