Question

Change the following sentence into passive voice:
Somebody built the house last year.
A. The house was being built last year by somebody.
B. The house was been built last year by somebody.
C. The house has being built last year by somebody.
D. The house was built last year by somebody.

Answer 1

Hint:Passive voice is basically a grammatical voice construction where the object ‘noun’ of active voice is converted into the subject of passive and the subject of active voice turns into the object in passive. In other words, the passive voice displays the change that has occurred to the grammatical ‘subject’ of the sentence in active voice. But after converting the voice, the meaning is not at all changed, although the notion of the speaker (who is telling the sentence) is changed.

Complete answer:
1. In the first option, the use of ‘being’ is wrong as the word ‘being’ would be used only when there would be any such continuous form of verb in the active form of this sentence. Hence, it is wrong to use the word being here. If we would take this passive form back into active use, it would be like that: ‘Somebody was building the house last year’.
2. In the second option, the usage of the word ‘been’ is wrong here. The word ‘been’ is an auxiliary form of verb used with the present, past and future perfect. In short, if the auxiliary form is ‘was’ or ‘were’, it could not be set with the word ‘been’.
3. In the third option, the grammar is also wrong. The auxiliary verb ‘being’ is used only in the continuous form of the verb. Whereas the word ‘has’ is used with the present perfect and present perfect continuous only. So, if one would write as ‘has being’, it would not be correct.
4. In the fourth option, the auxiliary form of the verb ‘was’ is correctly used with ‘built’. And according to the rule of conversion into passive voice, we found that this option is right. Because, the sentence in the question is in simple past tense. So, the conversion to passive form will be “The house was built last year by somebody.” The fourth option is correct.

Hence the correct answer is option ‘D’.

Note: There is a list of rules that should be kept in mind while converting from active to passive and vice versa. The conversion is obviously different for different kinds of sentences and for different tenses as well. The principal verb’s tense and form is to be noticed while it is to be converted into passive. The appropriate corresponding verb along with the preposition as attached with object (converted from the subject) is very essential in cases of conversion.