Active to passive

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 9:31 am

Rewrite the sentence using the words given:

1. A Fire destroyed the original cinema in 1990.

The original cinema _________________________________ .

Now this is clearly an activity designed to test the student's ability to change from the active to the passive voice.
The problem is that apart from those who just don't get it, I would normally get two responses:

a) The original cinema was destroyed by a fire in 1990, and
b) The original cinema was destroyed in 1990 by a fire.

The second sentence, if anything, seems more popular with Polish students I think it's because they are told that you just say, "by+old subject at the end."

As a native speaker, I find the second sentence a bit awkward because the agent, if mentioned, would seem more logical streight after the verb with the second prepositional phrase following.

Just how important do you think this in English?

At the moment I uniquely mark this sentence 0.75 to show that it's not quite right. Would you accept sentence b)?

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 5:06 pm

I would miss out the article
destroyed by fire

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 5:24 pm

Stephen Jones wrote:

I would miss out the article
destroyed by fire

Yes, I know that "fire" can be countable or uncountable but that's not the point here. Should the agent come first?

sonya · Post by **sonya** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 7:31 pm

the fire is no longer the agent in the passive voice; in passivization the original agent theta role gets thrown out. it becomes an adjunct like "in 1990", and adjuncts are interchangeable. both sentences sound fine.

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 9:28 pm

Sonya wrote:

the fire is no longer the agent in the passive voice; in passivization the original agent theta role gets thrown out. it becomes an adjunct like "in 1990", and adjuncts are interchangeable. both sentences sound fine.

This from Wikipedia theta role:

In linguistics, a theta role or θ-role is the semantic role a noun phrase plays in a sentence. The term thematic role denotes the same concept. As such it is a semantic rather than a syntactic feature, in contrast to such notions as the subject of a sentence or a prepositional object.

For instance, in the sentence Debra broke the window, "Debra" is both the subject of the sentence and the agent and "the window" is the object of the verb and the patient. But in The window was broken by Debra, "Debra" is still the agent, even though "the window" is now the subject of the sentence.

Major theta roles

Here is a list of the major theta roles, using the example sentence, Debra broke the window with a bat and Jack fell asleep.
* The agent (A) is whoever is intentionally carrying out some action. In the first example sentence, Debra is the agent.
* The experiencer (S) is someone or a thing who experiences some state. Thus, in Jack fell asleep, Jack is the experiencer. This is because Jack is not an agent, in that he did not "fall himself asleep". One semantic test used to distinguish the two roles is to ask if "I promise to..." makes sense. For example, "I promise to break the window" is contrasted with "I promise to fall asleep". Another example includes "What did she do?" contrasting with "What happened to her?"; this is shown with the pair "What did she do?" — "She broke the window." which is contrasted with "What happened to her?" — "She fell asleep."
* The patient or theme (O) is whatever is acted on. Thus the window is the patient.
* The instrument is whatever is being used to perform the action; the bat is the instrument.
Other theta roles exist in the literature, but many tend to be more controversial.

Uniqueness

Generally, only one noun phrase can occupy a certain theta role in a sentence. This does not include conjunctions such as Bill and Ted went shopping, or I was attacked by cats and by dogs. But a sentence such as The car broke the window with its fender strongly implies for most speakers that the car is acting as an agent, because the car and the fender cannot both be instruments.

No, I'm afraid "a fire" is still the agent. See the emboldened part of the quote above.

What I would like to know is as a native speaker would you be as likely to say either. Does anyone have access to corpora to test this?

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 9:28 pm

yes, I know that "fire" can be countable or uncountable but that's not the point here. Should the agent come first?

The point is relevant.
The cinema was destroyed by fire in 1990.
The cinema was destroyed by a fire in 1990.
*The cinema was destroyed in 1990 by fire.
?The cinema was destroyed in 1990 by a fire.

In certain cases the time can go first.
Penicillin was discovered in 1928 by Alexander Fleming.
Peniclllin was discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928.

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 9:40 pm

Just to make sure I understand you Stephen, are you using the symbol <*> to indicate that that sentence is NOT possible and <?> to indicate it isn't certain if it's possible?

