Why put "to" in passive?

Hmm.

He made her sing -- She was made to sing.
He heard her sing -- She was heard to sing.
He helped her sing -- She was helped to sing.
He saw her sing -- She was seen to sing.
He let her sing -- She was let (to) sing (?)
He had her sing -- She was had (to) sing (?)

Quirk, et al merely comment that in this type of Object + bare infinitive complementation, some of the very limited number of verbs grouped there (have, let, make, feel, hear, overhear, see, watch, notice, observe, help, know) permit the passive, some do not, and for others the passive is doubtful or limited acceptability-- and some require the infinitive marker to in the passive voice.  See Quirk 16.52.

Paco2004 wrote:

Hello I got a question from a learner in a Japanese site for English learning. It's a really simple question but I myself am puzzled at it. The question is: You say, "He made her sing". When you passivize it, you say "She was made to sing" not "She was made sing". The question is why you do not put "to" before "sing" in active voice but you put "to" in passive voice. The questioner wants an explanation more than "Because it is an English grammar rule and we native speakers say so". paco

Didn't you have the answer to that question back in Post :157932 ?

[link]

Hello guys

Thank you for the replies. All of them are very helpful to me in thinking the problem. I think I had better explain the question more in detail.

Actually the questioner asked at first the semantic difference between "He made her sing" and "He told her to sing". So, at first I explained to the questioner like as follows:

To my knowledge, the difference comes from Old English where they used verbal infinitives in accusative form (which correspond to bare infinitives in modern English) as well as ones in dative form (which correspond to to-infinitives in modern English). So the "sing" in "He made her sing" is taken to carry a sense of accusative case, and as the consequence the sentence can be parsed as "He made her-sing", which means, "her-sing" is an inseparable objective of the verb "make". In contrast, the "to sing" in "He told her to sing" carries a sense of old dative infinitives which were used to mean "towards the said action or activity". In this case, "her" and "to sing" are separable entities, and "to sing" can be taken as a complement of the verbal "tell her" as known from the fact we can say "He told her so" by replacing "to sing" with "so".

This was the first reply I made to the question. Then he (or might be she) asked as follows.  "If 'her sing" in the 'made' using construction is really an inseparable entity, why can we make a passive sentence like 'She was made to sing' and why is 'to' inserted in this case?"  With this question, I lost for an answer. If my theory is right, it should be impossible to make a passive sentence for "He made her sing".

I feel Endi's reply might contain some clues. I have believed "He made her sing" and "She was made to sing" are the same in the meaning. But I am beginning to feel you native speakers might take them as subtly different in the sense. The active version clearly implies "She actually sang", but how about the passive version?  Is it possible to say like "She was made to sing, but she didn't"?

paco

Thank you, CJ. Your explanation is very interesting and kind of a surprise to me.

I rather think, if you have "He made her to sing" as a D-structure in your minds, a considerable portion of your folks, maybe some kids would utter it as a S-structure. But actually very few people do so. For example, "Someone made him run" hits some 670 pages on UK domain, but no page is hit for "Someone made him to run". Do you think  it is because English education is so excellent in UK?

paco