Usage of passive voice in the e-mail texts

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THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF

THE REPUBLIC OF KAZAKHSTAN

Aktobe University named after S. Baishev

The Faculty of Pedagogy

The Department of Philology and Translation

COURSE PAPER

On THEORY PHONETICS

Usage of Passive Voice in the E-mail Texts

Done by:

Alpamyssova A.E.

Aktobe, 2017



Introduction

The theme of our course paper is the Passive Voice. It deals with the general characteristic of the Passive Voice and its usage. The practical part of the paper is based on the material of the scientific literature. It is very important for English learners to know the general characteristic of the Passive Voice since they must realize that the Passive Voice is often applied in the English language.

As the Passive Voice is of the great use more in the scientific literature than in the fiction, and more in written than colloquial language, it is very important to learn more about peculiarities of its usage. That's why the topic that had been chosen presents certain theoretical difficulties. Though the analysis of the Passive Voice in English as a grammatical category has found their reflections in many linguists' works, none of them contain exhaustive information about the peculiarities of its functioning in particular cases. Our course paper is directed to enrich the knowledge about the specific character and peculiarities of the usage of the Passive Voice in modern English. We, English learners, need to know more about the Passive Voice; in particular we need more information about when and why it is used.

The study of theoretical grammar resources relating to the study of the Passive Voice is the theoretical importance of the research. That's why the purpose of our course work is to clarify peculiarities of the usage of the Passive Voice. The tasks that have been put for achieving the aim are the following:

to study general characteristics of the Passive Voice;

to give a description of the formation of the Passive Voice;

to describe the usage of the Passive Voice.

The object of our course paper is functioning of the Passive Voice in the English language.

The subject of our work is the peculiarities of the usage of the Passive Voice and its functions in the sentence.

The material used for our course paper comprises a lot of examples of the usage of the Passive Voice taken from the scientific literature.

The structure of the course work contains the introduction, theoretical chapter I, practical chapter II, conclusions and the list of used literature.

The introduction of the work shows the actuality of the problem of the usage of the Passive Voice. The object and the subject of our course paper are clarified. The purpose and the main tasks for achieving the aim of the work are pointed out. The structure of the course paper is described.

The chapter I presents general information about the formation of the Passive Voice and its usage.

The chapter II gives the examples of the use of the Passive Voice selected from the scientific literature.

The conclusions sum up the information given in the course paper.

The list of used literature enumerates the sources used in the course paper.

grammatical semantic lexical english



1. The passive voice as the grammatical category of the verb

1.1 Verbal Categories of Voice

The verbal category of Voice is an expression of relationship between an action and its subject and object. In other words, as a grammatical category, Voice shows the relation between the action and its subject, namely, it indicates whether the action is performed by the subject or passes on to it. As a result, Voice is connected with the sentence structure more than other verbal categories. There are two voices in English:

The Active Voice, that shows that the action is performed by its subject, i.e. that the subject is the doer of the action.

e.g. James sent me a letter.

The Passive Voice that shows that the subject is acted upon, that it is the recipient of the action.

e.g. A letter was sent to me by James.

The opposition is based on the direction of an action. According to the traditional approach to Voice, verbal forms, among other peculiarities, indicate relations between an action and its subject, i.e. Active Voice is used to denote actions directed from the person or thing expressed by subject, whereas Passive Voice forms show that an action is directed towards the subject [1; 123].

Some scientists distinguish more voices in the English language.

An issue of importance concerns the semantic differences that exist between the active and the passive voice. First of all, passive and active sentences may sometimes differ in meaning - e. g. as Chomsky (1965) and Lakoff (1968) have pointed out, the active and passive sentences in the following two pairs are not completely synonymous.

According to Chomsky:

Everyone in the room speaks two languages. (i.e., any two languages per person)

Two languages are spoken by everyone in the room. (i.e., two specific languages that everybody speaks)

According to Lakoff:

Few people read many books. (i.e., There are few people in this world who read lots of books.)

