In my earlier article, I showed how the iLexicon system can generate verb conjugations based on <Verb, Tense, Person, Number> quadruple. For the 16 tense forms discussed in that article, the verb conjugations were generated in “active” voice.
We all know that “transitive” verbs can be expressed in both “active” and “passive” voice. For example, considering the transitive verb “chase”, the following are valid sentences:
The dog chased the cat (active voice)
The cat was chased by the dog (passive voice)
Intransitive verbs such as “sleep”, do not have a passive voice. For example, we can only say:
Peter slept (active voice)
There is no corresponding passive representation.
Here are the “active” voice conjugations of the verb “eat” for 3rd Person Singular:
Active Voice Conjugations
For the same verb, here are the “passive” voice conjugations for 3rd Person Singular case:
Passive Voice Conjugations
How does it change if we conjugate for 2nd Person Plural case?
Passive Voice – 2nd Person Plural
Finally, let us use another verb “drink” and generate the conjugations for 3rd Person Singular case:
Passive Voice Conjugations – “Drink”
This example also shows that even though we specify the “continuous” form of the verb “drink”, the verb conjugator is intelligent enough to take its “root” form and then emit the 16 possible conjugations of the verb.
Neat, isn’t it?
In my next article, I will discuss how iLexicon internally uses these conjugation rules to transform a sentence in active voice to passive voice, and vice versa.
Have a great week ahead!
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