ABSTRACT
Voice is syntactically very different from the other verbal categories. This chapter deals with voice proper, the passive voice. It considers some related structures that have close semantic and syntactic relations with the passive voice. The switching of the two noun phrases makes voice quite different from the categories of tense, phase and aspect. Although the active-passive relationship sees the subject of the active becoming the agent of the passive, passives often occurs with no agents. Passivization is possible only with transitive verbs, that is, those that have objects. The significant point is that the object of the transitive verb is the subject of the intransitive. The semantic relations between the transitive and intransitive are of a variety of kinds. The active-passive relationship is unaffected by the presence of tense, phase and aspect.