Many books are read by few people. (i.e., There are many books that are read by very few people.)

Second, there are active voice sentences with surface structure objects that do not have a passive equivalent since the verbs are not truly transitive, e.g.:

Mike has a car. - *A car is had by Mike.

Roger weighs 200 pounds. - *200 pounds was weighed by Roger.

Likewise, there are passive sentences in English that have no Active Voice variant, e.g.:

Mehdi was born in Tehran. - *Someone bore Mehdi in Tehran.

It is rumored that he will get the job. - *Someone rumors that he will get the job.

With certain verbs and in certain situations either the Active or the Passive Voice must be used exclusively [5; 224-225].



2. The General Characteristic of the Passive Voice in English

The English passive is a problem for non-English speakers, mainly with regard to usage. Even though students can easily learn to form the passive, they have problems learning when to use it. There are several reasons for this. A few languages don't even have a passive voice. Most languages, however, have a passive that is more limited than the English one. Such languages will use word order, impersonal constructions, or other devices to express the equivalent of an English passive sentence. Only a few languages have a more generalized passive than English. For most English learners the passive will occur more frequently in English than in their native language and there will be a wider variety of passive sentence types in English than in their own language [5; 221].

2.1 The formation of the Passive Voice

The Passive Voice is formed by means of the auxiliary verb to be in the required form and Participle II of the notional verb.

The Present, Past and Future Indefinite Passive are formed by means of Present, Past and Future Indefinite of the auxiliary verb to be and Participle II of the notional verb.

The Present, Past and Future Perfect Passive are formed by means of the Present, Past and Future Perfect of the auxiliary verb to be and Participle II of the notional verb.

The Present Continuous and the Past Continuous Passive are formed by means of the Present Continuous and the Past Continuous of the auxiliary verb to be and Participle II of the notional verb.

The Future Continuous, the Present Perfect Continuous, the Past Perfect Continuous and the Future Perfect Continuous don't have the appropriate forms in the Passive Voice [4; 226].

The uses of tenses in the Active and in the Passive Voice are the same [3; 113].

There are 4 formally distinct kinds of passive sentences in English:

Simple passives with “to be”:

e.g., Mary was hit by John.

Grapes are grown in that valley.

Simple passives with “to get”:

e.g., Barry got invited to the party.

John got hurt in the accident.

Complex passives with “to be”:

e.g., It is rumored that he will get the job.

John is thought to be intelligent.

That he will get the job has been decided.

Complex passives with “to have”:

e.g., Hal had his car stolen last weekend.

Alice had her purse snatched while shopping downtown [5; 226].

Modal auxiliaries frequently co-occur with the passive voice in at least 3 distinct uses:

Possibility/ability - Can and could are used with the passive to express possibility or ability in the present and past, respectively.

e.g., The star can/could be seen from the balcony.

Logical (predictive/deductive) use - The logical modals can be used with the passive voice to express present deductions or future predictions; when these deductions or predictions refer to past time, “to have” must also be used.

e.g., Mr. John must/should/might/… have been/be elected mayor.

Making suggestions - In order to express a suggestion the conditional modals are used; also, “to have” is used to express hindsight, i.e., suggestions about things that were unfulfilled in the past.

e.g., More hospitals could/should be built. (= could be fulfilled in the future)

More hospitals could/should have been built. (= was not fulfilled in the past)

Studies are needed to determine which modals in which of their specific usages co-occur most often with the passive as opposed to the active voice. Also, it is important to note that the meaning of the modals in some so-called active-passive counterparts do not seem truly equivalent, e.g.:

People say that Dan is a fool. = It is said that Dan is a fool.

People may say that Dan is a fool. ? It may be said that Dan is a fool [5; 227-228].

