Search results for 'tag:Passive sentences tag:Verbs' matching tags 'Passive sentences' and 'Verbs'

Re: use active or passive form

Goodman — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 22:33:04 GMT

Hi Raen,

In order to learn how natural English is used, sometimes, we have to learn to use them in a broader context, rather than in limited terms.

âHandle- can be used both actively and passively, depending on the context.

Many verbs used in the passive voice don't require a agent (a subject, as you referred)

This project should be handled with careful plannning.- no agent
The paintings were damaged becasue they weren't handled carefully during the moving (by the mover). Either with or without agent is ok.

This project is too big for John to handle by him self. â Active voice, meaning it may be beyond his ability to manage the project alone. He may need help.

This operation is too delicate to be handled by a rookie â This is a passive sentence.

This operation is too delicate for a rookie to handle- This is an equivalent statement in active voice.

Both are fine, in my opinion.

Hope this helps

Re: passive voice

Goodman — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:54:10 GMT

Huevos,

So am I correct to assume that your classification of âexhaustedâ is adjectival in nature? Perhaps, this is the difference between how you and I see it. For pure fact finding interest, I have done some more investigative research: Bear in mind, my sentence was âI am completely exhausted from â¦â

Your answer was âItâs activeâ.

http://www.perfectyourenglish.com/grammar/passives-agents.htm

English Grammar

Passives: Agents

In most cases, the subject of an active verb (the agent) is not mentioned in the corresponding passive sentence. If it does have to be mentioned, we usually use an expression with by.

They gave me a warm welcome. (active)
I was given a warm welcome by them. (passive)
Children love toys. (active)
Toys are loved by children. (passive)
They built this house. (active)
This house was built by them.
Her attitude shocked me.
I was shocked by her attitude.

It should be noted that by is not the only word with which the agent can be introduced. After the past participles of some 'stativeâ verbs (verbs which refer to states, not actions) other prepositions can be used instead of by.

The state of his health worries me. (active)
I am worried about the state of his health. (passive)
Snakes scare me. (active)
I am scared of snakes. (passive)

With is used when we talk about an instrument which is used by an agent to do an action.

He killed the snake with a stick. (active)
The snake was killed (by him) with a stick. (passive)

__
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2003AprJun/0312.html

Passive voice is a verb where the action is done to the subject of the
clause, often by something. (The verb "done" there is the first verb in the
passive voice in this email). The pattern is that there is a subject, a
verb,
perhaps an agent (the thing that "does" the verb to the subject, and
possible
other stuff too.

Something that seems to confuse people is the pattern of the subject, the
verb to be (is, are, will be, was, etc) and an adjective or participle - a
description of the subject.

For example, "I am confused" is technically in the passive voice. However it
is a description of me like "I am tall" which is definitely not in the
passive voice. The confusion comes about because english uses a similar
pattern to make passive voice.

I suggest that we do not discourage this simple form, whether it is a
passive
construction or a simple description.

"I am confused by the passive voice" is the third time I have used the
<<<passive voice>>> in this email. It has the pattern subject - "me", a
verb - "confuse", and an agent - "the passive voice" - the thing which did
the confusing.

For most verbs in english (and many modern european languages) the passive
voice is made by combining the past participle (often "something-ed") with
the verb to be. (That was the fourth example: subject is the passive voice,
verb is to make, agent is the whole description of how to make it). For
example, The example I have used here is the verb "to confuse" - the passive
of "to confuse" is "to be confused".

Continues..on website.

Hope this resolved the difference of interpretations.

Re: question on conditional and reported speech

CalifJim — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 20:22:27 GMT

Anonymous
Is this possible as reported speech? I think it sure is but why the past perfect passive is possible? I thought a passive sentence is usually used when the identity of an agent is not an issue. What could be the agent in this case?

I met him yesterday and he told me he had been interested in the job I had offered earlier.

It is possible and correct. This is not a true passive. interested is normally treated as a plain adjective, not as a part of a verb. The verb here is therefore be (in the past perfect tense, had been).

The job is the agent if you treat this as a passive form of the verb to interest. But as I said, this is only a very borderline case of a passive.

Re: Lack of emphasis on NPs in ESL

Kooyeen — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 20:38:55 GMT

I obviously agree with Forbes: it depends on your first language. I have never had any problems with passive sentences, subjects and objects, the difference between countable and uncountable, etc. because those are all features I have in Italian too. It is not difficult at all for me to use conditional structures (= modal verbs) in polite requests, like in "Could you lend me 1,000 dollars?", because very similar structures are used the same way in Italian too. On the other hand, I know some Asian languages don't even have past or future tenses, so it's easy to imagine how much more difficult it must be for them to learn English.

So instead of focusing on noun phrases, shouldn't we rather focus on the real difficulties, which happen to vary from learner to learner according to their native language and past experience with languages in general?

Anonymous

How about this student?

<<I assume many of you have watched the cartoon "Totally spies", right?
I just wonder why it is "Totally" here. "totally" is always an adverb, so what do they imply when using "totally" here? How can it go with the noun "spies"?>>>

Heh, good question! I don't know! Could somebody tell me more about that, as a side note here without going completely off topic? Otherwise I will open another thread. I would say "Total spies", but if I suspect that "totally" in "Totally spies" is used informally in some dialects to mean "definitely", like in, like " Are you, like, coming to my awesome party tonight? - Oh, yeah, totally!"
If that is the case, then I don't think that "totally" has anything to do with proving learners have trouble with noun phrases. It would suggest learners have trouble with informal English, and if you ask me, that's true.

