![]() ![]() (6) The village was surrounded by soldiers. In this position, there may be ambiguity between adjective and passive verb, depending on how commonly the word is used as adjective and/or verb: We call the word in (5) an adjective because it's in adjective position and has very limited possibilities for being modified, unlike a verb, which can be followed by lots of different modifiers.Īn adjective can also be the complement of 'be' (John was bored / excited / interested / amused). It is rare for a past participle in functions (2) to (5) to be active, though one example is 'retired' - 'a retired teacher' 'Retired since 2005, the teacher now lives in Spain.' ![]() ![]() Now of these, only (1) is active, and (2) to (5) are passive (in meaning, at least - only (2) is a full passive voice construction). (5) The rejected bird was eaten by a cat. (4) Rejected by its parents, the baby bird was eaten by a cat.Īnd it can modify a noun in the adjective position: exercise 3: two exercises in which you have to choose using the active or passive voice in the simple past. exercise 2: fill in the active or the passive form of the verb in the simple past. exercise 1: fill in the active or the passive form of the verb in the simple present. (3b) The baby bird, rejected by its parents, was eaten by a cat. Deciding whether to use passive or active voice. (3a) The bird rejected by its parents was eaten by a cat. It can head a verb phrase, either modifying a noun or being part of an independent adjunct in a clause: (2) The baby bird was rejected by its parents. (1) The parent birds have rejected their baby. It can be the complement of an auxiliary verb - 'have' for the perfect tenses, and 'be' for the passive voice: Let's review the ways the past participle is used. The situation is not helped by the fact that some people would describe broken here as a pure adjective and do not use the term passive for verbs that describe a state. So we can have a situation where we have a passive construction (either dynamic or passive) as in The television was broken. The difference between these two sentences is minimal, in practice. You can always use very in front of them, for example (but you cannot say very married). You can only recognise these adjectives by experience ( or read lists!). But there are some participles that can be pure adjectives, like excited, interested, disappointed etc. So we can say a cracked mirror, a married couple etc. Stative passive participles can generally be described as adjectives that can come before a noun. by the burglar), when we have a dynamic passive). (stative passive, although the agent could be understood (e.g. This is really a question about terminology, and I am not sure that it has any practical value.įirst you have to distinguish between be + past participle describing a state (the static passive) or an action caused by an agent (the dynamic passive). ![]()
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