Voice

What is voice?

Voice, also known as diathesis, is a grammatical feature that shows the relationship between the verb and the subject (or agent) in a sentence. It specifies how the verb is written or expressed in relation to the agent.
There are three types of voice: active, passive and middle.
Active Voice: The dog bit the mailman. (Subject “dog” is doing the action “bit”)
Passive Voice: The mailman was bitten by the dog. (Subject “mailman” is having the action done to them)
Middle Voice: The cake is baking (The subject “cake” is undergoing the action of baking)

Active voice

Active voice refers to a sentence structure where the subject performs the action. In an active voice sentence, the subject carries out an action on the object. As an example, in the sentence “The dog chased the cat,” “dog” is the subject and it is doing the action of chasing the object “cat”.

Passive voice

Passive voice occurs when the subject of a sentence is the recipient of the action. In a passive sentence, the object of the active sentence becomes the subject, and the subject of the active sentence is either an object of a preposition or is left out. For example, “The cat was chased by the dog,” the subject “cat” is receiving the action of being chased and “dog” is the object of the preposition “by.”

“Middle” voice

The middle voice is a grammatical voice in which the subject of a sentence performs the action and also experiences the action. It is less common, and not present in many languages. Some ancient Greek and Indo-European languages have the middle voice, but it’s not widely used in modern English. An example of the middle voice in English is “The window opens easily,” where the subject “window” is performing the action of opening and being affected by it.