Lesson 9: More Fun With The Passive

1. Lesson 9: More Fun With The Passive Exercises; Agents; and Intransitives

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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?

7. 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?)

8. 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?

9. 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.”

10. '' '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?

11. 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.

12. Context is important • Consider the situation of what is being emphasized.

13. 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. . .

14. 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?

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

16. 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.

17. 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.

18. Examples: Identify the problems and determine what the student doesn’t 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.