Search results for 'tag:Direct objects tag:Passive sentences' matching tags 'Direct objects' and 'Passive sentences'

Re: Passives (Like & Love) "-"- Subject & Object

Mister Micawber — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:02:07 GMT

.
John likes pizza.
Pizza is liked by John.

There is no object in the second sentence. The subject of the passive sentence (pizza) is the object of its active equivalent. By John is an adverb. John is the agent in both sentences.

Of course, some passive sentences can have objects:

John gave Mary a pizza.-- John is subject and agent, pizza is direct object, Mary is indirect object.
Mary was given pizza by John.-- Mary is subject, pizza is object, by John is adverb and agent.

Re: Transformational Rules and Subject-Verb Agreement

miriam — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 09:01:07 GMT

In response to the questions posed in the first post of this thread, "the officer" is NOT the subject of the sentence regardless of whether the sentence is active or passive. "The officer" is undoubtedly the doer of the action in both sentences, but it is the subject only in the sentence with the active verb.

In the sentence with the passive verb, it can only appear in the predicate as "agent". It is still the doer of the action but no longer the subject of the sentence.

The subject, in a sentence with a monotransitive verb such as "capture" is always the "receiver" or "undergoer" of the action, and it will change from subject to direct object in an active sentence.

If we have a look at the post before mine, we will see "The officer has been captured by the subjects", which is untrue if we consider the sentences in the first post correct. The subjects have been captured, not the officer.

"The subjects" is not only the grammatical or formal subject of the passive verb, it is also the notional subject or whatever other name you might wish to call it. The subject of a sentence is not necessarily the doer of the action, and that fact doesn't make the subject in question any less "logical" than it should be. Actually, it'd be illogical to make "the officer" the subject of the passive verb if what you mean is precisely the opposite.

The officer, whether as agent or subject (from a syntactic point of view) will always be the "agent" of both sentences, the active and the passive, from a different perspective, from that of thematic roles. Perhaps analysing the sentence in terms of thematic roles will help you see the diferences between active and passive constructions more clearly. In this type of analysis, the agent (not a syntactic function) is the doer of the action regardless of whether the sentence is active or passive and also regardless of the position the construction occupies in the sentence. The direct object of an active sentence, and the subject of that sentence in the passive voice, are called "patient" if a living entity, and "theme" if it's a non-living entity. Again in this case, it shows that places are not always what define a function.

Leaving that aside and coming back to transformational grammar, Chomsky and his theories aren't the easiest to understand. But it is important to remember that an active sentence and a passive one require different mental processes and that, according to Chomsky, when you think of a sentence there are choices you must make before actually coming up with an utterance. One of those choices has to do with the sentence being active or passive. If you decide on a passive sentence, that will dictate a number of sub-processes needed in order to make adjustments to produce a grammatical sentence. Chomsky says that the choices concerning a sentence in the passive voice are made at the very beginning, at the moment you decide your sentence will be in the passive voice instead of the active. All this usually happens without us being aware of our own mental processes, but it seems we make decisions such as subject-verb agreement the very moment we decide what type of sentence we wish to produce. In his first book (Syntactic Structures, 1957, Chomsky made the rules for the passive voice appear as "optional". Later, in 1965, when he was already closer to becoming a rationalist or mentalist, and farther away from structuralism, he saw that the rule couldn't possibly be optional and that they should appear at the level of the phrase structure rules; in other words, before the "transformational" stage.

I hope this makes sense. I tried to put it in very few words, but I'm not sure it was a good idea.

Miriam

Re: Passives

J Lewis — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 16:01:10 GMT

I agree with Marius Hancu's correction.
On a more general point, some of these passives are a pain in the neck for teachers and students. The logical transformation of "They offered him a job" is "A job was offered to him", based on transforming the direct object of the active sentence into the subject of the passive sentence. When we say "He was offered a job", we create a passive from the indirect object, which has no logic at all. This form is of course typically English but confuses students, who don't find an explanation in the text books, so I have to give it... no problem in that, but what are text books for?

Re: Personal and Impersonal Passive

Mister Micawber — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 23:55:27 GMT

This is off the internet too, Abmateen, but I could do no better:

Personal Passive simply means that the object of the active sentence becomes the subject of the passive sentence. So every verb that needs an object (transitive verb) can form a personal passive.

Example: They build houses. â Houses are built.

Verbs without an object (intransitive verb) normally cannot form a personal passive sentence (as there is no object that can become the subject of the passive sentence). If you want to use an intransitive verb in passive voice, you need an impersonal construction â therefore this passive is called Impersonal Passive.