Pioneering studies by Huddleston (1971), Shintani (1979), and others provide us with some guidelines concerning when to use the passive. Raw frequency data, for example, indicate that the English passive is by far most frequent in scientific writing and that it is least frequent in conversation. Other discourse types can be placed along the frequency continuum [5; 228]:

The Passive Voice is always used in the following constructions:

It is/was said that…

It is/was known that…

It is/was believed that…

It is/was expected that…

It is/was reported that…

It is/was understood that…

It is/was considered that…

e.g. It is known that many Ukrainian people live in Great Britain.

It was expected that people would live better.

With the combination of words to be born the predicate is always used in the Past Simple Passive Voice [4; 238-239].

e.g. He was born in London. - When was he born?

The following guidelines, which are culled from many sources as well as from our own observations, may be of use in the absence of a complete and definitive usage study:

The passive is often used:

When the agent is redundant, i.e., easy to supply, and therefore not expressed.

e.g. Oranges are grown in California.

2. When the writer wants to emphasize the receiver or result of the action.

e.g. Six people were killed by the tornado.

3. When the writer wants to make a statement sound objective without revealing the source of information. (Although this sentence is more complicated than the other passives discussed here.)

e.g. It is assumed/believed that he will announce his candidacy soon.

4. When the writer wants to be tactful or evasive by not mentioning the agent or when he or she cannot or will not identify the agent.

e.g. Margaret was given some bad advice about selecting courses.

Based on the total figure, it appears that an error was made in the budget.

When the writer wishes to retain the same grammatical subject in successive clauses, even though the function of the noun phrase changes from agent to theme.

e.g. George Foreman beat Joe Frazier, but he was beaten by Muhammad Ali.

6. When the passive is more appropriate than the active (usually in complex sentences).

7. When the theme is given information and the agent is new information.

e.g. - What a lovely scarf! - Thank you. It was given to me by Pam [5; 228-229].

A significant number of passive sentences in English are stative passives; i.e., they function more like predicate adjectives than like passive verbs. This distinction will become clearer if we consider the following pair of sentences:

e.g. The wells are located near the edge of the reserve.

The wells were located by two engineers.

Even though the verb to locate appears in both sentences, two different meanings are being expressed. The first sentence is a stative passive without an agent and without an active voice counterpart; it gives the reader or listener the location of the wells. Note also that the present tense is used. This is typical though not universal for stative passives. The second sentence, however, does have an agent (i.e., the engineers), and it tells us that the engineers discovered the location of the wells; also, an active voice counterpart is possible. Some linguists maintain that stative passives are really adjectives, not true passives. Whatever analysis is used, you should be aware of the fact that some sentences that look like normal passives are in fact stative passives that have no agent and no active voice counterpart [5; 229].



3. The peculiarities of the use of the passive voice in the scientific literature

While analyzing the practical usage of the Passive Voice, it should be mentioned that the greatest examples taken from the scientific literature deals with the usage of the Passive Voice mostly in Present Indefinite and affirmative form and also with modal verbs.

We want to present the scientific article taken from the source of medical literature. It deals with the great usage of the Passive Voice that is printed in italics. The article is the following:

Chewing Gum & Gum Chewing

The United States is a major producer of chewing gum, and Americans are major consumers - chewing an average of 183 sticks of gum per person annually. However, the love affair with this chewing confection is not restricted to the geographic borders of the United States. After a slump in the mid-1980s, chewing-gum sales rebounded. Gum has now emerged as a multibillion-dollar commodity with worldwide popularity.

Currently, gum chewing is marked as part of a healthy lifestyle. Both manufacturers and researchers proclaim its benefits: gum chewing helps reduce plaque buildup when brushing is not an option; it temporarily hides bad breath; and it even improves concentration and relieves the boredom associated with long-distance driving. In addition, gum chewing is promoted as an alternative to such bad habits as overeating and smoking.

Gum was long believed to contribute to tooth problems because of its high sugar content. Now it is enjoying a redemption of sorts. Recent studies show that gum chewing stimulates saliva flow, which helps rid the mouth of food particles that ultimately contribute to decay. In fact, the studies show that chewing a stick a gum for 15 minutes after eating can prevent dental cavities. Another study suggests that you need not chew sugarless gum to derive benefits. Researchers say that the sugar in gum is quickly rinsed out of the mouth by saliva, and therefore is not a factor in tooth decay.

