The passive in English (2011)(languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu)
languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu
The passive in English (2011)
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2922
44 comments
The sentence isn't that unnatural when you realize that it's full of standard linguistic terms, such as "clause", "subject", "semantic roles", "action", and "agent".
Pick a random sentence from discussion on tax laws or building an npm package, and they will sound just as ridiculous (or even pompous) to outsiders.
Pick a random sentence from discussion on tax laws or building an npm package, and they will sound just as ridiculous (or even pompous) to outsiders.
In layman's terms, he's saying, "I am very smart and George Orwell is a blowhard." You can decide for yourself which author you'd rather read.
the author is linguist using linguistic terms
should be phrased "when a verb denotes an action, the standard is for the subject to correspond to the agent"
I've also been pondering the two uses of the word "roles" in this sentence. This sentence is the world's best sentence.
Interesting parallels with other languages:
1. Slavic languages have several ways to construct "impersonal sentences" that can be used to describe the results of actions or being in a certain state without mentioning the actors. They sound completely natural and are used in common spoken speech.
2. Passive does sound more complicated and marked in English. Descriptions often need to use either passive voice or "fake" subjects (e.g.: "It was raining").
2. In Chinese, true passive voice ("被/叫/...") is extremely uncommon and is used mostly for negative things like "was hit by a car". Some linguists even call it an "adversity marker". And for neutral things like "The package was delivered yesterday" typical constructions look more like "The package is yesterday-delivered", with the "yesterday-delivered" construction acting almost like an adjective.
1. Slavic languages have several ways to construct "impersonal sentences" that can be used to describe the results of actions or being in a certain state without mentioning the actors. They sound completely natural and are used in common spoken speech.
2. Passive does sound more complicated and marked in English. Descriptions often need to use either passive voice or "fake" subjects (e.g.: "It was raining").
2. In Chinese, true passive voice ("被/叫/...") is extremely uncommon and is used mostly for negative things like "was hit by a car". Some linguists even call it an "adversity marker". And for neutral things like "The package was delivered yesterday" typical constructions look more like "The package is yesterday-delivered", with the "yesterday-delivered" construction acting almost like an adjective.
FWIW, the passive voice is completely natural in spoken English. Otherwise, you wouldn't have admonishments against it in style guides and English teachers wouldn't be slicing through instances of it with a red pen (or modern equivalent).
[deleted]
A quick fun thing you can do in response to that first graf is to ask Claude or GPT5 to quiz you.
I got:
* The report was written yesterday.
* The committee approved the proposal.
* The door was open when I arrived.
* The window was broken during the storm.
* The window was broken when we bought the house.
* Mistakes were made.
* The system is designed to fail safely.
* The results are surprising.
* The patient was examined and released.
* The data suggests the model was trained improperly.
* There were several errors identified in the report.
* The system appears to have been compromised.
I got two of them wrong, though I think "partially passive" is a total cop-out.
I got:
* The report was written yesterday.
* The committee approved the proposal.
* The door was open when I arrived.
* The window was broken during the storm.
* The window was broken when we bought the house.
* Mistakes were made.
* The system is designed to fail safely.
* The results are surprising.
* The patient was examined and released.
* The data suggests the model was trained improperly.
* There were several errors identified in the report.
* The system appears to have been compromised.
I got two of them wrong, though I think "partially passive" is a total cop-out.
> * The window was broken during the storm.
I just realized that there's a delightful bit of ambiguity here.
Was the window damaged during the storm (and so the water got onto the carpet), or was the window damaged _by_ the storm?
I just realized that there's a delightful bit of ambiguity here.
Was the window damaged during the storm (and so the water got onto the carpet), or was the window damaged _by_ the storm?
I got this right, but led off with "it's a perfectly good sentence".
The examples in the first paragraph, while not grammatically passive, are functionally passive. They would be stronger in most cases if the author wrote them with the actor as the subject. For example, yes "the bus blew up" is active, but does not answer who acted on the bus.
Being so pedantic, and then saying "but I'm not going to use the technical term voice" is particularly off-putting. If this is an article about grammatical pedentry, let's go all the way. Otherwise, the author should focus on providing useful advice.
