Active construction An active construction is a sentence in which the subject of the sentence is the person carrying out the action, or the event taking place (as opposed to a passive construction where the subject is the person affected by the action): mio marito fuma troppo ‘my husband smokes too much’; gli ospiti rimangono fino a sabato ‘the guests are staying until Saturday’. A verb can therefore have an active form (chiudiamo la porta a mezzanotte ‘we shut the door at midnight’) or a passive form (la porta viene chiusa a mezzanotte ‘the door is shut at midnight’).