Chewing gum is made with three main ingredients: gum base, sugar, and corn syrup. (The gum base is especially strong and elastic in bubble gum.) The desired appearance and taste are achieved with the addition of natural and artificial colors and flavorings (most often fruit, cinnamon, or mint).⁷ In general, 90 percent of the sugar and 50 percent of the flavor is released during the first few minutes of chewing [10; 83].

The sentence “1” is the example of the Present Indefinite form of the Passive Voice; it is negative; it consists of the auxiliary verb “to be” in the Present Indefinite tense with the negative particle “not” and the Participle II.

The example “4” represents the Past Indefinite Passive that consists of the auxiliary verb “to be” in the Past Simple and the Participle II.

“2”, “3”, “5”, “6”, “7” and “8” are the representatives of the Present Indefinite form of the Passive Voice; they are affirmative; they consist of the auxiliary verb “to be” in the Present Indefinite tense and the Participle II.

This article is the example of frequent usage of the Passive Voice in the scientific literature. It is necessary to say that in colloquial speech the Passive Voice is not so widely used.

Now we would like to suggest another article that contains a lot of sentences with the Passive Voice. It is used in different forms, constructions and with the modal verbs.

All about Chocolate

Chocolate, like most fruits and nuts, comes from trees. The seed of the “chocolate tree”, as it is sometimes called, can be spun off in a number of guises. Those derivates can be further altered in flavor, consistency, and nutritional value through combination with such items as sugars and dairy products. Thus, standards have been devised so that consumers who prefer the creamy lightness of milk chocolate, for instance, to the zestier bite of bittersweet can satisfy their cravings.

What makes milk chocolate different from dark chocolate? All chocolate is derived from the seeds (beans) of the cacao tree, Theobroma cacao, native to the American tropics. The heart of the beans, that are called “nibs”, are contained in footlong pods and are additionally protected by individual outer shells. When finely ground, nibs become “chocolate liquor”, consisting of both cocoa solids and cocoa butter, which are separable. Proportions of these constituents used in chocolate products can be important to the consumer (one may be more or less costly than another). These proportions also affect flavor.

The FDA standards for cacao products were updated in 1993,⁸ and the final amended regulations were published in the May 21, 1993, Federal Register.⁹ Those rules are highly technical, down to prescribing analytic techniques and specifying approved processing methods. Specifications for cacao nabs themselves are offered (they may contain “not more than 1.75 percent by weight” of residual shell),¹⁰ as are the definitions of intermediate and end products, including chocolate liquor (“contains not less than 50 percent nor more than 60 percent by weight of cacao fat,” among other requirements). There are also standards for breakfast cocoa, sweet chocolate, semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, milk chocolate, skim-milk chocolate, and so on [10; 84-85].

The sentences “1”, “5”, “6”, “7” and “10” are the examples of the Present Indefinite form of the Passive Voice; they consist of the auxiliary verbs “to be” in the Present Indefinite tense and the Participle II.

The Passive Voice is used in the sentences “2”, “3” in the Present Indefinite with the modal verb “can” to express possibility in the present and prediction and suggestion in the future accordingly. It is formed by means of the modal verb “can” in the Present Simple, the auxiliary verb “to be” and the Participle II.

The sentence “4” is the example of the Present Perfect form of the Passive Voice; it is formed by means of the auxiliary verb “to be” in the Present Perfect tense and the Participle II.

“8” and “9” sentences are representatives of the Past Indefinite Passive that consists of the auxiliary verb “to be” in the Past Simple and the Participle II.

The next article is called “Feet First” by Ellen Trevor and a few examples from it are the following:

The Passive Voice is used here in the Present Indefinite with the modal verb “can” to express possibility in the present. It is formed by means of the modal verb “can” in the Present Simple, the auxiliary verb “to be” and the Participle II.

