Prepositional Phrase

Question

I was doing exercises with my students about passive voice. There was a question asking to turn the sentence "They paid the artist £1000 for his painting" into passive form. I said it should be "£1000 was paid to the artist for his painting" but one of my students asked why the sentence can't be like this: "£1000 for his painting was paid to the artist for his painting". Can it be like this? Or can't it be? I couldn't find a satisfying answer, please help.

David Hatton · Accepted Answer

green guava 781£1000 for his painting was paid to the artist for his painting

No - I assume you didn't mean to use 'for his painting' twice though.

green guava 781£1000 for his painting was paid to the artist.

It doesn't sound right. It certainly wouldn't be said, even if it could be grammatically justified.

Green guava 781 · Answer

Sorry, I meant I used "for his painting" twice. I did a mistke. My student asked if we can make the subject of the student as "£1000 for his painting" and the rest of the sentence goes like "was paid to the artist".

Cool Breeze · Answer

There is another way, though: The artist was paid £1000 for his painting.

CB

BillJ · Answer

They paid the artist £1000 for his painting.

[1] The artist was paid £1,000 (by them) for his painting.

[2] ? £1,000 was paid the artist (by them) for his painting.

Both your student and the book are wrong. They have changed the indirect object from the NP "the artist" to the PP "to the artist", so it is not a true passive equivalent of the active. Note that PPs cannot be objects.

In principle, ditransitive actives have two passive counterparts depending on whether it is the indirect or the direct object object that is externalised, as in [1] and [2] respectively.

The version with the indirect object externalised [1] is much more common; the second is hardly possible in AmE, and even in BrE is only marginally acceptable.

Prepositional Phrase

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