Originally Posted by missywinks

Passive construction in asl is different than in english. I think the confusion lies with the fact that we can use either a subject or object as the topic in a sentence as seen in my previous examples.

BOY THROW BALL - This would be translated into "The boy threw the ball". This would be considered active voice because the subject is the topic.

BALL? BOY THROW - This would be translated into "The ball was thrown by the boy." This would be considered a passive voice because I used the object as my topic.

I am not an ASL instructor but this is what I understand from my readings. Let me know if you want me to cite my references and I will look this week.