The strange passive voice!

Question

In our grammer book, we just can make passive voice by using transitive verb, but sometimes we can find passive voice by using intransitive voice like "fall"How can you explain these sentences??

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]In our grammer book, we just can make passive voice by using transitive verb, but sometimes we can find passive voice by using intransitive voice like "fall" How can you explain these sentences??[/nq]
You mean like "the tree is fallen"? That's not passive voice. It's the past participle being used as an adjective.
One test is whether it can be put into the progressive; a true passive voice will have no problem being expressed in the progressive:

I broke the window.
The window was broken by me.
The window was being broken by me.
BUT
The tree fell.
The tree was fallen.
*The tree was being fallen.
Still this test is not likely to be of much help to a nonnative speaker who does not have the internal grammar to tell them that the asterisked sentence is not quite kosher.
Note also that some verbs can be either intransitive or transitive, like "break". We can use it intransitively as "the window broke" or transitively as "I broke the window", so the transitive usage can go passive: "the window was broken by me", or just "the window was broken". The last sentence can also be parsed as (be + past-participial adjective), where "broken" refers to a state, not an action.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]In our grammer book, we just can make passive voice ... intransitive voice like "fall" How can you explain these sentences??[/nq]
[nq:1]You mean like "the tree is fallen"? That's not passive voice. It's the past participle being used as an adjective. ... The window was being broken by me. BUT The tree fell. The tree was fallen. *The tree was being fallen.[/nq]
"The tree was being fallen" makes no sense, and "The tree was fallen" is little better. Try "The tree was felled" (if somebody has finished chopping it down) or "The tree was being felled" (if somebody was in process of chopping it down).

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]You mean like "the tree is fallen"? That's not passive ... fell. The tree was fallen. *The tree was being fallen.[/nq]
[nq:1]"The tree was being fallen" makes no sense,[/nq]
How does it make no sense? The tree was just lying there, doing its thing, which was "being fallen". It isn't grammatical, it isn't the way this idea is expressed in English grammar, but that's not because it "makes no sense".
[nq:1]and "The tree was fallen" is little better.[/nq]
Hmm, perhaps not, but it just might be acceptable. A lot of intransitive verbs nowadays have adjective forms separate from the modern past participle, as "rotten" from "rot", past participle "rotted". So we have "it is rotten" not "it is rotted". Of course "rotten" is just the former past participle before regularization.
Try "The tree was felled" (if somebody has finished
[nq:1]chopping it down) or "The tree was being felled" (if somebody was in process of chopping it down).[/nq]
You're missing the point. "The tree was felled" is a normal passive formed with a transitive verb, "fell". The question was about forming passives with intransitive verbs. The answer is complicated by the fact that many English verbs have both transitive and intransitive senses, as "break". "Fall" is one of the few verbs that transitivize via the old ablaut system, yielding "fell" (which just happens to be the past tense of "fall" as well another complication).

The strange passive voice!

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