1. Active and Passive voice
Dr. Yahya Toyin Muritala
Kulliyyah Languages and Management
(KLM)
International Islamic University
Malaysia (IIUM)

2. Content Coverage
• Syntax in brief
• Parts of Speech
• Active and Passive Voices
• Examples of Active and Passive from the Quran
• Four Basic Sentence Structures

3. Syntax in brief
 Syntax depends on lexical categories
 There are 8 main parts of speech.
 Linguistic takes a different approach to these
categories
 Linguistic separates words into morphological and
syntactic groups
 Linguistic analyzes words according to their affixes
and the words that follow or precede them
 Hopefully, the following definitions of the parts of
speech will make more sense and be of more use
than the old definitions of grammar school books

4. Parts of Speech
Nouns
• _____ + plural
endings
"dogs"
• Det. Adj. _____
(this is called a
Noun Phrase)
"the big dog"
Verbs
• ____ + tense
endings
"speaks"
• Aux. ____ (this
is called a Verb
Phrase)
"have spoken"
Adjectives
• ____ + er / est
"small"
• Det. ____ Noun
"the smaller
child"

5. Parts of Speech contd.
Adverbs
• Adj. + ly
"quickly"
• ____ Adj. or
Verb or Adv.
"quickly ran".
Determiners
• a, an, the, this,
that, these,
those,
pronouns,
quantities
• ____ Adj. Noun
"this blue book"
Auxiliary
Verbs
• forms of be,
have, may,
can, shall
• NP ____ VP
"the girl is
swimming"

6. Parts of Speech contd.
• at, in, on, under, over, of
• ____ NP (this is called a
Prepositional Phrase)
"in the room"
Prepositions
• and, but, or
• Adj.
“Musa and Haroon”
• "Apples and oranges".
Conjunctions

7. Active and Passive Voices
 The difference between the two sentences "Daud killed
Goliath" and "Goliath was killed by Daud" is that the
first is active and the second is passive. Surat Al-
Baqarah Q2: 251
 In order to change an active sentence into a passive
one, the object of the active must become the subject of
the passive.
 The verb in the passive sentence becomes a form of
"be" plus the participle form of the main verb.
 And the subject of the active becomes the object of the
passive preceded by the word "by."

8. Examples of Active and Passive from
the Quran
• Daud killed
Goliath.Surat Al-
Baqarah Q2: 251
• Subject + Verb + Object
Active
voice
• Goliath was killed by
Daud.
• Object + "be" + Verb +
by + Subject
Passive
voice

9. Four Basic Sentence Structures
• A simple sentence is a sentence with just
one independent clause (also called a
main clause): ‘He (Solomon) laughed’ or ‘A
man arrived from the extreme of the city’.
• Surat An-Naml Q27: 19.
• Surat Yassin Q36:20
Simple
Sentence
• A compound sentence contains at least
two independent clauses: Ahmad laughed
and James cried.
Compound
Sentence

10. Four Basic Sentence Structures contd.
• A complex sentence contains an independent clause
and at least one dependent clause: Ahmad cried
when James laughed.
• Another example of it is the statement of the prophet
which is: “Whoever memorizes the first ten verses of
Surat Al-Kahf, will be saved from the affliction of
Dajjal”. Reported by Abu Daud
Complex
Sentence
• A compound-complex sentence contains two or more
independent clauses and at least one dependent
clause:
• Ahmad laughed and James cried when the results of
their last tests were released.
Compound-
Complex
Sentence