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UNIT TWENTY
The passive
Introduction
A construction that is much more common in Dutch than in English is
the passive voice. Sentences in English such as I was born in 1962 or This
house was built in 1785 are passive constructions. They are used when the
emphasis of the statement lies more on the action than on its agent, or
more specifically, when the agent is irrelevant or unknown. This applies
very much to the sentence This house was built in 1785. We don’t know
who built it, but a sign on the house or city records might show us that it
was built in 1785, which is much more important information than knowing
who actually built it. If, however, the architect or the builder was a very
famous or important person, we might say: This house was built in 1785
by the famous architect John Johnsen. In Dutch, we would do the same:
Dit huis is in 1785 gebouwd (no agent).
This house was built in 1785.
Dit huis is in 1785 door de beroemde architect Jan Janssen gebouwd
(with agent).
This house was built in 1785 by the famous architect Jan Janssen.
This unit introduces you to the passive construction in four tenses:
present, simple past (imperfect), present perfect and past perfect. It gives
examples with and without the agent of the action, and it discusses the
most common form, the passive construction with er. As always, the unit
pays special attention to issues of word order.
The forms
The passive construction is formed with the auxiliary verb worden and the
past participle of the main verb (here, we call this the passive participle).
The form of worden is the finite verb, and the passive participle is at the
end of the sentence. 133