Lesson 9: More Fun With The Passive

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Lesson 9 More Fun With The Passive

• Exercises Agents and Intransitives

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• 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 explorers 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.

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• Directions Change these sentences to passive
• Example 1. A scientist performs this experiment
  every day. --gt is performed --gt 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.

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• 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.

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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.

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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 arent 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?

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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?)

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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 isnt 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?

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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.
  

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• '' '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?

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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 by-phrase of the passive.

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Context is important

• Consider the situation of what is being
  emphasized.

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Context An article about a really innovative
researchers 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. . .

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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?

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Technical and Professional English

• Technical English is one place where we often see
  the passive.

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• 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.

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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.

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Examples Identify the problems and determine
what the student doesnt understand.

• My mother was died when I was ten.
• The party was occurred without my knowing about
  it.
• That man hurt by the explosion.
• The man was placed the box on the table.
• 5. My grandfather was came from Vietnam.