To make this comparison, we need to understand how to convert a passive sentence into its counterpart active form, and vice versa, how to con-vert an active sentence into its counterpart
Trang 13 Finally, the mystery has been solved!
4 John has retired from his position at the university
5 The remodeling is costing us a fortune
6 Your salary will be adjusted to refl ect the higher cost of living in Tokyo
7 The gate is always locked at 6 p.m
8 The company’s success has been noticed by the fi nancial press
9 My car was previously owned by a reckless teenager
10 The operation has just emerged from bankruptcy
11 Senator Blather was elected in 1996
12 The alarm was fi rst sounded by a security guard in the early morning
13 I should have listened more carefully
14 The product should have been recalled earlier
15 The play is being directed by Joan Ridgeway
Virtually every passive sentence has an active sentence counterpart In order to use a passive sentence effectively, we need to be able compare the passive and active forms of the same sentence
to see which version best suits our purpose To make this comparison, we need to understand
how to convert a passive sentence into its counterpart active form, and vice versa, how to
con-vert an active sentence into its counterpart passive form Unfortunately this conversion back and
forth between the active and passive forms is one of the most complicated operations in English
grammar
Let us begin by looking closely at how we change the active sentence “John saw Mary” into its
passive counterpart, “Mary was seen by John.” The fi rst and most important step is to insert the
passive auxiliary verb be immediately in front of the main verb in the active sentence Adding the
passive auxiliary verb be automatically triggers the following changes in verb forms: the original
tense of the main verb passes over to be, and the main verb changes to its past participle form.
John saw Mary ⇒ John was seen Mary.
The next two steps are both complicated and unique to the passive The subject in the active
sentence is turned into a prepositional phrase beginning with by:
John was seen Mary ⇒ by John was seen Mary.
Trang 2Then this new prepositional phrase switches place with the original object:
by John was seen Mary ⇒ Mary was seen by John.
The most important thing to understand about the process that converts the active to the passive is that it does not change the meaning of the sentence The passive means exactly the
same thing as the original active The purpose of the shift from active to passive is to change the
focus or emphasis of the sentence In the active form of the sentence, the focus is on what the
subject does In the passive form of the sentence, the focus is on what happens to the object In
our example, the active version of the sentence tells us what John did (he saw Mary) The passive
version of the sentence tells us what happened to Mary (she was seen by John)
Here are some more examples of the three-step process of changing an active sentence to its passive counterpart:
Insert passive auxiliary: Kathy was postponed the meeting.
Switch subject and object: The meeting was postponed by Kathy.
Insert passive auxiliary: The joke was amused the audience.
Switch subjects and objects: The audience was amused by the joke.
Insert passive auxiliary: The Senator is denied all charges.
Switch subjects and objects: All charges are denied by the Senator.
Did you notice that we had to make one fi nal adjustment when we switched the subject and
object in the last example? When the old object in the active sentence became the new subject
in the passive sentence, we had to adjust the form of the verb be to agree with the number of the
new subject since it was different from the number of the old subject That is, we had to change
is denied to are denied to agree with the new plural subject all charges rather than the old singular
subject the Senator.
Trang 3McGraw-Hill published the books.
Insert passive auxiliary: McGraw-Hill was published the books.
Switch subjects and objects: The books were published by McGraw-Hill.
1 Janet answered my questions
2 The press offi ce issued a statement
3 Everybody supported the proposal
4 A visitor taught my economics class today
5 What happened proved my point
6 Somebody made a big mistake
Trang 47 Our law fi rm represents the union.
8 Many companies use our software programs
9 The new process obtains much better results
10 The government recognizes the problem
Fortunately, adding the passive auxiliary to other sentences with other helping or auxiliary verbs is not at all diffi cult because the passive auxiliary is always added at the end of any sequence
just in front of the main verb so that adding the passive auxiliary does not cause changes in any
of the other auxiliary or helping verbs Here are some examples:
Perfect
Passive: John has been seen by Mary.
Active: The rug had covered most of the fl oor
Passive: Most of the fl oor had been covered by the rug.
Trang 5Active: Ralph was offering me the job.
Passive: I was being offered the job by Ralph.
Modal auxiliary
Passive: John might be seen by Mary.
Active: They will pay the bill
Passive: The bill will be paid by them.
As you can see from the preceding examples, the forms of be and the main verb are completely
predictable: the passive auxiliary be always takes on whatever tense the main verb originally was:
if the main verb was in the past tense, be is in the past tense; if the main verb was in the
progres-sive, be is in the progresprogres-sive, and so on The main verb then always changes to its past participle
form
Exercise 14.3
Use the three-step process to convert the following active sentences into their passive sentence
counterparts
My parents are watching the kids
Insert passive auxiliary: My parents are being watched the kids.
Switch subjects and objects: The kids are being watched by my parents.
1 The waiter is calculating the bill
2 The police will solve the crime
Trang 63 The merchants were displaying summer clothing.
4 The mosquitoes might bother you this time of year
5 Everybody had accepted his offer
6 We are hiring some new employees
7 The union could have sued the company
8 The secretary had delayed the merger
9 Jackson should have seen them
Trang 710 They are talking about what happened.
Going from the passive to the active is relatively easy A quick way to do it is to move the
noun phrase inside the by prepositional phrase to the subject position and turn the main verb
(the last verb in the chain of verbs) into a simple present or past tense and then use the subject of
the passive sentence as the object Here is an example:
Passive: The motion was made by Mr Brown
With a little practice, it is relatively easy to change a passive sentence back to its active coun-terpart in your head See how quickly you can do the following exercise in your head, without
using pen or pencil to work it out
Exercise 14.4
Without working though the process step-by-step, see how fast you can convert the following
passive sentences to their active forms
The manuscript was examined by an expert from the university
An expert from the university examined the manuscript
1 Alice was discouraged by the weak response to the ads
2 The estate was evaluated by a professional appraiser
3 Smoke was detected by a sensor in the lab
4 The hotel room had been cleaned by the maid
5 A new hearing was requested by the defendant’s lawyer