Level: beginner
Transitive verbs have both active and passive forms:
Active | Passive |
---|---|
The hunter killed the lion. | The lion was killed by the hunter. |
Someone has cleaned the windows. | The windows have been cleaned. |
Passive forms are made up of the verb be with a past participle:
Subject | be | Past participle | Adverbial |
---|---|---|---|
English | is | spoken | all over the world. |
The windows | have been | cleaned. | |
Lunch | was being | served. | |
The work | will be | finished | soon. |
They | might have been | invited | to the party. |
If we want to show the person or thing doing the action, we use by:
She was attacked by a dangerous dog.
The money was stolen by her husband.
- Active and passive voice 1
- Active and passive voice 2
- Active and passive voice 3
Level: intermediate
The passive infinitive is made up of to be with a past participle:
The doors are going to be locked at ten o'clock.
You shouldn't have done that. You ought to be punished.
We sometimes use the verb get with a past participle to form the passive:
Be careful with that glass. It might get broken.
Peter got hurt in a crash.
We can use the indirect object as the subject of a passive verb:
Active | Passive |
---|---|
I gave him a book for his birthday. | He was given a book for his birthday. |
Someone sent her a cheque for a thousand euros. |
She was sent a cheque for a thousand euros. |
We can use phrasal verbs in the passive:
Active | Passive |
---|---|
They called off the meeting. | The meeting was called off. |
His grandmother looked after him. | He was looked after by his grandmother. |
They will send him away to school. | He will be sent away to school. |
- Active and passive voice 4
- Active and passive voice 5
Level: advanced
Some verbs which are very frequently used in the passive are followed by the to-infinitive:
be supposed to | be expected to | be asked to | be told to |
be scheduled to | be allowed to | be invited to | be ordered to |
John has been asked to make a speech at the meeting.
You are supposed to wear a uniform.
The meeting is scheduled to start at seven.
- Active and passive voice 6
- Active and passive voice 7
Hi Nevi,
The correct form here is 'with'.
The papers are not performing the action here. They are the tool which is used, so to speak.
If you want to see the sentence as a passive then the subject in the sentence is 'the desk'. No agent is provided because it is unknown or irrelevant, but an agent could be added:
However, I would not see this sentence as a passive at all. 'Covered' here describes a characteristic of the desk rather than an action performed on it. Many past participles can be used as adjectives and I would simply treat this as an adjective, just as we do with 'interested', 'bored', 'dressed' and so on.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Rsb,
Yes, both of those words can function as adjectives:
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello again Rsb,
That use is fine. It's a passive form using 'get' instead of 'be' as the auxiliary verb.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Rsb,
I think it is an adjective here describing the account. If you read it as a passive then it would be present simple, and you'd need a context to suit that such as 'my account is blocked every week' or similar.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Nevı,
Some dictionaries do list stopped as an adjective (e.g. the Collins Dictionary).
Different dictionaries use different criteria for including or excluding words. One of these criteria is probably the frequency of usage - i.e., blocked as an adjective is probably more frequently used than stopped as an adjective.
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Rsb,
The two uses of 'got' that you mention here are just two of quite a few. The sentence you use as an example is grammatically correct, but sounds a little unnatural to me because there is dissonance between the use of 'get' as an informal passive auxiliary and the word 'hospitalized', which is not informal. Your example is grammatically correct, however -- I just wanted to point this out.
I'm not familiar with the rule you mention about 'get' not being used in passives in continuous or perfect forms, but it does sound like a good guideline in general. It does indeed sound odd to me to say 'The window is getting broken', but I don't think I'd go so far as to say it's incorrect.
Hope this helps.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Rsb,
I understand that perhaps this kind of summary is useful to you, but I wouldn't give my students this kind of thing. This is mainly because I think it's more useful to learn patterns, which allow for more diverse usages, than it is to learn rules, which tend to leave out important details. For example, I think it's important to note that 'get' is more informal than 'be'. I'd also not say it's wrong to use it in continuous tenses, though it is unusual.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Nevı,
Your sentence has a direct object (my ideas) and an indirect object (her). We use the direct object as the subject in passive voice:
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello again Nevı,
No, '
She was expressed my ideas' is not a correct sentence.As I said, we use the direct object as the subject in a passive sentence, not the indirect object.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Nevı,
I'm surprised by the definition you found in the Oxford Dictionary and don't know how to explain that. I see something different in the Lexico UK dictionary (which is based on the Oxford Dictionary) win the definition for 'throng'.