Re: targeted/meant

CalifJim — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 07:06:41 GMT

Evo25
Is the word targeted in ~~above~~ the sentence above ~~is appeared as~~ a past participle or adjective?

It's the past participle of the verb target. Note that a word can be both a past participle and an adjective, however, so it has some adjectival qualities.

Evo25
become a passive sentence?

Yes, it has many qualities of passive voice, but I would not call it a true passive. Past participles can occur even when the sentence is not in the passive voice. This is really more like a semi-passive.

Evo25
(1)it It is hoped that the things which i I learn are correct
(2)it is meant that all students can go back home now.

The second sentence is incorrect. It is meant that is not English. hoped and meant are past participles. These are passive sentences.

The general rule is that if a past participle is adjectival, then you do not have a case of passive voice; if the past participle is not adjectival, then you probably have a case of passive voice. The topic of past participles and passive voice is very confusing because there are so many borderline cases that are difficult to decide.

If the participle makes sense with the word "very" in front of it, then it's probably an adjective, and this is not passive voice. Example:

I am interested in card games. interested is a past participle. But it's an adjective as well, because you can say very interested in card games. This is not an example of passive voice.

Above, note that you can't say It is very hoped that ... It is hoped is passive.

See Re: adjective or part of a passive for further details. There are five categories: true passives with agent, true passives without agent, pseudo-passives, semi-passives, and statal passives.

Passive Voice Conundrum

unixfanatic — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:27:52 GMT

I have recently been debating with someone about the true nature of passive voice. While we both understand that passive voice is when the subject of a sentence receives the action, like "he was hit by the ball", we can't agree about a specific case.

Consider the sentence:
"It is tempting to think about passive voice."

The other individual argues that this is a passive sentence because it is still using an auxiliary verb. For instance, the component "tempting" implies that there must be an infinitive to follow, and thus it's still passive. In other words, it's a passive periphrastic phrase.

I disagree. While the sentence might be a little weak stylistically, it's still grammatically neither active nor passive. In this case, "to be" is being used as a linking verb, so the sentence can't be classified as either.

I was unable to find any good examples about passive and active voice regarding how a sentence constructed this way was classified. Thus, I was hoping someone could shed some light on this befuddling situation. Thanks!

Re: was admitted to

Mr Wordy — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:36:41 GMT

(b) is fine.

I'm not keen on (a). It's fairly common to omit second and subsequent instances of "was" in passive sentences. For example "She was bitten by a snake and admitted to hospital". However, if the first item is an adjective (as "sick" in your example) then this style doesn't read so well (to me). I think this is because you get no cue from "was sick" that the construction is a passive one (unlike "was bitten"), so you tend to initially read "admitted" as an active verb before realising that this doesn't work and then having to backtrack.

"... was admitted to/into (the) hospital" are all OK. I would normally use "admitted to". Use "the" only if you're referring to a specific hospital that is identified by the context.

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: transitive or intransitive

Mr Wordy — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 17:30:57 GMT

Anonymous

Here, "is vanished", are we taking it as an intransitive?

If yes, then, are all intransitives be able to form present perfect sentences?

I'm not an expert on grammar or linguistics, but here are my thoughts as an ordinary native user of English. I hope I got all the grammatical terminology correct!

I think that all verbs -- transitive or intransitive -- are able to form present perfect sentences: "He has died", "It has vanished", "They've eaten all the pies". At least, I can't think of any verbs that can't, or any reason why they should exist.

"Is" (or, analogously, "are", "was" or "were") followed by the past participle of a transitive verb can range from a pure passive use ("I'd be astonished if that record is broken by an American") to an adjectival use ("This watch is broken."). In the latter case, the idea that the watch has been broken by something or someone, though in theory implied by the word "broken", is weak or non-existent, and "broken" behaves as an adjective that just describes the present state of the watch (just like "The watch is heavy"). Moreover it can be placed before the noun: "A broken watch".

"Is" followed by the past participle of an intransitive verb can't form an passive sentence in the usual sense: "He is/was died by a heart attack" is wrong. So, if the sentence "The watch is vanished" is interpreted as an ordinary passive then it must be the case that "vanished" is used transitively. (There is, however, something called the "impersonal passive". The usual examples are things like "it is believed", where we are not saying that the thing believed is "it" (ordinary passive), but just that there is a general sense of people believing. I'm not very clear if and how "is vanished" might fit this sense.)

The remaining possibility is that the past participles of intransitive verbs (such as, perhaps, "vanish") can, by analogy with the adjectival use of transitive past participles, be used adjectivally -- even though the "background" meaning that I mentioned earlier can't exist even in theory. Let's look at some examples. "It is existed" and "It is behaved" are completely wrong. "He is died" is not quite completely wrong but could (to me) only be used in certain special situations, such as jokey use or attempts at recreating or preserving archaic language. In most contexts it would sound unnatural. Are there any intransitive past participles that are natural adjectives in everyday language? One candidate that comes to mind is "fallen", in the sense of "fallen from a state of respectability". For example, "a fallen woman" is perfectly good English to me (though "she is fallen" still has a slight sense to me that it is an archaic form of "she has fallen").

Re: how to explain the usage of the ergative verb?

Goodman — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:58:51 GMT

Hi Ganesh77,
<<>> The sentence "Last year, turnover was increased by 20%" is called a 'common mistake' in my course book.

I just need to throw in my 2 centsâ¦.

As already explained âturnoverâ (as in employee turnover) is a noun. If a company for some unknown reasons was unable to retain the employees it has hired, thatâs commonly known as a âturnoverâ in the US. I see nothing wrong in this passive sentence. I know, you insist that its âpassive statusâ is wrong. But in my opinion, itâs perfectly grammatically and legally correct.