ABSTRACT
The passive voice is used to shift the emphasis away from the agent (i.e. the ‘doer’) of the action described by the verb to the recipient of the action. Thus, an ordinary ‘active’ sentence like Clara und Lisa fragte den Lehrer ‘Clara and Lisa asked the teacher’ becomes Der Lehrer wurde (von Clara und Lisa) gefragt ‘The teacher was asked (by Clara and Lisa)’ in the passive.