What Collins says makes sense to me, and matches what Cambridge and Longman show as well. In other words, I'd recommend you view it as an adjective formed from the past participle of the verb 'throng'; it often collocates with the preposition 'with', but there are other patterns as well.
It's always a good idea to check several sources.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello dipakrgandhi,
It's important to recognise the communicative function here, as it is not the same for all of these sentences.
When we are describing a fact in the world, we can use these sentences:
All of these sentences are correct. For example, a hotel might say this to its guests:
However, sometimes the function is not simply to describe a fact. For example, Your suggestions are welcome has the function of encouraging people to make suggestions.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Rsb,
'delay' is a transitive verb, so I'm afraid the first sentence is not correct. If you look up the word in the dictionary, you'll see some useful example sentences.
The second sentence is a bit awkward in standard British English, but its use of 'delayed' is correct.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Rsb,
Actually, delay has several meanings! For the meaning of 'to make something late', it's only transitive (see the second meaning of delay in the Cambridge Dictionary). It's not intransitive or ergative for this meaning.
About the arrive phrase, it should be: The employee's cab was delayed (in) arriving at the office. You can use it with or without in. It has the same meaning.
Using 'to + verb' (to arrive at the office) doesn't work here, unless you want to show the purpose of the delay (e.g. The event was delayed, to give us more time to prepare).
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Rsb,
Delay is a noun and a verb but not an adjective, so we should use the -ed form here: The cab was delayed.
Best wishes,
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Rsb,
I just wanted to point out that Jonathan didn't say that 'delayed' is a noun -- he said that 'delay' is a noun. In this sentence, 'delayed' is an adjective.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Rsb,
I'm afraid that isn't correct. I'd suggest you study the example sentences you can find in a few online dictionaries -- I think that should clarify to you how it is used.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Rsb,
Yes, that's right! The sentence has those two meanings. Note though that the noun cab needs an article before it (probably the).
I don't understand what you mean by 'what kind of noun'. Do you want to know the meaning, or whether the noun is countable or uncountable? If so, I'd recommend using the dictionary for both of these. Have a look at these Cambridge Dictionary pages for delay and shift.
Best wishes,
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Rsb,
OK, I see now! In those dictionary pages, after noun, it shows C if it's countable, U if it's uncountable, and C and U if it's both. Delay and shift are abstract things.
Best wishes,
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi eager2know,
I think normally, we'd understand another table as the object of the active voice sentence. We'd understand the phrase for this class as referring to the action of repairing, and it isn't part of the object.
But, we can understand it another way: the object is another table for this class. In this case, the table is for the class (while in the other meaning above, 'repairing' is for the class). It's a small difference in meaning, though, and both of your passive sentences mean pretty much the same thing.
Best wishes,
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Rsb,
Yes! We can understand this sentence both ways.
But, the second one (broken = adjective) is more likely, because of the tense in your sentence. The first one is a passive action in the present simple. The present simple usually shows something that is true in the present and is relatively unchanging, or is a regularly occurring action. But the action of breaking a chair is short and usually not a regularly occurring action.
Instead, to describe an action that you are seeing right now, we'd use the present continuous: The chair is being broken. (Or: The chair is breaking). Alternatively, if we can see the broken chair, then the action has already happened and we'd use the present perfect or past simple: The chair has been broken / The chair was broken. (Or: The chair has broken. / The chair broke.)
Best wishes,
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Rsb,
Yes :) The past tense sentence has the two different meanings you mentioned. And that's right - break is an ergative verb.
Best wishes,
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Rsb,
Yes, that's right. Simple sentences are sentences that have only one clause. Simple tenses are tenses that are not continuous. Both the examples you mentioned are simple sentences and have simple tenses.
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello bakh.sh85,
No, that's not a passive form. To make a passive, you need to use be + past participle. It's possible to replace 'be' with 'get' or 'become', but you still need a past participle, and in your sentence 'angry' is an adjective, not a past participle.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team