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Moon7296 Posted 14 years ago
Essay & Composition Writing
this mock exam question
1. Sandy gave the flowers to herself
2. The flowers were given by Sandy to herself.
Explain why the sentence #2 is ill-formed though it seems to be the passive version of the well-formed sentence #1, based on the observation of the word order of #1.
The answer I found says this.
This violates the word order in that the adjunct by-PP cannot precede the reflexive pronoun "herself"
Q) A weird thought came into my mind after reading the answer. I don't know how to put my thoughts in words but I just felt like the answer tried to say just like this: 1+1 is not 3 because one plus one is two.
2. The flowers were given by Sandy to herself.
Explain why the sentence #2 is ill-formed though it seems to be the passive version of the well-formed sentence #1, based on the observation of the word order of #1.
The answer I found says this.
This violates the word order in that the adjunct by-PP cannot precede the reflexive pronoun "herself"
Q) A weird thought came into my mind after reading the answer. I don't know how to put my thoughts in words but I just felt like the answer tried to say just like this: 1+1 is not 3 because one plus one is two.
Top answer
I don't know about the mathematics of it, but there is nothing wrong with the word order of #2; it is simply that the passive voice is so hopelessly awkward here. Of course it could be re-arranged to 'The flowers were given to herself by Sandy', but that hardly sounds any better, does it?
- I don't know about the mathematics of it, but there is nothing wrong with the word order of #2; it is simply that the passive voice is so hopelessly awkward here.
- Of course it could be re-arranged to 'The flowers were given to herself by Sandy', but that hardly sounds any better, does it?
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1 Answers
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I don't know about the mathematics of it, but there is nothing wrong with the word order of #2; it is simply that the passive voice is so hopelessly awkward here. Of course it could be re-arranged to 'The flowers were given to herself by Sandy', but that hardly sounds any better, does it?
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