A small body of research exists that examines deaf children’s acquisition of passive constructions that use the verb to be with a past participle. Three salient studies are presented here. For the purpose of understanding deaf children’s acquisition of the passive voice, it is useful to divide passive constructions into three subtypes.
1. Reversible passive constructions
2. Nonreversible passive constructions
3. Agentless passive constructions
A "reversible passive" is a passive construction in which the subject can be exchanged with the agent in the by-phrase and still leave a correct logical sentence, albeit with the opposite meaning. Note the following example.
The detectives were tricked by the computer hacker.
If the subject and the agent in the by-phrase were reversed like this, “The computer hacker was tricked by the detectives,” the sentence would still make logical sense. Most reversible passive constructions contain animate nouns in both the subject position and in the by-phrase.
A "nonreversible passive" is a passive construction in which the subject cannot be exchanged with the agent in the by-phrase and still leave a correct logical sentence. For example,
The whole mainframe system was destroyed by a young hacker.
If this sentence were expressed as “A young hacker was destroyed by the whole mainframe system,” it would never make sense; hence, it is nonreversible.
An "agentless passive" is a passive construction that does not include the agent by-phrase, such as in the following two sentences:
The detectives were tricked.
The whole mainframe system was destroyed.
The agentless passive is, of course, the most common of the three subtypes.
Summary of Subtypes of Passive Voice Constructions
1. In reversible passive constructions, the subject can be exchanged with the agent in the by-phrase and still leave a correct logical sentence
2. In nonreversible passive constructions, the subject can not be exchanged with the agent in the by-phrase and still leave a correct logical sentence.
3. In agentless passive constructions, there is no expressed agent by-phrase.