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 postal carrier. | The postal carrier was bitten by the dog. |
| Arabic | عَضّ الكلبُ ساعي البريد. (The dog bit the postal carrier.) 'eَd alklbu sa'ey albryd |
عُضّ ساعي البريد بواسطة الكلب. (The postal carrier was bitten by the dog.) 'eud sa'ey albryd bwasth alklb |
| Finnish | Koira puri postimiestä. (The dog bit the postal carrier.) | Postimiestä puri koira. (The postal carrier was bitten by the dog.) |
| French | Le chien a mordu le facteur. (The dog bit the postal carrier.) | Le facteur a été mordu par le chien. (The postal carrier was bitten by the dog.) |
| German | Der Hund biss den Postboten. (The dog bit the postal carrier.) | Der Postbote wurde vom Hund gebissen. (The postal carrier was bitten by the dog.) |
| Korean | 개가 우편집배원을 물었다. (A dog bit the postal carrier.) gaega upyeonjibbaewon-eul mul-eossda |
우편집배원은 개에게 물렸다. (The postal carrier was bitten by a dog.) upyeonjibbaewon-eun gaeege mullyeossda |
| Japanese | 犬がかんだ。 (A dog bit [someone].) Inu-ga kanda |
犬にかまれた。 (By a dog [someone] was bitten.) Inu-ni kamareta |
| Polish | Pies ugryzł listonosza. (The dog bit the postal carrier.) | Listonosz został ugryziony przez psa. (The postal carrier was bitten by the dog.) |
| Spanish | El perro mordió al cartero. (The dog bit the postal carrier.) | El cartero fue mordido por el perro. (The postal carrier was bitten by the dog.) |
| Swedish | Tjänaren bär vinet. (The servant carries the wine.) | Vinet bärs av tjänaren. (The wine is carried by the servant.) |