Being so pedantic, and then saying "but I'm not going to use the technical term voice" is particularly off-putting. If this is an article about grammatical pedentry, let's go all the way. Otherwise, the author should focus on providing useful advice.
The phrasal verb "blow up" can be either transitive or intransitive.
"The bus blew up" is a perfectly active clause. "The bus" is the subject, it did its own blowing-up.
"The bus was blown up" is a passive clause. "The bus" is the object, some unnamed entity acted on the bus.
"The bus blew up" is a perfectly active clause. "The bus" is the subject, it did its own blowing-up.
"The bus was blown up" is a passive clause. "The bus" is the object, some unnamed entity acted on the bus.
For completeness, the transitive active might be "The terrorist blew up the bus".
In the intransitive case you can infer the reflexive case (agent acting upon itself), "The bus blew itself up". Some languages have a formal "middle voice" for reflexion.
English lacks a formal middle and there is a good deal of established literature on verbal aspects where the subject is not really the agent called "ergative".
There is utility in comparing "the bus exploded", perhaps unclear as to the agent, but language is not an agent game. It's trying to convey information, which is clear enough in these cases.
English lacks a formal middle and there is a good deal of established literature on verbal aspects where the subject is not really the agent called "ergative".
There is utility in comparing "the bus exploded", perhaps unclear as to the agent, but language is not an agent game. It's trying to convey information, which is clear enough in these cases.
I like "the bus blew up the terrorist" as a clearer illustration. :P
grammatically active, functionally passive, exactly as GP said
The whole point of the article is that there's no such thing like "functionally passive" and people will invariably twist themselves into knots if they actually try to give it a, let's say, functional definition.
You could simply say "You must be clear who did what" and it would be as good an advice as any, but people have to shove in "passive" into the advice, which serves no purpose and just makes things more confusing.
You could simply say "You must be clear who did what" and it would be as good an advice as any, but people have to shove in "passive" into the advice, which serves no purpose and just makes things more confusing.
The author is a linguist where passive has a technical definition and implicitly wishes that people would use some other word for what they have an issue with.
How is it even functionally passive?
It doesn't tell you who blew up the bus
A bus can blow up of its own accord if, for example, its fuel tank explodes. There's no need for an external agent.
The volcano erupted.
Is that passive?
Is that passive?
No, the volcano caused the eruption. Who caused the bus explosion? You are fixated on the grammatical parse tree instead of the reality conveyed by the grammar, what happened in the universe and what information is conveyed.
Maybe this is just the programmer in me but it really feels like the difference between an abstract syntax tree and an IR is apposite here. You're evaluating at the wrong level. But also: who's to say the bus didn't decide to blow up all by itself? The bus can be the agent, the same way the volcano is.
If you think that couldn't happen, you never rode in my 2011 Audi A6 that blew up on the Ike, and that I parked in a CPD parking lot, flames jumping out from under the hood, and walked away from like a fucking Batman villain, clicking the key fob just to hear it go "beep-boop-beep" one last time.
If you think that couldn't happen, you never rode in my 2011 Audi A6 that blew up on the Ike, and that I parked in a CPD parking lot, flames jumping out from under the hood, and walked away from like a fucking Batman villain, clicking the key fob just to hear it go "beep-boop-beep" one last time.
There is a link right there in TFA that explains what happened to the bus. The bus was not your Audi. It did not spontaneously combust. The bus was involved in a conflict that was a hot-button issue even back in 2011, and the quoted headline "Bus Blows Up in <CITY>" was blatantly excluding information. Language exists in context.
When the commenter above says "functionally passive", he is getting at something that lies outside of any strict grammatical sense. It is not a matter of ASTs, IRs, or anything of the like. It might be less confusing to phrase this as "spiritually passive". We're using "passive" not in the technical sense but in the normal, colloquial meaning of the word.
