Transcript More Fun With The Passive - Washington State University

Lesson 9: More Fun With The
Passive
Exercises; Agents; and
Intransitives
• With a partner, determine if the verb phrases are transitive. If
they are, find the object. Then make them passive:
• Shipwreck stories form an important part of American colonial
literature. A review of Spanish colonial literature finds four major
shipwreck narratives. Researchers have found the earliest of
these narratives in the diary of Christopher Columbus.
Columbus mentioned a shipwreck in the diary of his third
voyage. Another famous shipwreck story is the story of the
Spanish sailor, Pedro Serrano. His story appears in Los
comentarios reales by El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. Serrano
spent seven years on an island. One day a ship saw his
campfire. The captain sent a boat to rescue him. The most
famous shipwreck narrative of the period comes from the writing
of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca. This Spanish explorer’s boat
crashed on the coast of Florida in the early sixteenth century. He
wandered from Florida to Mexico. His trip lasted seven years.
Los infortunios de Alonso Ramirez by the Mexican writer Carlos
Siguenza y Gongora tells another shipwreck story. This story is
fictional. However, modern literary scholars consider this story a
precursor to the modern novel.
Directions: Change these sentences to passive
Example: 1. A scientist performs this experiment every day. --> is performed -->
This experiment is performed every day by a scientist.
• 2. A scientist is performing this experiment today.
• 3. A scientist has performed this experiment recently.
• 4. A scientist has been performing this experiment for the last six months.
• 5. A scientist performed this experiment yesterday.
• 6. A scientist was performing this experiment at 10 p.m. last night.
• 7. A scientist had performed this experiment before.
• 8. A scientist had been performing this experiment over a number of years.
• 9. A scientist will perform this experiment tomorrow.
• 10. A scientist is going to perform this experiment tomorrow.
• 11. A scientist will have performed this experiment by this time tomorrow.
• 12. A scientist will have been performing this experiment for two weeks at this
time tomorrow.
• 13. A scientist may perform this experiment.
• 14. A scientist could have performed this experiment.
• 15. A scientist should have performed this experiment.
• 16. A scientist didn't perform this experiment.
• 17.. A scientist isn't performing this experiment.
INTRANSITIVES -• Intransitives are verbs that do not take
objects. There are basically two types:
those that are always intransitive (A)
and those that are sometimes
intransitive and sometimes not (B).
Example (A): The accident happened.
The man disappeared from the scene of
the accident. The woman died at the
scene.
Example (B): He kissed his wife. They
kissed quickly.
AGENT (whodunnit)
• The concept of “agent” is very much important to
understand.
• In active sentences, the “agent” in an active English
sentence is that which brings about the event or the
state described by the verb.
• Sometimes, the “agent” of an active English sentence
is transparently clear and is actually the same as the
subject.
Example: The woman taught a grammar lesson.
“The woman” is the subject --- and clearly the “agent”
-- that which is bringing about the teaching.
Examples of Agents
• The cat chased a mouse. Who or what “did”
the verb, the chasing? The cat. The cat is
the agent.
• Sometimes agents aren’t very clear. They
are implied or “understood” but very obviously
not the subject of the verb and very obviously
NOT in the sentence. . The accident
happened. So who exactly did what? Did
this accident just sort of spontaneously
combust or did someone DO something?
More on Agents
• Sometimes when a verb can be either
transitive or intransitive, the subject of
the transitive version is clearly the
agent, but the subject of the intransitive
version is NOT the agent.
John broke the plate. (John did it!)
The plate broke. (Who did it?)
The Agentive Phrase
• The “by phrase” in a passive is called the
agentive by-phrase. Frequently it contains
the agent -- BUT NOT ALWAYS. If the agent
isn’t the subject in the active, the agentive
phrase is not the agent either!
Active: The race broke the speed record.
Wait! Who actually did the breaking?
Passive: The speed record was broken by
the race. Who did the breaking?
Interesting Language Change
• “Disappear” is definitely an intransitive verb in
English.
• However, in American intelligence agencies in
the 1980s, it became fashionable, in talking
about the death squads in central America, to
refer to the victims by saying, “He/she was
disappeared.”
'' 'Desaparecer,' or 'disappear,' is in Spanish both an
intransitive and transitive verb, and this flexibility has
been adopted by those speaking English in El
Salvador, as in 'John Sullivan was disappeared from
the Sheraton,' 'the Government disappeared the
students,' there being no equivalent situation, and so
no equivalent word, in English-speaking cultures.'’
---- from Salvador by Joan Didion
Why might an English-speaking person make this verb
transitive and passivize it?
The “shoulds” of passives
• So when do we use the passive? The most
common use is when the agent is relatively
unimportant, or is clearly understood, or is of
no real consequence, or is of much less
importance than the action or the object (of
the original active). In this case, we can
almost always just delete the agentive byphrase of the passive.
Context is important
• Consider the situation of what is being
emphasized.
Context: An article about a really
innovative researcher’s life and exploits.
• Williams found the first examples of
these narratives in the archive of the
Columbus materials in Santo Domingo.
She went on to publish them. . .
Context: An article about shipwrecks. The
emphasis is on the content of various
narratives.
• The earliest narratives have been found
in the diary of Columbus’ first voyage.
In this context, do we absolutely need to
know who found these narratives?
Technical and Professional English
• Technical English is one place where
we often see the passive.
The following sentences are from a scientific article on climate
change. The article has about six authors. Some clauses are
active. Some are passive. Identify the actives and passives
and explain why you think the writers chose the active or
passive.
• Conceptually this increase is understood as a shift of the
statistical distribution towards warmer temperatures.
• Changes in the width of the distribution are often considered
small.
• Here we show our framework.
• This framework does not explain the record-breaking central
European summer temperatures in 2003.
And Finally Some ESL Errors
The passive is also hard for ESL students.
Depending on the language
background, students have different
problems with the passive.
Examples: Identify the problems and determine
what the student doesn’t understand.
1. My mother was died when I was ten.
2. The party was occurred without my
knowing about it.
3. That man hurt by the explosion.
4. The man was placed the box on the
table.
5. My grandfather was came from
Vietnam.