Passive Voice in The Perfect Past Tense: How to Form

In the passive voice of the perfect past tense in an affirmative sentence, we use the auxiliary verb ‘had’ with ‘been’ and the past participle, which is the third form of the verb. In this topic, we will discuss how to form and change the active voice to the passive voice in the past perfect tense.

Passive Voice of Perfect Past Tense – Formation

In this, we use the helping verb ‘had’ for any subject that is-

• If the subject of the passive voice is first person singular or plural, that is ‘I’ and ‘we’.
• For the subject in the second person singular or plural, that is ‘you’.
• If the subject is third person singular or plural, that is ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘it’, ‘they‘, or any other person.

In the passive voice of the perfect past tense – positive, negative, interrogative and negative interrogative – we use the past participle (third form) of the verb.

Keep in mind that we should arrange the sentence in the following form:

• Active sentence: subject + had + past participle of verb + object
• Passive sentence: object of the active sentence + had + been + past participle (third form) of verb + by + subject of the active sentence

Example of Perfect Past Tense – Transformation

Now we shall take an example of the past perfect tense and transform it into the passive voice.

Have a look.

Active: She had drawn a picture yesterday. (draw – base form)

First, you should learn how to form the past perfect tense.

The above sentence is in the form-

• Subject + had + past participle of verb + object + remaining word

Passive: A picture had been drawn by her yesterday. (drawn – past participle of draw)

The passive voice of this sentence is in the form:

• Object in active + had + been + past participle of ‘draw’ + by + subject in active + remaining word.

In the above sentence, we can see the changes in the transformation of active to passive voice as:

• The object of the active form (picture) became the subject.
• Subject ‘she’ became object ‘her’.
• The past form of have, that is, ‘had’, with ‘been’ is added
• The past participle of the verb ‘draw’, which is ‘drawn’, is taken.

More Examples- Passive Voice of Perfect Past Tense

All of these sentences are affirmative.

Have a look.

Active: They had watched a movie.

• Passive: A movie had been watched by them.

Active: A mason had built a wall.

• Passive: A wall had been built by a mason.

Active: A teacher had delivered a lecture.

• Passive: A lecture had been delivered by a teacher.

Active: The students had obeyed the orders of their physical trainer.

• Passive: Orders of their physical trainer had been obeyed by the students.

You may also like the passive voice of the tenses

1. Simple Present
2. Present Continuous
3. Simple Past
4. Past Continuous
5. Perfect Present
6. Simple Future
7. Future Perfect