French 116-02 Collaborative Page

Grammar Checkpoint: The Passive Voice

1. What is the passive voice?

When we hear or read English we typically expect that the first noun closest to the verb carries information about who or what is responsible for the action or state described by this verb. The standard information order about who or what performs some sort of action thus goes as follows: “X did Y.” Such sentence structure is called the active voice.

The passive voice reverses this standard information order: “Y was done by X.” In this case, Y, even though it appears in first position, receives the action described by the main verb. Notice that the reversal of X and Y’s position in the sentence not only affects the standard information order but also the form of the main verb. In the case of the examples presented above, “did” becomes “was done.”

2. The purpose of the passive voice in context

Grammar textbooks often describe the passive voice as an awkward structure that one should avoid. Linguists have established its tendency to occur mostly in the written mode, especially in newspapers’ “current events” section. This is because the passive voice helps to emphasize the results of an action, and turns the latter into a hard fact. By the same token, the passive voice deemphasizes who is responsible for the action described by the verb, to the point that it does not need to mention that information explicitly. In the following example, it would be common sense to assume that policemen arrested some people.

Example 2.1

     Hier, 337 personnes ont été arrêtées au cours d’une manifestation pacifiste devant la Maison   
     Blanche. 
     	Yesterday,337 people were arrested during a pacifist protest in front of the White House.

Consider the topic of WWII that you are currently studying. Because France was conquered by Germany, you may want to emphasize in your compositions what the French experienced. The examples in the passive voice below shift the perspective of the sentence away from the Germans as doers of actions during WWII, onto the results of their actions, and onto the French as being the receivers of these actions:

Example 2.2

Les Français ont été attaqués par l’Allemagne en 1939. The French were attacked by Germany in 1939.

     Les Français ont été traumatisés par la guerre éclair.
     The French were traumatized by the Blitzkrieg.     
     Les résistants ont été torturés par la Gestapo.

Freedom fighters were tortured by the Gestapo.

If you wanted to shift the perspective of these sentences back to the Germans’ actions, you would write them in the active voice:

Example 2.3

Les Allemands ont attaqué la France en 1939. The Germans attacked France in 1939.

     Les deux guerres mondiales ont traumatisé les Français.

The two world wars traumatized the French.

     Les Allemands ont torturé les résistants.

The Germans tortured the French freedom fighters.

Finally, because the passive voice shifts the information that usually comes after the verb on to the first part of a sentence, it emphasizes and keeps in focus the information about a topic that is already established. In the following conversational exchanges (examples 2.4 and 2.5) we see that the underlined information remains in first position.

Example 2.4

Aline: Quels sentiments ont eu tes grands-parents en voyant les images d’archives du Jour J? What were your grandparents’ overall feelings after viewing the archival footage of D-Day?

    Laure: 	Ils ont été touchés par les images d’archives du Débarquement.

They were moved by the archival footage of D-Day.

Example 2.5

François: Est-ce que les soldats français ont participé au Jour-J? Did French soldiers participate in D-Day? Pauline: Pas complètement. Ils ont été déployés au sud surtout, pour l’opération “Anvil-Dragoon.” They were deployed in the Southern part of France mostly, with the Operation “Anvil-Dragoon.”

3. Recognizing the passive voice

As you noticed in the examples above, the passive voice in French requires that you use some conjugated form of the verb être as part of the main verb phrase. In this case, être is called an “auxiliary” because it is inseparable from the main verb and carries necessary information about tense, person, and number. However, it does not make sense on its own.

Furthermore, notice that the shift of information from “X ont fait Y” (active voice) to “Y ont été faits par X” (passive voice) frequently, but not always, triggers the addition of PAR (the equivalent of “by”) in the sentence structure.

So far, the formation and use of the passive voice in French does not look dramatically different from that of the passive voice in English. However, it is easy to fail to recognize the passive voice in French in two ways:

A. Confusion of the doer and receiver of the action described by the main verb. This confusion is due to the assumption that the first noun closest to the verb carries information about who or what is responsible for the action or state described by the main verb. However, you must ask yourself who/what receives the action described by the main verb as opposed to who/what performs the action in order to differentiate between the passive and the active voice. Oftentimes, the inclusion of PAR in the passive voice sentence structure helps you to recognize the difference between the two. In the exercise 3A below, ask yourself who is responsible for the actions described by the main verbs.