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Passively Voiced
A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the ''theme'' or ''patient'' of the main verb – that is, the person or thing that undergoes the action or has its state changed. This contrasts with active voice, in which the subject has the agent role. For example, in the passive sentence "The tree was pulled down", the subject (''the tree'') denotes the patient rather than the agent of the action. In contrast, the sentences "Someone pulled down the tree" and "The tree is down" are active sentences. Typically, in passive clauses, what is usually expressed by the object (or sometimes another argument) of the verb is now expressed by the subject, while what is usually expressed by the subject is either omitted or is indicated by some adjunct of the clause. Thus, turning an active sense of a verb into a passive sense is a valence-decreasing process ("detransitiviz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voice (grammar)
In grammar, the voice of a verb describes the relationship between the action (or state) that the verb expresses and the participants identified by its arguments (subject, object, etc.). When the subject is the agent or doer of the action, the verb is in the active voice. When the subject is the patient, target or undergoer of the action, the verb is said to be in the passive voice. When the subject both performs and receives the action expressed by the verb, the verb is in the middle voice. Voice is sometimes called diathesis. The following pair of examples illustrates the contrast between active and passive voice in English. In sentence (1), the verb form ''ate'' is in the active voice, but in sentence (2), the verb form ''was eaten'' is in the passive voice. Independent of voice, ''the cat'' is the Agent (the doer) of the action of eating in both sentences. # ''The cat ate the mouse.'' # ''The mouse was eaten by the cat.'' In a transformation from an active-voice clause to a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Topic–comment
In linguistics, the topic, or theme, of a sentence is what is being talked about, and the comment (rheme or Focus (linguistics), focus) is what is being said about the topic. This division into old vs. new content is called information structure. It is generally agreed that clauses are divided into topic vs. comment, but in certain cases the boundary between them depends on which specific grammatical theory is being used to analyze the sentence. Topic, which is defined by pragmatic considerations, is a distinct concept from Subject (grammar), grammatical subject, which is defined by syntax. In any given sentence these may be the same, but they need not be. For example, in the sentence "As for the little girl, the dog bit her", the subject is "the dog" but the topic is "the little girl". Topic and subject are also distinct concepts from Agent (grammar), agent (or actor)—the "doer", which is defined by semantics. In English clauses with a verb in the passive voice, for instanc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prepositional Phrase
An adpositional phrase, in linguistics, is a syntactic category that includes ''prepositional phrases'', ''postpositional phrases'', and ''circumpositional phrases''. Adpositional phrases contain an adposition (preposition, postposition, or circumposition) as head (linguistics), head and usually a Complement (linguistics), complement such as a noun phrase. Language syntax treats adpositional phrases as units that act as Argument (linguistics), arguments or Adjunct (grammar), adjuncts. Prepositional and postpositional phrases differ by the order of the words used. Languages that are primarily Head-directionality parameter, head-initial such as English language, English predominantly use prepositional phrases whereas head-final languages predominantly employ postpositional phrases. Many languages have both types, as well as circumpositional phrases. Types There are three types of adpositional phrases: prepositional phrases, postpositional phrases, and circumpositional phrases. Pre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ablative
In grammar, the ablative case (pronounced ; sometimes abbreviated ) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in the grammars of various languages; it is sometimes used to express motion away from something, among other uses. The word "ablative" derives from the Latin ''ablatus'', the (irregular) perfect, passive participle of ''auferre'' "to carry away". The ablative case is found in several language families, such as Indo-European (e.g., Sanskrit, Latin, Albanian, Armenian), Turkic (e.g., Turkish, Turkmen, Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tatar), and Uralic (e.g., Hungarian). There is no ablative case in modern Germanic languages such as German and English. There ''was'' an ablative case in the early stages of Ancient Greek, but it quickly fell into disuse by the classical period. Indo-European languages Latin The ablative case in Latin (''cāsus ablātīvus'') appears in various grammatical constructions, including following various prepositio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