Normal people often use the grammatical term "passive voice" to casually mean "this sentence does that 'passive' thing where it omits key info about agency and responsibility". This casual usage makes a lot of sense, because the technical "passive" is our most useful tell for the spiritual "passive". Granted, anyone who takes a moment to think it over can see that there are counterexamples, and that this tell is merely a loose correlation, not an ironclad correspondence. Normal people are okay with this sort of situation.
Pedants are within their rights to be annoyed by this usage (and perhaps genuinely confused, though I doubt that this is common). There is certainly no law against being angry or snide whenever a word has multiple, related meanings. But TFA is just plain wrong when it claims that the passive voice "has nothing to do with lacking energy or initiative, or assuming a receptive and non-directive role." It is entirely related -- by correlation. Correlations are not foolproof logical rules, but people can see them and use them.
Moreover, normal people can see when Orwell or Strunk & White point out a correlation. They can read intelligently to understand what Orwell and Strunk & White really meant, and how it applies to actual headlines and sentences. And finally, they can read Pullum here call Orwell's essay "overblown", and decide for themselves whether Orwell is overstating the dangers of official language, how it can serve to dehumanize and deflect, or whether, more likely, Pullum is overstating this stupid nitpick about what "passive voice" ackshually means.
When the commenter above says "functionally passive", he is getting at something that lies outside of any strict grammatical sense. It is not a matter of ASTs, IRs, or anything of the like. It might be less confusing to phrase this as "spiritually passive". We're using "passive" not in the technical sense but in the normal, colloquial meaning of the word.
Normal people often use the grammatical term "passive voice" to casually mean "this sentence does that 'passive' thing where it omits key info about agency and responsibility". This casual usage makes a lot of sense, because the technical "passive" is our most useful tell for the spiritual "passive". Granted, anyone who takes a moment to think it over can see that there are counterexamples, and that this tell is merely a loose correlation, not an ironclad correspondence. Normal people are okay with this sort of situation.
Pedants are within their rights to be annoyed by this usage (and perhaps genuinely confused, though I doubt that this is common). There is certainly no law against being angry or snide whenever a word has multiple, related meanings. But TFA is just plain wrong when it claims that the passive voice "has nothing to do with lacking energy or initiative, or assuming a receptive and non-directive role." It is entirely related -- by correlation. Correlations are not foolproof logical rules, but people can see them and use them.
Moreover, normal people can see when Orwell or Strunk & White point out a correlation. They can read intelligently to understand what Orwell and Strunk & White really meant, and how it applies to actual headlines and sentences. And finally, they can read Pullum here call Orwell's essay "overblown", and decide for themselves whether Orwell is overstating the dangers of official language, how it can serve to dehumanize and deflect, or whether, more likely, Pullum is overstating this stupid nitpick about what "passive voice" ackshually means.
I mean, if your first thought is to appeal to Orwell and Strunk, and you're reading Language Log, you're gonna have a bad time:
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=992
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=992
I'm not appealing to them out of nowhere. I'm rejecting Pullum's dismissal of them at the end of TFA. You can learn a lot more from them, than from what I've seen of this blog.
As to this new link...what a load a willful misrepresentations. Misses the point entirely. The rules in PatEL are not literal laws. They are merely pointing the way toward something.
For example, from the very top:
> So, Orwell writes "it is generally assumed", which is passive. Why didn't he say "people generally assume", or "we generally assume", both of which are perfectly grammatical...
Beaver's proposed variants are also passive, spiritually, in my sense above. Who is "we"? A good author chooses between these not based on which one is literally passive, but on other considerations like flow and sound.
Maybe there are Orwell fans out there who have read PatEL too literally, and need to be disabused? Maybe this blog is good for those kinds of people? But from what I've seen so far of LL, it's a bunch of smug dunks that nobody asked for.
As to this new link...what a load a willful misrepresentations. Misses the point entirely. The rules in PatEL are not literal laws. They are merely pointing the way toward something.
For example, from the very top:
> So, Orwell writes "it is generally assumed", which is passive. Why didn't he say "people generally assume", or "we generally assume", both of which are perfectly grammatical...
Beaver's proposed variants are also passive, spiritually, in my sense above. Who is "we"? A good author chooses between these not based on which one is literally passive, but on other considerations like flow and sound.
