Use of passive sentences.

Question

Hello,I am confused about this.I know that you can't sayLooking at his brother, her eyes were filled with tears.It should be : Looking at his brother, she noticed that her eyes filled with tears.So...Can you write:1) Following existing plans, the new strategy was adopted.2) To develop a new plan, various strategies were considered.Are these acceptable grammatically?I know that we can sayFollowing existing plans, we adopted the new stratety.To develop a new plan, we considered various strtegies.But I want to know if 1 and 2 are grammatically corrrect.Thanks.

Dimsumexpress · Accepted Answer

englishnewbieI am confused about this.I know that you can't say Looking at his brother, her eyes were filled with tears.It should be : Looking at his brother, she noticed that her eyes filled with tears.

Is it "he" or "she" ? I am confused?

englishnewbieFollowing existing plans, we adopted the new stratety.To develop a new plan, we considered various strtegies.

My observation is that you are trying to the "to-infinitive" and adverbial clause construction. You used a present participle clause construction followed by a passive clause in #1 and "to-infinitive on # 2. Grammatically, they seemed correct to me. But I am not sure if this is a good practice but I definitely will not use this construction myself given the limited context. I prefer the active version because it makes more sense and sounds better semantically.

BillJ · Answer

englishnewbieI know that you can't say 1) Looking at his brother, her eyes were filled with tears. It should be : 2) Looking at his brother, she noticed that her eyes filled with tears.

Actually, you can say 1), it's OK; but note that the underlined clause is not a 'verbal passive' ('be' + past participle); it's an 'adjectival passive' where "filled" is an adjective, not a past participle.

englishnewbieCan you write: 1) Following existing plans, the new strategy was adopted. 2) To develop a new plan, various strategies were considered. Are these acceptable grammatically? I know that we can say 3) Following existing plans, we adopted the new stratety. 4) To develop a new plan, we considered various strtegies .But I want to know if 1 and 2 are grammatically corrrect.

Yes, 1) and 2) are grammatically correct. The underlined clauses are the passive versions of the underlined ones in 3) and 4), which are active. Same meaning, different voice.

BillJ

Englishnewbie · Answer

Thank you both!

Use of passive sentences.

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