ABSTRACT
Voice is related to the concept of transitivity. Active voice spotlights the doer of an action, and passive voice spotlights the affected entity of an action. There are multiple categories of passive voice in English: the be-passive, the get-passive, and the causative passive with have and get, each of which focuses or de-focuses a different element in the event scene. Middle voice defocuses the agent entirely and makes the affected entity into a pseudo-agentive subject. Voice in general evokes such notions as agency, control, passivity, non-agency, and non-accountability in discourse.
