I am confused about active and passive sentences, Can you clear up my doubts?

Question

I have some doubts regarding these sentences:
My bike's battery is discharged.
Is it Active or Passive voice sentence. I think its Passive. Because if you ask a question to the verb what is dicharged? Answer is battery. but the is discharged itself then what is the subject in the sentence.
My bike's battery has discharged. Can this is alternative question for the same sentence.
Also, sentence below:
It was not expected from you.
Does "Expected" act as a verb or an adjective here in this sentence?
If it's verb then the object is "It", Right??

Cool Breeze · Accepted Answer

harry1999If it's verb then the object is "It", Right??

In many languages that would be the right conclusion. Of course it indicates the actual object of was not expected but because it determines the grammatical inflection of the verb (was), it is generally considered the subject of the passive sentence.'

Since there are extremely few inflections in English, it is sometimes difficult to say for certain whether a past participle (needed, written, closed etc.) should be considered a verb or an adjective. In many cases past participles are definitely used adjectivally. What complicates matters even further is that there are many expressions that look like passives grammatically but can have an active meaning. For example there are two ways to say this:

He drowned in the lake.

He was drowned in the lake.

You may want to read and

CB

Anonymous · Answer

I have some doubts regarding these sentences:

My bike's battery is discharged.
Is it Active or Passive voice sentence. I think its Passive. Because if you ask a question to the verb what is dicharged? Answer is battery. but the is discharged itself then what is the subject in the sentence.

My bike's battery has discharged. Can this is alternative question for the same sentence.

Also, sentence below:

It was not expected from you.

Does "Expected" act as a verb or an adjective here in this sentence?

If it's verb then the object is "It", Right??

My bike's battery is discharged. It is in active voice, the sentence is a copula, with linking verb is, the subject My bike's battery, and an adjectival complement discharged.

It was not expected from you.

It was not expected from you. The same, it's a copula where expected is an adjectival complement of the subject It.

Clive · Answer

Hi,

My bike's battery is discharged.

A minor comment.
The normal way to say this is My bike's battery is dead.

Clive.

BillJ · Answer

harry1999I have some doubts regarding these sentences:
My bike's battery is discharged.
Is it Active or Passive voice sentence. I think its Passive. Because if you ask a question to the verb what is dicharged? Answer is battery. but the is discharged itself then what is the subject in the sentence.
My bike's battery has discharged. Can this is alternative question

I see it as a special kind of passive called an 'adjectival passive', rather than a 'verbal (or proper) passive'. The important difference between the two is that an adjectival passive describes a state whereas a verbal passive describes an event. But there can be ambiguity between the two because the verb "be" not only serves as a passive auxiliary verb forming verbal passives with past participle forms of verbs as complements, but also as a copular (linking) verb where it takes adjectives as predicative complements to form adjectival passives. For example, in "The clock was broken", the word "broken" can be an adjective in the sense that the clock was in an inoperative condition. By contrast, the verbal interpretation describes an event: 'Someone or something broke the clock'. Sometime, of course, it's obvious: "The clock was broken by the children" - here there's no doubt at all that it's a 'proper' verbal passive, especially as there's an active equivalent: "The children broke the clock".

So, in your sentence you need to decide whether "discharged" is an adjective or a past participle form of the verb "discharge". I think the most plausible interpretation is that it's an adjective, in the sense that the battery is simply inoperative because it has discharged (it's flat or dead), thus it's an adjectival passive. A less likely interpretation is that someone or something discharged it, in which case it would be a verbal passive clause, with the active equivalent "Someone discharged my bike's battery".

So far as "My bike's battery has discharged" is concerned, what do you think?

harry1999Also, sentence below:
It was not expected from you.
Does "Expected" act as a verb or an adjective here in this sentence?
If it's verb then the object is "It", Right??

"Expected" as an adjective is encountered sporadically in such expressions as "The expected sales target was not met", where it modifies the noun phrase "sales target". But in your example "expected" is a verb. "It" is the subject, and "was" is the main verb with the passive subordinate clause "not expected from you" as its complement. In the active equivalent "it" is the direct object. Of course, in your sentence we don't know who it is that's doing the expecting, so we need to posit someone (say, I) in the active version to make sense of it all:

"Do you like your gift?"

"Yes, but I did not expect it from you". (active voice, "it" is the object)

OR

"Yes, but it was not expected from you". (passive voice, "it" becomes the subject)

In both the active and passive versions, the pronoun "it" refers back to "gift" in the first sentence.

BillJ

I am confused about active and passive sentences, Can you clear up my doubts?

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