---
title: In the passive voice the subject receives the action: "The cake was… — Active and passive voice, modal verbs · tree and pragmatics
description: In the passive voice the subject receives the action: "The cake was eaten by the dog." Who acts: subject, dog. A sentence of the lesson «Active and passive voice, modal verbs» of the english course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Active and passive voice, modal verbs, sentence 6

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In the passive voice the subject receives the action: "The cake was eaten by the dog."

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**Who acts:** subject, dog · **What happens:** receive, eat · **To what, where:** action, passive voice, cake · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Active and passive voice, modal verbs» of the english course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (subject, dog), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:english:032-active-and-passive-voice-modal-verbs.lesson:6
# text = In the passive voice the subject receives the action: "The cake was eaten by the dog."
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = english
# lesson = 032-active-and-passive-voice-modal-verbs.lesson
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): no change
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	passive	passive	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	voice	voice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	subject	subject	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
7	receives	receive	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	action	action	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
10	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	7	punct	_	_
11	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	_
12	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	cake	cake	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
14	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	aux:pass	_	_
15	eaten	eat	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	7	parataxis	_	_
16	by	by	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	dog	dog	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obl	_	_
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
20	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
No stored speech act for this sentence.

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **receive** | present | the subject | the action |  | the passive voice |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **eat** *in a quote* | past · passive | the dog | the cake |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent subject=Patient |

<!-- .note -->
One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)**, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, `mova-school-agreed-en.conllu`) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence `school:english:032-active-and-passive-voice-modal-verbs.lesson:6`.

**The tree:** Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): no change. **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.

See the [release 0.4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

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