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3.Uses
- When the agent is unknown, unimportant or obvious
The road repairs have been completed.
- To make statements more polite or formal/ to render the sentence impersonal
My new suit has been burnt! (more polite than saying You’ve burnt my
suit!/ avoiding to name a specific person who is responsible for an
action)
- When the action is more important than the agent (news, reports, formal notices,
instructions, headlines, advertisements)
Taking pictures is not allowed.
Bread must be baked in an oven for 45 minutes.
It has been decided to reduce all salaries by 15%.
- To put emphasis on the agent
The castle was built by William the Conqueror.
! The passive in there-existential sentence: In this case, passive morphology is not present,
but the meaning/ interpretation is passive:
There emerged a problem.
There remains a trace.
9. Middle constructions
They echo the passive in meaning, but retain the appearance of an active sentence:
The poem reads easily and naturally.
This fabric washes and irons well.
-passive interpretation
-no agent present
-obligatory adverbial modifier
! BUT: Although most grammar books will indicate that both passive transformations
are the counterparts of the active voice sentence, this is not so. In fact, only The
flowers were given to Mary is the passive counterpart of He gave the flowers to Mary
because of the ADJACENCY CONSTRAINT which indicates that only the closest
object to the verb is the one that is promoted into the subject position.
7. Idioms
Some idioms do not have the same behaviour when turned from active into passive, as,
according to certain linguistic approaches, they are interpreted on the basis of metaphors,
metonymies or the encyclopedic knowledge of the world. The inability of certain idioms
to function in the passive is related to the metaphors underlying these idioms.
The old man died. The patient bit the bullet.
*The bullet was bitten.
Other idioms that cannot be used in the passive:
- Chew the fat (chat)
- Gather pace (move faster)
- Kick the bucket (die)
Interestingly, as seen above, idioms having intransitive paraphrases cannot be used in
passive voice.
Other idioms may appear in the passive, as their interpretation is more transparent
and easy to grasp:
The two enemies have buried the hatchet.
√The hatchet has been buried.
Other idioms that can be used in the passive:
- Make an example of
- Make too much of
- Take advantage of
- Pull strings
- Pop the question
- Turn a blind eye to sth
- Break the ice
- Do wonders etc
8. Intransitive verbs with a prepositional object
Some verbs allow passivization:
He paid for the party.
The party was paid for.
II. ACTIVITIES
Teach the passive to Intermediate Level Students. Devise four activities of
introducing this topic. Specify: the aim(s), the estimated time, students’ level,
students’ age.
STAGE 3 / ACTIVITY 3
LEVEL: Intermediate
AGE: 14-16 year-old students
ESTIMATED TIME: 10 minutes
AIM: to improve grammar skills, to reinforce the correct use of the passive
voice.