Agentless Passives

An agentless passive keeps the affected participant or action in focus while leaving the doer unexpressed. Most such clauses have a noun or pronoun as grammatical subject—La fenestro estis rompita. When the passive subject is instead a clause or infinitive, Esperanto uses an adverbial participle, as in Estis decidite, ke ni atendu; the same -e form also appears in genuinely subjectless passives. When the doer must be restored, see agents with de.

Leaving the Agent Unsaid

In the standard esti-passive, an active object becomes the passive subject. The old active subject may appear with de, but it need not.

The passive version is agentless because no thief is named. It is not subjectless: mia biciklo is the grammatical subject, and singular ŝtelita agrees with it.

Agents are commonly omitted for four reasons:

• the agent is unknown: La fenestro estis rompita dum la nokto;
• the agent is obvious from the situation: La paciento estis operaciita je la naŭa;
• the agent is irrelevant: La vojo estos remalfermita morgaŭ;
• the writer deliberately backgrounds responsibility: Eraroj estis faritaj.

Negation and questions do not require an agent. The passive participle continues to agree with its subject.

Phase Still Matters without an Agent

Omitting the agent does not weaken the -at-/-it-/-ot- distinction.

The unknown or irrelevant repairer has no bearing on the phase choice. Likewise, estis riparata is a process at a past point and estos riparita is completion at a future point. The finite form of esti gives reference time; the participle gives relative phase.

Active participles use the same relative-time logic but keep the agent in view: -ant- presents its subject during the action, -int- after it, and -ont- before it. They therefore cannot turn an active clause into an agentless passive.

Here riparantaj describes the people doing the repair. Participles can also take the noun ending -o: active venkinto denotes the winner—the semantic agent of venki—while passive venkito denotes the defeated person.

These nominal forms name participants; they are not analytic passive predicates. Agentless passive clauses themselves use an agreeing -a form or the -e construction explained below.

No Noun-Phrase Subject: Use -E

When the passive subject is a clause or infinitive—or when the clause has no subject at all—the participle is adverbial and ends in -e, not -a. Such constructions often correspond to active clauses with generic oni.

The ke clause is the grammatical subject of the passive, but it is not a noun phrase with which an adjective can agree. Esperanto therefore uses decidite. It does not insert a dummy subject equivalent to English “it.”

The same rule applies when an infinitive phrase is the passive subject:

And it applies when an object-taking verb is used without an expressed object, leaving no promoted noun phrase:

Here a natural active counterpart is Dum la kunveno oni longe diskutis pri la buĝeto. Because diskuti can be object-taking but is used here without a direct object, the passive remains subjectless and takes diskutate.

A-Final or E-Final? Find the Subject

In the first sentence, tio is a grammatical subject, so interkonsentita is adjectival. In the second, the following embedded question is a clausal subject and therefore takes the adverbial predicate interkonsentite.

Al la vizitantoj is a recipient/target, not the direct object promoted to subject. The infinitive atendi is the passive subject, and the visitors are understood as the people who will wait. Because that subject is an infinitive rather than a noun phrase, the form is ordonite, not ordonitaj.

Not Every Intransitive Verb Can Form an Impersonal Passive

The -e ending does not make arbitrary verbs passivizable. Passive morphology still presupposes an object-taking use. Standard Esperanto does not form estas dormate from ordinary intransitive dormi, nor estis okazite from okazi.

If there is no plausible active object—even an omitted one—use an active or ordinary impersonal clause. Some verbs vary in transitivity by meaning, so check the actual construction. The rule is semantic valency, not whether an English translation happens to allow an impersonal passive.

Alternatives to an Agentless Passive

Generic ONI

An active clause with oni is often the clearest neutral alternative, especially in (informal) speech. The pronoun's wider generic uses are explained on the oni reference page.

The active version foregrounds the procedure as something people do. The passive keeps viaj dokumentoj as topic. Neither requires a named individual.

An IĜ-Verb

An -iĝ- verb can present a change or disposition without an agent:

This goes further than agent omission. An esti-passive still encodes an action that could in principle have a de agent: La pordo estis malfermita de la gardisto. Malfermiĝis packages the door's change as an intransitive event and provides no agent slot.

A Direct Active Clause

When responsibility matters, suppressing the agent may be evasive. La administracio perdis la datumojn is more informative than La datumoj estis perditaj. This difference is rhetorical, not grammatical. (Formal) institutional writing frequently uses agentless passives, but good style names the actor when accountability is relevant.

Common Mistakes

Using -E despite an expressed noun subject

Using -A with a clausal subject

Adding a dummy ĜI from English

Making an intransitive verb passive

Confusing agentless with subjectless

Key Takeaways

• Most agentless passives still have an affected noun or pronoun as subject and therefore use an agreeing -a participle.
• When the passive subject is a clause or infinitive—or when there is no subject—the participle ends in -e: Estis decidite..., Estas malpermesate fumi, Estis diskutate.
• The absence of an agent does not change the -at-/-it-/-ot- phase contrast.
• Passive -e does not license passives of purely intransitive verbs.
• Active oni, an -iĝ- verb, or a named active subject may express the intended focus more naturally.