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Jander52 Posted 17 years ago
Grammar

Passivisation- please help!!

so i'm on to passivisation now and having a couple troubles.

Can these sentences be passivised,

1) these flowrs wilt easly under the hot sun
- I don't think it can because there is no direct object and "under the sun" is an adverbial

2) Steve Jabby is one of the most important and most popular american referee of our time
- I again dont think this can because there is no direct object that can become the subject

3) Michael jordan does not find all the film versions of his books acceptable.
I am having trouble with this one, i think it can be passivized into " all the film versions of his books were not found acceptible by Michael Jordan"

4) he is the leader of a secret organization in prison
thanks
  

Top answer

Well, your questions were posted before. I was hesitant to approach it because I felt I could have opened up a can of worms. Passive sentences have a specific purpose.

  • Well, your questions were posted before.
  • I was hesitant to approach it because I felt I could have opened up a can of worms.
  • Passive sentences have a specific purpose.
  • Unless one knows what that purpose is, blindly changing a good active-voice sentence into passive can be troublesome, and the examples fall into this category.
  • We can approach # 1 this way.
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2 Answers
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Well, your questions were posted before. I was hesitant to approach it because I felt I could have opened up a can of worms. Passive sentences have a specific purpose. Unless one knows what that purpose is, blindly changing a good active-voice sentence into passive can be troublesome, and the examples fall into this category.

We can approach # 1 this way. The flower were wilting under t
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Hi Jander;

If you look up a verb in the dictionary, it will tell you if the verb can be used in a passive voice or not. The technical terms are "transitive" (the verb can have an object) and "intransitive" (the verb cannot have an object).
Some verbs can be both, depending on the meaning.

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