AKA: Actor

Examples

The burglar ran away.

The Normans invaded England in 1066.

We put water in the test tube.

The earliest technology behind GPS systems was invented by Hedy Lamarr.

🧾Definition

In functional grammar, the Agent is the participant who is responsible for the process (verb). Often, the Agent is the subject, but not always! The Agent can also be found in the by phrase of a passive clause (see Hedy Lamarr in the example above). Many subjects are not Agents: they have other functional roles. However with an action verb in the active voice, the subject will usually be the Agent.

🔬Discovery

💬Functions

It’s helpful to track Agents in order to understand who a text presents as responsible for the processes it describes. When an Agent is a pronoun, readers may need to track back to find its referent.

📝Practice

• Please answer these questions and share your answers with a colleague or PLC:

➡️What next?

• Read about agency in intransitive verbs

Talking About Language © 2024 by Nigel A. Caplan is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International. Development support was provided by the University of Delaware Libraries.