Subject I am verb is adjective: is that passive voice? e.g.
- The question I am asking is stupid
I'm not sure because I don't know if "asking" or "is" is the verb, here.
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Sign up to join this communitySubject I am verb is adjective: is that passive voice? e.g.
I'm not sure because I don't know if "asking" or "is" is the verb, here.
Passive is a rule that applies to clauses, and there are two clauses in the sentence.
(1) is active and intransitive; since Passive only applies to transitive clauses,
there is no passive version of this clause.
(2) is the relative clause transform of I am asking the question,
which is active and transitive. Therefore Passive can apply to it, producing
Making that back into a relative clause produces
and plugging that back into the original sentence gives
This isn't the "passive voice" of the original sentence, however;
it's just a different sentence with a passive relative clause.
It's grammatical English, but it's hard to think of a context that it would be useful for.
No, the sentence is active:
The question I am asking is stupid.
I am asking a stupid question.
The passive version would be:
A stupid question is being asked.
Here is a longer answer.
In linguistic terms, what we call a subject in (common) grammar is an agent, and what we call an object in grammar is a patient.
In sentences in an active voice, there is a 1-1 relationship between subject and agent, and between object and patient.
But when a sentence changes to the passive voice, subject and object are said to change places. However, agent and patient do not.
In the active voice, I am both the subject and agent of the sentence; and the question is both the object and patient of the sentence.
When switching to the passive voice, the subject of the sentence becomes the question. (And, in my version, the object disappears.)
In linguistic terms, the patient remains while the agent disappears. (We no longer know who's performing the action.)
In any case, the essential point is that we don't know who is asking the question—it could be anyone.
Now, the sentence could be rephrased as:
A stupid question is being asked by me.
In this version, the linguistic agent hasn't disappeared—but in terms of grammar, me is now the object of the sentence.
Regardless, the focus of the sentence has still switched from the asker to the question.
Typically, the reason to use the passive voice is if the person or thing responsible for an action is unknown. If you know what caused something, then you normally use the active voice. (Although sometimes you really do want to place emphasis on the target of an action rather than the person or thing responsible.)