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Fri Jun 02, 2006 9:45 pm

What about:
1) The window was broken with a bat by Debra.
2) The window was broken by Debra with a bat.

abufletcher · Post by **abufletcher** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 12:18 pm

Amy_H · Post by **Amy_H** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 1:21 pm

Hi Andrew

With your last example, the first thing I think of is--> If it's so darn important to include information about 'who broke the window', but doing so is difficult or awkward, why make the sentence passive in the first place?

I think most native speakers would either simply leave out either "with a bat" or "by Debra". OR would simply leave the sentence active.

Regarding your initial 2 sentences, I'd probably say "in 1990" at the end of the sentence, but putting "in 1990" right after "destroyed" doesn't really bother me in that particular sentence.

Just my two cents worth...
Amy

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 3:59 pm

I'm with Amy and Abu on this one. Andrew's example might be theoretically possible but they're very unlikely to be actually used in real life. I'm not against teaching passives on principle but we should stick to examples people are actually likely to say.

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 4:09 pm

Lolwhites wrote:

I'm with Amy and Abu on this one. Andrew's example might be theoretically possible but they're very unlikely to be actually used in real life. I'm not against teaching passives on principle but we should stick to examples people are actually likely to say.

Believe it or not, I'm with you too on this one. The sentence is pretty ugly though I would argue that it is still grammatical. I offered it as an example only. I took them from the wiki article on theta-role. I didn't know what theta-role was although I was familiar wth "agent", "patient" and "instrament".

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 12:16 am

What about:
1) The window was broken with a bat by Debra.
2) The window was broken by Debra with a bat.

Ugh!

Let's try and work out why these sentences are so puke-worthy.

Basically, too much focus and no theme. The ostensible theme of the sentence is 'the window', but what circumstance can you dream up where this would be true?

"It's hot in here! Could you open the window?"
"I'm sorry. The window was broken by Debra with a bat."
I think not! And what is so important about 'with a bat' that it takes the focus? If it was broken with a feather duster, maybe.

Now look at this sentence (pace Bumstead) which is grammatical because the theme and the subject are the same, and the grammatical focus is semantically worthy of it.
This is my great uncle Zach the anthropologist, He was beaten to death in Indonesia by an Orang Utan with a baseball bat.

Or, to give an example somewhat closer to the original.
"Can I borrow the Ferrari this weekend?"
"Sorry, it got driven off a cliff by Debra on the way to her bridge game."

abufletcher · Post by **abufletcher** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 6:27 am

Stephen Jones wrote:Let's try and work out why these sentences are so puke-worthy.

What gives these examples their high vomitability-quotient is how completely representative they are of decades of Chomskyan(-esque) linguistic theorizing.

It is, to my mind, simply ludicrous to treat something like "The window was broken by Debra with a bat" as "grammatically correct" while treating another sentence such as "There's several possible answers" as grammatically wrong. In fact, I'd say there's a whole heck of a lot more WRONG with the former than the latter.

And this isn't just a case of an inappropriate mapping of grammar to meaning. This is another instance of the lifeless "non-language" ("anti-language") characteristic of Chomskyan scholarship, completely striped of the socio-historical-dialogic reverberations which are the real carriers of meaning. Things "mean things" precisely because people have used them to mean them before.

sonya · Post by **sonya** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:38 am

Andrew Patterson wrote: No, I'm afraid "a fire" is still the agent. See the emboldened part of the quote above.

What I would like to know is as a native speaker would you be as likely to say either. Does anyone have access to corpora to test this?

it's not. this may be an instance where wikipedia is wrong, or fails to show the full picture. Their other examples are iffy too, they don't distinguish between the patient and theme and they define some of the theta roles imprecisely.

I should edit it.. hrmmm.

A fire and Debra would be the agent in these cases *if* they were assigned a theta role. but in the passive they aren't.

theta roles are assigned by a verb, if a verb gives however many obligatory theta roles, they all *must* be assigned and accounted for. In other words, you can't leave out something that takes a theta role; it won't sound okay (unless you wander into PRO territory).

a) The original cinema was destroyed by a fire in 1990, and
b) The original cinema was destroyed in 1990 by a fire.

In both, you can leave out the former "agent" theta-role receiving word. The original cinema was destroyed - in 1990. The original cinema was destroyed.

You cannot drop something that is assigned a theta role.
* Destroyed the original cinema in 1990.
but note: A fire destroyed the original cinema.

Adjuncts (ie: in 1990, by sthing) don't take theta roles.