Personal and Impersonal Passive Voice

The passive voice in English can be used in both personal and impersonal constructions to report general opinions or beliefs without specifying who holds them. This page explains the formation and usage of these structures, focusing on the impersonal passive and personal passive forms.

Definition: Impersonal passive constructions begin with "It is" followed by a past participle verb (such as "thought" or "believed") and a "that" clause.

Example: "People think that she is a very kind person" becomes "It is thought that she is a very kind person."

The personal passive transforms the subject of the original sentence into the subject of the passive construction.

Example: "People think that she is a very kind person" can also be expressed as "She is thought to be a very kind person."

Highlight: When both parts of the sentence are in the same tense (present + present/future), use "to + infinitive" in the second part of the personal passive construction.

For sentences with different tenses in each part (present + past), a different structure is used:

Example: "They believe that she stole the car" becomes "She is believed to have stolen the car."

Vocabulary: In this case, we use "to have + past participle" (3rd column of irregular verbs or -ed for regular verbs) in the second part of the personal passive construction.

These strona bierna - konstrukcje bezosobowe ćwiczenia demonstrate how to effectively use impersonal constructions with passive voice to convey information without specifying the source of the belief or opinion.