Passive and impersonal choices: patient, agent and result
CEFR B2
What you will learn
- Distinguish impersonal se from passive se through transitivity, personal a and agreement.
- Build event passives with ser and a participle that agrees with the patient subject.
- Separate an action passive from a resulting state and from a vague human agent.
The idea
Passive se has a grammatical subject that undergoes the action, so the verb agrees with it: “Se publicaron dos informes.” Impersonal se has no such subject and keeps third-person singular: “Se entrevistó a dos especialistas.” The number of things mentioned does not decide the construction. Agreement depends on grammatical structure: a direct human object marked by personal a is not the subject of an impersonal se clause.
“La puerta fue cerrada a las ocho” presents a closing event. “La puerta estaba cerrada a las ocho” describes the state observed at that time; it does not by itself identify when or by whom the closing happened.
A ser-passive can include an agent with por. An estar-result normally describes the condition and does not package the same agentive event.
Ser carries tense; the participle carries patient agreement
| time frame | singular masculine | singular feminine | plural masculine | plural feminine |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| present | es revisado | es revisada | son revisados | son revisadas |
| preterite | fue revisado | fue revisada | fueron revisados | fueron revisadas |
| imperfect | era revisado | era revisada | eran revisados | eran revisadas |
| future | será revisado | será revisada | serán revisados | serán revisadas |
| present perfect | ha sido revisado | ha sido revisada | han sido revisados | han sido revisadas |
| conditional | sería revisado | sería revisada | serían revisados | serían revisadas |
How it sounds
- Se agotaron las entradas.
- Se avisó a todos los socios.
- El puente fue inaugurado en mayo.
Your turn
Two or three, to check that the bit above landed.
Use exactly three application forms. En esta ventanilla se ___ tres solicitudes cada hora. (procesar)
procesan — Solicitudes is the plural patient subject of a passive se clause, so procesar agrees in third-person plural: procesan.
Use the access-card gate. En este edificio se ___ con tarjeta. (acceder)
accede — Acceder is intransitive here, so no patient subject can control agreement. Impersonal se takes third-person singular: accede.
Use the single facade and complete only the participle: La fachada fue ___ por el equipo municipal el lunes. (rehabilitar)
rehabilitada — The event passive already supplies fue. The participle agrees with the singular feminine patient fachada: rehabilitada.
What your own language pushes you to say
Wrong Se entrevistaron a tres candidatas.
Right Se entrevistó a tres candidatas.
Personal a marks candidatas as a human direct object here. The impersonal construction has no grammatical subject, so the verb remains singular.
Once it makes sense
Reflexive and pronominal verbs: keep the pronoun with its personWord order and information structure: topic, focus and clitic links