Sentence types - Zinstypen

Active and passive voice - Actief en passief (bedrijvende en lijdende vorm)

The passive voice provides a different focus on a situation. Look at the following examples:

If we consider the two examples above, it is obvious that both sentences refer to the same event: the publication of a book by a publishing house. The difference between the two sentences lies in the way in which that event is described.

In an active sentence the >>subject is the actor carrying out the activity described by the verb and the >>direct object is the entity undergoing the activity described by the verb. In the active sentence above the subject is De Arbeiderspers and het nieuwe boek van De Vries is the direct object.

In the corresponding passive sentence there has been something of a grammatical role reversal: the direct object of the active sentence (in the sentences above het nieuwe boek van De Vries) is the subject in the passive sentence.

The semantic roles remain the same: de Arbeiderspers is still doing the publishing and and het nieuwe boek van De Vries is still undergoing it. That is why it is useful to have separate labels for grammatical roles and semantic roles. We use the label agent for the actor carrying out the activity (de Arbeiderspers) and the label patient for the entity undergoing the activity (het nieuwe boek van De Vries).

In an active sentence the (semantic) agent is the (grammatical) subject and the (semantic) patient is the (grammatical) direct object . In the passive sentence the (semantic) patient is the (grammatical) subject. The agent is expressed by means of the preposition door (in English by).

In other words, in an active sentence the focus is on the agent, while in a passive sentence the patient is given focus. The active and passive voices offer different perspectives on the same situation by presenting the agent's and the patient's "point of view" respectively.

There is >more about the agent in a passive sentence.

The >>main verb in a passive sentence takes the form of a past partciple. There are also two passive >>auxiliaries: worden and zijn.

There is >more about the passive predicate.

The passive voice is widely used in Dutch. It occurs frequently in more formal text or written reports. Click >here to see an example of a text containing passive sentences.

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Click here to read about passive sentences in the Beginners Dutch Grammar