By Prepositions, Passive sentences

The agent is what we call the subject in an active voice sentence-- the doer of the verb action: 'My bicycle was stolen by a Mesopotamian.'-- in this passive sentence, the Mesopotamian is the agent, and in its active form it would read: 'A Mesopotamian stole my bike'. The method or medium is,...

The woman is a TV reporter who is standing in the hotel elevator. There's nothing wrong with this sentence. "Detective: I'm looking for two suspects: one is a man; the other, a woman. Here are their photos. Have you seen them? Helpful Janitor: Sure. The man is an executive who is...

Hi Englishpros, * The woman is a TV reporter who is standing in the hotel elevator. 1. Someone suggests the sentence above should be wrong. Why? _________________________________________________________ A stative verb, generally, cannot be made into a passive sentence. However, some stative...

I don't mind so much about whether the "down" in "down the road" is an adverb or a preposition because usually we don't use a passive sentence with "the road" as the subject even if the "down" is an adverb. What I am interested in is whether the frequencies for the uses of "walk down X" and "walk...

In a sentence in the passive voice, the receiver of the action is both the grammatical/formal subject and the real/notional subject. In "A new art gallery was opened last Saturday" "a new art gallery" is the only possible subject of the sentence. It is both the grammatical and the notional...

There was a mistake in Mountain Hiker's example. Where? In a sentence in the passive voice, the construction that acted as subject in the active sentence becomes what is called "agent", and it is introduced by the preposition "by". That is, *if* it is needed at all. One of the most common...

Hello, Kynguyen You are right. There was a mistake in Mountain Hiker's example. If "Mary created a software program", then the passive counterpart of that sentence is "A software program was created by Mary". In a sentence in the passive voice, the construction that acted as subject in the...

You are correct, kynguyen. "A software program was created for Mary" means that it was created for the benefit of Mary, or designed to her own personal specifications. It is unknown who created it. To indicate that, you must use the preposition "by": "A software program was created by Vivian for...

Hello, Daniel There is an explanation for the existence of sentences like "I'm given water" which is, by the way, grammatically correct. As has been explained here, the first you need in order for a sentence in the passive voice to be possible is a transitive verb and its direct object. You...

At the risk of sounding too complicated, Atesttaker, here's my response. I hope it will help until someone who can put things in simpler ways comes. 1. You got that one right. "B" is correct, and so is your explanation. 2. "C" is correct. It means something like "as far back as 1810" (a long...