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Anonymous Posted 17 years ago
Grammar
Was killed/have been killed
Hi everybody.
I have a question concerning the difference between "was" and "have been" with the verb "kill". I've already read other discussions with the same topic but I was just wondering if the difference here may lie not in the absence/presence of present consequences, but in the possible presence of the agent.
The sentence I'm translating is:
xxx was killed, or was generally believed to have been killed, in the crash of a helicopter.
So, could it be that was killed is just a neutral way to say that now he's dead, while "have been killed" implicates the fact that somebody killed him?
Thank you in advance
Federica
I have a question concerning the difference between "was" and "have been" with the verb "kill". I've already read other discussions with the same topic but I was just wondering if the difference here may lie not in the absence/presence of present consequences, but in the possible presence of the agent.
The sentence I'm translating is:
xxx was killed, or was generally believed to have been killed, in the crash of a helicopter.
So, could it be that was killed is just a neutral way to say that now he's dead, while "have been killed" implicates the fact that somebody killed him?
Thank you in advance
Federica
Top answer
-- No, that much cannot be extrapolated from the grammar . ')
- -- No, that much cannot be extrapolated from the grammar .
- ')
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1 Answers
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So, could it be that was killed is just a neutral way to say that now he's dead, while "have been killed" implicates the fact that somebody killed him?-- No, that much cannot be extrapolated from the grammar. The present perfect passive is required because that is the only way to place the infinitive into the past, which is required in the structure here ('believed to...')
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