The Present Indefinite Passive is formed by means of the Present Simple of the auxiliary verb “to be” and the Participle II.

The Present Indefinite Passive is formed by means of the modal verb “may” in the Present Indefinite, auxiliary verb “to get” and the Participle II. The Passive Voice is used here to express future prediction. Also this sentence is the example of such kind of the passive sentences as simple passives with “to get”.

The Passive Voice is used here in the Present Indefinite with the modal verb “can” to express possibility in the present. It is formed by means of the modal verb “can” in the Present Simple, the auxiliary verb “to be” and the Participle II.

The Passive Voice is also found in the works of legal scholarship. The source that I have worked up is the scientific writing about the Constitution of the United States of America. Some examples of the Passive Voice taken from this source are the following:

The Passive Voice is used here in the Present Indefinite with the modal verb “can” to express future prediction and suggestion.

The Future Indefinite Passive is used in this sentence in the Future Indefinite form and it is formed by means of the auxiliary verb “to be” with the Participle II.

The first part of the sentence contains the Present Indefinite form of the Passive Voice expressed by means of the Present Indefinite of the auxiliary verb “to be” and the Participle II. Also there is the Passive Voice in the second part of the sentence that is formed by means of the modal verb “can” expressing possibility and ability in the present, the auxiliary verb “to be” and the Participle II.

e.g. The Supreme Court has consistently held that the establishment clause requires government to maintain a position of neutrality toward religions and to maintain that position in cases that involve choices between religion and nonreligion. However, the clause has never been held to bar all assistance that incidentally aids religious institutions [13; 538]. -

This sentence is the example of the Present Perfect form of the Passive Voice; it is negative; it is formed by means of the auxiliary verb “to be” in the Present Perfect tense and the Participle II.

We would like to analyze another article where the Passive Voice is widely used. It is the following:

Government support of religion

In 1879, the Supreme Court contended, using Thomas Jefferson's words, that the establishment clause erected “a wall of separation between church and state.” That wall was breached somewhat in 1947, when the justices upheld a local government program that provided free transformation to parochial school students. The breach seemed to widen in 1968, when the Court held constitutional a government program in which state-purchased textbooks were loaned to parochial school students. The objective of the program, reasoned the majority, was to further educational opportunity. The loan was made to the students, not to the schools and the benefits were realized by the parents, not by the church [13; 538].

The sentences “1”, “2”, and “3” are the passive sentences of the Past Indefinite form, formed by means of the auxiliary verb “to be” in the Past Indefinite and the Participle II.

The sentence “4” represents the Past Indefinite Passive where the doer of the action, described in the sentence, is mentioned.

The examples taken from this source have different kinds and forms of the Passive Voice, they are very diverse.

It can be easily said that the usage of the Passive Voice in the medical and legal literature differs in the usage of the tense forms (in medical literature the Passive Voice is mostly used in the Present Indefinite, and in legal there are different tense forms).

While analyzing all these worked up sources we can gather that in the scientific literature the Passive Voice is used mostly in Present Indefinite and affirmative form and less frequent in the Continuous form. Also it is hardly to find all kinds of the passive sentences in such kind of literature.

Though the passive can be used for the purpose of concealing the agent, this is not a valid way of identifying the passive, and many other grammatical constructions can be used to accomplish this. Not every expression that serves to take focus away from the performer of an action is an instance of passive voice. For instance "There were mistakes." and "Mistakes occurred." are both in the active voice. Occasionally, authors express recommendations about use of the passive unclearly or misapply the term "passive voice" to include sentences of this type.^[8] An example of this incorrect usage can be found in the following extract from an article from The New Yorker about Bernard Madoff (bolding and italics added; bold text indicates the verbs misidentified as passive voice):

Two sentences later, Madoff said, "When I began the Ponzi scheme, I believed it would end shortly, and I would be able to extricate myself, and my clients, from the scheme." As he read this, he betrayed no sense of how absurd it was to use the passive voice in regard to his scheme, as if it were a spell of bad weather that had descended on him... In most of the rest of the statement, one not only heard the aggrieved passive voice, but felt the hand of a lawyer: "To the best of my recollection, my fraud began in the early nineteen-nineties."

