The impersonal passive voice is a verb voice that decreases the valency of an intransitive verb (which has valency one) to zero.
The impersonal passive deletes the subject of an intransitive verb. In place of the verb's subject, the construction instead may include a syntactic placeholder, also called a dummy. This placeholder has neither thematic nor referential content. (A similar example is the word "there" in the English phrase "There are three books.")
The deleted argument can be reintroduced as an oblique argument or complement.
Read more about Impersonal Passive Voice: Test of Unergative Verbs, German, Venetian
Famous quotes containing the words passive voice, impersonal, passive and/or voice:
“We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice—that is, until we have stopped saying “It got lost,” and say, “I lost it.””
—Sydney J. Harris (b. 1917)
“That impersonal insensitive friendliness which takes the place of ceremony in that land of waifs and strays.”
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)
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—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
““Pray my dear,” quoth my mother, “have you not forgot to wind up the clock?”M”Good G—!” cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking care to moderate his voice at the same time,—”Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question?””
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)