Is it okay to use "by" in the passive sentence when the real distance of a subject and the object of "by" is far?
It is not something I have not doubted about, but as I'm think deeply about the preposition "by", I have gotten a doubt like below,
The basic meaning of "by" is "next to, near to" as in the below sentences,
1.The telephone is by the window.
2.Come and sit by me.
so, for this sense of "by", I guess that the usage of "by" is used like in the below sentence.
3.He was knocked down by a bus.
"by" is used here to convey the meaning that the bus is near to "he" and knocked him down.
So, although I used to use "by" like in 4, I don't think the below sentence works, technically, because as people cannot be next to or near to the stars, it does not seem to work to use "by", which means basically "near to", "next to".
4.The stars cannot be observed by people who live in the southern hemisphere.
To sum up, I think to use "by" in passive sentences like 3 is possible only if the real distance of the object of "by" and "the subject" in a sentence isn't far, because of the basic meaning of "by", near to, next to.
It may be a silly and funny question, but I just want to know how you would think.
Thank you very much.
Top answer
There is no obvious semantic connection in the minds of modern speakers between the "by" used to indicate proximity and the "by" used to indicate the agent of passive verbs, and there is no requirement for the agent and the subject in a passive sentence to be physically close to one another . Apparently these two "by"s are from the same root, so there will be some historical etymological connection, but now they are like two different words that just happen to be spelled the same.
- There is no obvious semantic connection in the minds of modern speakers between the "by" used to indicate proximity and the "by" used to indicate the agent of passive verbs, and there is no requirement for the agent and the subject in a passive sentence to be physically close to one another .
- Apparently these two "by"s are from the same root, so there will be some historical etymological connection, but now they are like two different words that just happen to be spelled the same.
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There is no obvious semantic connection in the minds of modern speakers between the "by" used to indicate proximity and the "by" used to indicate the agent of passive verbs, and there is no requirement for the agent and the subject in a passive sentence to be physically close to one another. Apparently these t
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