The intransitive verbs would end and began are in fact in the active voice. Although the speaker may be using words in a manner that diverts responsibility from him, this is not accomplished by use of passive voice.

Reasons for using the passive voice

The passive voice can be used without referring to the agent of an action; it may therefore be used when the agent is unknown or unimportant, or the speaker does not wish to mention the agent.

Three stores were robbed last night (the identity of the agent may be unknown).

A new cancer drug has been discovered (the identity of the agent may be unimportant in the context).

Mistakes have been made on this project (the speaker may not wish to identify the agent).

The last sentence illustrates a frequently criticized use of the passive, as the evasion of responsibility by failure to mention the agent (which may even be the speaker himself).

Agentless passives are common in scientific writing, where the agent may be irrelevant:

The mixture was heated to 300 °C.

However the passive voice can also be used together with a mention of the agent, using a by-phrase. In this case the reason for use of the passive is often connected with the positioning of this phrase at the end of the clause (unlike in the active voice, where the agent, as subject, normally precedes the verb). Here, in contrast to the examples above, passive constructions may in fact serve to place emphasis on the agent, since it is natural for information being emphasized to come at the end:

Don't you see? The patient was murdered by his own doctor!

In more technical terms, such uses can be expected in sentences where the agent is the focus (comment, rheme), while the patient (the undergoer of the action) is the topic or theme^[5] (see Topic-comment). There is a tendency for sentences to be formulated so as to place the focus at the end, which can motivate the choice of active or passive voice:

My taxi hit an old lady (the taxi is the topic, and the lady is the focus).

My mother was hit by a taxi (the mother is the topic, and the taxi is the focus).

Similarly, the passive may be used because the noun phrase denoting the agent is a long one (containing many modifiers) since it is convenient to place such phrases at the end of a clause:

The breakthrough was achieved by Burlingame and Evans, two researchers in the university's genetic engineering lab.

In some situations, the passive may be used so that the most dramatic word or the punchline appears at the end of the sentence.

Advice against the passive voice

Many language critics and language-usage manuals discourage use of the passive voice.^[5] This advice is not usually found in older guides, emerging only in the first half of the twentieth century. In 1916, the British writer Arthur Quiller-Couch criticized this grammatical voice:

Generally, use transitive verbs, that strike their object; and use them in the active voice, eschewing the stationary passive, with its little auxiliary its's and was's, and its participles getting into the light of your adjectives, which should be few. For, as a rough law, by his use of the straight verb and by his economy of adjectives you can tell a man's style, if it be masculine or neuter, writing or 'composition'.

Two years later, in the original 1918 edition of The Elements of Style, Cornell University Professor of English William Strunk, Jr. warned against excessive use of the passive voice:

The active voice is usually more direct and vigorous than the passive... This rule does not, of course, mean that the writer should entirely discard the passive voice, which is frequently convenient and sometimes necessary... The need to make a particular word the subject of the sentence will often... determine which voice is to be used. The habitual use of the active voice, however, makes for forcible writing. This is true not only in narrative concerned principally with action, but in writing of any kind. Many a tame sentence of description or exposition can be made lively and emphatic by substituting a transitive in the active voice for some such perfunctory expression as there is or could be heard.^[15]

In 1926, in A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, Henry Watson Fowler recommended against transforming active voice forms into passive voice forms, because doing so "...sometimes leads to bad grammar, false idiom, or clumsiness."

In 1946, in the essay Politics and the English Language, George Orwell recommended the active voice as an elementary principle of composition: "Never use the passive where you can use the active."

