Narrative tenses (2)

1.     Passive voice

The passive voice emphasises the actions performed by people or things. The passive voice focuses on what happens to people or things as the result of the actions they experience.

Active:

Debbie ate all the cakes = we are more interested in what Debbie did.

Passive:

All the cakes were eaten by Debbie = we are more interested in the cakes and what happened to them.

In the first sentence, Debbie is the subject of the sentence and the cakes are the object. In the second sentence, the cakes are the subject and Debbie the agent (i.e. the performer of the action); there is no object.

We use the passive:

1.When the agent (the person who performed the action) is assumed, unimportant, or unknown:

The poor old gentleman was taken directly to hospital. (probably by ambulance, but this isn´t important).

My bag has been stolen (by an unknown person.)

2.When the action, event, and process is seen as more important than the agent. This is often the case in formal or scientific writing:

The formula was checked carefully.

3.To put new information later in the sentence:

Pride and Prejudice was written by Jane Austen.

Remember:

The passive voice is not a tense.

It always includes a form of the verb “to be” and a past participle. The main changes are:

Present simple: She eats the cake.-à The cake is eaten.

Present continuous: She is eating the cake. -à The cake is being eaten.

Simple past: She ate the cake.  -à The cake was eaten.

Past continuous: She was eating the cake. -à The cake was being eaten.

Present perfect: She has eaten the cake. -à The cake has been eaten.

Past perfect:  She had eaten the cake.  -à The cake had been eaten.

Going to future: She is going to eat the cake.  -à The cake is going to be eaten.

2.     The causative have (have something done)

We use the causative have:

a)     To talk about services others perform for us:

She had her teeth whitened by a famous dentist.

Form: have + something + past participle.

She didn´t whiten them herself; the dentist did it for her.

b)    To describe unfortunate incidents and accidents:

She had her handbag stolen from under the seat in the cinema.

Remember:

The present and past perfect continuous do not have a passive for (except for rare examples).

3.     Intransitive verbs do not have a passive form

Get

Get can be used in a similar way to the causative have:

We got (had) our car repaired at that garage.

Get is also used with adjectives like married and hurt:

Luckily nobody got hurt in the crash.

Get also has a passive sense:

I thought we had bought too much food, but in the end all of it got eaten.