Maybe there are Orwell fans out there who have read PatEL too literally, and need to be disabused? Maybe this blog is good for those kinds of people? But from what I've seen so far of LL, it's a bunch of smug dunks that nobody asked for.
Fair enough! I'm just saying it's one of the notable beats LL has, is poking holes in Strunk and Orwell.
the article is literally going through the technical definition of passive voice
Sure, but he is packaging it in this superior snark. He is aggressively dismissing the very real thing that people actually mean when they say "avoid passive voice". A technical explainer on its own would be fine, but at least to my ears, this piece reads as narrow-minded and bitter.
Their snark sounds superior because they are superior. It's Language Log.
Huh, I don't know much about this site. Maybe I should. From reading up on the author, it looks like this is where they invented the term "snowclone", which is pretty cool I guess.
But this particular article rubs me the wrong way, for whatever reason. It just seems to miss the point.
But this particular article rubs me the wrong way, for whatever reason. It just seems to miss the point.
The most important thing about the passive voice is that you can avoid saying who did something.
The headlines read "Hamas terrorists fire rockets at Israel, killing tens" and the other headlines read "Missiles were shot at Gaza" and "Thousands of Palestinians were killed" [corrected]. Who did that? Nobody knows!
The headlines read "Hamas terrorists fire rockets at Israel, killing tens" and the other headlines read "Missiles were shot at Gaza" and "Thousands of Palestinians were killed" [corrected]. Who did that? Nobody knows!
You can avoid specifying agency in the active with some sort of placeholder. Hopefully, maybe, that placeholder is going to be more noticable than the omission of agency in the passive... but it seems more useful to simply ask directly whether agency is clear.
"Missiles were shot at Gaza" is passive and avoids specifying agency. "Someone shot missiles at Gaza" is active and avoids specifying agency. "Missiles were fired at Gaza by Israel" is passive and specifies agency. Sometimes you don't even need a placeholder: "Missiles hit Gaza" is active and avoids agency.
"Missiles were shot at Gaza" is passive and avoids specifying agency. "Someone shot missiles at Gaza" is active and avoids specifying agency. "Missiles were fired at Gaza by Israel" is passive and specifies agency. Sometimes you don't even need a placeholder: "Missiles hit Gaza" is active and avoids agency.
Um, there's no passive in "thousands of Palestinians die".
"Thousands of Palestinians killed" is in passive. "Rockets were fired at Israel" would be as well.
"Thousands of Palestinians killed" is in passive. "Rockets were fired at Israel" would be as well.
Are you saying that the Jews are behind the passive voice?
This was clearly written by a pedant of the worst kind, boasting of how great he and his friends are at "mocking people who denigrate the passive without being able to identify it".
It is understood by basically everybody that there are two different things meant by passive vs. active: on one hand, the technical grammatical distinction, and on the other, the broader spirit of the phrase. Edge cases are very easy to construct: passive clauses where the agency is well-identified, and active clauses where responsibility is totally diffuse. This technical clarification is needed by nobody, because a rule-of-thumb like "avoid passive voice" is meant to be used holistically, not literally.
At the end, a parting shot is fired at George Orwell and E.B. White. Naturally, the superior intellect of the author of TFA is driven home.
It is understood by basically everybody that there are two different things meant by passive vs. active: on one hand, the technical grammatical distinction, and on the other, the broader spirit of the phrase. Edge cases are very easy to construct: passive clauses where the agency is well-identified, and active clauses where responsibility is totally diffuse. This technical clarification is needed by nobody, because a rule-of-thumb like "avoid passive voice" is meant to be used holistically, not literally.
At the end, a parting shot is fired at George Orwell and E.B. White. Naturally, the superior intellect of the author of TFA is driven home.
Uh I mean he's a linguistics professor. People are misusing "passive voice" when describing something they don't like and of course the linguist is going to get ornery about it. If you have something against clauses with diffuse agency say that- don't put the blame squarely on passive voice.
I've tried to read this sentence so many times. That parenthetical is a doozy.