The Columbia Guide to Standard American English states that:

Active voice makes subjects do something (to something); passive voice permits subjects to have something done to them (by someone or something). Some argue that active voice is more muscular, direct, and succinct, passive voice flabbier, more indirect, and wordier. If you want your words to seem impersonal, indirect, and noncommittal, passive is the choice, but otherwise, active voice is almost invariably likely to prove more effective.

The principal criticism against the passive voice is its potential for evasion of responsibility. This is because a passive clause may be used to omit the agent even where it is important:

We had hoped to report on this problem, but the data were inadvertently deleted from our files.^[5][11]

Krista Ratcliffe, a professor at Marquette University, notes the use of passives as an example of the role of grammar as "...a link between words and magical conjuring [...]: passive voice mystifies accountability by erasing who or what performs an action [...]."

Advice in favor of the passive voice

Jan Freeman, a columnist for The Boston Globe, said that the passive voice does have its uses, and that "all good writers use the passive voice."^[21] For example, despite Orwell's advice to avoid the passive, his Politics and the English Language employs passive voice for about 20 percent of its constructions. By comparison, a statistical study found about 13 percent passive constructions in newspapers and magazines.

Passive writing is not necessarily slack and indirect. Many famously vigorous passages use the passive voice, as in these examples with the passive verbs italicized:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. (United States Declaration of Independence)

Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain. (King James Bible, Isaiah 40:4)

Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this sun of York. (Shakespeare's Richard III, I.1, ll. 1-2)

For of those to whom much is given, much is required. (John F. Kennedy's quotation of Luke 12:48 in his address to the Massachusetts legislature, 9 January 1961.)

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. (Winston Churchill addressing the House of Commons, 20 August 1940.)

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage recommends the passive voice when identifying the object (receiver) of the action is more important than the subject (agent), and when the agent is unknown, unimportant, or not worth mentioning:

The child was struck by the car.

The store was robbed last night.

Plows should not be kept in the garage.

Kennedy was elected president.

Despite criticism that the passive can be used to hide responsibility by omitting the agent, the passive can also be used to emphasize the agent. Writers have preferred placing the agent at the end of a clause or sentence to give it greater emphasis, as in the examples given in the previous section:

Don't you see? The patient was murdered by his own doctor!

The breakthrough was achieved by Burlingame and Evans, two researchers in the university's genetic engineering lab.

The linguist Geoffrey Pullum writes that "The passive is not an undesirable feature limited to bad writing, it's a useful construction often needed for clear expression, and every good writer uses it."



Conclusions

In accordance with the analysis of the theoretical and practical material of the course paper we can make the following conclusions:

The Passive Voice is the category of the verb that shows that the subject is acted upon.

The formation of the Passive Voice is the following: to be (in the required tense form) + Participle II (of the notional verb).

The Passive Voice has the following tense forms:

The Present, Past and Future Indefinite;

The Present, Past and Future Perfect;

The Present and Past Continuous.

And it doesn't have the Future Continuous, the Present, Past and Future Perfect Continuous forms.

The Passive Voice can be used with modal verbs and there are 4 different kinds of passive sentences in English.

Also the Passive Voice is widely used in the scientific literature and less extended in the conversational speech.

The Passive Voice can express all the same that the Active Voice expresses and has the same functions in the sentence as the Active Voice has.

In combination with different modal verbs the Passive Voice can refer to the present, past and future action; all the more with modal verbs it may express the suggestion, ability, possibility, prediction and deduction in the sentence that is very important for English learners.

While working up sources of scientific literature we can sum up that in this kind of literature the Passive Voice is used mostly in Present Indefinite and affirmative form and less frequent in the Continuous form. Also it is hardly to find all kinds of the passive sentences in the scientific literature.

Thus, the material of the course paper gives better understanding of the theoretical material relating to the Passive Voice in English. And gathering up the practical analysis one can state that now it is easier for us to understand the formation and usage of the Passive Voice in the English language.

Also, we would like to repeat once more that we, English learners, need to know more about the Passive Voice; in particular we need more information about when and why it is used.



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