Voice
The voice of a verb expresses whether the subject of the verb is performing the action of the verb or whether the action is being performed on the subject. The two most common voices are the active voice (as in "I saw the car") and the passive voice (as in "The car was seen by me" or simply "The car was seen").
Most languages have a number of verbal nouns that describe the action of the verb.
In the Indo-European languages, verbal adjectives are generally called participles. English has an active participle, also called a present participle; and a passive participle, also called a past participle. The active participle of break is breaking, and the passive participle is broken. Other languages have attributive verb forms with tense and aspect. This is especially common among verb-final languages, where attributive verb phrases act as relative clauses.
Read more about this topic: Verb
Famous quotes containing the word voice:
“And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird.
Come lovely and soothing death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later delicate death.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“Living by basic good-mothering guidelines enables a mom to blend the responsibilities of parenthood with its joys; to know when to stand her ground and when to be flexible; and to absorb the lessons of the parenting gurus while also trusting her inner voice when it reasons that another cookie isn’t worth fighting over, or that her child won’t suffer irreparable trauma if, once in a while, Mom puts her own needs first.”
—Sue Woodman (20th century)
“It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.”
—Italo Calvino (1923–1985)