28.9: Part 1: 8 THE VERB: VOICE (LA VOIX)

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8 THE VERB: VOICE (LA VOIX)

"Voice" is a term used in classifying verb constructions as to whether the agent of the action mentioned is the grammatical subject or some other person, in which case the grammatical subject is "passive," that is, undergoes the action. The concept is interesting, but for learning French at this level, there are just a few structural rules that we need to mention, as given below in 8.2.

8.1 Voice: Active (La voix active)

The active voice is the more common one in English and in most European languages, particularly in French. All the examples of tenses and moods above are examples of active voice constructions.

8.2 Voice: Passive (La voix passive)

Form

The passive voice is formed in French with the verb être (to be) plus the past participle. (There is no reason to confuse this construction with the active construction in the passé composé with être verbs: you'll recall that all être verbs are intransitive, that is, do not take an object; all passive constructions, on the other hand, involve transitive verbs—all of which would take avoir as the auxiliary in the active passé composé construction).

The agent in a complete passive construction is introduced by par (when the activity is generally physical, concrete) or by de (when the activity is generally emotional, more abstract).

Jean a été frappé par son père.	John was hit by his father.
Le roi est aimé de ses sujets.	The king is loved by his subjects.

As mentioned above, the passive is not a very frequent construction in French. When the agent is known, French much more commonly retains the active construction. When the agent is not known or not made explicit, French uses the indefinite on, with an active construction.

La porte a été fermée.	The door was closed.
→ On a fermé la porte.	→ Someone closed the door.

There are also a number of verbs regularly used in the reflexive form to express what we might express in English with the passive. The most common, used in this book, is se trouver.

La tour Eiffel se trouve à Paris.

The Eiffel Tower is located in Paris.

Function and Use

It's really difficult to imagine why anyone would use the passive in French unless he or she was told by a composition teacher to avoid using personal subjects. Students at this level should not worry about producing passive constructions.

The use of the passive by native speakers is more or less stylistically controlled: the speaker/writer wants to vary sentence patterns, or wants to remove the subject (agent) from the initial position in order to place something else there, thus giving it special prominence.