[dragonwriter]

> Grammatically the passive voice uses the equative verb to be with a past participle of the verb. Both those phrases satisfy that condition.

Grammatically, the passive voice also places the active participant as an explicit indirect object rather than the subject. A sentence without an explicit indirect object is not in the passive voice.

It may still have some of the same problems of communication which motivate people to work to avoid the use of the passive voice, and may even go further than the actual passive voice in those problems in that rather than deemphasizing the actual actor -- as happens when that moves from subject to object -- it omits the active party entirely. But its still not in the passive voice, despite the similarity in issues that arise.

[duaneb]

> Grammatically, the passive voice also places the active participant as an explicit indirect object rather than the subject. A sentence without an explicit indirect object is not in the passive voice.

This is not true. Something as simple as "I was sat on" illustrates this well—in English, the subject is still required but the actor is not. This is much MORE so for eg Latin, where verbs take voices with much less context.

"I was exhausted" is ambiguous, using either the imperfect passive voice or the imperfect "to be" with a past participle. However, it's perfectly valid to note as passive as it is, in fact, passive under one of the two interpretations.