Passive Voice

English Passive Voice

Quirk et al. (1985) claims that voice is a grammatical category that allows users to interpret the action of a sentence in either of two directions without shifting the facts reported. The Passive voice is made of a form of be + the past participle of the main verb. The person or thing performing the action can be part of a "by" phrase, but it can and often is omitted from the sentence. When using pronouns, the case must be changed because the subject of an active verb becomes the object of a passive verb. An active verb's object also becomes the subject of a passive verb. n the active voice, the subject is performing an action

Forms of voices in English as shown below;

Active voice: Subject + Verb + Object.

Passive voice: Object + Verb + Subject.

Thai Passive Voice

According to Prasithrathsint (2006), some commentators are skeptical about the existence of Thai passive because passive is often considered a Western grammatical calque that arrived in Thai only in the early Bangkok period, less than 200 years ago.

Sudmuk (2003) claims that passive structures in Thai are just so-called ones influenced by English. On the other hand, Prasithrathsinth (2006) argues that Thai passives are true passives since they are covered by Keenan’s (1990) classification of world passives.

Overt Passive

Thai passive constructions use one of three lexical items: ถูก /thuk/ , โดน /don/, and ได้รับ /dai/ + /rup/. Iwasaki and Ingkapirom (2005) sometimes refer to them as ‘passive auxiliaries’ and sometimes as ‘passive markers.’

Covert Passive

Thai passive constructions without passive markers, or ‘covert’ passives is classified into two types. In the first one, the patient-subject appears before the verb and is then optionally followed by a complement. The structure is Subject-Patient+ Verb + (Complement). Secondly, if the agent is important and needs to be referred to, the word โดย /doi/ meaning ‘by’ is added to indicate the agent. The structure is Subject-Patient+ Verb+ /doi/ Agent.