Example: he says â it is said

Impersonal Passive is not as common in English as in some other languages (e.g. German, Latin). In English, Impersonal Passive is only possible with verbs of perception (e. g. say, think, know).

Example: They say that women live longer than men. â It is said that women live longer than men.

Although Impersonal Passive is possible here, Personal Passive is more common.

Example: They say that women live longer than men. â Women are said to live longer than men.

[To form Impersonal Passive] the subject of the subordinate clause (women) goes to the beginning of the sentence; the verb of perception is put into passive voice. The rest of the sentence is added using an infinitive construction with 'to' (certain auxiliary verbs and that are dropped).

Sometimes the term Personal Passive is used in English lessons if the indirect object of an active sentence is to become the subject of the passive sentence.

Re: Where is the direct object...

milky — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 23:23:56 GMT

Clive wrote:

Hi,

These agents are trained to kill.

I'd like to add a comment. If the sentence were 'These agents are trained to kill every year' , ie a repeated process, I would see it as more meaningful to look at this as a passive sentence. However, in the original example, I think the best way to look at it is simply that the past participle is used as an adjective describing an ongoing state. It's similar to saying 'These agents are French'.

When you look at it this way, it's clear that there is no object, or agent, involved.

Best wishes, Clive

That of course is another way of looking at it. Like "the road was closed by the police" and "the road was closed".

So now we have three ways of looking at it:

1. A sentence containing an objectless transitive verb.

2. A passive construction.

3. A construction with an adjectival phrase, "trained to kill".

Re: Where is the direct object...

Clive — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 22:51:56 GMT

Hi,

These agents are trained to kill.

I'd like to add a comment. If the sentence were 'These agents are trained to kill every year' , ie a repeated process, I would see it as more meaningful to look at this as a passive sentence. However, in the original example, I think the best way to look at it is simply that the past participle is used as an adjective describing an ongoing state. It's similar to saying 'These agents are French'.

When you look at it this way, it's clear that there is no object, or agent, involved.

Best wishes, Clive

Re: Where is the direct object...

milky — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 08:38:22 GMT

CalifJim wrote:
There is no such thing as a transitive sentence.

Verbs are transitive or intransitive, not sentences.

"to train" is a transitive verb. As such, it can be used both in active and in passive sentences.

The sample sentence illustrates a transitive verb used in a passive sentence (i.e., a sentence in the passive voice).
In the active counterpart "Someone trained these agents to kill", agents is the direct object. But sentences in the passive voice do not have direct objects because the direct object from the active sentence has been used as the subject of the passive sentence.

CJ

I think the questioner was speaking casually when he/she used the term "transitive sentence". It's like a "present perfect sentence", a "conditional sentence", etc. We all know what is meant.

Could you tell me how you know that the sentence in question has a missing agent and not a missing object?

You: These agents are trained to kill (by...).

Other possiblities (objectless transitive): These agents are trained to kill (defectors, cockroaches, poachers, deer).

Re: Where is the direct object...

CalifJim — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 03:10:35 GMT

There is no such thing as a transitive sentence.

Verbs are transitive or intransitive, not sentences.

"to train" is a transitive verb. As such, it can be used both in active and in passive sentences.

The sample sentence illustrates a transitive verb used in a passive sentence (i.e., a sentence in the passive voice).
In the active counterpart "Someone trained these agents to kill", agents is the direct object. But sentences in the passive voice do not have direct objects because the direct object from the active sentence has been used as the subject of the passive sentence.

CJ

Re: intransitive verbs

CalifJim — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 05:44:27 GMT

Verbs can be classified according to whether they are transitive or intransitive.
(If they take a direct object, they are transitive. Otherwise they are intransitive.)

John threw the ball.   (transitive - You can throw something. The direct object is "the ball")
Mary slept. (intransitive - You can't "sleep something". You just sleep - all by yourself! There is no direct object.)

Sentences with transitive verbs can occur in two voices: active and passive.
In the active voice, the agent (person doing the action) is the subject of the sentence.
In the passive voice, the patient (thing acted upon by the agent) is the subject of the sentence, and the agent occurs (if at all) in a "by" phrase.

Active: John threw the ball.   (The agent - John - is the subject.)
Passive: The ball was thrown by John. (The patient - the ball - is the subject. The agent occurs in a "by" phrase.)

Sentences with intransitive verbs can only occur in one voice: active.
This is because (by definition) they have no direct objects, so there is no direct object to use as a subject of a passive sentence.

Active: Mary slept.
Passive:   NONE -- You can't say "Was slept by Mary".

CJ

Re: Does this sentence have a passive form?

pieanne — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 16:57:19 GMT

I don't think it has, because "under the bridge" is not a direct object complement. In a passive sentence, the active voice direct object complement becomes the subject.